Review – Vampires

Longtime John Carpenter fans will vaguely recognize this plot as loosely related to themes explored in an earlier Carpenter movie, Prince of Darkness. But here instead of quantum physics we’ve got a script that sounds like it was drummed up after an extended weekend of screenwriters playing one of those vampire-centered role-playing games. So right alongside the Catholic cabalistic conspiracy stuff we’re forced to endure a pack of goths trying to overcome the vampires’ neurotic obsession with daylight. Oh, and then there’s James Woods, whose character’s every second word is either an anti-homosexual slur (for example, he refers to one of the vampires as a “pole-smoking fashion victim,” and that’s about as clever as it ever gets) or a reference to his penis (or somebody else’s penis). The idea of a Vatican-endorsed anti-vampire SWAT team is mildly intriguing, but here the execution leaves much to be desired. I’ve griped in the past about Carpenter setting up a great premise and then letting it devolve into cheap gore shots, usually in the last half hour or so of his movies. Here he doesn’t wait quite so long; the plot dissolves early on, and from there on out this picture is nothing but a lot of flailing and nonsense. See if desperate