Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

Actor & producer Wesley Snipes may have finally found himself an action movie franchise that he can sink his teeth into with British director Stephen Norrington's "Blade," a well-made, imaginative, adrenaline-laced vampire chiller based on the Marvel Comics' super hero. Last seen in "U.S. Marshals," Snipes heads up a first-rate cast that includes Kris Kristofferson, Stephen Dorff, N' Bushe Wright, Udo Kier, and Traci Lords. "Blade" synthesizes the exotic swordplay of the "Highlander" epics, the double-digit body count ballistics of a John Woo thriller, and the martial arts pandemonium of a Jackie Chan opus to spawn a horror movie several cuts above your ordinary vampire fare. If the sight of blood, especially torrents of bogus blood, turns your stomach, avoid "Blade." "Blade" takes its cues from renegade vampire sags like Robert Rodriguez's "From Dusk Till Dawn" (1996) and Kathryn Bigelow's "Near Dark" (1987) rather than those venerable classics like Tod Browning's "Dracula" (1931) with Bela Lugosi and Neil Jordan's "Interview with a Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles" with Tom Cruise (1994). The Snipes hero must have chose the same guy who tailored "Mad Max" and "The Terminator" in what essentially constitutes an apocalyptic version of Fran Rubel Kuzui's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1992). "Blade" qualifies as a tour-de-fang chiller with darker humor than "Buffy," top drawer special effects, and an infectious techno-pop soundtrack. Lowbrow escapism that it ranks as, "Blade" benefits chiefly from scenarist David S. Goyer's solid, seasoned writing skills and atmospheric, innovative helming by sophomore director Stephen Norrington.

Scenarist David S. Goyer provides an invigorating screenplay. "Blade" bristles not only with lively action and adventure, but also an intelligible plot that the characters go to extreme lengths of describe and discuss. When you consider that Goyer has penned scripts for such movies as "Dark City," "The Crow 2: City of Angels," "Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, "Demonic Toys," and "Kickboxer 2," then you know he qualified as the ideal choice to pen the script. Goyer's revenge fantasy script never leaves you in the dark about a bloody new world where its embattled but immortal hero Blade wages a perennial war against vampires. Goyer shows impressive flexibility in co-opting vampire mythology. At one point, a half-blooded vampire smears on sun screen lotion to shield himself from the sun. Jealous vampires put one of their vampire enemies to death by gradually exposing him to sunlight at dawn. Meanwhile, our hero uses an ultra-violet light to singe unruly fangsters. About the only vampire trait left out by Goyer is the ability to shape-shift into a bat.

A vampire infected our protagonist's pregnant mom with its venomous blood while she was carrying Blade in her womb. Delivered by Caesarean section from his dying mother, Blade emerges as neither totally a human nor truly a vampire. He can walk in sunlight without risk, and neither silver nor garlic an faze him. One villainous vampire admires Blade when he observes that Blade has "all of our strengths and none of our weaknesses." The filmmakers milk dramatic tension from Blade's growing tolerance to Whistler's (Kris Kristofferson of "Convoy") anti-venom serum. The chance that Blade may not revert to his vampire origins not only lurks in the background but also contributes to the suspense. This element of uncertainty generates anxiety and it endows the protagonist with an Achilles' heel that make shim more believable and charismatic.

Legendary vampire hunter Abraham Whistler (a grouchy Kris Kristofferson with a gimpy leg) found Blade as a juvenile roaming the streets and living off the blood of derelicts. Transforming Blade into a super hero with injections of a blood substitute, he serves as Blade's stepfather and ordnance maker. Surprisingly, Whistler lasts longer than most sacrificial characters. Loosely modeled on the Roman god Vulcan who forged weapons for the gods, Whistler trains Blade to kill vampires with extreme prejudice. Blade approaches his crusade with the enthusiasm that Charles Bronson mustered for killing muggers in the quintet of "Death Wish" movies. Not surprisingly, more than enough vampires survive from other parts of the world for Blade to combat in the sequels. Wows, does "Blade" ever leave itself wide open in its wrap-up in Russia for a sequel! Anyhow, the vampires in "Blade" are not tooth fairies. Organized into a powerful, global underground syndicate, Dragonetti (Udo Kier) presides over them as a Corleonesque godfather of sorts. The scene in the shadowy conference room with vampires dressed in suits is effectively creepy. Kier's Dragonetti is a pure-blooded fangster in a world of full and half-blooded vampires. In "Blade," the cities of the world have been practically undermined by vampires. Vampires have gained leverage in the business and politician arenas. These vampires own the police so they control the law. As the snotty, upstart Deacon Frost, actor Stephen Dorff plays the half-breed vampire who Dragonetti turned. Frost harbors greater ambitions than Dragonetti. The elder vampire prefers to co-exist with mortals and abide by their treaties. Frost demands that the vampires dominate humanity. Secretly, Frost has been translating an ancient vampire text which will enable him to resurrect a vampire blood god. Frost wants to revive this demon, but he needs the missing link: Blade's blood. Frost calls Blade "day-walker," because the vampire bible has prophesied Blade's unique genetic make-up. If he can revive this blood god, Frost can control the House of Erebus that rules the undead, and vampires can emerge as the dominant force in the world. The splashy finale in a phantasmagoric vampire temple with skeletons bursting out of the mouths of vampires in a storm of jagged lightning bolts owes a little to "The Fifth Element" as well as "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" (1958), but this scene is fully and logically integrated in Goyer's script.

Sure, "Blade" amounts to nothing more than bloody pulp fiction. Nevertheless, Goyer and Norrington have reinvented vampire thrillers. "Blade" is entertaining, somewhat cheesy, but technically proficient hokum done with considerable technical prowess. Congratulations Stan Lee!

Film lovers will groove on the multitude of special features, particularly the enlightening commentary tracks. For example, the train in the tunnel was NOT there; it was inserted during post-production with digital special effects.

Up until 1998 comic book movies were a joke. Sometimes they had some campy charm and were marginal successes but aside from the Michael Keaton Batman film in 1989 none of them had been all of that good. Even with that movie's fame, the successive films did their best to kill all of the best parts of that franchise until everyone's memories had been sullied by the horrors of the sequals. Marvel had a particularly hard time releasing its products to film and its two successes up to 1998, The Punisher and Captain America, were so bad that even fans of the characters felt the need to apologize for them.

Into this mix came Blade, a much lesser known character than previous Marvel and DC attempts to make movies about their characters but in a way that helped. Writer David Goyer and Director Stephen Norrington were able to tell the story that they wanted to tell without having to pay homage to 25 years of comic book history or to hordes of angry fans that wanted to make sure that their version of the character was the one presented on-screen. In fact the movie deviates greatly from the Marvel version of Blade's origin and his powers and they borrow the character of Whistler from Fox's Spider-Man The Animated Series to give Blade a mentor and father figure.

This movie was a success for several reasons. First, it took the story seriously. Blade wasn't a campy super-hero who had hilarious misadventures. The movie is serious from the opening moments when a man who thought that he was being picked up by a hot woman and taken to a party finds out that he's really the appetizer at a vampire rave. While certain elements like the character of Quinn lighten specific moments the characters always act as if the danger and the situations are real.

Second, the movie is an action movie rather than a horror movie. Vampires have almost always been placed in the horror mold. The genius of Blade is to depict vampires more as members of a kind of mafia rather than as the creatures that live in solitary mansions and prey on hapless virgins. The horror and fear are there. Norrington does a tremendous job in presenting a world to us in which creatures skulk around in the dark and the script describes a world that most of us are unaware of but influences our lives on a daily basis. However, even with these elements we are in full action mode as Blade takes on this mafia with all of the weapons at his disposal and his knowledge of martial arts. The fighting is done so well that you even let our cheers as Blade dispatches his foes in spectacular style. Many of the things that the Matrix would take credit for, such as bullet time and the idea that the world that we live in is an illusion (although this is a little more literal in Matrix), were developed in Blade first and usually with far more skill and style.

Third, there is an emphasis on character here that shouldn't be taken for granted. Most superhero movies are obsessed with action to the point that characters simply don't have time to grow. That isn't so here. The tragedy of Blade's life is presented to us and then further developed as we see how Blade being a man that fits into neither world can't live with vampires and that the relationships that he establishes with humans can never last. Deacon Frost is also developed well as his relationships with Quinn, Karen, and Dragonetti develop him to show that he is the complete antithesis of Blade: A hedonist that cares only about fomenting chaos and gratifying his own desires.

Finally, there's a wonderful synergy from all involved. The actors give great performances. Wesley Snipes is the gruff hero with just enough sass to deliver some witty lines to break the tension in some dramatic scenes. Kris Kristofferson plays the father figure and elder hero who has to die to give way to the younger generation. His obvious love for Blade comes through the subtleties of the performance rather than any overt dialogue. Stephen Dorff is fantastic as Deacon Frost who wants nothing more than to gratify his own desires and to be restrained by no one. His casual disdain of everyone around him except when he wants something shows the kind of character that he is. Then we have some great direction from Norrington who has the world move around us with time lapse photography when we aren't looking and gives the impression of things hidden all around. Turning up the brightness during the daylight helps to showcase how foreign that world is once you've been steeped in Blade's nighttime world. The script is a top-notch Goyer contribution. As usual with Goyer everything that is introduced has a purpose and all of the elements join together by the end of the movie so that everything from Blade's mom to comments about whether or not Karen will turn, to the biting of Dr Webb all come back when they will have maximum story impact.

If the story has any flaws it is that Deacon's idea to turn everyone into vampires makes no sense unless you assume that he is so interested in fomenting chaos that he would like to see a world full of vampires who feed on each other but this is never stated on screen and it would have been nice if there was some dialogue for it. The other problem is that La Magra is a bit of a disappointment once it appears. After building up to this since the midway point of the movie you expect something more than what you see but this is one of those things that you don't really think about until after your first viewing when you're thinking back on the movie.

Many movies like the Matrix, Daredevil, and the X-Men trilogy probably would have never been made or would have been radically different if it wasn't for the cult success of Blade and the techniques that it pioneered. Give it a try as a must-see movie experience if you are either a fan of comics or any of the aforementioned movies.