Blade

My quest to review all superhero movies has brought me to a rather random entry that barely feels like a superhero movie at all. Technically speaking, Blade is a Marvel character, and I think he showed up once in a Spider-Man cartoon. But really, he is a vampire hunter who has even less to do with traditional superheroes than Ghost Rider, Punisher, or even Howard the Duck. Despite this, and it R-rating, 1998's Blade is historically significant, as its incredible success helped get X-Men and Spider-Man off the ground, not to mention spawning two sequels of its own. And we probably would have more Blade movies had the main actor, Wesley Snipes, not been thrown in prison for tax evasion. However, he is free now and the movie rights to Blade have reverted back to Marvel, so you never know what could happen.

Blade was directed by Stephen Norrington, and stars Wesley Snipes as the half-vampire hero, Kris Kristofferson as his ally, Whistler, Stephen Dorff as the evil vampire Deacon Frost, and N'Bushe Wright as Blade's girlfriend, Karen.

The movie opens with the birth of Blade in 1967. His mom is suffering from a very bloody and suspicious neck wound, and it is implied that she dies shortly after delivering the baby Eric Brooks.

We then cut to a scene that's actually pretty fun. A sexy girl vampire leads an unwitting human guy into a secret vampire club hidden in a slaughterhouse. At first, the guy thinks it's just a normal club, but then blood starts raining down on the dancing vampires. Everybody and everything is red, and the poor guy starts running for his life, when suddenly he sees Blade, the only one not covered in blood. He is dressed head-to-toe in black leather and is armed with a shotgun, a big sword, and tons of knives. The red sea of the blood-covered vampires parts for Blade, and then he gets to work killing them. And it is fun to watch. Wesley Snipes is apparently a real-life black belt, and it shows here. He knows how to fight, he can do his own stunts, and it makes a difference.

But as much as I like watching Wesley Snipes fight, I really don't like him doing anything else. I don't like it when he talks, when he tries to be serious, when he tries to be funny, and I especially don't like it when he tries to be "cool." Case in point: After Blade kills most of the vampires at this club, he find's Deacon Frost's right-hand man, Quinn. Blade pins Quinn to the wall with a couple of stakes and then does a really cheesy fist pump that completely took me out of the movie. Blade shouldn't be having fun. He's a dark, disturbed, serious vampire hunter. There's no room for smiles, puns and fist pumps.

Anyway, Blade decided he wanted to kill Quinn slowly by burning him, but before he died, the police arrived and took the badly-burned vampire to the hospital. Two doctors who used to be in a relationship, Curtis and Karen, begin examining Quinn, when the vampire suddenly wakes up and bites the two doctors. Blade arrives at the hospital to finish off Quinn, but he's too late, as the vampire has already escaped. For some reason, Blade leaves the injured Curtis behind, but kidnapped Karen. (I guess she reminded him of his mother?) Anyway, the cops show up and open fire on Blade even though he has a hostage. Blade does call them out on this with a pretty cheesy "Are you out of your minds?" He also swore there, just as everybody swears constantly in this R-rated movie. Truthfully, I think they could've cut out the swearing and maybe tone down just a bit on the violence, and you'd have a perfectly acceptable PG-13.

Anyway, I now have to address Karen, the worst character in the movie. Or rather, N'Bushe Wright is the worst actress in the movie. She is completely flat and emotionless the entire movie, and I can't stand it whenever she has to deliver her lines, almost as if she was just calmly reading them off a cue card. When the vampire comes to life in the hospital and attacks Curtis, she barely even flinches, and then just sits there to let the vampire bite her, too. She acts too stupid at times and suddenly too smart at other times. She drags this movie down so much.

So back to the plot, Blade takes Karen to his friend Whistler, who injects her with garlic to prevent her from turning into a vampire. Whistler's family was killed by vampires, so he's dedicated his life to hunting them and developing weapons to kill them. In this world, vampires can be killed by garlic, sunlight, and silver, so all their guns have silver bullets with hollow tips filled with garlic, and they have a big UV flashlight they'll use once. Whistler found Blade when he was 13 and preying on the homeless. Since his mom was a vampire, Blade has the strength and healing powers of vampires, but ages like a normal human and is immune to sunlight, garlic and silver. He does, however, share their lust for blood, so he has to regularly take a serum to fight off that urge. We learn all this later in the movie, but I felt like getting it out of the way now.

Early on, we get a scene of the vampire council, and see that the young Deacon Frost is at odds with the old regime, especially the leader of this group, Dragonetti. Dragonetti yells at Frost for holding large public gatherings of vampires (like the club at the beginning) and for using computers to attempt to translate the vampire bible, which is apparently written in a dead language that no one knows. Dragonetti seems very mad at Frost, and he even slaps him, but does nothing else. I'm really disappointed by how weak and ineffectual the vampire elders were in this movie.

Back to our heroes, Karen wakes up the next day in new clothes with her hair perfectly done and makeup on, despite being kidnapped from the hospital at 3 a.m. in her doctor clothes. She is a blood doctor (hematologist) and could potentially help Blade and Whistler, but they just give her a can of vampire mace (silver and garlic in liquid form) and take her home. Blade warns her that the vampires will be looking for her, and there's a pretty fun fake out, where she thinks she's being followed, but isn't. She arrives home safely, and is greeted by a police officer checking up on her. But then he tries to kill her, so she squirts him with the vampire mace, but it does nothing. Blade suddenly arrives and beats the crap out of the fake cop, explaining that he's a familiar — a human working for vampires, hoping for the honor of one day being bitten by them. Blade then lets the fake cop go, so he can follow him, and Karen decides to tag along, feeling this is the best way for her to survive.

Deacon Frost's super computer then finishes translating the vampire bible, and he immediately sends out Quinn and his underlings to bring back Blade alive. But first, Blade and Karen find Frost's tech support, a morbidly obese vampire named Pearl. And I mean morbidly obese. Pearl probably weighs more than 1,000 pounds and is too fat to move. He also has a really high voice, which is odd. He is as intriguing as he is disturbing. Anyway, Blade and Karen interrogate/torture the fat vampire with their UV flashlight, and Karen very quickly begins to enjoy killing vampires. Blade finds a disc with the translation on it, but he's soon attacked by Quinn and his gang.

The fight spills out into the subway, and it really becomes a bit too much for me. It's also where the bad CGI really stood out. Overall, I'd say the special effects are on par with Men in Black, which came out around the same time, but the subway fight scene started doing things they shouldn't have attempted. And just when I felt the subway driver would stop after running over so many vampires, they show a sign that says, "Warning: Driverless Trains." OK ... Do signs like that even exist? Never mind. Blade and Karen are eventually by Whistler, and then we go back to Deacon Frost and his evil plan.

I do have to say that I really enjoyed Stephen Dorff as Frost. He was compelling and entertaining, and easily the best actor of the whole movie. His character, however, did a few too many things off screen that I felt were essential to show, like having him kidnap the head vampire, Dragonetti. How'd he do that? Doesn't the head vampire have underlings to protect him? I don't know. All we see is Frost and his boys taking Dragonetti out to the beach to rip out his fangs and watch him explode in the sunlight, while they watch safely behind darkened motorcycle helmets. I'm also not exactly sure why Frost had to kill this guy. I guess he did slap him once, so I suppose that justifies this. So then Frost takes the fangs back to the vampire council and he suddenly becomes their leader. These vampire elders are so weak and ineffectual. It drives me nuts.

So then our lovely and charming female lead Karen somehow sneaks back into the hospital and steals tons of equipment to help her find a cure for herself. It doesn't work, but she does create a serum that causes vampire blood to explode, so they start filling a bunch of vials with it for Blade to use as weapons. Blade then leaves to get more serum from his friend downtown with whom he exchanges cheesy complicated handshakes. On his way, Blade runs into Frost, who tries to convince him to give up trying to be a human and join the vampires. This happens in the middle of the day, so they said Frost was wearing lots of sun block. Naturally, Blade refuses his offer, and he even tries to shoot the vampire in front of a park full of people, including a little girl Frost was using as a hostage. But Frost somehow is able to move fast enough to dodge Blade's bullets.

Frost gets away from Blade and he and his men somehow make it back to Blade's hideout before he does. They don't say how they found the place, only that it took them a long time to. The vampires kidnap Karen, bite Whistler and leave a VHS with instructions to Blade. When he arrives, Whistler tells him not to go after Karen, because Blade, being a Daywalker, is the key to resurrecting the Blood God. Whistler then kills himself before he becomes a vampire, and Blade goes through a very strange meditation scene, preparing himself for the final battle.

Blade then assaults Frost's stronghold, and there is a pretty funny moment where Quinn starts telling Frost how powerful Blade is, and Frost starts to agree with him, then angrily yells, "Shut the F up!" Except he did really swear, and it was funnier then how I can write about it. But anyway, we get more fun action scenes with Blade killing many more vampires (some are even ninjas), but it all comes to an end when he is reunited with his mother. That was a pretty great shock. We saw her briefly earlier, but not her face, so showing us that she was not only alive, but also Deacon Frost's girlfriend, was a neat moment. Blade is so shocked by this that he is beaten down and captured.

Blade and Karen are thrown into the back of a truck and driven to a secret vampire temple. On the way,  Karen tells him that right before she was captured, she found a cure for him, but it would take away his vampire strength and healing powers. Once they get to the temple, the vampires take Karen down to a pit to be eaten by her old boyfriend, Curtis. Apparently he didn't turn into a full vampire, just a weird zombie thing, which apparently happens sometimes. It also apparently made him really weak, as Karen very easily defeated him and escaped.

Blade, meanwhile, is led to the top of the temple, so his blood could drip down on the twelve vampire elders and Deacon Frost, who is standing in the middle to become the new Blood God, I guess. Blade's mom straps him into the torture chamber to bleed him, but then leaves for no apparent reason. This small moment gives Karen enough time to save him, but she sees he's lost a lot of blood, so she asks him to suck her blood. This is a very strange and disturbing scene. It might just be me, but it felt oddly sexual with Blade sucking Karen's blood and her moaning and groaning the whole time. But luckily, Karen is completely fine after this, not even able to pretend to be woozy for a minute or two.

As soon as Blade is healed, his mom comes back, and they fight for a bit before he ultimately kills her with the line, "I release you." The ritual underneath them reaches its climax and all the vampire lords die in a very odd way. Their skin melts off and winged skeletons crawl out of their mouths. The winged skeletons then fly around the room and fly through Frost a bunch of times before they finally fly into him and disappear. Frost then turns into the Blood God, which basically means that his eyes turn red.

Blade finally gets downstairs and slices off Quinn's head and catches his signature sunglasses midair. It would've been a cool moment if they didn't start playing heavy techno music with it. A potentially awesome scene became quite lame and almost laughable. But anyway, Blade kills all the vampires, except for this one girl vampire that Karen gets to kill with her vampire mace. Finally it's down to Blade and Frost for a big, epic sword fight. Unfortunately, Stephen Dorff couldn't keep up with Wesley Snipes here, so they had to use a stunt double, and whenever the camera zoomed in on Dorff, it became painfully obvious that he wasn't holding the sword the same way the double was or moving it half as quickly. Fortunately, the sword fight doesn't last too long, as Blade cuts the vampire in half, but he uses his Blood God skills to instantly pull himself back together. The CGI was awful here, but it was kind of fun when Blade turned around and just mouthed the words "What the F?"

Ultimately, Blade defeats Frost by pumping him full of the exploding serum, and he blows up in a spectacularly crappy display of special effects. I'm sure it looked fine 15 years ago, but not today. Blade and Karen then leave, and he refuses to take her antidote, choosing instead to continue his life as a vampire hunter. And the final scene (which would occur after the credits nowadays) shows Blade killing a vampire in Moscow, Russia.

In conclusion, this is not a very good movie. At all. The plot had a lot of holes in it, the special effects were up and down, the acting for the most part wasn't good at all, but the action was usually top-notch. And at the end of the day, all this movie was about was Blade killing vampires, which was pretty fun to watch. So for that, I will reward this bad movie with a single point.

Final score: 1