Vampires [DVD] [1999]

Must have watched this vampire film 10 times over the years, a classic movie that everyone should watch, funny, grim and totally enjoyable.

PLOT... Recovering from an ambush that killed his entire team, a vengeful vampire slayer must retrieve an ancient Catholic relic that should it be acquired by vampires will allow them to walk in sunlight. This is yet another fantastic horror in John Carpenter's long list of awesome movies over the years, he tackles the vampire genre in his own way and gives us a cool classic horror, all the Carpenter touches are here, including a great music score, the cast is all good, James Woods and Daniel Baldwin lead the way and Sheryl Lee is sexy eye candy, there is plenty of bloody gore and violence, vampires on fire and some nudity, plenty of cool vampire slaying action, most part its good old school practical effects too which look great. This is certainly one of the coolest and fun vampire movies from over the years and don't take itself too seriously like some, make sure you check this out especially as it now looks so great on Blu-ray. HD picture on the Blu-ray is great (certainly an improvement over the DVD version) Features are good with a commentary by Carpenter, a making of (23-mins total) isolated score, trailer, Carpenter interview (38-mins) REGION FREE ABC, DVD is region free 0 too, 108-mins, 1998. Blu-ray is limited to 7000 copies and comes with DVD movie too and 20 page booklet. English language only.

Love him or hate him: Carpenter has a track record of films that range from the god awful (Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from LA), to the good (Escape from New York, The Fog) and to the excellent (They Live, Assault on Precinct 13), Vampires ranks somewhere in between good and very good as a film that has a lot of good stuff in it and a little bit of bad. Carpenter has tackled Chinese monsters, human zombies, aliens, slashers, demons, monsters and ghosts, so it was just a matter of time before he turned his genre-loving talents to vampires, and its good to see a good old fashioned vampire movie in which the enemy is actually a nasty scary being as opposed to the more softer/dull version of vampires we are introduced to in modern vampire stories (Twilight, True Blood). Its got all the great Carpenter ingredients that we've come to expect of his film-making: his cool scores, his fast graphic action, hard-boiled comic book-esque dialogue, B movie plots (elevated to A status through good direction) and violent main characters who come across evil they must destroy or be destroyed by. It follows Jack Crow, a tough, leader of a team of vampire slayers on a mission across New Mexico killing vampires and seeking the mysterious and sadistic, 'Master Vampire' who they must kill. A master who is so powerful that he is near unstoppable, their mission leads to ally themselves with a prostitute bitten by the master vampire giving them a telepathic link into it's mind and locations and a priest who is new on the job. Its a good set-up and it only gets better with Crow pursuing the near-unstoppable Master across New Mexico leading to two exciting confrontations. Whilst the film was critically panned on its release, it didn't deserve the bad reviews unlike Big Trouble in Little China which actually was a bad movie because unlike that film Vampires has a coherent story, a good pace, fairly well-developed characters and exciting action set-pieces. There's a lot to like about the movie: the direction which is clearly emulating the Western with its emphasis on intensely red skies, small towns and large landscapes, only instead of horses the characters ride in armored cars and carry high-tech weaponry to deal with their targets. Its new to see such un-likable hardboiled main characters (or that may be just my response to them); unlike in other Carpenter films; Jack Crow and his sidekick hunter are both pretty despicable (violently slapping around women, have basically aggressive attitudes towards anyone: good or bad, and at one point committing some pretty brutal acts to get information-out of a good guy at one point). Usually his characters are usually straightforwardly good (Assault in Precinct 13, The Prince of Darkness), however the characters in Vampires are anti-heroes and are unsympathetic but compelling to watch, you believe that these guys would have to be a nasty bunch to do the jobs that they do (decapitation, hunting, murdering). Carpenter nicely molds the genre of the Western with Horror to make a fun movie with a good sense of tension and pace and whilst the film is not action-packed when it does have its set pieces (three major ones: one in an abandoned house, one in a small prison and one in a small town), they feel exciting, original and well-handled. The flaws lie in the fact that the characters seem to do some strange things (like carrying around guns when they obviously have no effect on the creatures-why don't they use silver bullets or bullets that would have some kind of affect on vampires like the ones in the Blade movies which came a couple of years later) and their methods of killing vampires seem quite strange-for example the main character carries a crossbow which one bolt gets into them which is then connected to a car which pulls the vampire out into the sun-it seems like a very slow process, why not just carry around a sword to decapitate them or other more imaginative ways to kill them: after all it is a horror movie Carpenter can just re-write the guide book to killing vampires). Other than that its pretty fun, the film glides past and its adventurous and compelling, well worth checking out and up there in the same league as Halloween (1978) and The Thing. Gory, violent, hard-boiled and well-directed, this is a Carpenter Classic.

Brilliant box set, a must have for fans of this film.

One of my favorite vampire movies directed by the great John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing). James Woods plays the lead character Jack Crow who leads a team of vampire killers hired by the Vatican. One night after a slay the team heads back at their motel to have a party where they get a visit from the head vampire Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith) and he kills almost Crow's entire team and all of the hookers and partygoers. Jack can escape with one of his teammates and a hooker who's been bitten and finds out they've been betrayed, but who's responsible. The rest follows in a good modern horror movie. Perfect HD picture quality and great surround mix in a nice Collector's Edition. Also is included the DVD with the same menu and extra's.

ich habe mir die DVD gekauft, da ich in dem Film im Kino war und er mir gut gefallen hat. Zuerst hatte ich ihn als Video Kassette .Die Video Player gibt es nicht mehr .Natürlich die Version ab 18 Jahre.

Con la película no tengo problema porque la estaba cazando desde hace años y por fin pude comprarla. El problema es que vino con el disco suelto y se rayó un poco por una falta de cuidado al empacarla para el envio Solo pediría un poco mas de cuidado para los envios

Un altro grande film del maestro Carpenter. Ottimo blu ray sia audio che video. Ottimi effetti speciali, e bella storia. Qui siamo davanti ad un buon "horror" rispetto agli altri suoi film più " psicologici e di suspence" che siamo abituati a vedere dal maestro. Compratelo vi divertirete

Loved it

Película poco difundida pero muy recomendable de vampiros... Nada de jorterias de que brillan. Son vampiros crueles y sanguinarios