I'll make a brief statement and then I'll open up the floor to termites -- I mean to questions! (I know, I know: I used that joke last month, but you can never go wrong with the classics.)















Anywho, as you may know I recently watched the 1999 movie "Vampires" starring James Woods and Daniel Baldwin as freelance vampire killers working (improbably enough) for the local Catholic church, under the questionable but austere supervision of a certain Cardinal Alba (Maximillian Schell) and his young pious flunky named Father Guiteau (Tim Guinee). Not that James' character, Jack Crow, seems particularly religious, of course, but a job's a job, after all. Besides, the bloodsuckers killed his parents when Jack was but a simp (i.e. a baby Crow) and so the job is definitely personal for our slim, laconic and heavily armed hero. Still, one gets the impression that this Crow fellow really enjoys kicking "some vampire butt," to use his own no-nonsense lingo for the task, although his enthusiasm for this dream job is matched, if not surpassed, by that of his dozen or so teammates, all of them apparently recruited (complete with leather jackets, ear-rings, and all-knowing smirks) straight from the local Harley-Davidson fan club. This latter posse is apparently responsible for clubbing, slashing, and repeatedly shooting the homebound night-stalkers, preparatory to hog-tying them to the front bumper of the vigilantes' Jeep. Then Daniel Baldwin takes over behind the wheel as Anthony Montoya, throwing the vehicle into reverse and dragging the decidedly unhappy campers, one at a time, face up into the sunlight, where they spontaneously self-destruct in a pyrotechnic display worthy of the Zambelli family itself.




Right. Questions? (Remember, I can't give away the ending, guys, so phrase your questions accordingly, yes?)



Yes, sir.



Yes, Mr. Movie Viewer, sir, what was the funniest thing about the film?



Oi! Where do I begin?



No, seriously, it was exciting enough. (Hey, yo, it was directed by John Carpenter of "Halloween" infamy!)



Still, I had to chuckle when Jack Crow speculated on the reason that the rest of the world was largely ignorant of the vampires' plot to take over the earth. After all, there were so-called "nests" throughout the world now, yet nobody seemed to notice.



Well, the way Jack figured it (and he tells Tony as much near the beginning of the movie) it seems that the vampires had hit upon the ingenious strategy of "keeping their numbers low" so as to escape the notice (as far as possible, anyway) of the locals amongst whom they live. Can you imagine?



Now, I don't want to nitpick, but that seems to me like a rather poor strategy for world domination: keeping your numbers low so that no one will notice that you're taking over!



I can't speak for Jack, of course, but he probably meant to say that the vampires were keeping their numbers low until a certain "master vampire" (Jan Valek, played by Thomas Ian Griffith) managed to overcome our apparently spiritually protected hero in Southern California (or wherever ) -- at which point, he (Jan) could no doubt then give the "green light" to the rest of the vampire contingent to "proliferate at will."



What about the love interest named Katrina? I understand she got bit big-time by the very Jan Valek you mentioned.



I believe you mean the character played by Sheryl Lee. She did indeed get bitten -- and then some.



Didn't she actually turn into a vampire?



Well, I'll say this much: She spent more than half the movie teetering on the very verge of vampire-hood, as Jack and Tony shuttled her about the desert like she was some kind of big groggy rag doll.



But she did actually turn into a vampire eventually, right?



No comment.



Did Jack Crow finally "take out" that master vampire that he was after, Jan what's-his-name?



Jan Valek, I believe you mean. I can't comment on the ending, remember?



Did the movie raise any philosophical problems for you, Mr. Moviegoer?



Funny you should ask. It did, indeed. Because while I was watching Jack and company riddle the vampires with bullets and bash their heads in with pikestaffs, it suddenly occurred to me that the vampires in question, though perhaps implicated as a species in the death of Jack's parents, had not necessarily done anything as individuals to warrant this rude treatment at the hands of these church-sponsored vigilantes. I mean, I understand where Jack is coming from with this get-tough approach, since he's no doubt seen the same movies that I have wherein vampires are inevitably the sort of thoroughgoing bad guys that deserve no mercy whatsoever. But wouldn't it be awful if we were wrong -- at least about the majority of them -- in this regard? Shouldn't Jack at least give individual vampires a pro forma chance to surrender, so to speak, before killing them all off wholesale? Maybe the lion's share of vampires would be just as happy to get their RDA of blood from the jungle as from the city, in which case we could offer to repatriate these would-be peaceniks to the appropriate exotic biomes in, say the Serengeti Plains of Tanzania, or the Brazilian rainforest, where they can henceforth batten their canine hatches on somewhat less objectionable fare.



All I am saying is, Give peace a chance, Jack. If the vampires scorn your advances, you can always go back to hog-tying them to your Jeep and dragging them out into the sunlight. But at least then you'll know that they really do deserve every indignity to which you subject them and that you aren't just reacting to them based on some sensational stereotype promulgated by Hollywood.