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| Iconic scene that gets you all riled up for an otherwise shitty movie. |
Initial Thoughts?
Mona Bloodstick: What would Blade say? This movie is a cautionary tale on how NOT to write a macho vampire hunter. Our leading vampire hunter, Jack Crow, is detestable. He’s a massive cunt, and not in the asshole-who-secretly-has-a-heart-of-gold way. It’s not that deep, he’s just rude on every level. And no offence to his actor, James Woods, who looks average (but actually full offence I hate him so much), but Jack Crow is not giving sexy asshole. It’s giving Rude Tim Allen Home Improvement who is wearing dollar store sunglasses inside again.
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| Tim Allen |
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| Rude Tim Allen |
Then we have Rude Tim Allen’s best buddy Anthony Montoya. I don’t like him either. Imagine a class clown from an 80’s movie who never grew up and is now pushing forty but still can’t control himself on the rare occasion he sees a pair of boobs. He sucks. The other two members of the cast are slightly more interesting. We have the Hot Fruity Priest, and soon-to-be vampire Katrina (more on her later). Hot Fruity Priest is a beta cuck, and Katrina’s actress is the only person in this movie who actually knows how to act.
So yeah, didn’t like it very much. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Blade, either, but I would rather watch the entire trilogy than have to watch this one again. Blade would call Jack Crow a suckhead and run off with Katrina. And don't even get me started on what Buffy would get up to...
Vera Bradley: A vampiric twist on the time-old message that it’s okay to be a little gay, so long as you also beat women.
I had optimistically high hopes for this movie after reading two sentences of a review that mentioned it was a western-style vampire movie. Perhaps I should have read the rest of the review, where maybe it would have been mentioned that this movie is not good. This is the movie your middle school bully (in the 80s) snuck into and based his personality on - just a circlejerk of big macho men slapping women around and calling each other gay.
VB: The vampires in this movie (like every other character) were largely flat, but the film did offer one surprisingly interesting gem of lore: the first vampire was created by the Catholic Church in an exorcism gone wrong. Now, this is actually a super cool origin story, one which you think would be fleshed out maybe with a look at some secret underground Catholic society, or an entirely original set of vampire hunting methods etc. However it actually culminates in the one of the dumbest plot points I’ve yet to see in a vampire movie, where one of the heads of the Catholic Church agrees to do another exorcismic ritual on the original vampire, making him a daywalker, in exchange for…… being turned into a vampire. Now, I may be just one humble vampire, but it feels like anyone with two braincells might wonder hmm could he not get literally any other vampire to turn him??? Two other people in this movie turn into vampires without even trying. Why would he need to bring about human apocalypse (the presumed intention of allowing vampires to walk in the sun) for such a paltry reward? Surely he could strike a much smaller deal with another vampire, maybe bring him a few tasty priests as a bribe? Anyways this plot point is really dumb and the whole Catholic setup is very disappointing– nothing is dug into its just a couple catholic guys being sneaky and that’s the whole conspiracy.
One other note trope-wise is that the vampires are OP in a strange way- they aren’t thaaat good at fighting, but they are suuuuuper hard to kill. Bullets do nothing to them (which doesn’t stop every vampire hunter from carrying a bunch of guns??), and the only way to kill them seems to be harpooning them then dragging them into sunlight.
MB: If you’ve ever watched a trailer for this movie, you will know that Rude Tim Allen has a famous line where he says real vampires are nothing like the ones in the movies. Except, like, they’re exactly like they are in every other movie. Really, the only difference between these vampires and most other vampires we’ve reviewed is they can go inside places without having to be invited.
Let’s backtrack a little here. Opening scene shows a crowd of characters raiding a vampire nest. Pretty compelling cast, they seem interesting enough, I’m curious about them. They kill the vampires, blah blah blah. Skip to the after party with prostitutes and beer (apparently all the payment they want? Incredibly fitting for vampire killers associated with the Catholic Church *rolls eyes*). Our main vampire, Valek (a Marvel movie Loki looking motherfucker), shows up, hesitates at the door for a moment, and then just waltzes right in. Me and Vera are SCREAMING. HE CANNOT DO THAT. Vampires CANNOT go inside without being invited. It’s one of the most fundamental rules of vampirism. We kept waiting for someone to explain this away, but it never came.
Side note and spoiler (if you really want to watch this shitty movie) – Loki kills everyone at the party except for Rude Tim Allen, Anthony, and Katrina. This was a bit of a confusing move because they did try and give the opening cast a bit of personality. It set the scene for a cool southwest vampire movie. And then….they just die. I’m not gonna complain that much (I bet there would be even more woman-beating if they lived) but it’s just a strange direction for the movie to take, especially as the crew is composed of the only non-white characters of any relevance.
I did really love the Catholic aesthetic though, every vampire movie needs a lot of that.
VB: There were some pretty good kills in the beginning of the movie though it gets old pretty fast. I do really like that the vampires use their hands as weapons– they flatten their hands and it basically is a knife? They’re just cutting into people like butter, no knife necessary.
MB: I too am a big fan of the hand cutters. There really weren’t too many good kills in this movie though, which is disappointing because I was kind of expecting a lot of good deaths. There’s a weird scene where Rude Tim Allen has to go back and cut apart the bodies of everyone at the beer and prostitutes party, and even that wasn’t very good.
VB: It doesn’t really get into it tbh.
MB: There are people who really really want eternal existence with no regard for how badly it’ll mess with them.
VB: No. I will use this section, however, to explain in great detail me and Mona’s theory that the main character is canonically in love with the hot priest.
First, I will build the foundation of my argument with evidence that the main character (Jack) is in fact gay. I believe this to be true because every single time he meets a new male character in this movie, he creates a narrative about them being gay– often commenting directly on their sexual desire for him specifically. In psychology we would call this “projection”. I’m telling you, he does this legit every time he meets a new man.
Now that I’ve laid my framework, I will move onto his relationship with the hot priest.
First of all, I want to note that the priest is specifically very hot– the only man in this movie, in fact, who could be described as hot. Furthermore, he is given no female love interest. The ONLY person he interacts with more than a few words is our main character. If his primary relationship is with our macho vampire hunting male lead, why would he need to be classically beautiful? It’s because they are in love.
Moving on to more explicit hints at their relationship, I call forth what I believe to be the apex of their romantic arc: the unsaid “I love you.” Now, leading up to the final vampire fight scene, the vampire hunters were trying to capture vampires from a rundown prison. In order to do this, they had to use someone as bait– the priest. In making this choice we see a lot of resistance from Jack, who, despite it being super obvious the bait would have to be the priest, wants to find another way. Finally, right before the priest walks off to become bait, Jack stops him, looks down, hesitates, and says “Padre…” – The priest cuts him off, saying simply “I know.” Jack exhales, collecting himself as the priest leaves. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you what other phrase would be left unsaid in the gravity of this moment, aside from “I love you”? This moment has so many film and literary parallels, to the point that it can be safely implied it was canonically meant to be interpreted as a confession of love.
Finally I will mention that, in addition to the multiple times Jack passionately pins the priest up against things (it happens at least twice), he also asks the priest if his doing so gave him a BONER. This question is then repeated, this time as a familiar inside joke, at the end of the film, as Jack and the priest walk off into their future together as partners in vampire hunting (and love).
MB: UGH. Hello, we are macho macho men and therefore we must slap around our half vampire bitch kidnapping victim. Oh also we have to tie her up and remove her clothes for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. Seriously, why couldn’t they have come up with a better way to get Katrina naked??
Anyways, Vera covered the parts about Hot Fruity Priest and Rude Tim Allen, so I get to be the bad cop and talk about how John Carpenter thinks that you gotta beat up a bitch to make her “fall in love” with you. Now, I haven’t read the book, so maybe there was some tension here that didn’t translate well to the screen, but to a humble screenwatcher such as myself, there was absolutely ZERO attraction coming from Katrina onto Anthony Montoya.
Yes, you heard that right–the creators of this shitty movie decided to force a romance between a kidnapped prostitute and the guy who beats her up all the time. We aren’t just talking about slapping her around a little, he and Rude Tim Allen legit throw her on the ground and punch her. Rude Tim Allen wants to keep her around because she has a mind link with her vampire master. Katrina has 48 hours before she succumbs to her vampiric instincts. And yes, they do explain this in the most egregious display of exposition I’ve seen in ANY movie.
As soon as Katrina showed up, I was waiting for her to kill Anthony. I got super excited at the end, when it looked like she was finally gonna rip his throat out. Instead, she gets distracted, he gets away, we have a weird scene where Anthony and Rude Tim Allen talk about their stupid rules (there are so many things wrong with this movie, I’m not even gonna talk about those stupid rules), and Anthony leaves with Katrina in the back of his truck. Right before they head off into the sunrise, we get a horrible scene where Anthony and Katrina are supposed to engage in a passionate first kiss, but KATRINA’S ACTRESS IS LITERALLY BACKING AWAY FROM HIM. It reads exactly as the situation is, a kidnapping victim who has to kiss her kidnapper. Even Katrina running off with Anthony Montoya reads as creepy, because like what else is she gonna do, stick around and get caught in the sunlight?? Katrina’s actress gave easily the best performance in this movie, and I think it’s because she knows how fucked up this whole thing is.
Seriously, if there’s any romance in this movie, it’s between Rude Tim Allen and Hot Fruity Priest. In fact, I think the relationship between Anthony and Katrina is so horrible that the juxtaposition makes Rude Tim Allen and Hot Fruity Priest seem even more believable.
So yeah, didn’t like it very much. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Blade, either, but I would rather watch the entire trilogy than have to watch this one again. Blade would call Jack Crow a suckhead and run off with Katrina. And don't even get me started on what Buffy would get up to...
Vera Bradley: A vampiric twist on the time-old message that it’s okay to be a little gay, so long as you also beat women.
I had optimistically high hopes for this movie after reading two sentences of a review that mentioned it was a western-style vampire movie. Perhaps I should have read the rest of the review, where maybe it would have been mentioned that this movie is not good. This is the movie your middle school bully (in the 80s) snuck into and based his personality on - just a circlejerk of big macho men slapping women around and calling each other gay.
1: How did this movie handle classic vampire tropes?
One other note trope-wise is that the vampires are OP in a strange way- they aren’t thaaat good at fighting, but they are suuuuuper hard to kill. Bullets do nothing to them (which doesn’t stop every vampire hunter from carrying a bunch of guns??), and the only way to kill them seems to be harpooning them then dragging them into sunlight.
MB: If you’ve ever watched a trailer for this movie, you will know that Rude Tim Allen has a famous line where he says real vampires are nothing like the ones in the movies. Except, like, they’re exactly like they are in every other movie. Really, the only difference between these vampires and most other vampires we’ve reviewed is they can go inside places without having to be invited.
Let’s backtrack a little here. Opening scene shows a crowd of characters raiding a vampire nest. Pretty compelling cast, they seem interesting enough, I’m curious about them. They kill the vampires, blah blah blah. Skip to the after party with prostitutes and beer (apparently all the payment they want? Incredibly fitting for vampire killers associated with the Catholic Church *rolls eyes*). Our main vampire, Valek (a Marvel movie Loki looking motherfucker), shows up, hesitates at the door for a moment, and then just waltzes right in. Me and Vera are SCREAMING. HE CANNOT DO THAT. Vampires CANNOT go inside without being invited. It’s one of the most fundamental rules of vampirism. We kept waiting for someone to explain this away, but it never came.
Side note and spoiler (if you really want to watch this shitty movie) – Loki kills everyone at the party except for Rude Tim Allen, Anthony, and Katrina. This was a bit of a confusing move because they did try and give the opening cast a bit of personality. It set the scene for a cool southwest vampire movie. And then….they just die. I’m not gonna complain that much (I bet there would be even more woman-beating if they lived) but it’s just a strange direction for the movie to take, especially as the crew is composed of the only non-white characters of any relevance.
I did really love the Catholic aesthetic though, every vampire movie needs a lot of that.
2: Any good kills?
MB: I too am a big fan of the hand cutters. There really weren’t too many good kills in this movie though, which is disappointing because I was kind of expecting a lot of good deaths. There’s a weird scene where Rude Tim Allen has to go back and cut apart the bodies of everyone at the beer and prostitutes party, and even that wasn’t very good.
3: How does this movie deal with the curse of eternal existence?
MB: There are people who really really want eternal existence with no regard for how badly it’ll mess with them.
4: Sex appeal?
First, I will build the foundation of my argument with evidence that the main character (Jack) is in fact gay. I believe this to be true because every single time he meets a new male character in this movie, he creates a narrative about them being gay– often commenting directly on their sexual desire for him specifically. In psychology we would call this “projection”. I’m telling you, he does this legit every time he meets a new man.
Now that I’ve laid my framework, I will move onto his relationship with the hot priest.
First of all, I want to note that the priest is specifically very hot– the only man in this movie, in fact, who could be described as hot. Furthermore, he is given no female love interest. The ONLY person he interacts with more than a few words is our main character. If his primary relationship is with our macho vampire hunting male lead, why would he need to be classically beautiful? It’s because they are in love.
Moving on to more explicit hints at their relationship, I call forth what I believe to be the apex of their romantic arc: the unsaid “I love you.” Now, leading up to the final vampire fight scene, the vampire hunters were trying to capture vampires from a rundown prison. In order to do this, they had to use someone as bait– the priest. In making this choice we see a lot of resistance from Jack, who, despite it being super obvious the bait would have to be the priest, wants to find another way. Finally, right before the priest walks off to become bait, Jack stops him, looks down, hesitates, and says “Padre…” – The priest cuts him off, saying simply “I know.” Jack exhales, collecting himself as the priest leaves. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you what other phrase would be left unsaid in the gravity of this moment, aside from “I love you”? This moment has so many film and literary parallels, to the point that it can be safely implied it was canonically meant to be interpreted as a confession of love.
Finally I will mention that, in addition to the multiple times Jack passionately pins the priest up against things (it happens at least twice), he also asks the priest if his doing so gave him a BONER. This question is then repeated, this time as a familiar inside joke, at the end of the film, as Jack and the priest walk off into their future together as partners in vampire hunting (and love).
MB: UGH. Hello, we are macho macho men and therefore we must slap around our half vampire bitch kidnapping victim. Oh also we have to tie her up and remove her clothes for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. Seriously, why couldn’t they have come up with a better way to get Katrina naked??
Anyways, Vera covered the parts about Hot Fruity Priest and Rude Tim Allen, so I get to be the bad cop and talk about how John Carpenter thinks that you gotta beat up a bitch to make her “fall in love” with you. Now, I haven’t read the book, so maybe there was some tension here that didn’t translate well to the screen, but to a humble screenwatcher such as myself, there was absolutely ZERO attraction coming from Katrina onto Anthony Montoya.
Yes, you heard that right–the creators of this shitty movie decided to force a romance between a kidnapped prostitute and the guy who beats her up all the time. We aren’t just talking about slapping her around a little, he and Rude Tim Allen legit throw her on the ground and punch her. Rude Tim Allen wants to keep her around because she has a mind link with her vampire master. Katrina has 48 hours before she succumbs to her vampiric instincts. And yes, they do explain this in the most egregious display of exposition I’ve seen in ANY movie.
As soon as Katrina showed up, I was waiting for her to kill Anthony. I got super excited at the end, when it looked like she was finally gonna rip his throat out. Instead, she gets distracted, he gets away, we have a weird scene where Anthony and Rude Tim Allen talk about their stupid rules (there are so many things wrong with this movie, I’m not even gonna talk about those stupid rules), and Anthony leaves with Katrina in the back of his truck. Right before they head off into the sunrise, we get a horrible scene where Anthony and Katrina are supposed to engage in a passionate first kiss, but KATRINA’S ACTRESS IS LITERALLY BACKING AWAY FROM HIM. It reads exactly as the situation is, a kidnapping victim who has to kiss her kidnapper. Even Katrina running off with Anthony Montoya reads as creepy, because like what else is she gonna do, stick around and get caught in the sunlight?? Katrina’s actress gave easily the best performance in this movie, and I think it’s because she knows how fucked up this whole thing is.
Seriously, if there’s any romance in this movie, it’s between Rude Tim Allen and Hot Fruity Priest. In fact, I think the relationship between Anthony and Katrina is so horrible that the juxtaposition makes Rude Tim Allen and Hot Fruity Priest seem even more believable.
Also, people have BEEN noticing. I found this hilarious fanfiction from 2002 while researching. Not sure why anyone would expend energy writing something for this asinine movie, but here it is if you wanna check it out.
MB: In the beginning death scene, one of the vampires makes a noise like Jar Jar’s death scream from LEGO Star Wars the Complete Saga. One time I made a noise like that so it’s kind of like I’m already a vampire in this universe.
Otherwise, nah. But I’m on Katrina’s side for absolutely everything.
VB: This would be such a lame universe to be a vampire in. We do not really get a glimpse into the vampire world but it seems to me they just live in run-down buildings wearing sackcloth outfits like members of a really poor cult. They also never talk; they're just there to jump out at the hunters every so often. There was one vampire baddie though with suuuuch a cute outfit (bc she was a “Master”) I will try to find a photo and attach it here.
5: Would I want to be a vampire in this universe?
MB: In the beginning death scene, one of the vampires makes a noise like Jar Jar’s death scream from LEGO Star Wars the Complete Saga. One time I made a noise like that so it’s kind of like I’m already a vampire in this universe.
Otherwise, nah. But I’m on Katrina’s side for absolutely everything.
VB: This would be such a lame universe to be a vampire in. We do not really get a glimpse into the vampire world but it seems to me they just live in run-down buildings wearing sackcloth outfits like members of a really poor cult. They also never talk; they're just there to jump out at the hunters every so often. There was one vampire baddie though with suuuuch a cute outfit (bc she was a “Master”) I will try to find a photo and attach it here.
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| This is not a great image of it but trust |
Final thoughts?
There is genuinely nothing about these characters to intrigue– they are neither hot, nor filled with interesting conflict, nor do they have relationships to each other that compel me to continue watching. They are so mind-numbingly flat, that the only way to continue watching is to make up fake backstories/alternate plotlines for them in your mind. Here is one I came up with:
Now, there is one moment in this movie, at the very end, that almost has the potential to capture my interest. (SPOILER AHEAD) Jack’s former vampire hunting partner has been bitten, and is quickly turning. In a moment of grace, Jack tells him he will give him two days lead before hunting him down, in return for the two days his partner had been bitten but still protected him. The two of them have a pain-filled exchange in which Jack promises to hunt him down and find him, wherever he is. This is the only real relational tension I felt in the entire movie. I think a FAR greater premise for a western-style vampire movie, even with these same characters, would be a hardened vampire hunter on a journey to find and kill his former partner, who is on the run to Mexico with his vampire girlfriend. To me this is so much more compelling than “the master vampire is going to turn into a daywalker because the cardinal wanted to be a vampire.” I actually think this would be a fantastic movie idea so if any of our dear readers work for a movie production studio, I am available for meetings.
MB: Just like, don’t watch it. It’s not a good movie. In my opinion it’s actually the worst movie we’ve reviewed.
“Vaya con Dios, slayer”
–xxx, Mona and Vera
rave girl says hi!!! sorry this is so late, miss yall!
ReplyDeleteomg rave girl hi!!!!! tee hee
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