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They're nicknamed "goons" and maraud the earth since medieval times, the opening locates a nest in the dark pit of a boarded-up New Mexico home. "Pretty damn savage," fiends as well as nominal heroes, a crew of Vatican-approved "slayers" who skewer bloodsuckers with crossbows and drag them out to be broiled under the sun. The master vampire (Thomas Ian Griffith) eludes the raid and slaughters the hunters in a motel bacchanalia, though not before giving a hooker (Sheryl Lee) a taste of undead ecstasy by sinking his fangs into her upper thigh. "Doesn't it feel beautiful?" She develops a jolting psychic link with the master, the slayer leader (James Woods) and his sidekick (Daniel Baldwin) bring her along in a mission to "find him and shove a stake up his ass." An occult mythos mated with the Western, fine, let the Western be Peckinpah's then: John Carpenter lends the resulting ugliness a pristine frame, Dalí's Hallucinogenic Toreador is visible throughout. Vampirism turns out to be a creation of the church, an ancient matter of unfinished exorcisms and black crosses, the cardinal (Maximilian Schell) has his own plans while the padre (Tim Guinee) proves adroit at mayhem. Variations of lore, the desert is a vast graveyard and a bitten wound is cauterized with the muzzle of a machine-gun. "You want to try garlic? Stand with garlic around your neck and one of these buggers will bend you over and take a walk up your strada chocolatta while he's sucking blood from your neck, all right?" A kinship with Near Dark, a riposte to From Dusk Till Dawn, a full showcase for Woods' galvanic comic foulness. "Immortality can change your heart," but it can't compete with grungy camaraderie and boner jokes. With Mark Boone Junior, Gregory Sierra, and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa.
--- Fernando F. Croce |