Near Dark
(1987)
review by Head Cheeze

The vampire mythos has seen it's share of tinkering, with virtually every telling adding or ommitting something from the lexicon in hopes to achieve a sense of originality to differ it from it's peers and predecessors. Near Dark, Kathryn Bigelow's 1987 vamps-as-tramps offering, distances itself from the pack by not using the V word at all, instead letting the action speak for itself.

Caleb (Pasdar) is a cowboy kid living the cowboy life on his daddy's ranch with his lil' sis and his prized horses. He's happy in a simple way, but when Mae (Jenny Wright) comes into his life, things get complicated. Mae is a free spirit who loves the night so much it would just kill her to see the day. Literally.

When Mae gives Caleb a little nip on the neck, the young cowpoke suddenly gets sucked into Mae's world, one which she shares with Jesse (Henrikson), Severen (Paxton), Diamondback (Alien's Vasquez-aka Jeanette Goldstein), and the man-child Homer (Josh Miller). This traveling band of scavengers stay up all night, party hard, and live like wild western bandits. A life that would be perfectly suiting to Caleb, if they didn't also blow-up in sunlight and drink human blood.

Near Dark had the misfortune of being released within months of The Lost Boys, another retelling of the vampire lore, with a hip soundtrack, hipper actors, and Jim Morrison look-alike Jason Patric (Near Dark's Josh Miller's half-brother. One look at Miller and ya wonder what half he got.) Needless to say, Near Dark was eclipsed by The Lost Boys, and suffered at the box-office, only to resurface as a cult hit on video. While both films were basically doing the same thing, offering a modern take on the vampire mythos for the 80's crowd, horror purists seem to favor Near Dark's crueler anti-heros and visceral style over Lost Boy's big hair and glossy sheen. I personally think that Near Dark's cast (including three of the principals from Jim Cameron's Aliens) edges out The Lost Boy's gaggle of Tiger Beat poster children and make for a grittier and ultimately more satisfying bloodsucker flick.

This 2 Disc set from Anchor Bay was well worth the wait, featuring a very solid transfer and excellent audio mix, as well as an abundance of extra goodies, including a commentary with Bigelow (who actually infuriates me with the way she speaks, but offers a lot of insight when she's not being pseudo intellectual. Picture a hippie art teacher reminiscing about Woodstock with the aid of a thesaurus.) There are also poster and stills galleries, theatrical trailers, a deleted scene with commentary, and the icing on the cake; a brand new 47 minute documentary with interviews with Henriksen, Paxton, Goldstein, Pasdar and others involved with the production. It's a very solid "look back" and is worth the price of the film alone.

Near Dark is a great vamp flick that deserves it's cult-status, and Anchor Bay rewards it with a wonderfully presented release.