——Near Dark——

(B)

I actually enjoyed this movie a lot more the second go around. I guess its quiet, confident understatement made a bigger impact on me. In a movie where the word “vampire” isn’t even used it has to work more on a subtle atmosphere in order to get the right impact. I would have given this a B+ if it were for a few of the glaring continuity errors (in quite a few scenes the film shifts from pre-dawn to daylight in next to no time. Also, it’s harder than hell to figure out how many days have gone by in the movie because the scenes shift so fast without any transition shots. But these are minor complaints really.) I quite enjoy the bar scene, which goes on for quite a long time building up tension as it goes along (three songs play on the jukebox during the duration of the killings). Lance Henrikson coughing up a bullet is pretty cool too.

There is one major issue with the movie that I would like to discuss though: Vampire biology. According to this film all it takes is a blood transfusion to make you human again. What? I mean, in theory that could work but I think there is a lot more to the vampire body than that. What exactly happens in the transformation process from a human body to a vampire body? Vampires suck human blood apparently because they cannot create their own, but it is not like the blood goes straight into their veins; it goes into the stomach first. Does that mean they have a working stomach? How does it then process the blood? Also, you can bleed a vampire. That’s how the main character does all of his feeding. Now presumably all of that blood would not be vampire blood, or else how would he survive on it? This is where the complications of a blood transfusion come in. What exactly is he sucking out of the other vampire? If it is real blood how does it get through the body–through the heart right? Well then why aren’t vampires warm then, if they have warm blood running through them? I can see how the blood transfusion works in theory: take enough blood out of the vampire and he ceases to then be a vampire. But that should kill him. If you are pumping new blood into him, isn’t that just like feeding him? How’s that going to work? You could argue that there is a difference, but then how do you explain feeding off of another vampire? All of this makes my head spin.