Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

NEAR DARK is a DEG Films Presentation and is rated R for strong horror violence and language. It runs 95 minutes and originally came out theatrically on Oct. 2, 1987.

INTRODUCTION
NEAR DARK is perhaps the single best vampire movie of the 1980s. That's right...I said it! Better than FRIGHT NIGHT. Better than THE LOST BOYS. Better than TRANSYLVANIA 6-500 or VAMPIRE'S KISS . Not even any horror film of the 1980s that has zombies or slashers or anything such can overshadow this dark little tale. I just rented it no less than several months ago with FROM BEYOND and THE PROWLER, and this has been one of my all-time favorite horror films. The scenery, the direction, the script, the performances, the music, and the vampire lore presented all transcend the boring style of many eighties horror films, and somehow this movie failed to manage a crowd (came out around the time of THE LOST BOYS and was unfortunately left for dead). But Anchor Bay Entertainment has decided to give the movie its bite back and presented a new double-DVD special edition that will hopefully catch on with the crowds it lost. Now, in the words of Severen, "Fasten your f*ckin' seatbelt!" It.s the...

STORY
Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar) is driving his pick-up truck through a small southwestern town one night when he feasts his eyes on a beautiful, shy girl named Mae (Jenny Wright) sucking on an ice cream cone. It's love at first sight. Mae shows Caleb the beauty of the stars and Caleb takes her to a ranch where they kiss, but is withdrawn after Mae pulls away.

CALEB: "I sure haven't met any girls like you."
MAE: "No, you sure haven't."

Mae begs Caleb to take her home before daylight, but Caleb decides to stop the car until he gets some kissing play. Mae reluctantly places her lips around his neck, but then bites the boy?s neck and runs off into the distance. Trouble gets worse when his car breaks down and Caleb?s forced to high-tail it to his home on foot. The sunlight, however, is burning him and wasting him away and as he makes it to his father Loy (Tim Thomerson) and little sister Sarah (Marcie Leeds), an RV swings by and picks him up. Loy and Sarah go to the police on a search for these strangers in the trailer home, but things aren?t looking any up for Caleb.

Right when he sees Severen (Bill Paxton), he is greeted with a sinister "Howdy" and then is taunted by getting his head cut off. The thing is that he has fallen in with Mae's family of psychotic drifters, which is led by 'father' Jesse (Lance Henriksen) and includes knife-wielding 'mother' Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein) and two 'children' Homer (Joshua Miller) and Mae, as well as Severence. On Mae's request, they take Caleb in for now, but he must feed. This doesn't please Caleb, and right when he and Mae are alone, he tries to get back home. "You won't get too far," Mae warns, but Caleb learns it the hard way, as he is sick, dizzy, unable to eat solid junk food, and gets off the bus home and back to Mae, who lovingly opens a cut on her wrist to nourish Caleb with blood.

Caleb doesn?t want to kill, which fails to break him in with the vampire pack, who roam the night for fresh victims and hide out in the daylight. After Caleb finally proves himself worthy of more time by helping the clan break from police grasp in sunlight, they hold out at a hotel, where little Homer invites little Sarah Colton over to his apartment to watch TV. Caleb finds himself reunited with his family and his new friends, who don?t take too kindly to outsiders. An escape is ordained, but once Sarah is abducted from home, Caleb finds himself in a classic showdown: one man against a pack of the undead. It's feeding time.

OVERVIEW
This is a one-of-a-kind vampire thriller. There is not a single reference to the clan as 'vampires' throughout this movie, and we don't get much into the Gothic mythology of these creatures. The bloodsuckers in NEAR DARK do not worry about garlic or silver or crucifixes of any sort, but are nocturnal monsters who burn in sunlight and drink blood to live. The movie opens with the shot of a mosquito on Caleb's skin, and it metaphorically depicts dramatic irony.

This film takes place in the desert Southwest, a cowboy movie setting that has hardly ever seen such horror in film history, and never for once are we led to a place where bats and coffins lie in the basement. The night shots are all well done, and we see the wonderful Western setting used to its fearsome advantage in the sun and not. The visual element of this movie is strong and well done. We see oil pumps going to work as we see Caleb being nourished by Mae's plasma-packing wrist. There is also a lovely blue-tinted scene when were coming up on dawn and Mae and Caleb are in the truck about to make some love. The setting and camera shots presented throughout qualify this as classic. Adam Greenberg, the director of photography, deserves to be rewarded for such intense cinematography. I can remember Jenny Wright's character saying the night is so bright it's blinding, and I shook my head up and down in agreement.

Let me take a moment to tell you about the movie's best scene. All you who know this film will catch my drift. The scene where they decide to give Caleb some more time to make his first kill and take him into a local biker bar for some shots of Bloody Mary. This scene is full of good-looking gore and some really offbeat and effective acting from Henriksen and Paxton. It also happens to show that these creatures mean business. And that's what sets these killers away from other vampires. They don't turn into prosthetic displays or fashion plates like in THE LOST BOYS. These are dirty, violent, menacing murderers with twisted senses of humor and a penchant for crafty kills.

The movie also hits the mark performance-wise. Bill Paxton, in one of his early performances, is on fire as the sinister vampire Severence, spitting ample doses of grim comedy, swagger, and menace. Jenny Wright and Adrian Pasdar have some real chemistry together, Jenette Goldstein and Joshua Miller do respectively well in their roles as Diamondback and Homer, Tim Thomerson puts on a great show as Caleb's caring father, and there's Lance Henriksen...that's all I'll say. Very rarely does he disappoint, and he sure doesn't drop the ball in this movie.

The script was written by Eric Red (who scripted THE HITCHER) with first-time director Kathryn Bigelow. It improves upon every aspect of THE HITCHER and provides action, horror and laughs with smooth flair. And as for Bigelow, future director of POINT BREAK, STRANGE DAYS and K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER, she injects some hard-breathing set pieces and underlying symbolism to jack the stakes up some more, and gets away with it.

You could spy some drug and eroticism themes in this movie, as well as the young love motif, but make no mistake about it: whatever NEAR DARK sets out to do, it does it tenfold. Let me conclude with the words of Diamondback while she's char-broiling in a sunlight-radiated automobile: "Fun times."

DIRECTION
Katheryn Bigelow's feature debut is a tour de force terror piece. She brilliantly employs slow motion shots, slick camera shots, sharp editing, smoke machines and symbolic images to her sleight of hand and comes off with something Joel Schumacher would?ve killed to have utilized in THE LOST BOYS. Bigelow once was romantically involved with James Cameron of ALIENS fame. Needless to say, she managed to pick up some of her beau's best filmmaking traits. She's just superb!

ACTING
Adrian Pasdar and Jenny Wright communicate some real vampire chemistry in this film. Forget about Jami Gertz and Jason Patric getting it on. I saw much more intensity and passion in Pasdar and Wright's make-out in the car as well as when Pasdar is sucking blood from the wrist of Wright. A real cinematic erection popped up, and I enjoyed it. As for individual performances, Pasdar brings the right amount of vulnerability and poor boy sympathy to his Caleb character. He also possesses sly cocky wit and looks very convincing when he's wasting away. Did he eat anything on the set, or did he sleep? This looks damn near genuine! Jenny Wright also has a real beauty and physical appearance that left me weakened in the knees. I think she channels enough eroticism, mystique, vampire menace and romantic lead ability that I honestly wonder what happened to her? I've seen THE LAWNMOWER MAN...where did she go?

And speaking of ALIENS from the last section, we got three actors from that movie, who were the good guys, here they just become vampire variations on their classic Cameron characters. Starting off with Jenette 'Vasquez' Goldstein, she plays bad-a** vampire chick Diamondback with a razorblade and sex appeal for miles. She doesn?t get a lot of dialogue, so her physical performance channels everything that I loved in her character. I loved her as much as I loved Wright. And we got Bill 'Hudson' Paxton as Severen, who is so deliciously diabolical and full of black-as-night humor that I realize this is one of his early roles that MUST BE SEEN! This guy is on the ball all the time! I was laughing, trembling, getting into his character and relishing in Paxton's every scene in the movie. "Finger lickin' good!" And don't forget Lance Henriksen. SH*T YEAH! His character in ALIENS has the same last name as me! But in this film, Lance brings some really great intensity and fire to his performance as Jesse. And he does have some of his best moments in this movie. Let's just say that my favorite Lance Henriksen scene in NEAR DARK is when he coughs up the bullet Tim Thomerson's character shoots him with and gives it back. Delirious.

Tim Thomerson himself is something of a cult star too. Remember the TRANCERS films and DOLLMAN? Here I got to see him do a somewhat excellent serious performance as the worried father who sends the law to look for his boy. I respect him about as much as I do Paxton and Henriksen, and this guy rocks. The last couple people on my acting critique are Joshua Miller, as little Homer, who has the little boy vampire charm down and is also pretty darn psychotic as well as his other family members. And last of the pack is Marcie Leeds as Sarah, Caleb's little sister, who also gives a very good performance, as most child actors tend to be more annoying.

MUSIC
TANGERINE DREAM! As always, you can?t go wrong with their music, and this movie's got a pulsating, technologically-augmented score that ranks up with some of their previous best scores (remember FIRESTARTER?). It helps to paint the picture as much as all the other aspects in the movie, a combination of percussive drum machines, ominous wailing, guitar, and synthesizers. When this music kicks in, you feel startled. Also look for music by The Cramps, George Strait and John Parr.

VIOLENCE/GORE
The FX used on the vampires in sunlight (as well as Paxton on the mack truck) are always pretty good, and gore fans will enjoy the bar massacre as well as when a knife is shot into Lance Henriksen's mouth. The vampire bites are also relatively gruesome, and, as always, there are some gruesome gun wounds.

SEX/NUDITY
Steamy sex scene with Pasdar and Wright, with their clothes on. Nothing more. PINK FLOYD: THE WALL DVD, here I come.

CONCLUSION
NEAR DARK is lost in obscurity, which is an absolute shame. If you can pick up this movie by any means, do so. This movie will please even the most hardened creature of the night, and brings true fear and biting humor to the vampire mythology. Now, for all you people in DVD Land, I've got to tell you about this new Anchor Bay special edition, it's just too f*cking good!

DVD DETAILS
This brand new Anchor Bay Entertainment double-DVD package bears similar looking design to the limited edition release of BAD TASTE, with a tri-fold design handsomely packaged in a slipcase and containing a little 16-page booklet, with information and text by Michael Fleisher, as well as poster photos and stills. The sides of the DVD package contain photographs of one character and a memorable quote stuck beneath it. The movie is presented in TV-formatted 1.85:1 widescreen with optional DTS/Dolby Digital 5.1/DD 2.0 surround soundtracks, with THX-approved picture quality. The film's transfer is surprisingly strong throughout, with no hindering grain and a wonderfully aged palette given full body. Colors never go bad, and the soundtrack never fails to impress, with the Tangerine Dream score and sound effects used in all their surround beauty.

Kathryn Bigelow records her own audio commentary for this one, and opens on a promising note with Bigelow talking about the use of a mosquito that was grown six months in order to avoid contaminants. There are pauses between her comments, some of them seem to go on a little long. It's more of a "scene commentary" to me at least, but Bigelow still offers plenty of narrative information, technical aspects, and other bits information on the cast, the symbolism, and the genre conventions. Bigelow is a pretty good sport doing the audio commentary, but maybe on her next commentary, we slap the screenwriter and some cast members to help her move along.

All the extras can be found on disc two, and I'll begin from the bottom up, because they're all good. First of all, the DVD-Rom features. Pop in this disc for access to a screen saver and the original film's screenplay on your home computer. Then into the DVD player we go. There's two theatrical trailers, one entirely set to the tune of John Parr's hard rockin' "Naughty Naughty," which is played in the bar scene of the movie. There's talent bios for Bigelow, Wright, Pasdar, Henriksen, Goldstein, Paxton and Thomerson, all of them provide hearty biographical information, quotes and filmographies in true Anchor Bay style. Then we get a menu of storyboards, divided into five segments: "Caleb's Transformation," "A Taste Of Blood," "Feeding Montage," "Roadhouse Slaughter," and
"Hotel Shoot-out." All these segments are montages of the director's own storyboards set to the Tangerine Dream soundtrack.

The still galleries contain 29 slides of behind-the-scenes photos of the cast and crew, and 93 slides of poster art/cast photography and movie stills. Kathryn Bigelow offers audio commentary on a brief deleted scene, shot in black and white, wherein Caleb fantasizes about Mae and sees through vampire vision.

And now is the piece de resistance of the extras disc, the brand new 47-minute documentary "Living In Darkness." Brand-new interviews feature Bigelow, Greenberg, producer Steven Charles-Jaffe, executive producer Edward S. Feldman and actors Pasdar, Paxton, Henriksen and Goldstein. Although it lacks Jenny Wright (who made a recluse from movies since 1992 with one exception in 1998) and some other stars/crew members, the documentary presents a well-rounded retrospective on the movie. Want to hear Lance Henriksen's own back story on his vampire's conception, or Pasdar's comments on the drug references? This is for you. Together they all comment on the cast and crew, the production, the return of the ALIENS trio and special effects information. The post-credits bits offer final comments on the possibility of a sequel. Hmmm...


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age