Viking Night: Near Dark
By Bruce Hall
April 13, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Yes, that’s a mighty long sentence. But that’s a lot of potential packed into such a scrappy little film. I can’t imagine expectations were high at the time, but considering what all three of those people have accomplished in the years since, I was understandably curious to see whether any of that dynamite was present in Near Dark. And taking into account Paxton’s recent passing, I thought it might be fun to take a look at one of his lesser known roles.
It was. Not as much as I had hoped, but as we all know, a little Bill Paxton goes a long way.
And it kind of has to here, because Near Dark is the kind of story where absolutely nothing anyone does makes any sense, and all the characters are more or less terminally stupid. That’s not a criticism so much as it is a simple fact. Just think of any film you have seen that takes place on a long and dusty stretch of road, and you can more or less enjoy Near Dark with little fear of being taken by surprise.
Again, that’s not a criticism so much as it is a fact. A good (or bad) road thriller requires not just miles of desert, but also an understanding that at some point, we’ll be turning around and heading back the other way. And to clarify, I mean that both narratively and ironically. Obviously, there will be the point where our protagonist stops running from danger and turns to face it. Then there is the fact that in Hollywood, driving 150 miles in a straight line - stopping only to blow up a gas station or shoot someone in the face - is a consistently successful way to evade police pursuit.
Every night, I dream that I live in this world, with its upside-down logic and easy access to firearms. I have video game dreams, is what I’m saying. And like all my dreams, Near Dark begins with an aggressively poor decision making by characters who seem astonishingly new to the whole “decision making” process. In this case, it’s a horny cowboy named Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) and a weird, winsome wanderer called Mae (Jenny Wright). For reasons that aren’t important, Mae ends up in Caleb’s truck after weirdly and winsomely requesting a ride home.
What IS important is that Mae is secretly a vampire, which is an undead abomination that produces zero body heat. Caleb fails to pick up on this, what with his loins radiating all that oafish enthusiasm. In fact, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the fact that he’s so busy trying to get the girl to kiss him that at no point is their actual destination ever discussed. Maybe they’re neighbors, because after she bites him in the neck and runs away, Caleb stumbles what looks like a quarter of a mile or so back to the farm where he lives with his father (Tim Thomerson) and sister (Marcie Leeds).
In this universe, the whole “vampire transformation” thing happens pretty much on the spot. As the sun rises, Caleb becomes ill and starts smoldering like a Duraflame log. He’s outside just long enough for his family to see a Winnebago swoop in and carry him off. They enlist the police for help finding him, which is smart, because that Winnebago is stuffed with vampires. Mae and her coven of two men, two women and a weird child roam the roads like a vampire Partridge Family - drinking, smoking, and bloodsucking their way across the state.
When they discover what Mae has done, they reluctantly take in the newcomer, on a provisional basis. Jesse (Lance Henriksen), the coven’s leader, immediately wants to slaughter Caleb, as does his right-hand man Severen (Bill Paxton). But I guess vampires are reluctant to kill their own, and everyone seems to like Mae a lot. So, the plan becomes to keep Caleb around until he fucks something up, and then Severen plans to cut his face off, after kicking him in the throat hard enough to perform a rectal tonsillectomy.
I’m not making that up. It is based on actual threats made in the film. And while this gives Paxton a chance to shine like a Maglite every time he’s on screen, it does invite some interesting perplexities. You’d think that as a vampire, one would want to remain rather discreet in their everyday activities. You’re immortal, after all, and that’s a long time to spend constantly looking over your shoulder thanks to your penchant for spontaneous murder sprees. Add in that famous vulnerability to sunlight, and long drunken road trips begin to look like a bad idea.
This is why vampires usually live in castles and tend to avoid overnight trips to strange places.
Also, fun fact - these vampires can apparently survive on each other’s blood, as well as ours. That seems weird for a lot of reasons, but it’s an essential plot point here. Caleb has trouble adjusting to the fact that if he wants to eat, he’s going to have to get used to a steady diet of long haul truckers. Well, that’s MY fear. Caleb is reluctant to murder, because he’s only been a vampire for a few hours. I just kept thinking that because of where they are, that means chowing down on a lot of fat, sweaty necks, and sucking down a lot of residual bacon fat, bean burritos, and Pabst Blue Ribbon.
I can’t speak from experience, but I have to believe that after centuries of wallowing in human blood, you must get to the point where the puny mortals start to take on regional flavors. If I were (theoretically) a vampire, I’d want to live in a sunless place where I had easy access to fit people with good eating habits, like a posh London suburb or something. What I would absolutely NOT want would be to troll the highways of rural Texas, full as it is of sun, sand and all those empty redneck calories.
I guess I’ll have to wait for the sequel, because Jesse’s idea of lying low is a little something I like to call From Dusk Till Dawn: Road Edition. Jesse and Severen roll into bars every night, openly picking fights and loudly murdering everyone in a whirlwind of bullets, blades and often fire. That’s amusing, because at one point Jesse implies that he’s been at this for at least 150 years. But it’s hard to imagine even an immortal surviving quite that long with that kind of lifestyle. If you could somehow combine the DNA of John Belushi, Jeff Spicoli and Wolverine, THAT man would be far too prudent to party with Team Jesse.
I can live with a certain level of contrivance in a Vampire Road Flick; that’s fine. And trust me; I’m fine with violence in movies (video games desensitized me long ago). What bothers me is that such a great performance by Henriksen is diminished by the fact that his character is such a seething moron. It’s disappointing when a villain is presented as a criminal genius, only to consistently make the kinds of decisions that would get you a C minus in sixth grade creative writing. Maybe it was a conscious decision, so as not to distract from what’s supposed to be the center of the film - the relationship between Caleb and Mae.
That’s also kind of stupid, because if I hate anything more than the Idiot Mastermind, it’s Pretty Faces falling in love for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I kept waiting for Caleb to curse her for condemning him to an eternal waking hell of roaming the night, sucking on morbidly obese truckers. Even if you were kind of INTO being a vampire, that’s a bad omen, right at the beginning of a relationship. Chalk it up to the folly of youth, I guess. At my age, getting stabbed in the back - or bitten in the neck - ten minutes into the first date is a goddamn deal breaker.
I suppose this is where Kathryn Bigelow can say “Yeah, well, later I made The Hurt Locker and you didn’t, asshole.”
Fair point. You win this round, Bigelow. But it would also be fair to say that even as a genre film, Near Dark is, overall, weak. Aside from my earlier praise of Henriksen, and a classically unhinged Bill Paxton (I would be totally supportive of a Director’s Cut featuring ten more minutes of him), there’s little to recommend. Near Dark is an undead murder-fest that secretly wants to be a love story, which would have been fine if either one had been executed worth a damn.
In fact, did I say “wisp” of a story? I might be a little off on that. How many smidgens are in a wisp?