Product: John Carpenter's Vampires
Company:
Review By: Byron Hinson

Aspect Ratio	Regional Information		DVD Disc Details
2:35 : 1 Anamorphic Widescreen Pan & Scan	1 : USA	NTSC	Closed Captioning: None Master format: Film Sides: 1 (DS-SL) Chapter stops: 25

Sound:	English	English	French	Commentary
	5.1	2.0 Surround	2.0 Surround	2.0
Subtitles:

Just before its release, John Carpenter's Vampires had a hard time finding a distributor, but was eventually released on Halloween 1998.

The movie begins with the leader of a group of mercenary slayers, Jack Crow played by James Woods (Contact, Salvador) entering an old farm house that has been infested by a nest of Vampires. After killing them all the group go back to a hotel to celebrate their work, only to be attacked by a master Vampire (Valek played by Thomas Ian Griffith). The master Vampire destroys nearly all of Jack Crow's team of slayers, leaving only one other survivor, Montoya played by Daniel Baldwin.

The two of them set out to find and kill the master Vampire after taking one of his victims hostage and using her as a link into his body and soul.

John Carpenter is one of my all time favorite directors (The Thing being my favorite movie) but unfortunately he hasn't made a really good movie for some time now. Vampires doesn't really make me feel any different, it's nothing spectacular but certainly isn't a bad movie. It offers very few frights for a horror movie, but it does manage a couple of scary moments later in the film.

James Woods seemed a little miscast as the cool and generally calm Vampire slayer. It was a role which I could see Bruce Campbell doing an excellent job in. Daniel Baldwin does a surprisingly good job as Montoya, Jack's best friend.

The DVD offers a number of good extras including, a running commentary by director John Carpenter, a photo gallery and the usual trailer. The disk features both Widescreen and Full Screen versions of the film, both are of a high quality throughout.

The sound is also pretty good, although there did seem to be a few sound effects that sounded a little bit too quiet for my liking. (Unlikely to be the DVD's problem, it was likely to have been apparent in the cinema too)

For John Carpenter fans I can highly recommend Vampires, especially with his commentary being on the disk, but the actual movie didn't grab me in the same ways as both The Thing and the excellent Halloween did. The 104 minutes of viewing did pass by quickly though.

"John Carpenter's Vampires" - DVD Features

• Audio commentary by director John Carpenter
• Photo gallery

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