Weirdhouse Cinema: Blade

is this a Marvel superhero movie? Um? Uh, well, no, I'm not quiet for the first question, but yes for the second question, because we're gonna be talking about the movie Blade, a movie that is kind of it is kind of the precursor to the Marvel Cinematic universe, but unlike the PG era and PG I guess thirteen probably era of Marvel films that we have today, and even the darker d C films that we have, and certainly

those have more in common with Blade. Uh. We're talking about a solid are here, mostly for violence and language, a little bit of sexuality, but you know, several differ and things that wouldn't fly in the Marvel movies that are so popular right now. It is hilarious that this is essentially I would say, a movie for kids, but absolutely not for kids, hardcore R rated comic book movie. Uh. Like, basically every other word is the F word. It's relentless. Yeah,

Blade as a superhero. He has several different superpowers, but one of them is definitely that he gets to say the F and he gets to say the F as many times as he wants to, as far as I can tell, I don't think there's a limit. And there's constantly blood spraying everywhere on everything. Yes, yeah, there's a lot of blood in this one, um and a lot

of attitude. So it's this is a movie where we're once more getting pretty close up to U the dawn of the millennium here, uh, and in the end of the millennium that we say spend most of our time, and then the century we spend most of our time. And because this is ninety eight, I think I think the closest we've come to to to to breaking the millennium point has been Deep Blue Sea is that. I think it was ninety nine, But we're pushing the boundaries

again here. Well. So I was thinking about this and about how Blade is not only a vampire superhero movie. It is also very much in terms of like the cinematography, the way this movie looks and uh, in the the way the fight senator stage. It is very much a millennial R rated action thriller, and so what does that mean? I would characterize it as follows sets with tons of slick,

gleaming surfaces and gun metal gray coloration. Everything is wet. Uh, lots of casual depiction of futuristic digital devices like like laptops and cell phones doing things that they absolutely did not do at the time in and no one finding this unusual even though the movie is set in the present. Uh,

and just lots of wires everywhere. Uh. Beyond that, I would say muted colors in general, with kind of harsh white lighting, like not not soft yellow lighting, harsh white lighting reflecting off of all the slickness in the sets. And then extreme gratuitous gun violence where like rooms of bad guys are sprayed with bullets causing huge panes of glass to explode and shower down in slow motion, and

then finally sunglasses inside all the time. Yeah, the gun violence is interesting in this film because it's not the thing that I think of when I think of Blade, but it's it's clearly part of of of these movies. Uh. You know, when I've looked back fondly that I'm thinking about the times that he's he's kicking vampires and stabbing vampires and using that katana sword and so forth. But yeah, he's also blasting room fulls of of vampires. But but

I don't know. That stuff doesn't seem to I don't know with me anyway, it doesn't resonate as much as the martial arts action. Oh yeah, the martial arts is clearly where it's at. Blade kicks and he you just imagine like when you're watching this movie, like if Blade kicked, you be like getting hit by a bus. Yeah. Yeah, every every time Blade, really, anytime anyone is hit in this movie. I buy it. Like it. It does a

really good job of selling the physical violence. Now, before we go and eat any deeper, I'm gonna, I guess I'll mention this. We we started mentioning where to watch a film earlier on in the episode for folks who want to go in unspoilt. But basically, you can watch Blade everywhere. You can get it on DVD, you can get it on Blu Ray. I think there's a three pack of Blade films out there. Uh, and there's also you can simply go to I think HBO Max as of this recording in the US has has all all

three of the original blades of streaming. So Blade one, the excellent Blade Too, and also Blade three or Blade Trinity if you will. Now, I think you're more of a connoisseur of Blade than I am of my earliest experience. Uh well, they Sally, I think i'd only ever seen this first movie before I saw it, probably like eight through ninth grade, so not too long after it came out. I think I watched a VHS tape of it in

a friend's garage. Uh so, yeah, that's the setting. Uh, Whistler, for some reason put a movie on for you know, you just just he had a TV in his garage. I don't know why. We go. We go in there and we watch Blade because that's what you do. You're in eighth grade and there you go. So, wait, have have you not seen Gamma do Toro's Blade Too? No? I haven't seen any of the sequels. Oh my goodness. Blade two is amazing. Blade Too is is everything that

this film brings to the table. But then Gammada to a weirdness on top of that, So all sorts of like weird um quasi catholic imagery and uh and and strangeness. I'll touch on a little bit of this as we perceive, but I'll try not to get into Blade to too much because it's its own special treat Well, so that made me want to raise something. Uh. Germo del Toro obviously loves magic, and I wonder how his influence affects what I would consider the mostly materialist vampire ideology and Blade.

So Blade, the Blade universe is full of vampires, but with a few exceptions, they don't really seem to be supernatural. Like the vampires are not affected by holy objects. They don't seem to be spiritually demonic in nature, though they are evil. Uh, they're treated as products of genetic mutation, you know that, like they have a virus or a

mutation in their bodies. I would say the only major exception to this is suddenly at the end of the movie they bring in this like apparent magic ritual that does seem to have effect, like it actually works to

summon a blood God. Yeah, i'd say, when del Toro comes along, you know, granted he's he was beholden to what was established in the first film, but he seems he seems to embrace the materialist view of the vampire, but with the key difference being for for Norrington and company in this film, Uh, vampires are kind of people with supernatural powers. But for del Toro, obviously a vampire is a monster. He is a man of monsters and his vampires are going to be monsters. Oh yeah, that's interesting,

I would say in this Yeah, you're right. The vampires are just like people who are universally bad and they have super strength than they drink blood. Yeah, so then again I should stress for Del Toro, monster has different connotations perhaps than it does for other people. Like he loves his monsters. It doesn't mean the monster doesn't have

a lot of personality and depth. In fact, there's a good chance that the monster will have more personality and death than any human character h that he might be dealing with. Now. Another thing that sort of sets Blade apart, Uh, that I think I noticed when I first watched it back in the day A was that this is a movie that has a vampire hunter character of the classic Van Helsing type. I would have, you know, seen movies with Peter Cushing doing this role on TV, probably when

I was younger. Um, But a big difference is that this is a high tech vampire hunter and this was not the first movie to have characters like this. I mean, I'm sure there were plenty. I can think of. John Carpenter's Vampires came out earlier, and and that one. The Vampire Hunters have all kinds of technology and stuff, don't they now. Actually, John Carpenters Vampires came out the same year.

I'm not sure exactly like where they fall um in terms of each other though, well either way, I mean, I'm sure this was not the first movie to do this, but that that was kind of a change up on my expectations because the the earlier you know, the vampire hunter is more of a uh, sort of a holy warrior, kind of a kind of a priest slash professor who wields a steak and across and all that. Again, you know,

you're you're Peter Cushing type. Here it is like the toughest dude you've ever met, and he's decked out in all kinds of with like gizmos and gadgets. He's like Batman. He's got a you know, utility belt full of stuff. Yeah, he has a secular vampire hunter as opposed to the holy man that we see certainly in the in European traditions, but also in in Eastern traditions as well, there's stuff like Mr Vampire. You know that's that's the roll with a holy man to deal with the vamps. I wish

they had had some rice in this movie though. Hey, they used the garlic, but they don't use any any rice. A glutinous rice dealer scene would have really set Blade apart. That would have been it would have been brutal. Can you imagine the dressing down a corrupt rice dealer would get from Wesley Snipes as Blade, Because that's one more thing that really sets Blade apart is the way Wesley Snipes completely embodies this character. I don't know what so

this is based on comics. I have no idea what Blade is like in the comics, but it is hard to imagine this character as anything other than than Wesley Snipes. Wesley Snipes brings a kind of uh, I don't know, a like a weird poise and and sort of almost ironic sense of line delivery. It's it's beautiful and it's

very singular. Yeah, I will come back to this, but I think Wesley Snipes is as perfect in this role as anyone you can point to in a given role like he everything he does as Blade is just spot on. You buy it, you believe it. It's absolutely perfect. It's like Robert Shaw as Quint just is the character. Yeah, absolutely, all right, before we go any further, let's let's have it.

Let's here part of the trailer. I don't I don't really love this trailer, so we'll just listen to a little bit of it, just to remind you what you're dealing with in Blade. Better wake up. The world you live in is just a sugar cot top. There was not the world, real world. For thousands of years, they had existed among us. You keep your eyes open. They're everywhere. Chances are you see him yourself and didn't know it. A secret nation. Our Livelihoart depends on our ability to

blend in with the lust for power. We should be ruling the humans. These people are food. They've got their claws. That everything politics financed real estate. There's a war going on out there. He mixed the weapons I use of. Now one will lead them to conquer mankind Tonight, at the age of man comes to an end, we're gonna be gods, and one will try to stop him dead. There worst things out tonight than vampires like me Blade. Yeah, trailers were bad in the nineties. Yeah, yeah, I don't.

I don't love it. Um you know, maybe it's different depending on an age and what one is nostalgic for. But yeah, this is a trailer. I'm like, no, no, no, the movie is great trailer. I can I can take it to leave it all right, Well, let's let's get into the folks involved in this film, shall we? Oh please? Alright? Starting at the top, the director is Stephen Norrington, sixty four. This is this isn't the first time we've discussed Steven Norrington,

as he did creature designs on Split Second. That that really fun? Rugger Howard, what soft post environmental apocalypse monster Hunter film? Yeah? Yeah, Now let's see. My memory is that in Split Second we did not get much of a look at the creature. They kind of kept it mostly obscured. Yeah, you don't see much of it. I I if memory serves, there were like a lot of last minute changes. But it ends up working pretty well

because you don't see a lot of it. But when you when you do see more of it, you realize it's kind of a mix between a Xena Morph and Joege Death from the Judge Dread comic books. Alright, So Norrington is a London born effects makeup artist who worked on such films as Aliens, Young Sherlock Holmes, Hardware, Alien three and Jim Hinson's The Storyteller, and then he would go on to direct the film Death Machine, which had Brad Dorriff and Richard Brake in it, and he followed

this up with Blade. From here he went on to make The Last Minute and the film that reportedly kind of made him step back from actually directing The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. But I believe he has continued to work in effects and other areas of filmmaking, and every now and then catch some buzz of some possible project coming together with Norrington involved. But at any rate, I like his work in this film. Oh yeah. And I'm really impressed that he did effects on Storyteller, which has

marvelous special effects. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, Storyteller is a lot of fun like those uh the meducest at You Coming to Life and all that. Oh yeah, it's that. That's great stuff. Uh wow, I never saw a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But I distinctly remember the day that my friends went to see it in the theater and they were talking about it for the rest of the day. Uh. It made an impression on them, and it was not

a good one. It seemed to be one of those films that it caused a lot of people involved in it were kind of kind of had to question what they were doing with their lives at that point. I guess, but I don't know, but I haven't seen it. Maybe I would actually enjoy it. I don't know. Um, I

will say that. With Blade, however, you mentioned like some of the stylistic choices, and I think some of those definitely are just tied to the style of the day, But I also really like some of the choices that they made in terms of how they portrayed night and day.

Like a lot of the night scenes tend to feel hyper and alive, like they're they're literally twitching, like they they're just gonna start dancing at any second, while the daylit world often feels languid underwater, you know, kind of in a sense that that really meshes with this idea of like creatures of the night and creatures of that are mostly of the night, are being drawn further into

that world. I know exactly what you're talking about, that underwater feeling, and also that this movie has a lot of Again this is as I said earlier, this is common to a lot of these action movies of the time. But lighting often feels harsh in this movie, Like even lights just coming out of the ceiling are like, I don't like that. It feels bad. All right. So that's Norrington, that's the director. Screenwriter on this is David S. Goyer. Yeah,

this is a huge name in the screen screenwriting world. Um. His earliest screenplay credit is for Death Warrant, a Jean Claude van Dame martial arts movie from and he followed that up with Albert Pions Kickboxer two, which did not start Jean Claude van Damme hand. He also did the Charles Band produced Peter Manoogian directed horror film Demonic Toys in Is this just a parallel to the puppet Master movies or was it trying to sort of copycat them? Um?

I think it was part of you know, this is certainly getting into the area of of Charles Band and company figuring out what works and then like and then continuing to pump pump that out. I've never seen a Demonic Toys movie, but I know they like later Demonic Toys have crossover adventures with their Charles band properties. The Jetson's made the flint Stones, except their toys with like

drills and razors attached to them. Now. He went on to work again for band Camp on the film Arcade, but he quickly moved up from there, working in TV and film projects until he collaborated with Alex Proyas and Limb Dabbs on Dark City. Just an excellent weird film in my opinion, A Dark City is amazing that that one. I haven't watched it in a while, but for a long time that was one of my favorite movies. Yeah, same here. I haven't watched it recently, but back in

the day, absolutely loved it. Totally blew me away when I watched it, so definitely made a huge impression on me. Now. I should also mention though, that same year, uh Goya was also involved in the Nick Fury Agent of Shield TV movie that started David Hasselhoff. So he was and he was already getting in and getting a little marvel e with his screenwriting. I did not know that existed,

but at any rate. Yeah, then he moves on to Blade and Blade it's kind of the perfect goy or screenplay when you say, especially when you consider many of the products that came afterwards. It's a dark, largely serious comic book adaptation. He followed this up with screenplays for the again the Excellent and Weird Blade, to also Blade Trinity,

which Goyer himself directed. Blade Trinity did not continue the upward trajectory of the Blade franchise, but it does have at least one great Blade ism in it, so has that going for it. There are so many great Blade lines that I would love to quote, but we can't do it without making this episode need a parental advisory stickers, right, because again Blade will say the F and all his

best lines have to f in them. Yeah. Now, Blade Trinity was said to be a difficult shoot, but Gotya didn't give up on directing and came back with some various TV projects and the films The Invisible and The Unborn, and on the screenwriting end of things. He went on to work on Christopher Nolan's Batman movies, Jumper, Man of Steel, the upcoming Hell Raiser Rebooty at least has a story credit on that Terminator, Dark Fate and the upcoming adaptation

of the Sandman graphic novels. So um, yeah, Goyer is a huge name. You can't really uh no matter what you think of some of these films, there's no denying it. Now. Of course, we should drive home that Norrington and Goya did not invent Blade. This was the work of two comic book creators, credited to first of all, Marv Wolfman. Uh. This is a character creator credit. He was born nineteen forty six. He worked on Marvel Comics The Tomb of Dracula. So this was a horror comic that ran for seventy

issues between nineteen seventy two and nineteen seventy nine. It concerns vampire hunters, including you know, the Van Helsing's, and of course it has Dracula in it. Like straight up Marvel Comics version of Dracula, Blade was introduced as one of these vampire hunters. Uh. And the original incarnation was more of a like a thoroughly nineteen seventies affair, like

he had wooden teque daggers. I believe he had like a like a large afro hair doue so you know, he's very much inspired by some of the cinema of that time period and the other character creator, Jean Colon was born through eleven. He was the artist and I think he's He has said in past interviews that he based part of the look of Blade on Jim Brown as well as other um famous black actors of the time. Now. Colon worked on the comics Daredevil is Where It well

as Howard the Duck. He also co created the heroes Falcon and Carol Danver's. But going back to Wolfman, um, Yeah, the following this film, there was apparently a legal dispute between Wolfman and Marvel. He does get an official character credit on Blade two. He's written some TV shows over

the years, including a few episodes of Fraggle Rock. If I am maybe is correct on that um and fun fact, there was actually a previous Japanese animated adaptation of The Tomb of Dracula comic came out in eighty but I do not believe it has Blade in it. Um though

the character does show up in the Spiderman cartoon. I don't know if you watched this, Joe, but um, you know this was this was a fun cartoon that came on in the afternoons after you got him from school, and they eventually just throw every Spider Man related character in there. So Blades showing more Bias is showing up all these various weird Spider Man like second and third tier characters and villains. Spider Man met Morbius. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Morbius was totally in the mix. Fun fact, Morbius was originally going to be in this film. If you go on YouTube, you can even find some rough looking footage where originally at the end of it, Blade was going to have kind of like a stair down with Morbius, like setting up Blade versus Morbius in the sequel. I followed your link on this and I looked at the scene and my thought was, like, how's anybody supposed to

know this is Morbious. It's just a guy standing there. Yeah, well, maybe that's one of the reasons they cut it up. All right, let's get to two the actors here. So yes, Blade is Wesley Snipes. Wesley Snipes is Blade. Wesley Snipes was born two and really requires no introduction. I mean, he's he appears as the character in both of the Blade additional Blade movies that I mentioned Blade Too in two thousand two, Blade Trinity in two thousand and four.

One of his earliest credits he is a episode of All My Children, followed by early roles in such films as Wildcats eighty six, Streets of Gold same year, Critical Condition from eight seven, but then in eighty nine he appeared in Major League, followed by King of New York starring Christopher Walkin in nine, and then a whole string of just huge films in the early nineties, New Jack City, Jungle Fever, White Men Can't Jump, Passing Your fifty seven

Rising Sun, and Demolition Man. Demolition Man is a deeply stupid movie, but it is also Wesley Snipes is just great in it. He is so much fun. He's what a criminal from the past future something that is okay the premises they froze. It takes place in a sort of um in a very softened utopian future, where like where there's no crime or littering or even swearing anymore,

and everything's all just like nice. And suddenly they accidentally unthaw a frozen criminal from the nineteen nineties, and that's Wesley Snipes, and nobody knows how to deal with them, so they also have to unfreeze a tough cop from the nineties, and that's Sylvester Stallone. It's uh, whoever came up with that premise Chef's Kiss. I should see that one at some point. I hear that people enjoy it, at least in retrospect. I don't know how I did

at the time. All right. Now, of course, Snip's post Blade Trinity, he had some well known legal issues, but I believe he's He's worked pretty steadily since then. He notably showed up in The Expendables three. Uh Dolo, Mine is my Name and Coming to America. That's Coming Numeral to America, the sequel that came out recently. And I have to say I've long wanted to check out his two thousand twelve movie Gallo Walkers, in which he plays

a cursed gunman who fights the undead. Patrick Bergen is in it, so you know it's it's worth looking at, right. Oh yeah, And I also I don't want to spoil too much about I mean, obviously we're gonna spoil everything about Blade because you know, we got to talk about the like the ritual at the end and stuff. But uh, but for a different show, I'll I'll limit it to just saying that Wesley Snipes has an amazing cameo in

the in the What We Do in the Shadows TV series. Nice, I just to go back to something we discussed in the previous Weird House. I also have to say that when I think about Snipes now, I can't help but think about Steven Seagal, because both actors are of the same era. Both actors were allegedly difficult on set, or

could be difficult on set in some cases. Uh. However, Snipes was clearly the bigger star, and I feel like in Blade, especially, Snipes manages to actually capture the essence of a modern action movie warrior priest, certainly a vibe that C. Seagal was was always going for in these films but not quite nailing. So Snipes kind of captures what Segal always aspired for. That's an interesting way to

put it. Yeah, well, I would say another difference is that while Snipes does plenty of these, uh, these silly action hero roles, Snipes is actually a good actor, and I don't think that can be said of Steven Seagal. Yeah, I think that's an important distinction to make Now you know what they say, every great hero needs at least a mediocre villain. And that's that's where we turn to Deacon Frost, our Vambhire villain in this film, played by Stephen Dorff. Oh, I think uh Dorf as Deacon Frost

is better than mediocre. I found him a delightfully fun as the villain in this He's fun. I don't know, something always felt a little lacking from me in this character. Uh, you know, not not bashing the performance at all. I feel like he delivers on what they were going for here and and maybe ultimately he goes beyond that. Like Deacon Frost is a is a villain that I am not rooting for, Like I don't like him, and ultimately maybe that's the point, Like I'm not supposed to like

Deacon Frost. He's an upstart. Um, you know, he's a He insults everybody, whether you're you know, other vampires or you're a vampire hunter. You know, he's a He's a consummate bad guy in that regard. He I love the premise for the character though it's hilarious. He's basically the ideas Deacon Frost is taking this vampire thing a little too far, you know. He's like, well, I can understand the killing people and drinking their blood, but Frost is

a little extreme. He is he's an extremist. He's a young extremist, and the old establishment doesn't really know what to do with him. Um, he's hilariously inept and dealing with any internal threats clearly. Um. Yeah. He gets taken before the Board of Directors of Vampires and they're like, Frost, you're you're you're a loose cannon, you know, you're you're like yeah, though, yeah, Well, they don't even really kick

him off the force. They're just like, you shouldn't you shouldn't be like this, Frost, And he's like, well I am. And then he walks off and like smokes a cigarette and they're like the lass, what can you do? And then later just wipes them out and and yeah, it completely takes over without any real sense of like you don't get the sense that, oh man, Frost really was pulling those political strings, like I don't know, it looks like he just put at least marginal effort into it,

and the old vampire lords were just totally inept. Uh. They didn't see it coming. They couldn't come up with with even like they had every reason in the world to get rid of Stephen, get rid of Deacon Frost here, And there's no line in the film where they're kind

of where they even acknowledge why they haven't done. So they're not like, oh, Deacon Frost, you're so out of line, you're so you're so lucky that we have this one provision in vampire law that says we cannot kill you, or or something like, oh, Deacon Frost, thank goodness you're doing the uh the blood harvesting forests. Otherwise, if if you want it so important, we would just get rid

of you. There's no reason for us to believe that Frost has any importance to the vampire authority here, and yet they do nothing about him and then he kills them all. You're right. It's not even like Tony Soprano being like, oh, I want to whack him, but he's a good earner. They're just they're just like he's constantly causing problems and threatening us. Oh what are we gonna do? I'm mudokire, I don't know alright. So Doriff, though he's been around a while I started off as a child actor,

appearing in the seven film. One of his earlier roles was the eighties seven filmed The Gate about kids summoning up demons at home. But most of his earlier credits are TV roles, but some bigger screen roles would come around. With the Power of One is Backbeat, as well as Stewart Gordon's Space Truckers in post Blade. He was in such films as John Waters Cecil Beatdimented in two thousand, the uh if Memory Serves Terrible, Fear dot Com in two thousand and two. What wait, what are you saying

bad about fear dot Com? I mean maybe maybe would be fun in retrospect, but at the time even I remember watching Fear dot Com and it it was just a whole it was bad. No, it's bad, but it's part of the series of movies all came out around that time about telecommunications technology that kills you. So like in The Ring, you get a phone call and it kills you, and then in this movie you go to a website and it kills you. Yeah, Fear dot Com and like the one of the worst, like Ring knockoffs.

I guess of the era. I think it actually might have come first lightly before the American ring at least. Okay, I'm not positive about that at any rate. Uh, it's bad. Now. I don't have much to say about a lot of these roles, but I do think that Dorff was pretty great in the third season of True Detective. He really wowed me, and that, like, I hadn't really seen him play this sort of character before. Generally, I had only seen him play these cool characters from the younger phase

of the career. But as this character, Detective Roland West in True Detective, I really liked him in that. Yeah, I agree, he grizzled. Well. One more thing about him, A fun fact. He's the son of composer Steve Dorff, who composed the score for the seven film My Best Friend as a vampire. All right, next actor we're gonna talk about here, Chris ger Stafferson is in this with the character Whistler. Whistler is Blade's tech man, his back up, his He's his Q, always providing him with cool new

gadgets with which to kill a little blood drinkers. Except he's not whimsical like Q. You know, don't touch that table. Seven. Instead, he's a well to come back to the theme of grizzled, he is. He is as grizzled as it gets. Yeah, he has grizzled to the max um. And then you can imagine Norrington being like, cut, all right, can we try it again, Chris, but this time more grizzled. Can you make it more grizzled and and reckless and gruff and Christophers It's like, yeah, I can do it. Yeah,

smoking constantly guzzling Jack Daniels, it's great. Out of the bottle without pouring it in the class, smoking while sloppily putting gasoline in a car, smoking while fueling up a car. He always looks like he just stepped on a nail a few minutes ago. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he has like his leg and a brace too. Right. So this is Chris Kristofferson, very well known name singer, songwriter turned actor.

Some of his biggest songs that he wrote were Me and Bobby McGee for the Good Time, Sunday Morning, Coming Down, and help Me Make It through the Night. His first movie was Ones, the Last movie written and directed by Dennis Hopper, and he also starred in the movie um Cisco Pike the same year and He followed these up with such nineteen seventies films as While a pair of Sam Peck and pop films Patt Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, as well as Bring Me the Head of

Alfredo Garcia. Uh. He was also in Martin Scorsese's nineteen seventy four film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, and in nineteen seventy six he starred opposite Barbra streisand in A Star Is Born. Oh was he playing the the Bradley Cooper role in in that version of it? Yeah? Yeah, he's there, the character that Bradley Cooper would revisit the remake. Now, I can't We can't touch on all the films that

Christophers since been. He was in a ton of stuff and during his career, but some of the others that stand out, at least to me are nineteen eighties, Seven's Gate nine eight, Big Top Peewee nineteen eighty nine is Millennium. He was in John Saylis's Lone Star in ninety six, and in two thousand and one he was in Planet of the Apes, the Planet of the Apes remake, the Tim Burton one. Right, Yeah, yeah, that one has a great cast, and I believe I've seen it. I don't know.

I sometimes I feel like I need to revisit that one see exactly what was up. It has some great ape suits. So obviously he plays Whistler in all three Wesley Snipes Blade movies, so we're well weight of a shocker to you, Joe. I distinctly recall him dying in the movie. I just watched. It didn't take. It didn't take. The character was too good. People wanting more Whistler. So even though, okay, but he comes back very early, it's not really a big plot. Basically early on in Blade Too,

they're like, you remember Whistler, Well he's back. We're bringing him back from the dead. Like is he a vampire? Um? I think there's a little vampire nous involved in his him coming back, but I'm a little foggy on how it happened. It Also, it really, even at the time, as much as I love Blade Too, it felt like,

what we killed Whistler. No, he's great, bring him back, okay. Um. Chris Christofferson was also in the weird movie Trouble in Mind from directed and written by Alan Rudolph, which is a film that I think I would there'd be a lot to talk about if we were to cover this some weird how sin him muh uh, if it were not for some of the less savory aspects of the character he plays in the film. Um and now, Chris Kostofferson is really good in it, and so are Divine,

Keith Carroteene and Joe Morton. But for my taste anyway, Rudolph makes some choices with the protagonist that end up tarnishing the film for me. Uh anyway. At this point in his career, Christofferson is is still alive as of this recording, but is retired from acting in music these days. His last film role was two thousand Eighteens Blaze, directed and written by Ethan Hawk. Not Blade, but Blaze Blaze. Yeah, so when I kind of went out, I guess in kind of a blaze of glory. I don't know. I

haven't seen Blaze. I'm not not sure what it's about, but I don't think it's about an off brand vampire killer. Okay, so we got Blade, he's our vampire hunter, and then we got Whistler, he is our Vampire Hunters assistant slash tech slash mechanic. But let's see in a in a sort of materially based vampire scenario, you need a hematologist in this. It wouldn't be a movie without a hematologist, somebody,

somebody who can explain all the blood science. And wouldn't you know it, we we happen to run across a hematologist quite early in the film. Yep, it's Karen, played by and boucher Right born seventy known for such films as Dead Presidents, zebra Head, and Fresh Uh. So, yeah, she she kind of this has been more of a modern film, you know. So she's she's not merely a

damsel in distress. She is in distress a few times and Blade does safer, but then she also pulls through and is of course a brilliant hematologist who starts cracking the vampire medical problem as well as proving herself very eager to grab a shotgun or a UV light torch and jump in and kill some vampires as well. I think in boucher Right is great in this and I like her characters arc So at first she is, yeah, she's just like she gets bitten by vampire and needs

rescuing by Blade. But yeah, over the course of the film, she she becomes more and more active in fighting back and yeah, so she invents, uh invents some chemical weapons to use against the vampires and she uh she she gets a really good sword stab in on Donald Log at one point and makes some vampires explode with some garlic spray. Uh. She's great. Yeah. Another actor of note in this is um Sana Lathan, who plays Blades mom Vanessa. We see her at the very beginning in this flashback Borde.

She had a much bigger career post Blade, actually starting in two thousands of Love and Basketball and Brown Sugar from two thousand two, directed by Rick Famulula. She's also the lead in two thousand four's Alien Versus Predator. She had a recurring role on such TV shows as Niptuck, Secession, and Family Guy. So she's the main character and Alien

Versus Predator. I haven't seen that in a long time, but I remember having a thought about her character and that which is that in the end, she and the predators like defeat all the aliens, and the predators are like, good job, human, you know you you did good back there, and then I think they give her a trophy or something and then they fly off, and then she has left standing by herself in the middle of Antarctica. So

it's like, oh, she would definitely die. Well, you know, predators, they don't really know how humans work all that much. I guess she they should have given her a ride. I think all right, the next actor of note, Donald Logue is in this playing the character Quinn uh an excellent vampire henchman. Uh to Mr Frost here, this character is a lot of fun. This is a great villain. Uh And I kind of get the feeling that with

this character. Somebody watched Catherine Bigelow's Near Dark and they saw Bill Paxton's character as the as the all ways going nuts vampire, dancing on tables, taunting people with the with the kind of southern accent, and to use a Goyeri ism, they said, I gotta get me one of those. Yeah, I think I can see their connection here. You both also get crispy and keep on vamping um the you know, both fun characters with similar traits. I think Paxiston and

Logue each kind of make them their own. I think Paxiston's characters maybe a little more um Texan and Logues character Quinn here's a little more dude, you know, but but yeah, I can see the connection between these two anyway. In my opinion, Quinn is the best villain role in the in the film by far. Though. I do like the relationship that they developed between Quinn and Frost, Like they have a good vibe. So it's never one of these it's not a situation where I'm like, oh, I

wish it was just Quinn. Like I love Quinn when he's on the screen, but I also love his moments with Frost. They really worked those out. Well. There's a great scene where you think Frost is gonna like cut off Quinn's arm, but he's just joking with him. He's like, no, no, let's yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's there's some some nice little nods like this, the very the subtle manipulation that Frost has him play over Quinn. Um, but there bros that

there are bros. Yeah, but are they really like you know that Frost really is going he never gets the chance to actually betray Quinn. But but yeah, it's heavily implied that, Yeah, the second that Frost has what he needs, Quinn is no longer necessary. Yeah, when he becomes the Blood God. In the Blood God does not have any Bros. Yeah, So Logs TV screen career kicks off in the early

nineties with a smattering of small TV roles. You see him on X Files, you see him on Northern Exposure, as well as such films as ninety two Sneakers, ninety three Gettysburg, and these smaller roles continue. He even pops up in Jerry McGuire Um. He played Jimmy the Cab Driver and several MTV promos in the early nineties as well. I don't know if you remember these. Joe No just kind of a chance for outlandish character work from from logan those um. He's worked a lot since Blade, but

some of the highlights include David Fincher's Zodiac. In two thousand seven, he was on the TV series Vikings and Oh Man. He has a really fun role in the biker series Sons of Anarchy. He plays an opiate addicted renegade x Us Marshall named Lee Torrik. He's not on the show a lot, but he's he really eats up the screen when he's on there. Well. He's definitely a scene stealer in this movie too, as a vampire who just repeatedly gets like burned and chopped up and stuff,

but then comes back. Yeah, and he's he's just full of energy. You know, he's he's all about enjoying the party, but he's also all about bringing the fight to blade. But you know, it wouldn't be a vampire move if it didn't have Udo Kier in it. Yea, and Udo Kier in it plays Dragonetti is our our top vampire lord or vampire baron, at least in the local. Um. Uh, what does I don't even know what city this is supposed to be. I think they filmed parts of it

in Canada, in parts of it in California. Uh, it's vaguely it's it's not it's unimportant. It is just the city, South American big city. It's never specified. Parts of it look more like an East coast city like New York. Parts of it definitely looked like l A. So I'm not sure. But but yeah, Udo Kier, he is the CEO of the vampires in this movie. Yeah. So Kira oh Man, Kira has been in a lot so German bor an actor with two d and seventy five credits

on IMDb. Um, I don't know if I said I may have said it already born, still very much alive, still active. He's one of these actors. He seems to have been in everything and become an icon for this weird mix of pop ler but also art house and just utter B movies and and and less than B. Like there's some some really really really low budget looking like video game adaptations he's been in. Um, are you making a movie that you're filming on your cell phone?

Udo Kier will be in it. Give him a call. Yeah, if you meet the price, he will, he will show up. And that they and he's one of these guys that like even like, no, no, none of these movies have slowed him down. Uh So he's he just keeps keeps acting in things, and he'll pop up in some really good stuff here and there, but then he'll also be in something that's just you know, complete trash and nothing sticks to him. Um. He started acting on screen in the late sixties and appeared in such films as a

nine seventies Mark of the Devil opposite Herbert Loam. In seventy three and seventy four, he played both Baron Frankenstein and Count Dracula in Fresh Flesh for Frankenstein Not Fresh Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula, both famously produce used in part by Andy Warhol, so it pretty legendary for those roles. Um In nineteen seventy seven he played Dr Frank mandel Is in Mandel or Mandel I don't remember,

but anyway, the movie is Dario Argento's Suspiria. Yeah. He's like a character that the main character goes to talk to in a like a park outside an office building and and he tells her about witches. Yeah. So Kierre has been in lots of European films and in general just lots of films. He was in ninety five Johnny Nemonic. Uh, he was Ince Fincher, a pet detective. He was in nineteen six is barbed Wire. In two thousand he was in both Shadow of the Vampire and Dancer in the Dark.

In two thousand and one he was in both Werner Herzog's Invincible I believe that starred Tim Roth and he was also in Uh Meghito, was in Meghito Toho. I saw that in theaters. That's one of those uh Christian apocalypse movies. It's all about the anti Christ in the end times, the anti Christ played I think by Michael York Basil exposition from the Austin Powers movies. In two thousand and two, Kira was also in Fear dot Com. He's like, let me have some of that fear dot

Com action, and I will go to that website. Don't do not try. I don't know, we can't vouch for that website. Um. But but again, artful and terrible movies kind of find a perfect balance in udeau Kier and this trend continues to this very day. Most recently, his film Swan Song earned a great deal of praise, in which he plays a formerly flamboyant hairdresser aging flamboyant hairdresser. And yeah, that that one was can I was reading

articles about that one on MPR. Oh, but Joe, he was in another movie that I know that you've mentioned to mean before. He was in two thousand four. Is Dracula three thousand, that's right? Uh. Dracula three thousand is a directive video sci fi horror masterpiece starring Casper van Deen, who was in the first Omega Code movie by the way, to Connections abound, but not just Casper van Deen, and so it's also got coolioh Uh. Erica Lank and Tommy

Lister Tiny Lister. Um. I'm gonna say I saw Dracula three thousand circa two thousands seven, but the memory is firmly implanted because this is one of those movies that is not just bad. It's not just really bad, it's unusually bad. I think paying attention to this entire movie should be like a standard test of willpower and sustained

attention used in like training airline pilots. You know, if you're the safety technician at a power plant, you must watch Dracula three thousand and and be able to describe everything that happens afterwards. It's a it's that would be a feat of the brain. The plot is, I think

that there's a spaceship helmed by Casper van Deen. I think he's literally named Captain Abraham van Helsing, and they they've run across a derelict ship called the Demeter reference to Dracula, of course, and then they try to salvage it, but whoops. There's a vampire on board, but not a sci fi vampire, so imagine frilly shirt, huge collar, black cape.

He's a Halloween costume of a vampire. But in this spaceship movie because it sounds like you're working up he had like a space vampire, like a something like from Planet of the Vampires or something, or something even more alien. But you had shared a picture of this, and yeah,

it's just straight up department store vampire. No, he's literally just like Ivan tor Blood and so Udo Kier is in this movie too, But he appears in such a way that, as as a friend of mine put it at the time, it looks like he left his car running while he ran in to shoot his scenes. Uh. He does not interact with the rest of the cast. As far as I recall. He plays the dead captain of the Darrelict Chip, and his only scenes where he's

acting are like video logs left behind. And in these video logs, he's obviously reading his lines for the first time as he delivers them, so he's going straight off the que cards, and you can see his eyes going back and forth as he goes down each line of a bunch of whole you know, like, oh, there's something on board. We are doomed that that kind of stuff. All right. Next up, I guess we we got to try and move move a little quicker through these other names, but we so we have Quinn as one of the

vampire lackeys. We also have a character named Mercury. She's a super fast blonde vampire. Um May played by Arley Joverte, Spanish dancer turned actor went on to appear in such films as Vampire Slas Mirtos, Empire of the Wolves and David Finchers The girl with the dragon tattoo. She she vamps it up good here. Yeah, she's great. She she's she does a good like kind of wolf snarl. She's got good teeth for the role. That's something I was

thinking about watching this film. A lot of folks have vampire teeth in and vampire teeth look cool, but they can also make your uh this, the prosthetic that goes in your mouth can make your your cheeks a little puffy. So you kind of get that that vampire teeth cheek puff going on with a lot of the actors here. Yeah alright, Um, we also have Tracy Lords in this playing the character Raquel. Uh. This is the vampire who leads our bro victim of human to the vampire rave

early on her film. Um yeah, so just a small role, but uh Lords Born who basically transitioned out of notoriety into what would become a solid mainstream acting career. She was. Her first such role was in Not of This Earth, a remake of the Roger Corman classic that we've discussed on this show, directed by another name that comes up a lot, Jim Warnarski. I've never seen this remake. I

don't know that you should. It doesn't particularly good, but it exists, I mean, especially given how great the original Not of This Earth was. But anyway, she's been a bunch of stuff. She was in John Waters Cry Baby not long after that. She did a lot of TV for such series as mcgever, Highlander, Tales from the Crypt, melrose Place, Roseanne Nash Bridges, and Will and Grace. Okay,

smaller roles now, Uh, there's a character named Crease. He's basically a vampire underling that ends up losing a hand to a booby trap, played by Matt Schulz born seventy two. Matt Schultz is interesting because he returns and Blade two as an entirely different vampire um a blood Pack member named Chupa and Matt Schulz has has been in a number of movies over the years, including two thousand ones Fast and the Furious in two th was an eleventh Fast five in which he plays a character named Vince.

Was also in The Transporter. I think the basic situation is he did Blade and then he got jacked to do Fast and Furious, and then he came back and Blade two and played a different Jack vampire. I'm trying to remember who this guy is in any of these movies I've seen, and I can't. Okay, well, I mean, he was in two of them, right, like he was. He must be part of what the family, right, because he's called back he came back in I don't think so. I don't recall he's maybe it was a flashback. This

is This is not Vin Diesel. This is not ludicrous. This is you know, I don't. I don't know. Well, moving along, we're getting into bit players here now. But I have to point out that Greg Okamura is in this playing an uncredited vampire. He's one of the vampire lords. Their number of really cool looking vampire lords sitting around the table with Udo. Most of none of them do anything, most of them do not talk, but several of the him look really cool, and Okamarro certainly looks cool. Hawaiian

born American actor, stuntman and martial artists. You've definitely seen in something, um, even if it's just playing Wing Kong. Hatchet Man is Big Trouble and Little China. Uh. He's he's the one that has like two I think golden revolvers in his in his hands. He also pops up in such films as The Octagon, Samurai Cop, The Shadow, Mortal Kombat version, Blood Sport three, and much more. Who was he in The Mortal Kombat? I watched that probably

a hundred times. I don't remember him specifically, but he has a real he has a real cool look. You know, he's got this uh this long beard, bald head, you know, kind of a tough guy looks. So he's very much this kind of guy. He does some stunts, but also you're like, oh, he looks too cool to not have him more on camera. More can he at least stand

in the background. I don't remember if he has a line in Blade, but you were right about he does not the the sort of board of directors of vampires, being very ineffectual and not having much to say or do other than stand around and like look terrified by frost. I think occasionally one of them will just like like squeak like, well, I'm a coward, so I don't know. Yeah, or they'll be a little bit smug and be like you have you have frost, you have no idea what

you're doing. Or to one of the underlings, you know he's gonna get you all killed, right, and that's sort of that's all that ever announced to alright. Note on the music, Mark Isham did the music here um nine solid score in my opinion, you know, it hits all

the right action beats. But also we have a number of sequences that are more ambient and ethereal in nature, be it like a Blade meditation scene or one of those driving through the dreary daytime city scene that I feel like like, really those are the moments where you really have a chance for the score to shine though in and as was the style at the time. Note, this movie also has a lot of rob would you

would you call it acid techno? Yes, yeah, there's there's some there's some fun hip hop in it as well, but yeah, some of the key scenes involves some like a massive drop of acid techno. So yeah, there there are several points where like oh, Blade gets out the sword and then immediately it's down to go down, down, down, down down down. Yeah that kind of thing. Yeah, I

love it. But anyway, the score wise mark is Sham also did such films as two thousand fours, Crash Bad, Lieutenant, Port of Called New Orleans, two thousand sevens, The Missed Time Cop Romeo is Bleeding Fire in the Sky Point Break, the Hitcher Trouble in mind when if I mentioned earlier Never Cry Wolf from eight e three. Uh he was nominated for an oscar for River runs through It. Uh So yeah, he's a he's a big deal and he's still working. Cool now. A quick note on the stunts

and fights. Uh. There are a few different names that are tied up in the stunt working choreography. Henry King Jr. And Jeff Amata are credited with stunt coordinator honors. Imata is a long time stuntman and martial artists who has worked in tons of notable films including Blade Runner, Dreamscape, Prince of Darkness, and Big Trouble and Little China. He's in Big Troumble a Little China. He's one of the kidnappers of the Airport Okay and on Top of this

martial arts choreographer. Credits go to both Wesley Snipes himself and Jeff Ward another long time stumming. All right, let's let's let's bust into the plot of Blade a bit more. Huh. Alright, so I guess we will talk about the opening. The opening has a kind of prologue that takes place in nineteen sixty seven, where you're in a hospital. It's that dreamy kind of camera work that lets you know that this is not the whole movie is not going to

be like this. You know it'll take place in the present, don't worry, But it's a sixty seven. You see a woman being rushed through a hospital on a stretcher and she's about to give birth, but she also had as vampire bite marks on her neck, and you see like her I d falls on the ground. I think you see her name is Vanessa Brooks, and it's implied that she dies. So that's the background, and then we get credits, and we see over the credits there are some sped

up time laps shots of a city. I was trying to figure out what city, but I think it's just it's intentionally non specific. A side note on this cinematography. I was thinking, what is the effect on the viewer created by time laps footage of human activity in a city, And to my mind, it has a kind of d individual add effect because you can't focus on any individual person and instead only see kind of trails or lines.

You see masses of humans blurring together into just patterns of movement, or you see the effects of their behavior and projects over time, so you might see buildings being assembled, or garbage piling up or something, And in this sense kind of makes you think of the humans in the city more like ants in a nature documentary, not as individuals, but as a kind of collective effect and undifferentiated mass of biology traveling along certain lines, which I think actually

works really well in the intro for a vampire movie. It has the eerie effect of letting us see humans more like how the vampires do, kind of like we're herds of livestock without individual identities. So I think that's a very smart choice of technique for the opening of Blade. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, short lived creatures that burned through life so quickly, and it's these older beings, these long lived beings that prey upon them. Now, then we get to the real opening,

which is you see two people on a date. I think one of them is Tracy Lords, and they're like winding their way through a meat packing warehouse and leading into a secret club. There's like a bouncer at the door. They go into a club and immediately we're thinking, Okay, is this a vampire club. It's got to be. It's full of you know. Answer is there's one dancer there who can kind of teleport. I think that's um, what's her name? Who? Mercy Mercury? Yeah, and they're playing. At

first I was like, is this e d M? But Robbie corrected me, is, so this would be acid techno? Yeah, this is definitely acid techno in this scene. So there's a very gray and blue color palette, kind of pale colors. Uh. The DJ has flashlights strapped to his glasses. I think we see Stephen Dorff wandering around in the crowd. The rave scene is very late nineties. But then we see the DJ like unveils a giant banner saying blood bath and then what do you know of the sprinkler system

kicks on and it's just spraying blood on everybody. This is before we started recording, Seth was asking me, who is bladed the movie where the sprinklers come on and it's blood, and we talked about it, and I was thinking, I don't think that would work because wouldn't the blood kind of like clump up or coagulate and clog up the sprinkler system. I just don't think you could do that. It's a special system that was probably custom installed. Because

we find out the vampires are into everything. They can have custom tech installed. Um the human plumbers to do that, Um, well, if they are, they're they're vampire familiars. They have the glyph on the back of their neck and they're they know exactly. They install these in cities across the United

States and in Europe and beyond. But they So the blood comes on and then the human dude who's been led in there, he starts panicking, and then all the vampires are like hissing and baring their fangs at him. They're like really salting the meat with this guy. They don't just bite and drink his blood. They're like trying.

It seems like they're trying to scare him to death. Yeah, this whole sequence is fun to sort of try and figure out because yeah, so there's the vampires want to drink blood, but they also want blood to come through the sprinkler system and fall on everything. They want to drain this man's blood, but also they kind of want

to beat him up and scare him. And so I was the main way I was able to make sense of this is that, Okay, nothing that we that we as humans in our life, nothing that we like or love, do we love as much as a vampire loves blood like a vampire has so many Like the vampire can't feel emotions about most things, but a vampire feels like all emotions about blood. And therefore they're like, yes, I want blood, I want blood to rain on me, I want I want to make love to the blood. I

also want to beat the blood up. I want to drink the blood. I want to just blood, blood. Blood. That's all they can think about. And so this is the the very sort of of of experience, the very sort of room that a vampire would want to find itself in. That's very astute. I think that is exactly what they're going for. So this guy's toast right, like there's just no way out. Of course, they're gonna drain him. I mean it's like this club has I don't know, one or maybe a few humans in it, and then

five hundred vampires. I mean it's not a good ratio. Um So the guys crawling away in terror, slashing through the blood until he like crawls up on a big steel toed boot and you see the bottom of a long black leather coat flapping. What Who's this? Immediately the crowd panics, They're like, that's him, It's the day Walker. And then fight Fight, Fight Blade is here. Wesley Snipes looks awesome. He's got the sunglasses indoors, he's got the you know, lots of black leather, he's got the body

armor on. He's got the Vampire Hunter Batman utility belt. So I think he's got a shotgun that shoots silver and when it hits the vampires, they dissolve into gray and orange. C g I ash. And then he's got little silver steaks, and he's got a katana that I guess must have silver in it. And he's got some kind of boomerang made out of silver lasers. I think he can throw like bombs of garlic sauce, and he

of course does martial arts. So he's he's just unloading all of all of the fighting skills on this club full of monsters. It just tears into them and it's marvelous. There was a really funny part where a vampire grabs two meat hooks off the wall that looked like they're there for decoration, I guess because his meatpacking district or something, and then runs at Blades swinging the swinging the meat hooks like nun chucks. Yeah, it takes him out, but

then donal Loge comes out. This is our vampire, Quinn. He's got a like big red beard and he's he's he's got a bunch of goons with sunglasses and he's like, that's him. Get him. We're gonna jack you up and make him hurt bad. And so you get a big fight scene, a bunch of waves of dudes in in very distinctive late nineties bad guy outfits. So it's all black clothes, sunglasses inside finger gloves, black wool caps that

kind of look. Of course, Blade beats them all. Then he pins donal Loge to the wall with spikes and uh uh and Quinn here he seems to be speaking some ancient language I think there's a there's a vampire lang Widge in this movie. Yeah and yeah. That part of the plot ends up revolving around vampire runes and glyphs that can't quite be deciphered and so forth. But Blade tells him, Okay, I'm tired of He says, I'm

tired of chopping you up. This time, I'll try fire, and he sets the vampire on fire, and then police show up. Blade quickly checks the party guy for bite marks. He has none, so he lets him go. Then Blade disappears and we cut straight to the hospital where Quinn's charred cadaver has arrived. There like oh, chard cadaver for you, and so here we're about to meet a major character, the hematologist Karen Jensen played by and Bouche Wright and uh some of so at first we have her and

some other doctor or pathologist. I don't remember the character's name, but uh, my main thing about this other guy is, I'm sorry, this guy just does not look like a doctor. I know a doctor can look like anything, but this guy looks like he's in a Beatles cover band. He has a floppy like Paul my Cartney mop cut. He just I don't buy it. He does seem like a pretty useless character at the time, but it becomes it becomes clear that it's an economic choice later on in

the picture. Yes, um so, uh so. Anyway, so he and he and Karen are talking and she's analyzing the blood sample from the cadaver and things are not adding up. She seems skeptical that the blood she's looking at actually came out of a dead person, and she says, the red blood cells are by convex, which is impossible a little bit of monster science. I did some digging on this. Red blood cells are in fact normally by concave, meaning there's a little dip in the middle of the disk,

like a like a bally. A biconvex red blood cell would be one that bulged out in the middle on both sides, really making it more like a sphere. And there are in fact medical conditions that cause red blood cells to become shaped more like a sphere. These are

known as ferocytosis. People with spirocytosis often experience u hemolytic anemia, which is where the spleen mistakes these spherical red blood cells for damage to dead cells and then destroys them, leading to the problem that that the body is constantly attacking and eliminating its own blood supply. Now, this may be fleshed out more in the in the comics or the Blade lore, but I feel like this is a bit of physiology in the movie that they don't go

into great detail about. But it really fits pretty well with the vampire mythos, like the vampires have a condition where their bodies are constantly destroying their own blood supply and they must replenish it. Fascinating. Yeah, somebody did their homework, man, you know, maybe Goya or maybe somebody else. Anyway, Dr Jensen uh and this other doctor talk and he's like, come look at this body. It's weird, and she's she says,

I thought you promised to give me some distance. So they clearly have a romantic history, but it's all over now, and he's like, no funny business. I just want you to come to the morgue with me. Uh. So, you know, they go and investigate the body. She notices, Wow, the maxilla looks a little deformed, the maxillos the upper jaw, and she's like, there's some odd muscle structure around the canines.

They're cutting this charred body with fangs open, and then the guy is in fact, he's like, hey, want to get back together, and they argue about that for a minute, and then just sudden, vampening the Crispy Donald, pops up. He kills the dude, he bites Karen. You think he's gonna kill her too, You think she's done for But then suddenly here's Blade in the hospital and he's like,

I came back to finish you off. Uh. And there's a brief fight, which is funny because the crispy vampire is obviously very slippery and sliding around, which is gross. But the police show up and shoot Blade a bunch of times, and he just yells at them in a moment that's quite hilarious. He says yeah um, and then Blade cuts the vampire's arm off, but the vampire escapes, jumping out a window, running off into an alleyway. He snarkles like a puma. And then Karen's down on the

hospital floor. She's gasping for help, and Blades about to walk away at first, but then he, you know, he's sort of he has a moment of compassion and he picks her up and takes her with him, and the cops give chase. They shoot Blade like a hundred times, but he's fine, he's got the armor on, he's all, you know, he's great. Uh. And then Blade jumps across the sky to the roof of another building, and then they escape in the Blade Mobile, which is great. Blade

drives like a sick muscle car. They get back to the hideout, the Fortress of Blatitude, and it's in some abandoned industrial park. You know, there's pipes and chains and catwalks everywhere. That's another late nineties action movie thing you gotta have, like industrial building. It takes place in somewhere that used to be a factory. There's catwalks galore. We hear Credence Clearwater Revival playing it's Bad Moon Rising, of course,

and we meet Whistler. Here's Chris Christofferson, who's got glorious long white hair and a beer to match. Whistler is like a rock and roll Santa Claus or like a rogue biker grandpa. And he's like, oh, you're bringing home strays now. You should have killed her, and Blade says, yeah, I know, but I didn't. Uh. And uh So they decide, well, okay, we'll watch her. We'll see if she turns or see if we can treat her. And they give her to

try to treat her vampire bite. They give her an injection of garlic juice which is straight go straight into the neck. It's supposed to stave off the transformation or slow it down or something. And when they give her the injection, you see puffs of smoke coming out of the holes in her neck. After this, well, we we do get a scene at the vampire it's like a bank, you know, where the vampires hang out. It's the corporate board of vampire dum uh rob, How would you describe

this scene? Oh, it's like a dark gothic crypt of a meeting room occupied by various again scary looking vampire lords, very you know, very egal in their own ways. Clearly they're going for like this feeling of like these are different, uh you know, from different lineages of the vampire history. But again we find out that they are all completely inapt and utterly harmless right there. All they do they gather here to discuss the things they're afraid of. Their

Like Judo Kier says, Blade it's a day walker. You know, he's still pursuing this ridiculous crusade against us, And then they invited Deacon Frost to tell him that he's a loose canon deacon. Again, this is Stephen dor If. He's the young, hip, good looking bad boy vampire. Uh, he's

not like these buttoned up square vampires. And they're like, you know, you're you're a loose cannon because there is a treaty that I think should prevent vampires from gathering in large numbers, and Frost runs nightclubs that violate this treaty, and they say, like, human politicians could make things very difficult for our kind if they found out about us, And I was like, I don't know what they Yeah, what would that look like? Frost thinks the vampires are

being too timid. He's like, hey, humans are food that you know, we should rule them, not hide from them. Yeah, and again yeah, they're very timid. Uh. Well again. One of the big positive steps that del Toro makes him Blade Too is making sure that old vampires are scary. Old vampires are inhuman and monstrous, and they have not only are they scary, but they have scary plans and Blade one, Yeah, they're just smug and complacent, right, and they mock Frost by saying, like, oh, you're not even

a pure blood vampire. I think the distinction is that they were born vampires to vampire parents, and Frost was just bitten and turned by someone and they sort of disdain him for that. Yeah, and this is this is the moment where you're just kind of left to imagine this for yourself, the idea of vampire mother's giving birth to baby vampires like Bokire was once a vampire baby Udo Kier and we just have to to briefly imagine what that consists of what that was like, did he

drink blood as a baby out of a bottle? Okay? So then we go back and visit our heroes again. Frost uh Um. Blade visits like an apothecary shop where he buys I don't know his regular doses of like essence of garlic, and then he also gets a serum which he uses to stave off I don't know he Basically the deal is we will find this out in more detail later, but Blade is like half of a vampire.

He's got some vampire characteristics but not others. He can go out in the daytime and all that, but he does need blood and he's like, well, I'm good now, so I can't drink people's blood, so I've got to get injections of this serum whatever this is. And there's there's generally concerned in the movie, Like we hear from Whistler that, uh, he's building up a tolerance for the serum and it's not working as well as it used

to and he's got to find a solution. Meanwhile, Karen, who the hematologists who they brought back, she like witnesses them talking about all this and witnesses Blade getting a dose of his serum. Uh and finally uh, and she's a little bit freaked out, but finally like they explain everything to her. Whistler introduces himself. His name is Abraham Whistler.

Of course. Uh. This is the scene where he's lighting a cigarette while he's pumping gas into the Blade mobile and Whistler kind of gives her like a vampires one oh one. It's like they're called hominous nocturna And we find a Whistler and Blade hunt them. They follow their movements. They go from city to city and she says, oh, so do you use crosses? And they say, no, crosses

do not work. They're very pointed about this. They say vampires are allergic to silver and garlic into sunlight, specifically U V rays. By the way, Whistler has rigged up a UV flashlight that I guess they can shine at vampires to hurt them. And though one of the one thing in this movie is that apparently vampires are fine going out in the daytime if they just put sunscreen on. This is literally a plot point, and I'm like, why don't they just do that all the time? Then, um,

I guess it's a lot of sunscreens oily. You know. Yeah, well, I know I know that I don't like the feeling of sunscreen either, but I mean, if you're the other option is a responsible thing to do. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so they explained to Karen, They're like, look, you gotta get out of town. Now that you've been exposed to the vampires. They're gonna be on the hunt for you.

And she thinks she can go to the police, but nope, vampires owned the police apparently, and Whistler gives her vampire mace, which is a spray canister of garlic and colloidal silver. So she's I think she's going to go off and

do her own thing. Oh and then in the meantime, we get a really funny scene with Udo Kier and Frost, where like Udo Kier goes into the I don't know, the Vampire computer Bank the archives, I guess, and he walks in and Frost is in there with like a laptop running doing all kind of weird AI stuff on these like glyphs and indea, and he's like, you're using a computer to decipher the ancient text, you fool. The ancient text can never be translated. You wouldn't even understand them.

And Frost is just petulantly like yeah uh. And then there I think one of the does does Udo Kier slap Frost in the face? Oh yeah, yeah, this is not at least you know that they create the effect of him just really slapping the heck out of him, and and Udo has like all the veins and his head bulging after he does it. It's it's it's very nice. It's a good slap. But then Blade drops Karen off in the city and he is a reckless driver. He is not he is not respecting pedestrians. Um, so she

goes into her building, and then there's a scene. I thought it was very cool because you know, he's like, keep your eyes open, but she's like, but it's the daytime. Shouldn't I be safe now at least? But she goes into her building and then she gets into the elevator and she notices that there are people in the elevator who have these weird tattoos on the back of their next, these little square glyphs. Uh. And I really liked this scene. I think I remember this scene from way back when

I watched it in the day. I was like, oh, wow, it's a big conspiracy, you know, It's like there are

humans who are in on it. Of course, we find out that the humans with the glyphs on their necks are vampire familiars, like they belong to a particular vampire and they do work for them during the daytime or in other you know, other things vampires can't do, and they're hoping that if they are a good familiar, the vampire will they're there, they're they're appointed vampire will eventually turn them, which is a major theme also in what we do in The Shadows. Yeah, yeah, this is this

is classic vamp stuff. I mean I guess I was this was this a deal that was in place in Dracula between Rinfield and uh his lordship. I do not recall what was in it for Renfield. I mean he was in it for the bugs and the glory. Uh yeah, but uh, beyond that, I don't remember if there was any because it's it's become such a frequent trope although they empire familiar relationship and fiction that I honestly can't remember if it's in Dracula or not. Yeah, I couldn't say.

Well so anyway, So Karen goes back to her apartment. Um, she gets a visit from a police officer. He's like, Hi, I'm Officer Krieger. For a second, I thought this guy was Matthew Perry from Friends, But no, it's not. It's just a guy who kind of looks like him. Uh. This is also I thought a great scene. UH can probably describe what happens here. I mean, basically, he has a it seems like he has a plausible story. He's like, your front door was open, your coworker said you're missing.

You were kidnapps, So I'm just checking in on you. And then it becomes that were quickly realized, oh, this guy is also a familiar. He's here, he's up to no good. But then Blade shows up and proceeds to beat the crap out of this cop for like six solid minutes of film time. Yes. Uh, and he's like, you work for this Glyph says, you belong to Deacon Frost.

We've been tracking Frost for a long time. Uh. And they find out that this cop is transporting blow for a vampire owned blood bank, which that was an l O L moment for me. It was like, oh my god, the vampire's own blood banks. Brilliant. Of course they did. Yeah, they're involved in everything, and of course they're gonna I own the blood banks, and I love how. In the scene right after this, Blade gets away with beating up

a uniformed police officer in the streets and nobody cares. Um. But then the cop gets away, like he runs off and um, and Karen's a little upset that she was used as bait, but she decides, well, okay, at this point, I just gotta stick with Blade. It's the only way I'm gonna survive long enough to find a cure for

a vampire bite. So they stake out the familiars police car, and then when he finally comes back, they tail him to a vampire club and there's uh uh, there's a great part where Frost like he goes into the club after him because they're trying to find the I don't know the archives or the secret place, and he's like, give Frost a message from me, tell him it's open season on all suckheads. So was that line in the script or did did did Snipes make that up? I

don't know. I vaguely remember there being some ad libs. I think maybe some of the more famous bladisms are the creation of of Snipes himself, So I'm not sure. So meanwhile, Frost is throwing a party in his penthouse, but he's not partying. He's busy translating the ancient texts like Udo Kier told him not to do. So he's got his Apple laptop really really burning the cpu. Uh

and it finally finishes translating and the translation. I didn't understand how this would work at all, but the translation appears to somehow construct a virtual reality environment of like a machine that would be used in a vampire ritual. Well, vampires at the day had access to those those really advanced MacBooks, so okay, you know they were working with

tech that we didn't have yet. But here also we see Quinn is back, you know, he's regenerated, he he grows back the limbs, he's lost and stuff, though he still looks kind of nasty. And the cops shows up to be like, oh, I got some bad news, you know, Blades onto you, and then Frost just uh, Frost just kills the cop and they're like, okay, we gotta get Blade alive. So and the next scene there is uh,

the next scene I thought was really unpleasant. There's this like big immobile jab of the Hut type vampire who they who Blade and Karen torture with a UV flashlight in order to get information out of him. And I found this scene really nasty. Yeah, because the vampire, who we learned its name is Pearl comes off, is really more to be pitied than to be blamed it so it really feels like kind of a mean spirited scene that that also doesn't really I don't know, And evidently

they had to come and get information from somebody. This is a find the you know, find an informant sequence in the investigation. But I don't know it would have It seems like it would have worked better had Pearl been doing anything other than just setting around looking at a computer. And I was also like, why is he a different type of creature than the other vampires, Like we didn't we don't see any other vampires who were like,

I don't know what whatever this type of vampire is. Yeah, and I mean I'm all for their being, you know, multiple vampire species and you know, go go go entirely vampire the masquerade on this business, but by all means, but yeah, none of it's actually explained well anyway, So the vampire screams about how Lamagra is coming, the spirits of the Twelve will awaken, will awaken the Blood God, and they so that they discover Blade and Karen discovered

this back room with the Book of Erebus, which they call the Vampire Bible. So it's you know, they're getting the backstory. They're they're learning what's going on. But then big fight breaks out because of course Quinn is back, all his all his goons are there with him. Big fight scene, and you think Blade is actually done for they like, pin him down, How's he going to get out of this? But then it's day a sex whistler

Chris Christofferson shows up and saves the day. Right before Whistler shows up, there's some great gloating from Quinn, including this scene where he pulls off his glove and shows off his mostly regenerated monster hand, which is a little bit floppy and grotesque. Great sequence. Another great scene for

Quinn to shine. So this is another big action sequence that the fight eventually leads off into a subway tunnel next to a moving train, which must be like six miles long, by the way, because it's just constantly going by forever. Once again, Blade beats Quinn with Karen's help. This time she like stabs him with blade sword and helps out on the fight. And they also cut off the other hand this time. Yes yeah, and then Quinn runs away uh and they escape a Blade and Karen

escape by hopping onto the subway train. Oh and Karen repays a favor from earlier. So here in the movie, her shoulders dislocated and Blade pops it back into place. In this scene, his shoulders dislocated and she pops it back into place. So you know, I pop and you pop you go. So here we get more backstory. There's exposition about you know, how Blade ended up the way he is, how Whistler gives a sermon sort of on how Blade works. He says, you know, I found him

when he was thirteen. He was drinking blood. We also get Whistlers backstory. We learned that his family was tragically killed by vampires and he's been hunting vampires ever since. And he says, you know, we fight them, but it's just getting worse. There's something going on in the vampire ranks and and Frost is behind it. Uh So they're trying to understand the hidden politics within the vampire organization.

The basic things we learned about Blade are that you know, he can he has some vampire attributes but not others because his his mother was bitten right before he was born, so uh so he like can go out in the daytime. Uh and he has the super strength of the vampire, so you think it's like the best of both worlds. But he also does need blood and that's like the serum problem that we learned about earlier. There was a

very funny soul searching scene that came after this. He says, like, I'm not human and um and Karen says, you look human to me, and he says humans don't drink blood, and then she's like, you know that was a long time ago. Maybe you need to let that go. You know, you haven't drink blood for quite some time. So at this point I think, I think my summary, he's got to become much more cursory. Uh so, Oh, there's a great moment back in the vampire compound where Quinn is

back after the fight. His face is all torn up because Blade held his face against the passing train. Um. He's also got a missing hand again, and like their vampire buddies there in the room or just like chewing on his stump and he's yeah, he's supposed to be banging his hand or something, and that they can't hail. It's like a dog, right, just has to has to have a bite. But they talked more about well, we

gotta we gotta take Blade alive. Oh, and then we see them make moves against the Board of Directors of Vampires. They take Udo Kier out to the beach for execution by sunrise, which is has some kind of bad looking special effects, but I also kind of liked them. Yeah, it's a weird special effects sequence because it's not it doesn't feel completely c g I. It almost has kind of a stop motion quality to it. Uh, it's any kind of he kind of smolders, than kind of melts

and then kind of petrifies and then explodes. So they fitted all in. Meanwhile, Karen has been doing some hematology science, so she's working on a cure for herself and for Blade. Uh. The Blade will end up not taking it in the end because it not only it would cure his need for blood, but it would also make him lose his superpowers, and in the end he's like, no, I gotta I

gotta fight vampires, So sorry, Um. But she's able to cure herself and she figures out that an anticoagulant called E D T A uh makes vam pire blood explode. So she makes a bunch of injectors of this stuff for for Blade, and there are some glorious vampire pump up explosions later on. Oh, absolutely glorious. Yes, let's see. So a few other scenes to mention. There's a scene where Blade goes into the city for serum, but then Frost shows up like he's just standing in a park

slathered in sun block. It is daytime, but he's got a human hostage, and then he gives Blade the whole we're not so different you and I speech. He's like, why don't you join us? Yeah, like you're gonna You're gonna make Blade switch sides. This is Blade after all. So Frost is totally trying to ice Skate Uphill in this scene, right. Uh and then but so yeah, that that does not go as Frost planned, though. Frost does try to execute his human child hostage and Blade saves

the kid's life. Uh so Blade, Blade is kind of harsh, like he doesn't show a lot of niceness or compassion, but he does come through in a pinch and help the humans out. Yeah, it's nice, purely superhero move and a reminder that Blade is a superhero and he still has that humanity, especially after you know the previous sequences where a lot of it is about the struggle for his humanity and is he's slipping, is he doomed to fall into the night? Um? Uh, you know with these

vampires and so forth. But whoops. While Blade was out in the city outrunning errands, the vampires attacked the hideout and they they kidnapped Karen and oh no, Whistler has been turned. And so there's a scene where, well you think Whistler kills himself because he's going to turn into a vampire. Apparently that doesn't take and he's back in the sequel, right right, Um, yeah, the screenplay tried to kill him, but you can't keep a great character down. Um,

so yeah, he's back for the sequel. Don't worry about him, even though it does seem like he is tortured nearly to death and then forced to take his own life. But here from this point out is just like showdowns until the end. So you know, Blade attacks the penthouse where he meets his mom, who it turns out she's been alive this whole time because she was turned into

a vampire and now she's bad. So you think it's gonna be nice that he meets her, but she's like, well, no, I'm a vampire now, and when you become a vampire, you become evil. So I'm evil and I don't like you. Yeah, And just talking about it here, you might think, what, well, is it was it necessary for Blade to become Hamlet

for a little bit uh in this film? And it might sound like it's unnecessary, but like beat by beat, I feel like this this part of the narrative is also really important to break up the action and really propel things forward. Uh yeah. And so Blade is captured by Frost's vampire army, and Frost is going to use Blades half vampire blood for a ritual which is going to summon the blood God or turn Frost into the blood God, I think. And so, so Blade is imprisoned

and then you do the ritual. Uh he Blade is saved by Karen. They try to execute Karen by throwing her into a zombie pit. Apparently sometimes when you buy a human, they don't turn into a vampire. Instead they turn into a zombie. And it's hey, it's her old friend, her old ex boyfriend, the doctor who's got the beetle haircut. He's a he's a zombie now, and he tries to eat her in a pit, but she escapes and then she saves the day. She like unlocks blades cage and

gets him out so he can he can ohh. And then she's also like, you need to drink my blood to regain your strength so you can fight all the bad guys. And this is exactly how it goes down. Blade proceeds to just absolutely womp all underlings within reach. And this is a this is a whole sequence where you know it's great martial arts action, but there's certainly some intended martial arts physical humor in this. And I'm sure there's a name for this in Hong Kong cinema

that I'm just not aware of. But like, Blade is just taking out Lack, He's left and right, uh, and it all reaches a fever pitch from me when Blade has he's down a vampire underling, perhaps a vampire. I think it's a vampire, and then proceeds to kick the vampire multiple times with both feet in the groin and then finally kicks the vampire so hard in the groin that the vampire flies up onto his feet again and

then he states him or something. It's marvelous. Yeah, there there are parts that kind of remind me of like the uh, the physical comedy within the fight choreography that you see in like some Jackie Chan movies. And and in all this we also dispense with some of the underlings. Mercury gets taken out by Karen. She's sprays her in the mouth with the garlic silver stuff in her head explodes.

Quinn has a has a wonderful death sequence where basically at the very start of the battle, he jumps at Blade, It's like, I'm gonna take you out, and Blade uh beheads him with a with a like a zip line. It's pretty great. Oh yeah. In fact, when he when he immediately takes up, it's very much like the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where and d pulls

out the revolver. It's just like, okay, that's that's that's done. Yeah, and he catches the shades, puts them on, and then it's oh because because Donald Log stole his his sunglasses, which is you do not take Blade sunglasses. Yeah, that's the final straw. There is a weird scene where Blade has to stake his mom, but he explains that he's like, I'm setting you free. I'm releasing you because it's not really her anymore because she's a vampire. Is that that's

how I read that? But now it's really it's just final showdown. It is it's Frost versus Blade, except Frost isn't quite Frost anymore because he's managed to pull off this ceremony. This ritual, there's kind of like a kind of like a Raiders of the Lost darc esque soul capture and absorption of the vampire c g I souls. Now Frost is Lamagra. Frost has the superhuman blood vampire powers, and he might just be too much for Blade to

take out. Yeah, there's a scene where Blade like cuts Frost in half, but then blow jumps out of his two halves and like grabs itself and pulls him back together. So he's it's destructible now that. Yeah, Blade goes to say the f and he can say the F out loud. He has to mount the f instead. In the end, though, how how do you defeat the blood god? Well, how

about some anti coagulant? Oh yeah, so yeah that Finally there's some some wonderful drama and the fight involving having to get ahold of those those vials of the of the anticoagulant. Blade is able to get it and stabs Frost with one of these vials and then proceeds to

just pelt him with the vials. Like a dozen of these vials are now stuck in Frost, filling him with the stuff, and we get a wonderful like hyper bloat and explode scene, and a wonderful bladeism from Blade himself where he tells us that some mother efforts are always trying to ice Skate uphill. Um. You can, we can discuss back and forth what it means, but you don't even have to. It's clear what it means. It's all in the context you it's It's one of the greatest

lines in cinematic history. It's like poetry. Okay, I think that's everything I have to say about Blade. Yeah, yeah, yeah, what else can you say, except you know, they imply at the end that there will be more Blade and lo and behold there was more Blade and lo and behold there there will be more Blade because we know now that mahrschela Ali is going to play Blade in an upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film, And uh yeah, I think this is terrific casting. With Delroy Lindo in it

as well. I can't help but wonder if he's going to play the new Whistler. Um. I have other questions as well, like are we gonna have to put up with scenes of where Blade is hanging out with Doctor Strange, or are they gonna let it be mostly uh its own world? Are they gonna let Blade say the F in this? I have no idea. Oh yeah, can you make an R rated m c U film? I don't.

I don't really know anything about that. Yeah, isn't. It's like sometimes they say, Okay, you can say the F X number of times and still not have an R. But can you ask Blade? Can you limit Blade in that fashion? I don't know. Okay, Well, I guess I gotta see the other older Blade movies. First. I'm kind of I mean, I like my herschel Ali, but but it's also hard for me to imagine anybody but Wesley Snipes in this role. It's like, as we were saying earlier,

it just is identical to him the actor. Yeah, it is. It is very hard to to imagine anyone other than Snipes. But I think Ali could do it. I think he has he has the acting chops, he has the physicality. And uh, I think I read that that he got Snipes his blessing. So okay, well we'll see. But who knows. Maybe Snipes will be in it. Maybe Snipes will be the new Whistler. Now that would be something. Okay, I

don't know. We'll see, we'll see how it develops. All right, all right, we're gonna go ahead and close the casket on this one. We didn't even talk about the cool space age caskets the head in this sleeping baskits um. But anyway, we're gonna go and close the casket on this one. We're gonna go and put a stake in it. But we'd love to hear from everyone out there who has thoughts on Blade, Uh, this movie Blade, other Blade films, films from this era right in, we would love to

hear from you. Weird House Cinema of course, publishes and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed every Friday. We're mostly a science and culture podcast, but on Friday's we set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. I blog about these episodes at some New to music dot com. Also, if you use letterboxed, you can go to that website and you can look us up. We're a weird House on that and there's a complete list of all the films we've covered there.

And sometimes I'll even go ahead and include the next film we're gonna cover in case you want to watch ahead huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your

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