OK it’s scarier when you’re 14 years old!
Along with Point Break and The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow has had three films now reviewed by this site. I never thought that would happen. Not that I have anything against Big Kat, it’s just that when you think of name directors, hers doesn’t often come up versus the Spielberg’s, Scorcese’s and Cameron’s (even though she was married to him for a while).
This is one of Big Kat’s early efforts, and although it hasn’t aged exceptionally well it still holds up to scrutiny 20+ years later, especially when compared to what passes for a Vampire film these days.
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Caleb is your standard single cowboy in a small town, driving around at night aimlessly and trying to pick up anything that moves with his smooth cowboy talk.
One night though he meets waifish May, a teeny tiny chickie with short blonde hair who looks like she weighs as much as a match with the wood scraped off (one of my Dad’s old sayings). After 45 seconds of scintillating convo they’re away in his ute into the night.
No hanky-panky mind you but their night of magic goes a little too long for May’s liking and she orders Caleb to take her home immediately, seeming a little more than panicky in the process.
The lovely Undead couple.
Taking advantage of the situation Caleb asks for a blackmail kiss or the ute goes no further, May initially complies and draws a little blood, but then changes tack and does a bolt, heading off on foot. For some reason Caleb’s ute won’t restart so he too hoofs it for a while… until he starts smoking, and I don’t mean Camel Lights. As he nears home with smoke billowing from all over him a van shows up and plucks him off the road.
May is in the van, and it’s meet the family time!
Hopefully you can guess by now that something is amiss in the goings on, so the news that the “family” are all Vampires shouldn’t really shock.
The rest of the “Fam” L-R Jesse, Homer, Diamondback, Sever.
Jessie (Lance Henricksen from Aliens), Diamondback (Vasquez from Aliens), Sever (Bill Paxton from Aliens, notice a trend here?) and Homer, a young boy seemingly in his early teens who is to be frank, a bit of a dickhead.
After the intros May is chastised for picking up without consultation and Caleb is told he has a week to learn the ropes or he’s out.
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From this point on Caleb tries to integrate himself into the Vampy lifestyle without a lot of success, despite the best efforts of May to help, and Caleb’s Dad and little sister fang around the countryside looking to find him. As with the Vampires though most of their efforts are in vain… get it? ZIIIIINNNNNGGGG!!!!
I feel like I’m 7 years old again!
The pivotal scene in the film has the new age family heading to a local bar for a drink and a feed, so to speak. The scene runs for 12 minutes and lets Paxton ham it up big time as the gung-ho Sever, indeed he is the best thing in the movie, but all good things must end and when Caleb lets a victim go the family must rush off with the cops on their tail and daylight a comin’.
Eventually both of Caleb’s families end up in the same room, he must make a choice with uncomfortable repercussions in either case and in doing so he sets up a pretty good, albeit stock standard finale.
The old school cover from the late 80s early 90s VHS release had an unrecognisable Bill Paxton coated in post-battle make up, he is bloodied and basically seems to have had his head caved in. It was a great cover, a little too great for me as I was about 14 when it came out and gave the film a wide berth for a few years thinking it was an over the top shlockfest, and unlike today’s 14 year olds I wasn’t fully confident that I was ready for that.
While the film does have gory elements and indeed Paxton does get to wear the cover makeup at one point, most of the film is carefully plotted and well acted. It still most definitely isn’t a film for young kids, but it desires to be more than a simple Vampire eat-em-up, and thanks to Big Kat it achieves that goal.
Final Rating – 8.5 / 10. Hasn’t aged incredibly well, but still holds up as an extremely effective little horror film that takes itself a little more seriously than most.
