In the wake of things like The Lost Boys, Vamp, Fright Night, and Transylvania 6-5000, it is heartening just to see vampires taken straight again. This is no small accomplishment when the vampires in question are a ragtag troupe who look like vagabonds out of the Mad Max series and who patrol the Bible Belt in a Winnebago. (Very soon and very sensibly the Winnegabo is ditched for something smaller.) Nor does it help matters that they speak in accents like those of a clan of mountain men or buffalo hunters on the old Gunsmoke show. And the occasional out-and-out gag, seemingly specially written to the dialect, couldn't be resisted: "I hate it when they ain't been shaved," comments one of them before pitching in to a prospective throat, and afterwards: "Finger-lickin' good." But the best things in the movie have genuine power. The ominous flirtation that opens the action, between a cone-licking temptress ("You never met a girl like me before") and an overconfident Oklahoma stud, is agonizingly prolonged -- to such lengths, and to such an inconclusive conclusion, that we know early on we are in a better-than-average class of horror film. And there are a couple of unusually intense action set pieces. The first derives its impact from the amount of attention paid to the utterly realistic reactions of the normals in a roadside bar, as the gang of vampires sets about taking its own sweet time feasting on each of them in turn, and laughing off such minor inconveniences as a shotgun blast in the stomach. The second, a Highway Patrol assault on a Bonnie-and-Clyde-type motel hideout, makes great play on the movie's main innovation -- the flesh-scorching effects of sunlight -- as the bullet holes in the walls of the bungalow (pay no mind to the bullets themselves) let in deadly lances of daylight. This just-mentioned innovation, which comprises a complete range of effects from smoking to browning to flaming to finally exploding in a ball of fire, is the sort of boundary-expansion (but not erasure) that any respectful but self-respecting genre piece will feel honor-bound to attempt. And Near Dark easily makes the Transylvanian honor-roll. With Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, and Tim Thomerson; directed by Kathryn Bigelow. (1987) — Duncan Shepherd
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