lukem-52760 Another BRILLIANT Carpenter film!!! Ever since first renting this on it's first release on video i absolute loved & went out & brought it straight away,JAMES WOODS is Fantastic as Jack Crow a very violent vampire hunter who leads a team of hunters & WOODS performance is so much fun to watch & my favourite of his movies. Carpenter has created a scary western type of Horror movie with that open plains background & lonely dessert highways & old motels & farm houses, he's created a creepy atmosphere yet again perfectl. The vampires themselves are very scary & wild like savage beasts so yeah carpenter has made a fantastic Vampire movie with plenty of brutal Action & gore & great fx & some very funny moments with James woods!!! Yes a very underrated movie? But truly it's one of carpenters best films it's a great vampire film.

bradleygranz Vampires is good 90s vampire film a good soundtrack better good acting a lot of action l like this one

lurch99-198-323833 John Carpenter's fondness of Westerns is well established, all the way back to his first prominent flick "Assault on Precinct 13" being a modern re-working of "Rio Bravo" with John Wayne. I think Carpenter is one of the best American directors, up on a level with Scorsese and a few others (and usually working with a much lower budget) but for some reason he doesn't get critical respect in this country, probably due to the genre he works in (I suspect that's also why Stephen King is not generally regarded as one of the best American novelists). I've also been a huge fan of James Woods since "The Onion Field," so to have them working together is a dream for me. "Vampires" had me right from the get go with Woods and his crew planning their raid on the "nest" ---I don't think there's anyone better than Carpenter at setting up scenes and building suspense, he's not afraid to give it the running time it needs—unlike a lot of younger directors who came from music videos and want everything fast and choppy. After most of the characters are killed off early on, the survivors track down the bad guy like in "The Searchers" also with John Wayne---in this case the "sheriff" and his "deputy" and the "floozy." Carpenter gets the best career performances out of two actors who are not my favorites—Daniel Baldwin and Sheryl Lee—although those two have the best scene in the film, i.e. the first one in the hotel room. I have mixed feelings about Thomas Ian Griffith as the "master"---I'd only ever seen him once before, in "Excessive Force," and liked him, but I thought he came a little too close to the "stereotyped European bloodsucker" that the Woods character himself had derided, but I imagine Griffith played it the way Carpenter wanted it. I loved having the devious Cardinal turn out to be a "bad guy," but that's just me and my issues with Catholicism in general. The plot with tracking down the "black cross" got just a bit unwieldy at times, but Carpenter keeps things humming along until the climax, after which in classic Western tradition the Woods character lets the two new vampires go their way for "old time's sake" but warns he'll have to kill them if they cross paths in future, then Woods and his new sidekick ride off (without horses) into the sunset (or sunrise, rather) for more adventures. …So after multiple viewings I really can't see why anyone wouldn't enjoy this flick unless they were just pre-determined not to; reportedly this was the project that led Carpenter to decide to stay in the business, and I'm sure glad he did…. Woods' line to the young priest in one scene---"Did you get a little wood just now, Padre?" ---should be in a collection of classic movie bon mots, along with "You gotta be f---in' kidding" from Carpenter's version "The Thing"--maybe someone should do a short film of just clips from Carpenter's oeuvre.....

BA_Harrison A band of professional, Vatican-sanctioned vampire hunters, led by hardened slayer Jack Crow (James Woods), battle a powerful master vampire called Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), who is attempting to repeat the ritual that turned him into a vampire and which will enable him to walk in daylight.Director John Carpenter is, of course, capable of much better than Vampires, but the film is also a long way from his worst (Ghosts of Mars, please stand up!). The plot plods at times, especially when the director focuses a little too much on style over content, but any film that features James Woods as a mean sonuvabitch vampire slayer, the gorgeous Sheryl Lee as a sexy hooker turned bloodsucker, some impressive set-pieces (the vampires burning up in sunlight being amongst some of the best bloodsucker deaths committed to film), and lots of outstanding gore effects by the brilliant KNB effects group is never going to be a total waste of any horror fan's time.6 out of 10, bumped up to 7 for Mark Boone Junior's awesomely bloody demise (split up the middle by Valek's talons), the savage decapitation of a priest, and Sheryl Lee's nude scene (we don't really get to see her 'twin peaks' but we are treated to her delightful derrière).