Movie Review: John Carpenter's Vampires

2/10

The Usual Suspects has a lot to answer for. Only with the presence of one of the (other) Baldwins in that classic piece of cinema could any of the others continue to get decent paying gigs, except for the by-these-standards-a-savant one. This outrageously tepid jaunt through bad goth make up and miscasting features the lamest duck in all of the Baldwin gene pool, Daniel.

Now, one piece of bad casting does not ruin a movie, but this film has so much more to offer. Tae, for example, the rock hard leader of the Vampire hunters, played by James Woods who, rather than looking like a modern day Van Helsing glowering at his immortal foes, resembles nothing so much as a dad's disdain upon meeting his daughter's prom date. To this tower of acting prowess anger strongly resembles a bad case of constipation.

Now, ok. The idea is not to make a classic motion picture - we want to have some fun with this silly tale, right? Well there isn't any. Any tongue in cheek moment (usually some overacting from the laughable "master" vampire) is undermined by the film's inflated sense of its own genius. The film flounders about for a couple of hours, never bothering with character development or pathos, pausing only to clunkily fill in back story - one character even does that crap screenwriters trick of summarising Wood's backstory in one sentence like that guy in Alone in The Dark did. Remember that "careful; she's the head curator of the museum and she's upset because her boyfriend's gone missing". That was a line!!!!

In Vampires they try and dress this up as some kind of "hello" between characters, but it is as clunky as the acting.

This never, ever works. Why on earth do people still think it will?

Add to this the dumbest set of plans and plot holes - one sequence has the hunters, pushed for time before sunset, nevertheless to decide to try and lure the Vampires outside one at a time. Into the light. Where they will die.

And they fall for it! Twice!

The lame twist at the end is also just an afterthought... ooh bad catholics! Who'd a thunk it?

This is lame. Avoid it if you can. It's not even fun enough for a Blue A.

A