Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

lukem-52760 Another BRILLIANT Carpenter film!!! Ever since first renting this on it's first release on video i absolute loved & went out & brought it straight away,JAMES WOODS is Fantastic as Jack Crow a very violent vampire hunter who leads a team of hunters & WOODS performance is so much fun to watch & my favourite of his movies. Carpenter has created a scary western type of Horror movie with that open plains background & lonely dessert highways & old motels & farm houses, he's created a creepy atmosphere yet again perfectl. The vampires themselves are very scary & wild like savage beasts so yeah carpenter has made a fantastic Vampire movie with plenty of brutal Action & gore & great fx & some very funny moments with James woods!!! Yes a very underrated movie? But truly it's one of carpenters best films it's a great vampire film.

bradleygranz Vampires is good 90s vampire film a good soundtrack better good acting a lot of action l like this one

classicsoncall There's something to be said about a vampire flick that dispenses with the usual lore and goes for something new and creative. You won't find garlic or the fear of crosses in Jack Crow's (James Woods) arsenal, he's dealing with a Master Vampire who's determined to crack the taboo of bursting into flames with the first hint of sunlight. The entire scenario is placed under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church, with a crooked Cardinal Alba (Maximilian Schell) forsaking his vows to team up with the indomitable Jan Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith). Since I don't know any better, it appeared to me that Montoya's (Daniel Baldwin) emphasis on reciting Rules for Hunting Vampires might have been the inspiration for a similar treatment in "Zombieland" a decade later. That one was done for kicks, however Montoya was pretty straight up and serious about the whole thing. My favorite would have been 'You can't kill a Master at night'. Considering their camaraderie throughout the picture, it made sense that Crow would catch Montoya a break at the end of the story. Until they met again of course, and then he'd have to get the wooden stake ready for his buddy. I'm sure there was some kind of unstated rule on that too.

lurch99-198-323833 John Carpenter's fondness of Westerns is well established, all the way back to his first prominent flick "Assault on Precinct 13" being a modern re-working of "Rio Bravo" with John Wayne. I think Carpenter is one of the best American directors, up on a level with Scorsese and a few others (and usually working with a much lower budget) but for some reason he doesn't get critical respect in this country, probably due to the genre he works in (I suspect that's also why Stephen King is not generally regarded as one of the best American novelists). I've also been a huge fan of James Woods since "The Onion Field," so to have them working together is a dream for me. "Vampires" had me right from the get go with Woods and his crew planning their raid on the "nest" ---I don't think there's anyone better than Carpenter at setting up scenes and building suspense, he's not afraid to give it the running time it needs—unlike a lot of younger directors who came from music videos and want everything fast and choppy. After most of the characters are killed off early on, the survivors track down the bad guy like in "The Searchers" also with John Wayne---in this case the "sheriff" and his "deputy" and the "floozy." Carpenter gets the best career performances out of two actors who are not my favorites—Daniel Baldwin and Sheryl Lee—although those two have the best scene in the film, i.e. the first one in the hotel room. I have mixed feelings about Thomas Ian Griffith as the "master"---I'd only ever seen him once before, in "Excessive Force," and liked him, but I thought he came a little too close to the "stereotyped European bloodsucker" that the Woods character himself had derided, but I imagine Griffith played it the way Carpenter wanted it. I loved having the devious Cardinal turn out to be a "bad guy," but that's just me and my issues with Catholicism in general. The plot with tracking down the "black cross" got just a bit unwieldy at times, but Carpenter keeps things humming along until the climax, after which in classic Western tradition the Woods character lets the two new vampires go their way for "old time's sake" but warns he'll have to kill them if they cross paths in future, then Woods and his new sidekick ride off (without horses) into the sunset (or sunrise, rather) for more adventures. …So after multiple viewings I really can't see why anyone wouldn't enjoy this flick unless they were just pre-determined not to; reportedly this was the project that led Carpenter to decide to stay in the business, and I'm sure glad he did…. Woods' line to the young priest in one scene---"Did you get a little wood just now, Padre?" ---should be in a collection of classic movie bon mots, along with "You gotta be f---in' kidding" from Carpenter's version "The Thing"--maybe someone should do a short film of just clips from Carpenter's oeuvre.....