Vampires

Action, Horror, Thriller

James Woods	Jack Crow
Daniel Baldwin	Montoya
Sheryl Lee	Katrina
Thomas Ian Griffith	Jan Valek
Maximilian Schell	Cardinal Alba
Tim Guinee	Father Adam Guiteau
Mark Boone Junior	Catlin
Gregory Sierra	Father Giovanni
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa	David Deyo
Thomas Rosales Jr.	Ortega (as Thomas Rosales)

Director	John Carpenter
Producer	Sandy King
Writer	John Steakley; Don Jakoby

The first few minutes of John Carpenter's Vampires--in which James Woods' vampire killer leads a dawn raid on a New Mexico "goon nest" of bloodsuckers--not only suggests a horror movie that refuses to pull its punches, but even evokes some of the more disturbing dream-memories of American Westerns. Muscular and uncompromising, the sequence suggests a new Carpenter classic unravelling before one's eyes. Things don't quite work out that way, but this is still a film to reckon with. There are a few serious (and surprising) misjudgements on the director's part, particularly a mishandling of Sheryl Lee's role as a prostitute poisoned by the bite of a "master vampire" (who pretty much wiped out Woods' team of goon terminators). But aside from some weaknesses, the action is jolting, the suggested complicity of the Catholic Church in destroying monsters is provocative, and the traces of Howard Hawks' continuing influence on Carpenter's storytelling are in evidence. -- Tom Keogh, Amazon.com