NEAR DARK
When bad ending happen to good movies
I have nothing but admiration for the root idea of what happened to vampires in the 1990's; that they would be "humanized" and attempts made to flesh them in to three-dimensional characters was inevitable, and it's not a bad idea at all. Unfortunately, most of these movies turned their vampires into feeble pathetic weaklings in the process, sobbing with self-pity while constantly having sex with the very people who they should be having for dinner. Do we fuck cows (or for you vegetarians, cucumbers)? No. (well, maybe YOU do, you weirdo, but don't speak for the rest of us)
Near Dark came out in 1987, beating out the trend, and unsurprisingly pulling it off better than any 90's vamp flick ever did. I think part of its success in characterizing its vampires is that the film offers no excuses for them. No lamentations of the loneliness of the night, no forced romanticism; these are people, yes, but they're people who cut throats and drink blood to live (uh, un-die). And they have their peeves like anybody else ("I hate it when they ain't been shaved!").
Adrian Pasdar stars as Caleb, a young man in Oklahoma who picks up a cute girl (Jenny Wright) (no relation) at the bar. (I always thought it was Texas until it was clarified later in the film) (figures - first guy from Oklahoma I ever met I thought was Texan too) (course, he went around lyin' to everybody about being from Texas) Soon enough they're making out in his truck, and before you can say "C'mon baby, just suck it a little", he's getting a little more neck action than he'd hoped. She doesn't finish him off, though; guess he won her over that much. He tries stumbling home as the sun creeps over the horizon, but doesn't make it - a mysterious RV swerves up and pulls him in. It's the girl's creepy vampire family, and they're not entirely pleased with having to take in a new member.
Things are actually pretty awkward up until they get him in the RV - this very scene is edited so that his father and sister are looking on, but we never actually see them looking on until it's all over with. And Caleb's attempts to hit on the girl are amusing, and lead only to baffled wonderment as to whether this shit actually works in Oklahoma. (not that Wright helps much, delivering a number of cheesy and inexplicable lines) Things pick up quickly after that, however.
Near Dark plays more like an atmospheric action movie (with an accent on character) than a horror movie; with dust and grit everywhere and everybody snapping at each other all the time, it's easy to see the clear influence this had on Carpenter's Vampires. One scene where the police corner the vampire clan in a motel room and shoot it up in the middle of the day is beautifully orchestrated - with every bullet not only comes pain (getting shot won't kill you if you're a vampire, but it sure hurts like hell) but a hole in the wall for sunlight to stream in. (director Kathryn Bigelow excruciatingly piles on the tension for this one) This also leads to a turning point in Caleb's relationship with the vampire clan; up until then, even though Caleb never did any of the killing, he was always the guy who the clan's victims fought back against. It's a fairly unlikely scene, though, particularly in its payoff, which basically consists of the siegeing police just standing around and doing nothing, just when you'd think they'd, well, do something.
This is really the only vampire movie I've seen which seriously gives us a look at day-to-day vampire life, as opposed to the usual hunting and seducing. These guys can't stay in one place, they can't keep one car; they're fugitives by the very nature of what they are, made fugitive by an understandably frightened humanity and all out of sympathy for what they once were. They can't make friends other than each other (and the only two that seem to get along all the time are the "father" and "mother" figures of the clan). This is a bleak, ugly life they lead, but again, no excuses are made for them, and we're not asked to shed a tear for their plight.
Also of note is a scene where the "family" busts in on a redneck bar and helps themselves. They clearly enjoy it; hard life or no, they obviously love being vampires, and doing what vampires do. The joy they take in the ensuing massacre might just make your skin crawl all the way across the room until it hides behind that ugly brown chair you have in the corner. (in my house we call it "the porno chair" because...never mind)
I find it slightly annoying that this is one of those vampire movies where nobody says the word "vampire". This is a minor trend that I found more annoying in every vampire movie I saw it in (Innocent Blood, The Addiction, and God help us, Dracula Rising). But I did kind of appreciate that it declined to give us the usually obligatory infodump of just how vampires can be killed - there's obviously sunlight, and for the purposes of this movie, that's enough. Adding in stakes, holy water and garlic would've seemed silly and excessive. (an exploding tanker late in the film seems a little over-the-top too, but you can bet that even the undead aren't gonna get up from that one) Sunlight is the near-omnipresent enemy, and these guys don't always have the luxury of just shacking up in a coffin for the day. The clan spraypaints the windows of their vehicles black from the inside; shots of daylight are so harsh and oppressive that it's hard to go outside the morning after watching this movie.
Every actor in this movie excels. Pasdar is sympathetically desperate as a man stuck with a crew of people who don't like him and can simply kill him via exile any time they want, and for him, acceptance means murder. Tim Thomerson is quiet and thoughtful as his father who's looking for him after his disappearance in that RV. Lance Henriksen oozes understated menace and strength as the clan patriarch; both he and Thomerson turn in probably the best performances of their careers. Jenette Goldstein doesn't entirely shed her "butch" image from Aliens, but shows enough cleavage (and bad wig) to make her appropriately creepysexy. Bill Paxton turns in one of his best performances as the manic, tantrum-prone yokel who hates everything around him. (must be nice to be able to stand at the side of the road with your thumb out and have foxy chicks just swoop on in to pick you up) (it's like an Aliens reunion here - even the director was once shagging James Cameron) And Joshua Miller just gives me the willies as a young 'un who was "turned" at a young age and has stayed in this really ugly, androgynous kid's body for God knows how long while he's mentally grown into a very horny adult. He gets several of the movie's best moments.
It's kind of too bad that such an excellent piece of work blows off its left foot with a shotgun at the 75-minute mark. It all starts to become a little underwhelming, mostly in that one hopes for a little more power from the only scene with both Thomerson and Henriksen. This scene also features the fastest sunrise I've ever seen - it's completely dark out when they bring Thomerson into the room, but by the time they leave about three minutes later, it's VERY bright out. (and never mind the convenient, why-did-this-happen-at-all explosion of the aforementioned tanker truck later)
But that scene looks like a masterful little piece of work when compared to what comes after. The absurdity behind the notion of a blood transfusion curing vampirism notwithstanding - I mean, really, if a wee bit of saliva can transmit the "vampire virus", then I don't think just changing your oil will get it out of your system - it just makes things so ridiculously happy that it becomes silly. I'm not one of those curmudgeoned cranks who wants a dreary, nihilistic ending to every movie I've seen, but this "cure" thing (to avoid spoilage, I won't say who's cured) just takes an already satisfactory conclusion - one that could've gone somewhere in the viewers' heads - to a very routine, conventional, "Hollywood" place, if you will...it looks like it was added in after test audiences whined about it, even though this doesn't strike me as a movie that's extensively test-marketed.
The music from Tangerine Dream is spotty, but a lot better than might be expected. The script was written by Bigelow and Hitcher-meister Eric Red.
Just a few notches under top marks from me. Would've been probably my favorite vampire flick of all time if it weren't for it falling apart near the end. Nevertheless, enthusiastically recommended.