**UPDATE: Technical issues on this post have been resolved**
#18: Near Dark (1987)
“The night has a price.”
For a time, during the late eighties, I would set an 8 hour VHS tape to record whatever was broadcast overnight on the various movie channels in the hopes of catching some unheard of gem. In those days, so many movies were produced that never saw the inside of my local Milwaukee theatres that there was just no other way to make sure I caught everything. This was also many years before Al Gore’s Internet and so if a film didn’t get some love from the MSM or those glossy foo-foo film magazines, a minor classic that ended with an explosion instead of a “Fin” could disappear without a trace. Admittedly, most of what I found on that increasingly worn out tape was utter crap, but every once in a while…
“Near Dark” was released into 262 theatres on October 2nd, 1987 and promptly flopped as though it had never existed. Hitting theatres just as another stylish vampire film was at the tail end of a wildly successful run probably didn’t help. Nonetheless, you can’t keep a great film down and thankfully I wasn’t the only one who, thanks to late-night cable, would later discover and be blown away by future Academy Award-winner Kathryn Bigelow’s sophomore directorial effort.
In the heart of yet another dull prairie town night, out walks a vision licking an ice cream cone the likes of which local cowhand Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) has never seen before. Sensual and fragile, her name is Mae (Jenny Wright) and what follows is a slow dance of seduction that will lead to Caleb being left both smitten and bit (literally). After Mae runs off just ahead of the coming dawn, Caleb finds himself getting sicker as the sun rises. As he struggles to make his way home across a dusty field, from out of nowhere (as Caleb’s young sister and father helplessly watch), a battered RV bounces onto the dirt, roars towards Caleb and without slowing down snatches him up into the alternately terrifying and alluring world of centuries old vampires who roam the West like a gang of outlaw bikers stirring up trouble to balm the boredom that comes with immortality and indiscriminately feeding on whoever they feel like taunting.
Their leader is the intimidating Jesse Hooker (The Mighty Lance Henriksen), a Civil War veteran (“We lost.”) and his girl — the alternately cold-blooded and maternal punked-out Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein). Also along for the ride is the flamboyantly sadistic Severen (a scene-stealing Bill Paxton) and Homer (Joshua Miller), a old frustrated man trapped forever in a little boy’s body. Except for Mae, they would prefer to feast on Caleb but Mae didn’t bleed him and now, just like that, he’s one of them. Well, not exactly one of them. Full acceptance requires a rite of passage. Caleb will either have to kill and feed on an innocent or suffer some kind of living death at the hands of his new “family.” In love with Mae, constantly starving for blood but unwilling/unable to kill, Caleb’s trapped between two worlds with no solution anywhere in sight.
No crucifixes and no holy water, just bleak landscapes and pure badassery. They say that what makes a great film is x-number of unforgettable scenes, and “Near Dark” has at least four of them, the centerpiece event taking place in a remote “shit-kicker” bar where our dangerous marauders mercilessly toy with the patrons before making a meal of them. Using the music from the jukebox, Bigelow brilliantly sets the sequence to four different songs that serve to change the tone as the violence plays out. It’s also worth mentioning that Bill Paxton completely owns this scene, his finest moment on the big screen.
Most people consider “Near Dark” a hybrid of Vampire and Western genres but I see it as more of a biker flick with bloodsuckers than any kind of Western. There’s an unmistakable spirit of the open road that drives Jesse and company and the sense of liberation we share with them as they lawlessly roll over the back roads of the American Southwest is contagious. At least until the killing begins.
For the purposes of making this list, what qualifies and separates “Near Dark” from similar films in tone and style such as John Carpenter’s “Vampires,” is Tangerine Dream’s evocative and atmospheric score. Without it, like “Vampires” (a film I absolutely love), Bigelow’s triumph would most certainly still qualify as top-notch genre flick, but not as the kind of viewing you would seek out every October. From the opening scene, the disquieting, relentless thump of the score cuts through everything and settles deep into your gut for the full 95 minutes.
These days, whenever I’m watching the latest pretty boy, metrosexual vampire vamping across the big or small screen, I try to imagine what Jesse, Diamondback, Severen and Homer would think of such a sad spectacle, and better yet what they would do about it.
“Near Dark” meets “Interview With a Vampire.” In the right hands, I’d wait in line to see that.
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