Near Dark
dir. Kathryn Bigelow
1987

"The blood is the life."
- Vlad Dracul

Quick: name the best teen-targeted vampire movie of 1987. If you said The Lost Boys, put down your cans of hairspray and your Tiger Beat magazines, children, and gather around.

Near Dark is not just better than The Lost Boys, it's better than any vampire movie I can think of. Before next year's likely abomination of a remake hits the screen, I'd like to put a plug in for the original.

Ever since Dracula, we've had this idea that vampires are charming, romantic characters unbound by the rules of society, free children of the night, dark aristocrats allied to secret ancient powers who...

Well, you get it.

With legions of Anne Rice fans out there keeping Bram Stoker's vision aloft on a cushion of pent up sexual frustration, this romanticized conception of the undead has diluted a great culture myth almost beyond recognition.

Which is to say, vampires are nasty, vile, despicable creatures. Not just in their dark little hearts, but on their rotting exteriors as well. There is no (or rather, should be no) contradiction between a vampire's nature and its appearance.

The original European notion of vampires was more akin to the way we think of zombies: barely conscious revenants inhabiting rotting corpses, harbingers of the blood debts of the past, tax collectors for the wages of sin.

Not charismatic. Not charming. Not sexy. Not sophisticated. Not intelligent. Not admirable. Just repugnant.

It would be a stretch to say that Near Dark is true to this vision, but it certainly knocks vampires a few pegs down the romance scale. The vampires in Near Dark are not charming sophisticates. They are vermin. They hide by day in rundown motel rooms or under bridges or in sewers and come out at night to feed on the weak and hapless.

The story centers around Caleb, a young man living with his sister and father somewhere in Midwestern farm country. One night, Caleb meets Mae, a beautiful blond girl who gives him one hell of a hickey. As Caleb's hunger for blood grows, he is drawn to Mae and into her family of fellow vampires. Caleb's reluctance to kill becomes a sticking point among the family members, leading ultimately to the kind of confrontation you'd expect it would.

Okay, so what about this is so great? Well...

I. The acting is good.

Okay, not Amadeus good, but good.

Take, for example, the contrast between the hot Corey-on-Corey action of The Lost Boys and Joshua John Miller's Homer, the "man in a boy's body" vampire in Near Dark.

In The Lost Boys, the Coreys are little more than annoying comic relief. They preen and play to their supposed heart throb images while the older kids play out the story.

Miller, on the other hand, invests Homer with an almost sickening emotional corruption. He is a casual sociopath, uninterested in anyone but himself. The story takes a dark turn when Homer falls in love with Caleb's still human younger sister and threatens to take her in retribution for Caleb having taken Mae from him.

Bigelow wasn't afraid to give a 12-year old actor real work to do.

II. The story is tight.

No subplots, no hunts for the mysterious amulet that will reveal the truth of the vampire curse, no loose threads put in just to leave room for a sequel. All of the drama is internal to the characters.

We're also spared long dissertations on the vampire rules. Vampires are strong, immortal, indestructible, require blood and are vulnerable to sunlight. It's pretty much assumed that we'll know this going in. We don't need a folklore professor from the local college to tell us about it.

III. It's true to itself

Beyond all the basics of good storytelling, this film did one thing brilliantly: it reinvented the vampire.

The vampires of Near Dark are lowlife, desperate pack animals. By de-romanticizing them, Bigelow humanizes them. In fact, the word "vampire" never appears in the film. These people simply are what they are.

In the few moments where the romantic myth is presented, it comes off as self-flattering posture. When Jesse tells Caleb that he fought for the South in the civil war, he holds up his gun to the camera, smiles and says, matter-of-fact, "we lost."

Jesse has nothing left to fight for, and he knows it.

Three stars. Jasonback sez, there's a fly on the ceilin'.