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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:	1987
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Kathryn Bigelow
Genre:	Vampire Western
Starring:	Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein
Rating:	4/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093605/
Tagline:	...pray for daylight.
Favourite line:	"Just a couple more minutes of your time, about the same duration as the rest of your life."

Kathryn Bigelow's vampire horror / Spaghetti Western fusion is an enjoyable beast.

The plot:
Caleb Colton is an everyday sort of schlub. Working as a farm boy in the Midwest, there's not much going on in his life, save for the ridiculous squareness of his jawline and the fact he will one day turn into Nathan Petrelli from Heroes.
One night, idling away some time, he spies a beautiful woman by herself, eating ice cream and, being the kind of smooth operator that makes you want to throw acid in his face, he wanders over. Seeming interested, the pair spend the night together, though in a Platonic sense for the most part. As dawn approaches the girl, Mae, becomes agitated and, in one last moment of intimacy, bites him on the neck before fleeing.
Now, Caleb's world is turned inside out.
He attempts to find his way home, but struggles, the sunlight beaming down seeming to scorch his body and, just as he nears the farm, a blacked out caravan appears and he is bundled inside, surprised to find Mae within, along with her' family' of vampires.
Turned, now, Caleb must join the bloodsuckers, but his reluctance to take a life for himself will inevitably cause trouble in the not too distant future for the group.....

Played pretty low-key, this is an interesting take on the vampire mythos, as here we are afforded a glimpse within the world of the nocturnal ones. Indeed, the PoV of the movie is that the vampires are our heroes, the ones we root for, even as they are committing appalling crimes.
Bigelow is renowned as being one of the most muscular directors in the business, despite her profound lack of a penis, and it's in evidence again here, with more testosterone in places than you could shake a tiny blue pill at. It's also worth noting that she was, at this point, married to one James Cameron. Nothing unusual about that, I guess, but the connection is clear on screen. Several scenes either relate to The Terminator, or would go on to be effectively replayed in Terminator 2. Also, three of the main cast from Cameron's own Aliens make up the vampire clan (Hudson, Bishop and Vasquez, for the geeks out there).
As Firefly would several years later, here the Western genre is successfully fused with an alternative, less predictable format, and the strangeness of that adds a real visual appeal, and is played with on occasion; lingering shots of spurs; riding into a deserted town on horseback; bandits with a price on their head.
Though certainly not a movie for gore-hounds, as the bloodshed is minimal in the extreme, this is interesting enough to be a recommendation to anyone wishing to see an alternate take on two different genres.
Splice-meisters, if you will.
So yeah, if you consider yourself a Splice-meister, check this out.
If not, well, just bloody piss right off, then.