TV & Film
It's back to the movies and back to 1998 on the latest Precinct 13, as Chris and Nick sink their fangs into John Carpenter's action/horror/western hybrid, Vampires. Starring James Woods as the leader of a wild bunch of slayers hired by the Catholic church to exterminate the unholy undead, this film was a rare commercial success for Carpenter in the 90s. But, with last-minute studio-imposed budget cuts, a tangle with the MPAA over its bloody mayhem, and the blockbuster Blade breathing down its neck, could this movie live up to the Carpenter classics -- or, at least, to the earlier From Dusk Till Dawn, which covers a lot of the same territory? We've got lots to say about this one -- not all of it positive -- and, along the way, we get into everything from the influence of classic westerns to the crazy "could've beens" on of the casting to the film's uniquely explosive way of dispatching its villainous bloodsuckers. Plus, a few off-the-beaten-path recommendations of genre films that the Carpenter crowd might enjoy, whatever their feelings on this attempted return to form.