If you look up "gorefest" in a dictionary of movie terms, the definition should simply read: "see John Carpenter's Vampires." And I mean that in a good way.

This is a movie about bad people hunting down even badder people, and bad things happen to everybody. It's bloody and ultra violent (if you don't like seeing a guy get sliced right down the middle this movie is not for you). The film is mindless and misogynistic: women are treated as nothing more than sex objects who parade around naked before getting decapitated, but the males don't come off any better. Did I mention this was all really, really fun to watch?

Carpenter (who directs and, as usual, provides the crunching musical score) has told interviewers that in making Vampires, he wasn't setting out to make a monster movie; instead, he set out to film a Western. I'd say he made a darned good one. Vampires, owes a lot more to Sam Peckinpah than it does to Bram Stoker. The movie is the sort of high-energy camp where guys say things like "how do you like your steak?" before stabbing a vampire in the heart. Carpenter hasn't been this good since Big Trouble in Little China

"Suck this!" Woods leads a gang of buff vampire slayers.

The film opens in the New Mexico desert, where Vampire Hunter, Jack Crow, played by James Woods, has brought his posse of slayers to wipe out a nest. Crossbow in hand, Jack and his boys go in, shoot-up the "goons" and haul their undead asses out into the sunlight where they instantly incinerate. It's way cool.

But they fail to find the nest's master (Thomas Ian Griffith) who turns out to be a 600-year old demon haunted Priest from Eastern Europe named Valek -- he's the original vampire. Valek hunts down Crow's gang at a motel and kills them all, except for Crow and his right hand man, Montoya (Daniel Baldwin). Also escaping is a just-bitten hooker kidnapped by Jack because her telepathic link to the Master will come in handy. She's played by Sheryl Lee (a.k.a. Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks) who's job is to look sexy and get tied naked to a bed until her vampirism takes effect. God bless her, she does more with the limited role than she has any right to.

Jack must stop Valek's quest to find a relic that will give him even more powers. The film loses a bit of steam as it winds toward the inevitable showdown in a ghost town, but Carpenter doesn't drag things out. The pacing is nice and tight.

But the best thing about the movie may be Woods. Finally, someone has seen his potential as an action star. Woods, (Hollywood's villain of choice when Gary Oldman isn't available) makes a perfect anti-hero. Woods has a real Steve McQueen quality here. He wears black leather and black sunglasses. He steals cars. He's an outlaw, but at least he isn't an undead nightwalker from Hell! In this movie, he's the closest thing to a hero you're gonna get. I'll take him over Bruce Willis or Will Smith, any day.

Copyright 1998