Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Near Dark (1987)

Near Dark is by far the most disturbing representation of vampires I have ever seen. This movie is a cross between Trublood and the family from House of 1000 Corpses. Not nearly as gory as either, the film has the classic 80’s theme of leaving it up to the imagination or forcing the audience to figure it out, in other words try not to think about because I am still shuddering.

I think a lot of really good choices were made in the costumes, they were awesomely cowboy-ish, and the guns each character had were very… phallicly applicable? The kid vampire in the film, Homer, had a small silver gun, which fully exemplified his frustration with his physical age compared to his mental maturity. He also might be the most frightening villain ever because of his attempts to turn a little girl. The other vampires all have reasonable sized guns, while the humans all have long shot guns, but in the case of adults, it was more to show how useless guns were against vampires and how effective they were against humans.

It was a super interesting take on the myth. The word vampire was never used to describe what happened to the group, and they were constantly moving to avoid being traced which added this criminal element to the film not usually explored in vampire flicks. Overall, I think the 80’s were an amazing time to be a vampire and I wish I-tunes would let me rent fright night.


1 comment:

Vladigogo said...

Fright Night wasn't bad. It will be interesting to see the remake later this summer.