Reeling Backward: Near Dark (1987)

Kathryn Bigelow's grim "artsy vampire Western" didn't make a big splash with audiences at the time, but it's rightly now seen as one of the most influential horror films of its era.

It’s always fascinating to me how a movie, book or other work of fiction can come out and not get any strong purchase with audiences, but years down the road you can clearly see how much its influenced subsequent pop culture.

There was a rash of vampire movies in the mid-‘80s, with “The Lost Boys” the phenom of its time, and for obvious reasons — pretty boy actors as sexy, toothy killers. “Near Dark” came out a few months later, very grim and low-budget, with plenty of hard-edged gore and little in the way of eye candy. Most of the promotional materials played up Bill Paxton, despite being a secondary character, and even that with half his faced ripped off.

Made on a shoestring for $5 million (about $14 million today’s dollars), “Dark” failed to make back even that at the box office. Reviews were all over the map, and even the positive ones seemed to damn the film with faint praise, calling it a darkly pretty artsy vampire flick.

It was Kathryn Bigelow’s second feature film as a director, and her first solo effort, also co-writing the screenplay with Eric Red. They wanted to make a Western about a roving ersatz family of bandits, but could find no backing from the studios, so they turned them into vampires to ride the nosferatu wave.

Today, it’s rightly regarded as one of the most influential horror films of its era. You can see its DNA in the “Twilight” books and movies, with a family of vampires told from the perspective of a human who becomes romantically involved with one of them.

Bigelow would go on to a busy up-and-down career as a director, including the head-scratchingly beloved “Point Break” surfer/robber movie, most notably winning Oscars for directing and producing “The Hurt Locker.”

Interestingly, about half the principal cast is carryover from the previous year’s “Aliens,” directed by James Cameron, who mentored Bigelow and later married her. In addition to Paxton as charming rascal Severen, it featured Jenette Goldstein as Diamondback, the matriarch of the vampire clan, and Lance Henriksen as its leader, Jesse Hooker.

“Aliens” alum Michael Biehn was to have played Jesse but didn’t like the script, so I guess they decided to just get another cast member.

In more Cameron/Bigelow crossover, Robert Winley plays a tough biker dude killed by the clan in a roadside bar, and would later play essentially the same role, getting his ass kicked by Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Terminator 2.” James LeGros also had one of his first screen rolls as a young biker in the same sequence who gets away.

I was very aware of the film when it came out, and I and all my horror fan buddies adored it. For a scare flick it’s quite beautifully shot, with a lot of backlit characters perambulating around at night with fog whispering about them. You can see the film’s low production budget in some of the car chase scenes and special effects, such as where the vampires catch fire when exposed to the sun.

The vampire clan cruises around from place to place together, stealing RVs, vans or station wagons and holing up in abandoned industrial sites or cheap motels during the deadly daytime. At night they’ll split up to hunt, with Jesse and Diamondback usually sticking together. They like to set things on fire to cover their tracks, never staying in one location very long.

The main character is Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar), a teenage Texas cowpuncher who gets embroiled with the vampires when he falls for their “youngest,” Mae (Jenny Wright). I put that word in quotations not because she looks to be about Caleb’s age, but because she was the most recently turned vampire, about four years ago. At the end of an evening of wooing, she gives him a little bite and suddenly he finds himself smoking when he stands in the sun.

Jesse and the rest pick him up and give him a chance to join them. Problem is, Caleb doesn’t want to kill people and must content himself with sucking blood from Mae’s wrist to sustain himself.

The metaphysics of how the whole vampire thing works is left a bit muddy, but is notable for departing from the general mythology. They’re vulnerable to sun but no mention is made of crosses or holy water. Their bodies can take a hellacious beating but seem to repair themselves in a few hours. No Wolverine-type special effects healing here; they’ll just have less and less makeup in each subsequent scene.

They do not age — Mae, during her meeting with Caleb, muses that it’ll take a billion years for the light of the stars in the night sky to reach them, and she’ll still be there to see it. Any injuries sustained pre-turning don’t go away, as evidenced by the crooked scar across half of Jesse’s face.

It all seems to come down to ingesting blood. Once it’s in your system, you’re imbued with all the powers of vampirehood. Vampires can even feed other vampires from their own lifeblood, but can be killed if too much is taken.

Jumping ahead — sorry, no spoiler warnings after 37 years — Caleb and later Mae are eventually cured by his dad, Loy (Tim Thomerson), a large-animal veterinarian who gives them transfusions of regular human blood. Presumably every drop in their body would need to be replaced, but he appears to only give them a few pints, the first procedure using his own blood.

The thing that continues to make “Near Dark” so interesting is the family dynamic of the vampires. Jesse is the clear patriarch and presumably “original” blood-sucker, and has been plying his trade for a long time — he talks about fighting for the South during the Civil War, and he and Severen joke about starting the Chicago fire of 1871. No mention is made of who turned him, but he apparently turned Diamondback to have a wife/companion.

There’s some indication Severen was some sort of Wild West gunslinger, favoring that sort of garb when he’s not in his usual black leather hunting kit.

There’s also Homer, the kid-sized vampire played by Joshua John Miller, who appears to be about 10. He is cursed to spend the rest of his days in this childlike form, something accentuated by the lisp Miller speaks with. It was he who turned Mae so he could have his own partner, and he is violently dismayed that she has essentially “left” him to take up with Caleb, and continues to treat him badly at every turn.

Later, when Caleb’s kid sister, Sarah (Marcie Leeds), turns up while out looking for Caleb with Loy, Homer becomes fixated on her and wants to turn her for his own.

The bar scene is clearly the centerpiece of the movie, and the part everyone remembers. Departing from their usual M.O. of hunting separately, they walk in together with the intent of having Caleb prove himself by finally making a kill. So they bar the door and taunt the humans while slaying them one by one.

Severen takes out a balding, bearded pool player, famously complaining “I hate it when they ain’t been shaved,” before sinking deep. He then slurps his crimson-splashed fingertips before giggling out the Kentucky Fried Chicken (as it was known then) tagline, “It’s finger-lickin’ good!” He finishes things up by strutting along the bartop in his spurred boots, using them to slice open the neck of the shotgun-wielding bartender (Thomas Wagner).

Jesse, Diamondback and Homer pitch in by killing the waitress and letting her blood flow into a beer glass for easier consumption.

What struck me about this sequence upon my latest viewing, probably the first in about 15 years, is how long and deliberately paced it is. Bigelow lets the horror gradually unfold upon the bar patrons, who at first thing these newcomers are just misfits looking for a fight, but soon realize their fates are about to be sealed. Homer bebops his head in rhythm to some fell tune only he can hear.

“Just a couple more minutes of your time,” Jesse answers to the plea of what they want. “About the same duration as the rest of your lives.”

As is often the case with movies like these, the protagonist is the least interesting person on screen. Caleb is basically just there to be the audience’s eyes and ears, experiencing the company of these terrible killers and reacting as we might. His growing affection for Mae turns out to be his saving grace, and eventually it brings her back into the light, too.

“Near Dark” is a memorable crossover of genres — you could easily picture Jesse and his gang riding around on horses instead of in an RV, or as a biker gang. It’s a cheaply made picture rich in mood and subtextual themes about the price of wanting to live forever.