B Plus Movies

Some movies let you know what you’re getting into right up front. Most action movies fall into this category. Some like to make you think they are one sort of movie and then turn out to be something else, like a lot of suspense thrillers. Then there are some movies that hold up a sign saying what they are, but pretend like they can’t see it, so the viewer is left going “wait a second, is this what I think it is?”

Near Dark, a film released in 1987, is a grand example of the last sort.

It’s tempting to sum up this movie as the best redneck vampire film ever made, but saying that in no way conveys the depth of the characters in the film nor the tension nor the fact that in the whole 94 minutes the movie runs, the word “vampire” is never used.

The story starts with a young farm boy named Caleb (played by Adrian Pasdar,  Heroes own flying man Nathan Patrelli). He meets an pretty young woman (Jenny Wright) who intrigues, mystifies and then bites him. Soon Caleb gets abducted by a traveling band of murderous gypsies that includes the psychotic Severen, the knife wielding beauty Diamondback (played by Aliens stars Bill Paxton and Jennette Goldstein respectively), a man locked in a boy’s body (Joshua John Miller) and headed by Jesse Hooker (played intensely by fellow Aliens alum Lance Henriksen).

They give him an option: Join them or die. Only to join them, he has to learn to kill and feed. Caleb’s father (played by Tim Thomerson) takes up pursuit and soon Caleb is forced to decide between the family he was born to and the darker clan that would make him one of their own.

The performances in this movie are amazing and intense. Lance Henriksen spoke about Jesse Hooker at a convention I attended and talked about the pages of back story he had put into the character, going so far as to add touches like sewing a rebel flag inside his trechcoat, a memento that’s never seen on the screen. The way Jesse and the other villains of the piece are portrayed makes you forget at times what they are and the evil that they do, adding a layer of concern for characters that could have easily been camped up or turned into laughable stereotypes.

If there is any negative criticism to be given, it’s mostly in some elements of the movie that feel slightly forced, things like the length of any given night seeming to change as required by the events of the script and that the antagonists seem a little too eager to throw caution to the wind toward the end of the picture. Also, there is a cure for vampirism found in the film which may make you wonder “And no one figured this out before a 18 or 20 year old kid from Kansas?” These flaws are thankfully minor and overall require only a smidge of suspension of disbelief.

The movie stands up after twenty years. I see it often in the bargain rack at Wal-Mart and it’s more than worth the five or seven bucks to pick up. The talent that went into this film, both in front and behind the camera, is immense and is a great way to spend an hour and a half watching people burn, bleed and get shot as well as do something much more difficult, which is to make you care about them.

I give this movie a B+ and hold it up as the example of what a B+ movie should be.