What was the last movie you've seen?

[OldSchool_Boy]

Lost Highway

I enjoyed it especially the scene of Robert Loggia screaming at a bad driver about proper driving techniques. Scene.

[BurningDoom]

Shamefully, the only Brooks film I've seen is Spaceballs.

I've seen that and Silent Movie + Young Frankenstein, but not Blazing Saddles. So far Spaceballs is my favorite.

You've got to see Robin Hood: Men In Tights, too. After Spaceballs, it's the best one, IMO. Hilarious!

[Michi]

First write-up in a while and probably the last one til some time in October.


Near Dark

Actually, I was praying for a better poster design, but this is the only one I didn't totally hate.

TCM has been disappointing me recently. With the exception of this, everything they’ve been playing on Friday nights for the last couple of months has been a repeat. Very big drag. I take solace in the fact that October is coming up and they will be playing the old horror classics for a month, but it’s still a bummer that they haven’t been playing any new quirky cult classics recently. Thankfully, Near Dark ended TCM’s new movie run for a while on a high note, so there’s that.

Near Dark starts off with Caleb Colton, a young cowboy-wannabe. Caleb meets his friends in town one night and they spot a skinny, young, ice-cream cone eating Mae. Young Caleb makes his move and the two of them spend the night driving around town, with Caleb intermittingly trying to awkwardly get a kiss.


Awkward scenes abound.

When Mae becomes panicked about the idea on not making it home before sunrise, Caleb drives her there, but not before being a bit of a dick and stopping in the middle of the road to demand a kiss from his very agitated passenger only a couple of miles from her destination. Caleb gets what he wants along with a bonus: She bites him on the neck and then flees the truck.

He runs after her, but can’t catch her. Not being able to get his truck started again he starts walking home, a treck that slowly gets more and more difficult for him as the sun slowly rises. First his pace slows, then as he gets weaker he starts stumbling, and finally he literally begins to smoke as he makes his way across the empty fields.


Yes, I know there's no smoke, but he's mere minutes away from bursting into flames at this point. Trust me.

His father and younger sister spot him trying to stumble his way home seconds before a old beat up RV tears across the field and snatches him right off the property. This is Mae’s “family” a clan of roving vampires consisting of their hardened leader Jesse, his mate Diamondback, the wild Severen, and the vampire child Homer.

Caleb is not welcomed into their ranks with open arms. He was supposed to be prey and was instead accidentally turned. The others are ready to kill him, but Mae insists that he can be inducted into the group and taught their ways and is given a week to teach him. Terrified and not comprehending what’s going on, Caleb tries to return home, but has to abandon his journey when the lack of blood makes him so ill that he has no choice but to return to Mae.


Caleb does a lot of stumbling around in this movie....Notice "ALIENS" on the marque. It was filmed one year earlier by the directors
soon-to-be husband. Paxton, Henriksen, and Goldstein (Diamondback) all stared in it

Try as she might though, Mae just can’t get Caleb to summon the gumption necessary to kill in order to feed. He comes close on two occasions, no more so than when the family takes out an entire roadside bar and practically hands him a sniveling pool player on a silver platter. But Caleb lets him go, creating a terrified witness and leaving the family vulnerable. Meanwhile Caleb’s family is taking part in their own frantic hunt, relentlessly searching the highways and gas stations for any signs of him.


The whole scene was a big, bloody mess…But probably really no different from any other Friday evening.

Near Dark is an interesting mixture of the western and horror genres and the film surprisingly blends both together very well. The sparse, desolate, ill-lit western landscape is imbued with a feeling of menace that lends itself well to the more horror driven aspects of the plot.

The running theme of the intrusive outsider is also very prominent. Caleb is an unwanted outsider within his new “family”, a family that is itself composed of nothing but outsiders, too different from humanity to ever even consider to try to fit into human society again. And yet Caleb still tries to fit in, while at the same time desperately clinging to what’s left of his humanity, pushing him even further away from the only people who can understand him now.

The first thing I noticed about this movie was the terminology used. Like Ganja and Hess the term “vampire” is never used. Instead the vampires describe themselves as “sick”, “different” or “not normal.” Another thing that will be very noticeable to any vampire fan going into this movie is a serious lack of fangs. Fangs are not present. At all. There are several were the characters are seen giving close-ups with their big, toothy grins and it becomes very obvious that there is a lack of big, pointy teeth.

Yet the lack of fangs does not make these vampires any less dangerous. Each one of them has their own callous disregard for life. Jesse is an old Confederate veteran, ambushing victims with Diamondback and then implementing a sort of scorched earth policy as they leave. Homer is a bitter, hard, unsympathetic old man trapped in a child’s body and resentful because of it. And Severen…well, Severen’s just old-fashioned crazy, delighting in terrifying, overpowering and slaughtering his victims. Mae is the only one that comes across as having anything related to humanity left, trying her best to protect Caleb while at the same time trying to live up to the expectations of her adopted family. Her heartlessness comes across more of a necessity of survival, not something she gets a sadistic joy out of like Severen.


You can tell he’s really relishing this moment.

Speaking of Severen, both Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen are exceptional in their respective roles. Paxton’s performance is at once hammy and filled with a lethal black humor that shines in ever scene he’s in. You can easily see that Severen is not only evil, but that he also delight in that evil in a way that unsettlingly unites the vampire family. Henriksen brings both a ruthlessness and charm to Jesse that you can easily see why he had managed to survive for so many years.


Lance Henriksen being his most…. Lance Henriksen-like.

One of the most striking things I noticed about this film was the cinematography. Many scenes are set in spacious open fields, yet when night falls everything becomes moody, almost claustrophobic. The use of light and shadow is exquisite and fitting to a movie such as this, blending the western and horror themes together beautifully.







Near Dark is a more modern take on the vampire myth, an American modernization of them if you will. Gone is the old world elegance usually associated with them. Instead it’s replaced by a more modern, gritty, urbanized approach. So if you like your vampires to have a little class, look elsewhere. If, however, you want more of a Bonnie and Clyde bent to your vampire movie than this is something you may want to look into.

[noiseredux]

wow Michi... a horror film we disagree on. (Actually wait, you liked The Vanishing and I didn't). It was bound to happen. I really tried to enjoy Near Dark, but just couldn't. Maybe because I'm not a "western" fan? I did love From Dusk Til Dawn though. I don't know. Maybe I need to see it again, but for some reason it just didn't grab me the last time I saw it (say 2005?).

[Michi]

Well, it was decent, but I wouldn't say I loved it. It's one of those movies that hides behind a main theme, in this case horror, but then shoves a lot of stuff in the background. Not just he undercurrent of the outsiders theme, but also the comments on the counterculture, street culture, the lost working class, the dichotomy between the primal and modern....There's a lot going on here and sometimes it feels like a little too much. Like it's just short of hitting the greatness it set out to achieve by trying to comment on too much at once and got a little lost in the process.

That and the ending felt a little...off. It just seemed a bit too unlikely when you considered the rest of the movie. It also falls into the trap of the suspiciously quick sun-rising scenes that a lot of vampire movies fall victim too

I stick by my comments on the cinematography though. Some of those scenes were damn beautiful.

[noiseredux]

^I think the working class theme is the most successful... but I almost wish they had done a better job of focusing on that than trying to stuff so much into the film. Maybe that's my problem with it. It felt too unfocused?

[Michi]

Yes, unfocused. That's a good way to put it. There are several impressive scenes with themes that are striking when viewed by themselves. The bar scene and the shoot-out scene in particular stand out to me.

By themselves those scenes are exceptional and singularly focused, but viewed together they loose some of their consistency, and in turn their coherency to the overall plot.

[KillerJuan77]

wow Michi... a horror film we disagree on. (Actually wait, you liked The Vanishing and I didn't). It was bound to happen. I really tried to enjoy Near Dark, but just couldn't. Maybe because I'm not a "western" fan? I did love From Dusk Til Dawn though. I don't know. Maybe I need to see it again, but for some reason it just didn't grab me the last time I saw it (say 2005?).

Which version of "The Vanishing" you saw? The original is amazing but the remake fucks the ending up.

[noiseredux]

Which version of "The Vanishing" you saw? The original is amazing but the remake fucks the ending up.

I saw both Juan, and disliked both. I preferred the original, but still found it (I'm sorry) rather boring. There were some great moments, like the spiders (was it spiders or bugs?) in the drawer that were very atmospheric, but ultimately I didn't find the film compelling on the whole. I know I'm in the minority on this one, although my wife felt the same. And she tends to be the Statler to my Waldorph.

[KillerJuan77]

I saw both Juan, and disliked both. I preferred the original, but still found it (I'm sorry) rather boring. There were some great moments, like the spiders (was it spiders or bugs?) in the drawer that were very atmospheric, but ultimately I didn't find the film compelling on the whole. I know I'm in the minority on this one, although my wife felt the same. And she tends to be the Statler to my Waldorph.

I'm not going to lie, it is very slow paced but I like the slow-burn.