In recent years, vampires have being de-fanged somewhat, Stephanie Myers' Twilight kickstarting the once fearsome creatures of the night's reinvention as romantic figures, and mainstays in Young Adult fiction. The trend seems to be dying off, thank god, with the likes of Dracula Untold and t.v show The Strain putting some bite back into the vampire legend, but in 1987, Kathryn Bigelow brought us a movie that proved you could perfectly marry the love story Myers was attempting to tell with the more traditional views of the vampire myth. That movie was Near Dark.
Around about the year 2000, something got flipped in popular culture, and vampirism became an attractive prospect. No longer were vampires something to be feared, instead they were desirable, becoming something to emulate. Not so in the Eighties. Back then, vampires were dangerous and fearsome creations, and Near Dark, adding Western and biker genre tropes into the vampire movie mix, embraced that impression of the undead with both arms. Jesse (Lance Henrikkson) and his roaming band of bloodsuckers are dirty, detestable creatures, living in absolute squalor and in constant fear of the sun (sunlight seems to be their only weakness, but it works in spectacular fashion, making them explode like they were stuffed with explosives). When Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) is accidentally turned into one of their kind by Mae (Jenny Wright), who share an instant connection with each other, he is immediately met with hatred and disgust, Mae's love for him only prolonging his death sentence before he makes his first kill. So, that's the simple story of Near Dark, with much of the movie concerned with Caleb striving to keep his humanity while his new companions goad him at every step. Caleb and Mae's story is sweet and well told, Caleb becoming a parasite of sorts, choosing to feed on Mae as opposed to sating his thirst with human blood. It blends in perfectly with the horror aspects of the vampire myth, and doesn't overpower the narrative, unlike other attempts to tell a vampiric love story.
For a vampire movie, Near Dark is relatively bloodless for much of the movies first half. We're shown the blood sucking nomads, rounded out by Jesse's lover Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein), eternal pre-teen Homer (Joshua Miller), and the delightfully evil Severen (Bill Paxton), on the hunt, faking accidents or picking up hitchhikers as a means to feed, but it always cuts away just before the kill. It's when they descend on an out of the way bar, determined to make Caleb feed, that the violence breaks out in spectacular fashion, the movie not afraid to show what these creatures are truly capable of. This is also the scene where Paxton becomes the star of the show, having an absolute blast as Severen. He puts the entire reserve of manic energy he possesses into the role, cementing the characters place in the pantheon of great onscreen vampires. Using this scene as springboard, the movie experiences a change of pace. At first, it was content to move forward at a leisurely pace, but it's second half jumps from tension filled scene to another, the finale featuring a confrontation between the nomads and Caleb, with Severen going head to head with a truck in a fantastically realised action scene.
Initially a box office failure, favourable reviews soon turned things around, and the movie gained a sizable cult following. A remake went into production in 2007, and even though rumours persist that it was partially shot, it was cancelled been viewed as just an R-rated version of the soon to be released Twilight, and thus redundant. Surprisingly, Near Dark would later capitalise on its similarities to the undead teen saga, with a Blu-Ray release, not long after Twilight became the cinematic juggernaut it is now, that featured a very Twilight-esque cover. But don't let that put you off. Near Dark is old school vampire movies at their best, that proves you can tell a love story within in the genre without robbing the well known legend of any of it's menace.
