DVD Tuesday: Heroes, Big Love, Aliens and Vampires!
Near Dark courtesy Anchor Bay
Near Dark puts a bloody twist on vampire cliches and features a very young Adrian Pasdar.
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A hero, a big lover and three alien fighters walk into a bar and let me tell you, all hell busts loose. I love
Near Dark (1987), the best vampire film never to use the V word ever made.
As I was watching the
Heroes finale last week, I thought this would be a fine time to acquaint - or reacquaint - DVD Tuesday readers with a very young
Adrian Pasdar (
Heroes' Nathan Petrelli), a scorching hot
Bill Paxton (
Big Love's Bill Henrickson) and dynamite middle-aged murder junkies
Lance Henriksen and
Jenette Goldstein. (Paxton, who was also in
Aliens, does double duty in my admittedly gimmicky lead - forgive me, please.) Not to mention
Joshua Miller, son of playwright and
Exorcist star
Jason Miller and hands down the creepiest movie kid
ever. Plus the underrated
Tim Thomerson, silver-haired star of too much direct-to-DVD junk. And there's the haunting
Jenny Wright - anyone who can tell me what's become of her, please write.
Pasdar is good-looking Oklahoma boy Caleb, who loves his daddy (Thomerson) and little sister, his horses and his pickup truck, but not as much as he loves gamine blonde Mae (Wright) the moment he lays eyes on her, standing on a deserted small-town street, licking a vanilla cone and looking like moonlight made flesh. Their late-night date ends with a bloody kiss, and next thing Caleb knows, there's something really wrong with him. And that's
before he finds himself scooped into a van with Mae's family, a pack of blood-drinking serial killers who keep dropping ominous hints about how long they've been criss-crossing the Southwest, wreaking gory havoc and reveling in every minute of it. "Let's put it this way: I fought for the South," says patriarch Jesse (the magnificently malevolent Henriksen). "We lost."
Caleb's dilemma: He's tainted by Mae's bite. He can't go home; he can't even stand in the sunlight without frying like bacon. But until he starts killing he's not one of them, and he's just not the killing kind.
Director and co-screenwriter
Kathryn Bigelow never lived up to
Near Dark's promise (and her writing partner,
Eric Red - who scripted the nothing-short-of-brilliant original version of
The Hitcher - suffered some kind of
spectacular meltdown in 2000), but what a kick-ass variation on a theme: A vampire Western that anticipates
The Devil's Rejects with a healthy dollop of serious sex appeal.
It died in theaters, and I had to spend a tidy slice of the '90s converting friends to its dark charms. Check it out on DVD: It looks fantastic and it holds up ferociously.
Things to consider:
What's the appeal of vampires? Filmmakers keep making movies about them, spinning the traditions every which way but loose, and moviegoers keep going to see them.
What's you favorite vampire movie?
When you like an actor or actress you know from something current, a movie or a TV show, do you seek out his or her earlier work? Any favorite discoveries?
Previously in DVD Tuesday
Perfect Blue
Pan's Labyrinth
Les Girls
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Queen
Expresso Bongo
I'm Not Scared
Shocking Grindhouse Double Bill! - Scanners and The Candy Snatchers
Don't Look Now
Re-Animator
Casino Royale
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Pi
The Prestige
13 Tzameti
The Departed
Suspiria
Kiss and Make Up
Kiss Me Deadly
The Long Good Friday
What Alice Found
The Devil's Backbone
The Descent
The Devil Wears Prada
Pandora's Box
The Thief and the Cobbler
Nashville
Panic in the Streets/Jack Palance Interview
The Pusher Trilogy
Scarface
Slither
Sunset Blvd.
In Cold Blood
Brick
Also:
This week's new DVD releases
