Okay, here's the deal. Y'all remember back to this past summer? Remember me using the words "wasted potential" a lot, or words to that effect, anyway? Well, I'm beginning to think that I may have to pack a couple of bags and head out there to ol' Holly Rock and set up a branch office. Why? Simple. I'm beginning to believe that there's a crisis out there, of epidemic proportions. It seems that there's a virus out in LaLaLand, other than the ones you already know all about. This one is more deadly to the cinematic world, though. As far as I know, this virus has no translatable name in English, not one I can use here, anyway. It's usually known by its Latin name Urinatus Potentialus. The best translation I can give you is that the virus has a nickname - The Big Whiz.
Studio heads, directors, writers, actors, this disease knows no enemies. It strikes any and all that begin to have visions of grandeur that far overstep their actual talent or worth. Normally, it starts slowly, and escalates until there is one huge attack that puts the victim in Movie Limbo for a couple of years. Writer Joe Esterhaus suffered his attack after a rousing encounter with some Vegas dancers. It continues to this day. Bruce Willis is an occasional sufferer, as are the rest of the Planet Hollywood crew. Burt Reynolds is just now beginning to recover from a fifteen-year bout. Director Paul Verhoven is showing some classic symptoms of the onset of Urinatus Potentialus, due to the same dancers that Esterhaus caught it from, and it was further aggravated by a mysterious plague of fifty-foot praying mantises. The Sony Pictures folks caught their case from a large lizard and two co-directors who happened to be carriers of the disease.
Sadly, though, while Urinatus Potentialus is curable, it takes great effort and rebuilding to make a full recovery. Just ask John Carpenter. Johnny Boy has a chronic case of The Big Whiz. He seems to be fine, and on the road to recovery, then, BOOM! It strikes, and it drags everyone down with him. Kurt Russell is apparently immune to the disease. Any project he and Carpenter do together, be it Big Trouble in Little China, The Thing, or the Snake Plissken movies, always catch a nice level of fun. But, alas, Kurt's not in John Carpenter's Vampires. Nor is Jamie Lee or even Roddy Piper. Strangely enough, John grabbed a cast full of fellow sufferers, and, all in all, they joined forces to show the world exactly how terrible Urinatus Potentialus, The Big Whiz, can effect a movie.
Jack Crow (James Woods) has a special calling in life. He's a vampire hunter, a contract hitman for The Vatican, hunting down and wiping out the undead in the world. He has a highly trained crew, he has financial backing, and he has all the high-tech weaponry that backing can buy. But, when Cardinal Alba (Maximilian Schell) sets him loose on a vampire named Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), the stakes (pardon the pun...) get much higher. The good cardinal has evidence that Valek may indeed be Patient Zero for vampirism, meaning that Valek may be the very first vampire, the one that started it all. A virus of sorts causes vampirism, and Valek may very well be the man that began the spread of blood sucking and bat changing and all that. As anyone could tell you, if you can stop the original source of any problem, the problem can finally be destroyed once and for all. But, is Crow strong enough to lay Valek to rest for good?
Carpenter had everything he needed to go straight to the top with this thing. He had a story based on a very good genre book called Vampire$, by John Steakley. He had big studio bucks behind him. I was geared for this thing for months, worse than anything out there now. I loved the book; I love Carpenter when he is in top form; I love vampire movies; and now I was getting all three in one big box. And, truthfully, this thing starts out like perfection under glass. It's a neat blend of gore and deadpan humor, and it has the tone you expect from Johnny Boy's best, like Escape From New York and Little China, where everyone is dead serious about utterly fantastic stuff. The hunters play like Helen Hunt's crew from Twister, all with their own specialty and all ready for giddy-up at a moment's notice, wild for the hunt. Woods, especially, is great playing the deadpan tough guy, but the Tommy Lee Jones-MIB impression gets old quickly.
And, here's lies the biggest problem with James Woods in this movie. He has no one, and I mean NO ONE, to back him up in this. If there had been even one actor in this movie that could have balanced him out, it would've worked. But, for whatever reason, Carpenter chose to back Woods up with people like Daniel Baldwin, playing Crow's right hand man Tony Montoya, and Sheryl Lee, playing a hooker that Valek bit and is now the link between the hunters and the hunted. And let's not forget Valek himself, Thomas Ian Griffith. Danny Baldwin is in a duel with Brother Stephen to see who is the most annoying of the Baldwin brothers. Sheryl Lee's best performance in her career was being the dead chick in the shrink-wrap in Twin Peaks. And Griffith is probably best known as the bad guy in Karate Kid Part Three. THESE are the people that are supposed to balance out fellow Big Whiz sufferer James Woods, who has bounced between perfection and penny-on-the-eye, tag-on-the-toe dead so many times he should rightfully be a Siamese cat on its eighth life..?
Carpenter also doesn't go far to help himself, either, when it comes to maintaining the pace he sets. In the first fifty minutes, we're handed a heap of information. Vampirism is a disease, Valek is the main carrier, and The Vatican has a team of hunters dedicated to the extinction of vampirism. Interesting AIDS metaphor as the disease is linked to vampirism and sex. Nice, nice, nice. But then, all of a sudden, everything just goes ka-blooey. SFX gore and Schwarzenegger wisecracks begin to replace plot advancement. When that handle gets pulled, the flush just carries everything else down with it.
This whole movie should hinge on good versus evil. Much could've been made about the religious overtones, or the sexual overtones, or the true classification of who exactly is "good," and who is "evil" in this covert war, but it never happens. Work it as a camp piece, it would have worked, but it never happened. Work it as a full-fledged horror movie, it could have worked, but it never happened. I actually found myself comparing it to Blade, a movie that, in theory, had little chance of working, but did. Here, we have a movie that, in all rational thought, should have worked, but it never happened.
It's a shame that Johnny Boy can't find the touch here. It makes you think back to New York, and The Thing, and Halloween, when John had his mojo on high. Then you have to flash onto Prince of Darkness or, God forbid, Memoirs of an Invisible Man. There are times that I just cannot bring myself to believe that the same man that made the moody and atmospheric Assault on Precinct 13 so many years ago also wrote the doggie flick Beethoven. Is The Big Whiz ever gonna let this poor guy go, or is it just going to lie dormant, waiting for big budget-itis to trigger its reoccurrence? When John has no money, he makes good movies. When he has huge budgets, he tanks.
If you were hoping for a nice little Halloween present from the Master, well, you might be disappointed. John Carpenter's Vampires is not a pony, no matter how hard you dig through the meadow muffins to find one. All that potential, and just whizzed it away....
Image copyright Sony Pictures.
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under the knife