John Carpenter's
VAMPIRES

• Starring James Woods, Daniel Baldwin, Sheryl Lee and Maximilian Schell
• Directed by John Carpenter
• Rated R, with gore, strong profanity, nudity and sex; running time 107 minutes
• With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a 6

Trivia quiz If you dig walking corpses, here's a high-STAKES trivia quiz to sink your teeth into It's certainly not the first and it won't be the last. But John Carpenter's Vampires is the latest film to explore the dark legends of undead bloodsuckers. No other horror fables have as much going for them: exotic locales, spooky folklore, body-piercing, religion, sex, gore, garlic. No wonder they're so popular. Filmmakers love them, too: VideoHound's Vampires on Video (Visible Ink, 1997) lists more than 600 vampire films. To test your knowledge of movie vampires -- and to remind yourself of videos for this Halloween weekend -- sink your incisors into this list of bloody trivia questions. 1. Which of the following actors never played a vampire on screen: Leslie Nielsen, Robert De Niro, Eddie Murphy or Catherine Deneuve? 2. Though this year's Blade featured a black superhero who combats vampires, an earlier black vampire film, starring William Marshall, became a cult hit in 1972. Name it. 3. The Horror of Dracula (1958) is the second most important vampire film ever made (after Universal's 1931 Dracula with Bela Lugosi). It made Christopher Lee a star and established a British B-movie studio as a leading horror house. Name the studio (which became famous for garish color and buxom female victims). 4. Every movie vampire with bite is pursued by a good doctor who knows how to kill him off. Typically, the doc is named Van Helsing. Who played that important adversary opposite: Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931)? Christopher Lee in The Horror of Dracula (1958)? Frank Langella in Dracula (1979)? And Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)? 5. The sexiest of all vampire films was The Hunger, a glossy 1983 Tony Scott thriller with three attractive co-stars. Name them. 6. Before his Oscar-winning glory, Nicolas Cage starred in a vampire film that he still considers among his best work. Name it. 7. Roman Polanski once directed and co-starred in a vampire film that also featured his late wife, Sharon Tate. Name it. 8. Who plays the interviewer in Interview with the Vampire? 9. Before achieving prestige status with Dead Ringers and M. Butterfly, Toronto's David Cronenberg directed a gory cult-favorite vampire film that starred one-time porn queen Marilyn Chambers. Name it. 10. Who played the two brothers who stumble into a nest of vampires in 1995's From Dusk till Dawn? THE ANSWERS 1. Though Robert De Niro has played Frankenstein's monster, he has yet to grow fangs on film. Nielsen starred in Dracula: Dead and Loving It; Eddie Murphy had the lead in Vampire in Brooklyn, and Deneuve was the most gorgeous 200-year-old vampire in film history in the sexy The Hunger. 2. Blacula. 3. Hammer Films. The Horror of Dracula is this critic's all-time favorite vampire film. 4. The good guys in the best of the Dracula movies were Edward van Sloan (1931), Peter Cushing (1958), Lawrence Olivier (1979) and Anthony Hopkins (1992). The last three are easy, but if you guessed van Sloan, go to the head of the class. 5. Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, Susan Sarandon. 6. Vampire's Kiss (1988). 7. The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). 8. Christian Slater plays the nervous journalist who interviews Louis (Brad Pitt), who recounts his relationship with Lestat (Tom Cruise), in the opulent 1994 film. 9. Rabid. 10. Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney.

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(Oct. 30, 1998) -- Vampire hunter Jack Crow (James Woods) tells a rookie on his team to forget any romantic ideas about elegant vampires "in formal dress, talking with Euro-trash accents" who back off at the first whiff of garlic.

No, he says, that's only in the movies; real vampires are evil, foul-smelling, super-strong, hard-to-stop walking corpses who could gleefully gargle garlic while they drain your body of every drop of blood, before they rip you in half.

John Carpenter apparently agrees with his protagonist, because the vampires he presents in his new film, John Carpenter's Vampires, are not the sort you'd want to bump into while trick-or-treating. This film is a rough-and-tumble, foul-mouthed and ultraviolent showcase for down-and-dirty Draculas.

Carpenter, of course, is the veteran horror director whose chief claims to fame are the slice-and-dice exploits of Michael Myers in the Halloween films. Here he offers his first foray into vampirism, adapting a novel by John Steakley about a nest of vampires in the American Southwest.

Perhaps inspired by the New Mexico setting, Carpenter has created a modern vampire tale that owes a lot of its style to the violent, latter-day Westerns of Sam Peckinpah and Walter Hill. It's also clearly influenced by the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez collaboration on From Dusk Till Dawn. Jack Crow is like a gunslinger who has come to rid the territory of some unsavory denizens.

The chief adversary is Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), a 600-year-old vampire "master" who is on a mission. Beyond creating an army of fellow vampires, Valek is looking for a fabled black cross; if he finds it he can conduct a ceremony that will allow vampires to walk the earth in daylight. (For now, vampires burn up explosively with any exposure to the sun.)

Early in the film, Crow's hunting team is largely wiped out in a horrific vampire attack. Only he and his chief assistant, Tony (Daniel Baldwin), survive. To find Valek, they kidnap a prostitute (Sheryl Lee) who's been bitten by Valek but hasn't yet turned into a vampire. According to lore, she'll be connected telepathically with Valek and can help them find him.

Ultimately, Crow and Valek meet as adversaries on the dusty streets of a Western town. Instead of six guns, it's stakes for the heart versus long fangs for the neck. Instead of High Noon we could call it Midnight.

Beyond the Western influence, Carpenter's other contribution to movie vampire lore is the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church as a major force against vampirism. Crow and his fellow hunters are funded by the church and report to a cardinal (Maximilian Schell). The film adds exorcism elements to the vampire mix.

Thus, John Carpenter's Vampires is moderately original and exciting, at least for viewers who don't object to a lot of gore. It isn't very scary, though, certainly nowhere near as unsettling as Carpenter's first Halloween.

The role of Jack Crow is tailor-made for James Woods, one of the day's most intense actors. He also demonstrates a flair for cynical humor and profanity-laced asides. The tall Griffith makes an impressive, imperious master vampire.

Sheryl Lee struggles with the film's only female role as little more than a sexy victim. The vampire genre has not been kind to women over the years. Regrettably, this film overflows with machismo; the women are around only for bedding, biting or belting.