Vampires

John Carpenter gave up on darkness and suspense and went in the direction of rock music, splatter, violent action and cool catchphrases. On the one hand, he disappointed me, because I adore the very thing he abandoned, but on the other hand, he entertained me more with this flick than he did with Village of the Damned. But in order to stand out from the gray average of similar vampire movies, Vampires would have to offer something more than just frantic camerawork with nice filters. It would have to combine black-humour and horror more artistically and sensitively. And that’s where Carpenter’s directing comes up short. (04/06/2002)

Let’s be real, this is quite embarrassing for Carpenter, but it’s still watchable. Weak three stars, I’m not a fan of this kind of horror B-movie. (19/05/2011)

Slightly above average stuff. Too bad John Carpenter ran out of breath halfway through. Unlike his earlier horror films, this one lacks carefully constructed atmosphere, but there's plenty of blood, violence, dry one-liners and a decent James Woods. Which is pretty cool. (23/08/2002)

Man, that Carpenter must have had some anger issues back then to barf up this unprecedented butchery where James Woods slaps women, beats a priest with a phone, and when he gets around to a vampire he shoots a full clip into his face from two inches away for absolutely no reason. Me gusta! That was also the year that saw another unscrupulous vampire hunter burst into the cinematic ether, namely Blade. Couldn't have been a worse year for them toothy predators. (24/10/2020)

John Carpenter became a filmmaker to make westerns, but by the time he broke through, the genre was almost dead, and his work took a different direction, yet it is very much influenced by the western; Vampires (along with Ghosts of Mars) most of all. And not just with their western visuals of the arid landscape of the American Southwest (or in the case of Ghosts, the arid landscape of Mars). This film is basically a vampire version of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. Instead of a bunch of outlaws, there's a bunch of ruthless vampires who also share a mutual respect and a code of their own. The protagonist, then, is a typical Carpenter cynical badass (a surprisingly well cast James Woods), whose angry toughness surpasses even Snake Plissken himself. While most of Carpenter's films were influenced by Howard Hawks, this one is primarily a tribute to Sam Peckinpah. The action scenes are much more frenetic and fast-cut than is usual for Carpenter, and instead of the "bloody ballet" of shot-up cowboys in The Wild Bunch, the film is bathed in a "fire ballet" of vampires exploding in the sun (the central gang literally hunts them like fish, pulling them out of the darkness and into the light, where they burst into flames). Understandably, there are also inspirations for one of Carpenter's favorite films, Hawks' Rio Bravo in the final prison clash, for example. Vampires is a formulaic, repetitive and predictable film. It is by no means scary vampire horror. Instead, you're in for a solid helping of violent, stylishly shot macho action with macho guy lines and a gritty sense of humor. I'll admit that when I saw it for the second time many years later, and I was already treating it like a western and not a horror film, I liked it much better. (01/12/2023)