Vampires VHS DVD

We're having some trouble with our digital cable PPV.  It wouldn't let us order it.  We called TCI and the first person was an idiot.  The second person understood better what was going on.  She was able to authorize us, though she did say they needed to send a tech out to fix it.  The first available was three weeks.   Sheesh.

I wasn't really interested in seeing this.  I'm not a big horror movie fan.   They've gotten way too simple, predictable and boring for my tastes.  But his movie had James Woods in it, and Bruce said that he had heard it was campy.  So I gave it a try.

Great music for the opening scene.  Kind of a techno version of what you hear when they show gunfighters squaring off.  It worked.

They start the movie with a group of guys climbing out of a truck.  It's obvious they've been hunting vampires for awhile.  There's little chatter, and no audience-directed exposition.  They is one quip, "Rule number 7: Nobody goes in alone."  (Sorry, drawing a blank on the rules.  I'm not sure that was the right one.)  Anyway, the point is to show that they've fought enough vampires to have a standard set of rules, but they never talked down to the audience to list all ten rules in order.  They just threw out four or five of them during the movie.  I liked that.  It gives the impression of a lot more depth to the story.  They don't feel the need to tell us everything.

They fought the vampires with machine guns and spears to knock them down.  And then they shoot them with a crossbow that's been converted to a harpoon.  Meaning, they have a cable attached to the bolt. When they catch one, the guy outside (Daniel Baldwin) starts the winch that pulls the undead into the sun, where they burst into flame like a giant matchstick.  I thought that effect was maybe a bit over-done.  But I've seen it before.  In Fright Night, I think.

Another way they imply a full backstory is they mention that another team was wiped out.

When they brought in the replacement priest, again, they didn't spend a lot of time filling in the new priest on the basics.  They simply said crosses and garlic didn't stop vampires.  That was about it.

There were a few scenes that came out a bit staged and melodramatic.  When Valek, the head vampire wakes up one nite and he and all of his subordinates melodramatically stand shin-deep in their graves for several seconds.  I would have liked to see some sort of "morning ritual" kind of thing.  Maybe where they casually brush each other off or something like that.  Again, it would have implied that they had been doing this for some time, adding the hint of backstory.

A few verasimilitude breaks.  In the early fight scenes the vampires have super-human strength and nearly decapitate people with one swipe.  In the final fight scene the humans seem to be able to hold their own.

Christy couldn't get into it.  She seemed bored with most of it and annoyed by the Baldwin/Lee love interest.

On my brother's Total Movie Value Scale, Pay-Per-View.  Generally fun and a bit campy.  Almost a really good movie.

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