John Carpenter sucks the life out of me.

Vampires (1998)

“How do you like your stake, bitch?!”

That line, uttered by Daniel Baldwin (he’s the fat one!) is either really cheesy or really awesome. I can’t decide.

And that’s sort of the problem that I have with the whole movie.  It’s got a cool concept.  Vampire slayers, hired by the Catholic church, are hunting down the original vampire before he gets his hands on an ancient artifact that will allow him to walk around during the day.  It’s not super-original, but how original can you really get in a vampire movie?  The premise, along with the location (the southwestern desert) has a lot of potential for a pretty unique vampire tale, a vampire Western of sorts.  And that kind of seems to be what John Carpenter was going for here.  Unfortunately, by this point, Carpenter had apparently run his creative well dry, and Vampires is left with no style, no atmosphere and no scares.

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