Near Dark (2pc) (Ws Spec)

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The word "vampire" is never mentioned in Near Dark, but that doesn't stop this 1987 cult favorite from being one of the best modern-era vampire films. It put then-unknown director Kathryn Bigelow on Hollywood's radar and gave choice roles to Aliens costars favored by Bigelow's ex-husband James Cameron: Lance Henriksen is the leader of a makeshift family of renegade bloodsuckers, nocturnally seeking victims in rural Oklahoma; his immortal gal pal is Aliens and Terminator 2 alumnus Jenette Goldstein; and Bill Paxton is the group's deadliest leather-clad ass kicker. Fellow traveler Jenny Wright lures Okie farm boy Adrian Pasdar into the group with a love bite, and he's soon turning toward vampirism with a combination of frightened revulsion and relentless desire. With Joshua Miller (River's Edge) as the youngest vampire, Near Dark is Bigelow's masterpiece of low-budget ingenuity--a truck-stop thriller that begins well, gets better and better (aided by a fine Tangerine Dream score), and goes out in a blaze of glory. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews:

Now that thar's whut I call a REDNECK!.......2007-09-13

Love bites! Love bleeds!

Tell it to bored Okie farmboy Caleb (Adrian Pasdar): for him, it's the oldest story in the world & the one he's looking for on a Saturday night:

Boy meets Girl. Boy wins Girl. Boy takes Girl to tractor pull.

But he doesn't figure on the special sauce. Nobody does.

That little modification throws in some groovy new beats to the mix: Girl Bites Boy. Girl leaves godawful nasty hickey on Boy's neck.

And, about an hour later: Boy lurches over tobacco fields in the Lower 40 with a hankering for meat considerably rarer than ground round.

I think it was the old vampire fighter Professor Abraham Van Helsing who observed of his undead foes "the Dead travel fast".

That was 1897: he shoulda got a load of the white trash bloodsuckers in Kathryn Bigelow's riotous "Near Dark", where the Undead ditch their long-haired gypsy servants & wagons for some real horsepower, muscling up and sunlight-proofing a Winnebago and carrying out a rampage of cold-blooded (or warm-blooded, or blooded, anyway, which is the point) killing spree across the windswept badlands.

Director Kathryn Bigelow & screenwriter Eric Red beat Tarentino & Rodriguez to the pop culture punch by more than a decade in this blood-drenched fusion of Southwestern Vampires and the joys of the tri-state killing spree, done right & done hard: "Near Dark" is a nihilistic little cinematic IED of battery acid, Semtex charge, sweat, rage, sex & desperation, all wrapped up in spikes & roadworn leather.

Breaking up may be hard to do, but it's murder if your lovely young pallid drifter hottie-of-the-moment Mae (the ethereal Jenny Wright, who vies with the flick's Tangerine Dream soundtrack for most dreamy movie presence here) has a family with a real aversion to laying down stakes.

No, literally.

Anyway, Caleb flees from what he is becoming, the Family follows, & the Law hunts all of them.

"Near Dark" is a child of the Night, no doubt, but even more it's a child of the eighties, a country-cousin (the one who mainlines white-lightning) to blood-soaked eighties stalwarts like "The Hitcher" and "Lost Boys": the snarling white-trash bloodsucker of the film's windswept Oklahoma hellscape has more in common with the mass murderering duo of "Badlands" than with the mincing machinations of Underworld's Eurotrash vamps or castrati courtliness of a Lestat.

That's what's cooking in "Near Dark": the vamps here are monsters. They're scary. They're a little feral. They stink of Death & the weary, endless blacktop. The tragically hip vamp of modern cinema is a fashion victim too hip to kill, too busy trying to Emo you to death to ever get around to killing you.

Not so with the nosferatu from "Near Dark", who offer up a different breed of bat: they're hungry, for one. They dispense with the Bau Haus & haute couture in favor of razor blades and sawed off shotguns; they worry more about running blood and less about running black mascara.

Bigelow raided James Cameron's casting wardrobe for her crack cast, & here it pays off: Paxton, Henriksen, & Vasquez form up the old Aliens trifecta and cook up a little downhome bloodletting attitude.

Bigelow's underworld is an unforgettable nightland of all-night diners and truckstops and endless blacktop lit up by neon and arc-sodium and flickering, hissing fluorescent, where you look half dead even if you're still trucking around your 5 quarts of red slosh, baby.

There's something breathtaking about the way Bigelow squares and stages and fixes her action: the steady waltz of doom and sadness and savagery in the bar-scene to the strains of "the Cowboy Rides Away", for one, possibly the first time in history sheer infinite boredom caused a barfight, which midwifes a slaughter.

Or the Siege: the riveting syncopation of the blackpowder ballet as M16 bullets tear holes in walls of seedy motel flop where the vamps have holed up and dug in after their latest killing spree, death borne not of the bullets but the rents of sunlight they unleash on the room-temperature desperados.

"Near Dark" is as cool as the tailfin on a Shelby cobra, but it's not all empty style: there's an overarching sense of awe front and center, whether it's the stark & sere emptiness of its midwestern urban badlands, haunted by its own faded fallowness, or the hard-bitten ghoulishness of its monsters. It's the landscape, in fact, that becomes almost a central character here, spinning out its own calculus in crafting the food that drifts across this dusty backstage Night Land and the predators who hunt them.

There are vampires---& then there are vampires.

And the worst of them take more than your blood.

JSG

Gritty, Haunting & Eerily Sublime ..........2007-06-23

Near Dark is a vampire film with a look and feel unlike your typical fang-fest: daylight is harsh and painful, while the quicksand-lull of shadows by night are at once sharp and surreal, altering the landscape and ensnaring the viewer unawares.

Co-written by Eric Red (writer of the original "The Hitcher") and Kathryn Bigelow (director of "Strange Days"), this film is a taut, smart and surly Western Vampire flick that still stands up to - and surpasses - today's standards of chop and spray film-making (thank goodness). This was a film with a vision, evolving out of the mid-80s when film-makers were still taking chances and the genres of old were a-changing. These are no walking corpses in molding black capes, hiding in coffins and dodging wooden stakes. These vampires mean business and the landscape in which they travel is as cruel and as unrelenting and as personable as are they.

Charactor development, the look and feel of the piece, plot, and snappy dialogue are those things that matter in Near Dark. If you're going to make a horror film, by god, make the thing. And the cast/crew/creators of Near Dark did just that.

I was a pre-teen when I first saw Near Dark, back in the late 80s. No movie before or since has left me with such an eerie memory of intensity, pain, and ... strangely enough given the subject matter ... a giddy sort of hope. As a kid the infamous "bar scene" nearly did me in, and provided fodder for nightmares this fearless horror-film watcher didn't think were possible. For years, just remembering that scene, was enough to keep me passing it by in the rental aisles.

But, being the admirer I am of many of the central cast in Near Dark, I couldn't stay away for long, and so I rewatched it with adult eyes. It was even better than I'd remembered it. I'm not ashamed to say I had to buy my own copy, which I watch every couple of months.

There is the naive and flirtacious Caleb Colten, perfectly cast in Adrian Pasdar (who plays the polar opposite in the deliciously wicked "Jim Profit" in the tv show "Profit", also now available on dvd) who meets the at once simple

There vampire's.......2007-05-20

Only Calab doesn't know that. He is thinking with his heart, not his brain.

Be Bitter if this movie was before your time.......2007-05-02

Certain vampire movie franchises which I shall not name are as so many other media products all about selling lipstick and lisp in these shallow shallow days.

This movie has so much style and probably was made for very little money.

A Terribly Underated Vampire Film..........2007-01-26

I first watched this film when I was younger, but since then I have loved this film and consider it definitely one of those films that should be much more popular than they are. Most people I know don't even know it, although they claim they have a good knowledge of horror films. I always recommend it, but at least where I live the video stores don't even have it.

Anyway though this movie does go above so many other vampire films made today. It definitely gives its own unique view on vampires. I was a huge fan of Anne Rice's romantic, suffering vampires but watching this film where instead the vampires are dusty and completely cruel to their victims without any air of sophistication gave it a much more real and frightening view on such creatures.

The cast carry out their parts well, but its truly Paxton that steals the show. He is the most cruel of them all, and the loudest. Right away he just steals the show. The others kind of fade compared to him, but quiet Mae, the complete opposite of Severen, holds her own candle on the show. And yes, you do root for her and Caleb, who is roped into being a vampire thanks to her seduction.

A dark, harsh and powerful movie about vampires that matches to the maturity of Interview with the Vampire, yet with a complete new view on their lifestyle. I highly recommend it if you can find it.

4.5/5

Average customer rating:

Now that thar's whut I call a REDNECK!
Gritty, Haunting & Eerily Sublime ...
There vampire's
Be Bitter if this movie was before your time
A Terribly Underated Vampire Film...

Near Dark
Starring: Adrian Pasdar , Jenny Wright , Lance Henriksen , Bill Paxton , and Jenette Goldstein
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0002NIAZC
Release Date: 2004-07-01

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Customer Reviews:

Now that thar's whut I call a REDNECK!.......2007-09-13

Gritty, Haunting & Eerily Sublime ..........2007-06-23

There vampire's.......2007-05-20

Only Calab doesn't know that. He is thinking with his heart, not his brain.

Be Bitter if this movie was before your time.......2007-05-02

A Terribly Underated Vampire Film..........2007-01-26

Average customer rating:

Complete and Utter Crap!!
No, but really ... DON'T!
"Hey baby, you want to take a walk on the wild side?"

Don't Go Near the Park
Starring: Meeno Peluce , Linnea Quigley , Aldo Ray , Tamara Taylor , and Lawrence D. Foldes
Director: Lawrence D. Foldes
Manufacturer: Dark Sky Films
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000CR76TY
Release Date: 2006-04-25

Description

This notorious sickie centers on two prehistoric cult members who abuse the secret of eternal youth… by cannibalizing children of their own circle! When their lurid exploits are discovered by the tribal Queen, they are damned to an eternity of old age, from which only random acts of gutmunching can bring the fleeting appearance of youth. Flash-forward to early 1980s Los Angeles, where the two lurk a sprawling park, lying in wait for the celestial happenstance under which they commit the ultimate atrocity in their only hope to recapture eternal youth: the sacrifice of a 16-year-old virgin, who happens to be of their own flesh and blood! Starring Aldo Ray (The Naked and the Dead, The Green Berets), Tamara Taylor, Meeno Pulce (Voyagers!, The Amityville Horror), and famed Scream Queen Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers) in an early performance.

Customer Reviews:

Complete and Utter Crap!!.......2007-07-13

Wow that is all I can after watching this, there must have been a really low budget for this movie, this is not a cannibal movie and if you like cannibals movies like myself you will stay far away from this.

No, but really ... DON'T!.......2006-11-10

A few weeks ago, I read the reviews below, and thought, "Yeah, yeah, you guys just don't appreciate the act of savouring every rotten morsel of a wonderfully bad flick." Now, I look to those reviewers as my new gurus. I must learn to trust these wise Amazon connoisseurs of B-movie good-badness. They were so right! This film was beyond bad, not good-bad, but bad-bad ... no, BOMB-bad, a negative 11 on a scale of 1-10. There were three potentially hilarious things about it (they would have been hilarious had the rest of the flick not filled me with that helpless, numbing anger I feel when I'm on a really bad date). First, there is the fact that the daughter, Bondi (okay, so maybe there are four hilarious things), is never onscreen with the mother who hates her. Would it not make dramatic sense to give them at least one scene of dialogue together? (I suspect that their scenes were shot years apart ... maybe even 12,000 years apart.) Second, Bondi decides that it's cool to accept a ride from three young dudes in a van with painted windows. Um ... ? Third, and you've heard this before if you read the reviews below, that van went up in flames faster than the Hindenberg. The Hindenberg ... I think I'll end on that note.

"Hey baby, you want to take a walk on the wild side?".......2006-05-16

What's that? You've never heard of the psuedo cannibal horror film Don't Go Near the Park (1981) aka Sanctuary for Evil aka Curse of the Living Dead? Well, neither did I, and after watching it last night I now know why...because it stunk something awful...produced, co-written, and directed by Lawrence D. Foldes (Young Warriors, Nightforce), the film features an early appearance by scream queen Linnea Quigley (Savage Streets, Silent Night, Deadly Night, The Return of the Living Dead), along with Aldo Ray (The Green Berets, Psychic Killer, Biohazard). Also appearing is Tamara Taylor (Life Stinks), Meeno Peluce (The Amityville Horror), Chris Riley, Barbara Monker, and Crackers Phinn, who obviously angered a god in a previous life to be saddled with the name "Crackers".

As the film begins we're treated to a bit of text stating that `while the film you are about to see is fiction, it's based on actual occurrences which happened over the centuries'...yeah, whatever...seems some 12,000 years ago some prehistoric witchy woman placed an evil whammy on two cannibals named Gar (Phinn) and Tra (Monker) because of their penchant for eating the entrails of others in their quest for eternal youth. The curse entails them aging ten years for every year, but never actually dying, and thereby having to continually consume the entrails of others to stay young until such a time when the stars are in a certain alignment to which they then can perform some sort of sacrifice, freeing themselves (the amount of stupidity within the first ten minutes of this film is overwhelming). Fast forward 11,984 years and we see Gar, who's now named Mark, dressed like a low rent secret service agent, accosting some kid in a field and eating his guts. Shortly after he begins stalking a blonde (Quigley) he sees on the street and to make a long and pointless story short, the two get married and have a daughter, which they name Bondi (Taylor). Flash forward a number of years to Bondi's sixteenth birthday party...after a falling out between Bondi's parents (seems Mark dotes on his daughter and not on his wife at all), Bondi runs away, and gets picked up by three lecherous skeevs in a boogie van with red shag interior. After a bit of mauling on their part, the van crashes in a fiery blaze due to unseen forces, and all die except Bondi, who stumbles around in the woods eventually holing up in a dilapidated ranch occupied by a couple of runaways and a creepy old baboochka named Patty (who is, in reality, Tra, from the beginning of the movie). Things soon come to a head as Bondi, who's now `of age', is supposed to be a part of the ritual to lift the 12,000-year-old curse...I think...

What a mess...between the Neanderthal flashbacks and zombie dream sequences I think there was a glimmer of a plot somewhere in this movie, but I was hard pressed to find it...I did learn a number things while watching this film, though...

1. If you're the spawn of a 12,000 plus year old evil entity, you're more likely to get a goony, mystical amulet for your sixteen birthday rather than a car.
2. Ford boogie vans from the 1970s explode spectacularly when they crash, indicating perhaps they run on a nitroglycerine based fuel.
3. Never accept a ride from three, skeevy guys in a late model Ford Boogie van with a red shag interior.
4. If you rent a room to someone, it's perfectly acceptable to rummage through their belongings when they're out.
5. Linnea Quigley doesn't seem to mind appearing nekkid in a movie even though said nekkidness has absolutely nothing to do with the actual story.
6. People from 12,000 years ago sported similar hairstyles to those popular in the early 1980s, along with having a remarkable grasp of the English language.
7. Aldo Ray could use the term `psychoactive' within a sentence (that's not to say he knew what it meant).
8. If you're making a cheapie horror film, you can save a lot of money and pad out the running time by showing a lengthy sequence more than once.

Perhaps the worst aspect of this film, besides the aimlessly meandering plot, was the disjointed dialog. Whoever wrote the script obviously had some experience with the English language, but certainly not enough to understand how normal people converse with each other, and this isn't helped any by the terribly shoddy acting, inept direction, and an inappropriate, and often annoying, musical score. Characters of seeming relevance appear and disappear, and some are never even properly identified (Quigley is in about a third of the film, but we never learn her character's name). There's a number of `What the hell?' moments throughout the film, but the most memorable was near the end as Gar and Tra, during a heated disagreement, begin shooting laser beams from their eyeballs...up until this point there was little indication they had any real special powers other than eating guts, so this was straight out of left field. Aldo Ray is in the movie for all of ten minutes or so, and the only point to his character, as far as I could tell, was to dump exposition into our laps. You see, he was a writer (I think), and he was researching the strange goings on over the years (apparently the stuff that happened some 12,000 years ago occurred in the area where the ranch is located, the same ranch the runaways now call home). There are about three or four gory sequences, ones that will make the uninitiated squeamish, but probably won't appeal a whole lot to the hardcore gore hound. We do see guts being torn open, but the actual feasting on entrails is more or less alluded to in terms of how it was shot (we usually see someone pretending to chew on something hidden in their hands). The make up isn't that great and the special effects less than special, but it did feel like there was some effort in this area, hampered obviously by a meager budget. There were a couple of funny moments in the film (I'm unsure if they were intentional or not), the funniest being the twist ending, which involved the runaways, after getting kicked out of the ranch, deciding to celebrate their homelessness by heading to a nearby playground. As far as what follows, well, you'll just have to see for yourself...(I'd recommend having a good amount of booze on hand, as it will make the movie go down a whole lot easier)

I have to give Dark Sky Films a lot of credit, as they tend to put a whole lot of effort into their releases whether the film warrants it or not (Don't Go Near the Park falls into the latter category, in my opinion)...the picture quality, presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1), looks sharp, and the Dolby Digital 2.0 mono audio comes through cleanly. There are a number of extras including a commentary track with writer/producer/director Lawrence D. Foldes and actress Linnea Quigley, extended and deleted scenes, a featurette titled Grue!! Gore Outtakes, a photo gallery, English and Spanish theatrical trailers for the film, a television spot, and English subtitles.

Cookieman108

Average customer rating:

Good Vampire Flick
good B movie

Near Dark
Starring: Billy Beck , Roger Aaron Brown , Kenny Call , Ed Corbett , and Bill Cross
Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: UMD for PSP

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Hellraiser

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In the dusty heart of the American southwest, innocent country boy Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar of MYSTERIOUS WAYS) is seduced by a beautiful girl (Jenny Wright) into joining a roving pack of vicious drifters led by the enigmatic Jesse (Lance Henriksen of THE TERMINATOR and ALIENS). But this is no ordinary band of outlaws; Caleb is now trapped in a nightmare of soulless evil that waits in the shado

ASIN: B000DZ95IA
Release Date: 2006-03-07

Description

In the dusty heart of the American southwest, innocent country boy Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar of MYSTERIOUS WAYS) is seduced by a beautiful girl (Jenny Wright) into joining a roving pack of vicious drifters led by the enigmatic Jesse (Lance Henriksen of THE TERMINATOR and ALIENS). But this is no ordinary band of outlaws; Caleb is now trapped in a nightmare of soulless evil that waits in the shadows, hellish mayhem that thrives on blood and absolute horror that begins NEAR DARK. Bill Paxton (TWISTER) and Jenette Goldstein (ALIENS) co- star in this extraordinary shocker co-written and directed by Kathryn Bigelow (STRANGE DAYS).

Customer Reviews:

Good Vampire Flick.......2007-07-09

This is one of the better 80s vampire flicks that has a cult following. The vampires are not traditional Dracula types, but a mindless killing machine. Those supposed Christians who would condemn this are sort of missing the whole point. For diehard horror fans. Not much of a plot, though.

good B movie.......2007-03-08

Near Dark reminds me of another cult classic of the same era in John Carpenters They Live. Not in story but in cool casting. Both films are highly original ideas yet ultimately mediocre. If you are a fan of Bill Paxton and/or Lance Henriksen you will enjoy this vampire flick. Supposedly Michael Bay is interested in producing a remake.

Average customer rating:

Now that thar's whut I call a REDNECK!
Gritty, Haunting & Eerily Sublime ...
There vampire's
Be Bitter if this movie was before your time
A Terribly Underated Vampire Film...

Near Dark [Region 2]
Starring: Adrian Pasdar , Jenny Wright , Lance Henriksen , Bill Paxton , and Jenette Goldstein
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0000AISGK

Amazon.com

Customer Reviews:

Now that thar's whut I call a REDNECK!.......2007-09-13

Gritty, Haunting & Eerily Sublime ..........2007-06-23

There vampire's.......2007-05-20

Only Calab doesn't know that. He is thinking with his heart, not his brain.

Be Bitter if this movie was before your time.......2007-05-02

A Terribly Underated Vampire Film..........2007-01-26

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