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Near Dark

Near Dark (1987)

October. 02,1987
|
6.9
|
R
| Horror

A farm boy reluctantly becomes a member of the undead when a girl he meets turns out to be part of a band of vampires who roam the highways in stolen cars.

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Reviews

Solemplex
1987/10/02

To me, this movie is perfection.

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Stometer
1987/10/03

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

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BallWubba
1987/10/04

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

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Bumpy Chip
1987/10/05

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

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sparrowtrece
1987/10/06

Damn, this movie could've been good. Hell with that, it could've been great. It's got everything--an excellent cast playing fascinating and nuanced characters,,a wild premise (white trash vampires on the road!), great dialog, and atmosphere galore, topped off with spectacular sequences of blood-soaked violent horror.It's got all that, *and* one of the most jaw-droppingly stupid and contrived devices in any horror movie, ever. If you've seen ND or read or heard much about it, you'll know exactly what I mean. If you haven't, well I'll put it like this: a convenient bit of information never encountered in any other vampire movie, book or folklore collection seems to have been thrown together just to give the flick a commercially acceptable ending.Plot: a handsome young cow-puncher is bitten by a cute, country-style vampire chick. Love, death and madness ensue.The tribe of vamps are the best characters in the movie:scary-sexy, sexy charismatic Civil War vet Jesse, his hot-bodied cold-blooded tattooed bad-momma Diamondback, exuberantly sadistic Sevrin (was he maybe an Olde Weste outlaw while he lived?) Homer, the creepy, obnoxious, scary, funny but ultimately pitiful vampire kid who gets the best death scene in the whole movie, and Mae the aforementioned cute bloodsucker chick who brings photogenic young lout Caleb into the story.,.The creators *really* shouldn't have gone for that stupid, made-up ending, though. *Near Dark" wqould've been a near perfect horror movie if they'd done it different..

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Jackson Booth-Millard
1987/10/07

I knew that this was meant to be some sort of scary movie, I was interested because of the monsters that featured, the good cast, and it was rated well by critics, so I hoped for something worthwhile, directed by Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty). Basically in a small town in Pheonix, Arizona, late at night young cowboy Caleb Colton (Heroes' Adrian Pasdar) meets young beautiful drifter beautiful Mae (Jenny Wright), she asks him for a ride to her trailer. Before dawn, Mae bites Caleb on the neck, he is forced to walk home when his truck does not start, however when the sun rises and hits him, he starts to burn. Suddenly Caleb's father Loy (Tim Thomerson) and sister Sarah (Marcie Leeds) witness a van appearing out of the blue, and Caleb is pulled in and kidnapped. Caleb is introduced to Mae's family, a group of vampires: the leader Jesse Hooker (Lance Henriksen), his girlfriend Diamondback (Aliens' Jenette Goldstein), the cruel Severen (Bill Paxton) and the boy Homer (Joshua John Miller). What they all have in common is that they are all predatory creatures of the night who urge for and survive on blood, but Caleb refuses to kill, so Mae gives him her own blood to keep him alive. While Caleb is forced to join the vampire gang on their road trip, as they seek victims, while also trying to enjoy themselves, including nights in bars, Loy and Sarah are looking for Caleb, they eventually find him in a motel. Caleb has to choose whether to return to his beloved family, but eventually the vampires are killed off one by one in various circumstances, Jesse, Severen and Diamondback turn vicious, and will do whatever it takes to stop and kill Caleb and Mae, but in the end they survive and comfort each other. Also starring Kenny Call as Deputy Sheriff, Ed Corbett as Ticket Seller, Troy Evans as Plainclothes Officer and Bill Cross as Sheriff Eakers. Pasdar is alright as the luckless farm boy, Wright is seductive, and Henriksen and Paxton are good at being the nasty villains, it is a simple story about a gang of bloodsuckers, acting like outlaws, and trying to stay one step ahead of daylight, it is an interesting mixture of a road movie, a western and a scary movie, with striking moments of bloody violence, it is a watchable horror thriller. Good!

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The_Film_Cricket
1987/10/08

Vampire movies are the easiest kinds of horror movies to attend. We know all the rules and we know the scenerio. But it's what the director does with those two conventions that determine the film's success.We know that vampires can never go out in daylight (a rule which is based around a logic that I have yet to understand). The second thing we know is that vampires must constantly drink blood (why do they never visit slaughter houses?) This allows us the scenerio from almost every single vampire movie that has probably ever been made. Two characters are necessary: one has been a vampire since time began (no one is ever bitten in the 60s) and the other is a young virgin that the vampire bit and must now go through the agonizing process of figuring out how he/she is going to live for all of eternity living by all of the rules mentioned above.Kathryn Bigelow's 'Near Dark' takes these rules and does something neat with them. She sets a family of vampires in a van with the new guy (Adrian Pasdar) and puts them on a nocturnal trek across the southwest. Along the way we run into a redneck bar where some of the best scenes in the movie come to life (which I won't spoil with one single word). Following hot on their trail is Pasdar's father (Tim Thomerson) who thinks he knows how to cure his son.This leads to all sorts of complications that we can predict. You know what to expect but you are waiting to see the approach that Bigelow takes. This movie is fun, I enjoyed the swaggering characters, I enjoyed the plot twists and I enjoyed the preposterousness of the whole enterprise. You know what to expect but you don't expect it to come together this well.

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Ben Larson
1987/10/09

Vampires in cowboy country? No, this is not some western, but a tale of drifters in the west that just happen to be children of the night.Kathryn Bigelow directed a winner her with familiar stars such as Adrian Pasdar from Heroes, who falls in love with a vampire played by Jenny Wright. Don't get excited. Wright keeps her shirt on unlike her previous skintastic appearances in Pink Floyd the Wall, The Wild Life and The World According to Garp.The drifters? How about Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Jenette Goldstein from Aliens. Cool, huh? One thing I have never seen in a vampire movie is the transformation back to human. This was a first. Of course, it had the usual fire and explosions after sunlight hits.An interesting twist on the usual and a fun flick.

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