Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
And I'm Joe McCormack. And on today's Weird House Cinema Rewind, we are bringing you an episode that aired July eighth, twenty twenty two. This was our episode on Blade. What more could you ask for?
Yeah, it seemed fitting. You know, we were kind of trying to ice skate Uphill this week with our workload, and so we had to call on Blade to come in and help us out a little this Friday. But I think it's fitting. Blade's been on my mind a little bit, but I'm checking out this video game Midnight Suns and when you get to control Blade and turn based combat, it's pretty fun. And we're still, I guess some ways away from the next Blade movie with Marshall Ali.
I understand that one has had some setbacks and changes occur, but hopefully they're going to get buy back on track. They're going to shoot that like in our neighborhood, and then it'll be ready for us sometime in like twenty twenty five or something.
Beautiful.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
And this is Joe McCormick, and hey today, are we getting into the Marvel Cinematic universe? Is this a Marvel superhero movie?
Well, no, not quite for the first question, but yes for the second question, because we're going to be talking about the nineteen ninety eight 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 DC films that we have, and certainly those have more in common with Blade.
We're talking about a solid R here, mostly for violence and language, a little bit of sexuality, but you know, several different 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. Like basically every other word is the F word. It's relentless.
Yeah, Blade as a superhero 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, and a lot of attitude. So this is a movie where we're once more getting pretty close up to the dawn of the millennium here and in the end of the millennium that we spend most of our time in than the century we spend most of our time in. Because this is ninety eight, I think the closest we've come to to breaking the millennium point has been Deep Blue Sea?
Is that ninety nine?
I think that 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 the way the fight senat are staged. 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, lots of casual depiction of futuristic digital devices like laptops and cell phones doing things that they absolutely did not do at the time in nineteen ninety eight, and no one finding this unusual, even though the movie is set in
the present and just lots of wires everywhere. Beyond that, I would say muted colors in general, with kind of harsh white lighting, like 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 these movies, you know, When I look back fondly, 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 vampires. 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 time Blade, really, anytime anyone is hit in this movie, I buy it. Like 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've we've 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, and there's also you can simply go to. I think HBO Max as of this recording in the US has all three of the original Blades of streaming. So Blade one, the excellent, Blade two, 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. It's well, basically, I think i'd only ever seen this first movie before I saw it, probably like eighth or ninth grade, so not too long after it came out. I think I watched a VHS tape of it in a friend's garage. So yeah, that's the setting.
Whistler, No, come on here for some reason put a movie on for you.
No, he just just he had a TV in his garage. I don't know why. We go in there and we watch Blade, because that's what you do. You're in eighth grade, it's nineteen ninety nine, and there you go.
So, wait, 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 two is everything that this film brings to the table. But then Gamma to Toro weirdness on top of that, so all sorts of like weird, quasi catholic imagery and strangeness. So I'll touch on a little bit of this as we perceive, but I'll try not to get into Blade two too much because oh, it's its own special treat.
Well, so that made me want to raise something. Germo del Toro obviously loves magic, and I wonder how his influence affects what I would consider the mostly materialist vampire idiology in 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. 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 was beholden to what was established in the first film, but he seems to embrace the materialist view of the vampire. But with the key difference being for Norrington and company in this film, yeah, 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 and they drink blood.
Yeah. Though 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 depth than any human character that he might be dealing with.
Now, another thing that sort of sets Blade apart that I think I noticed when I first watched it back in the day 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. 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 in that one, the vampire hunters have all kinds of technology and stuff. Don't they now.
Actually, John Carpenter's Vampires came out the same year. I'm not sure exactly like where they fall 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 was kind of a change up on my expectations because the earlier you know, the vampire hunter is more of a sort of a holy warrior, kind of a kind of a priest slash professor who wields a stake and a cross and all that. Again, you know, you're your 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 gizmo's
and gadgets. He's like Batman. He's got a you know, utility belt full of stuff.
Yeah, he is a secular vampire hunter as opposed to the holy man that we see certainly in the in European traditions but also in Eastern traditions as well, stuff like mister vampire. You know, that's the throw of a holy man to deal with the vamps. I wish they had had some rice in this movie, though, oy they use the garlic, but they don't use any rice.
A glutinous rice dealer scene was really set Blade apart.
Oh, 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 Wesley Snipes. Wesley Snipes brings a kind of I don't know, a like a weird poise and a 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 hear 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 nineteen ninety eight's Blade.
Eh, better wake up.
The world you live in is just a sugar coated topper. There's another world. Believe it the real world. For thousands of years, they have existed among us. You keep your eyes open there everywhere. Chances are you're seeing him yourself and didn't know it a secret nation. Our livelihood depends on our ability to blend in with the lust for power.
We should be ruling the humans. These people are our food.
They've got their clauset everything, politics, finance, real estate.
There's a war going on out there.
He mixed the weapons I use the Warder Group. Now one will lead them to conquer mankind. Tonight the age of man comes to an end. We're going to be.
Gods, and one will try to stop him dead.
There were things out tonight than vampires like me.
Blade trailers were bad in the nineties.
Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't love it. Maybe it's different depending on an age and what one is nostalgic for. But yeah, this is a trailer where I'm like, no, no, no, the movie's 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?
All right? Starting at the top, the director is Stephen Norrington born nineteen sixty four. This is This isn't the first time we've discussed Stephen Norington, as he did creature designs on nineteen ninety two Split Second. That really fun, Rutger Hower, 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. 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 do see more of it, you realize it's kind of a mix between a Xeno morph and Judge Death from the Judge Dread
comic books. All right. So, Norrington is a London born effects makeup artist who worked on such films as Aliens, Young Sherlock Holmes, Hardware, Alien three, and Jim Henson's The Storyteller, and then he would go on to direct the film Death Machine, which had Brad Dorif 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 Gentlemen. But I believe he has continued to work in effects in 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 The Storyteller, which has marvelous special effects. I love it.
Yeah, yeah, Storyteller is a lot of fun.
Those oh the Medusa statue coming to life and all the ooh, yeah, that's great stuff. 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. 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 kind of had to question what they were doing with their lives at that point. Yeah, I guess, but I don't know. But I haven't seen it. Maybe I would actually enjoy it, I don't know. 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 literally twitching, like they're just going to start dancing at any second, while the daylight world often feels languid and 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, oh, oh, I don't like that. It feels bad.
Yeah, all right, so that's Norington, that's the director. Screenwriter on this is David S. Goyer born. Yeah, this is a huge name in the screenwriting world. His earliest screenplay credit is for Death Warrant, a Jean Claude van Dam martial arts movie from nineteen ninety and he followed that up with Albert Pyne's Kickboxer two, which did not start Jean Claude van Dam. And he also did the Charles Band produced Peter Minoogian directed horror film Demonic Toys in nineteen ninety two.
Is this just a parallel to the puppet Master movies or was it trying to sort of copycat them.
I think it was part of you know, this is certainly getting into the area of Charles Band and company figuring out what works and then like 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 Jetson's Meet the Flintstones, except their toys with like drills and razors attached to them.
Now. He went on to work again for band Camp on the nineteen ninety three film Arcade, but he quickly moved up from there, working in TV and film projects until he collaborated with Alex Proys and Lim Dobbs on nineteen ninety eight Dark City. Just an xyent weird film.
In my opinion, Dark City is amazing 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 it definitely made a huge impression on me now. I should also mention though, that same year, Goyer was also involved in the Nick Fury Agent of Shield TV movie that starred David Hasselhoff. So and he was already getting in and getting a little marvelly with his screenwriting.
I did not know that existed, but in any rate, Yeah.
Then he moves on to Blade and Blade it's kind of the perfect Goyer screenplay, when you say, especially when you consider many of the projects that came afterwards. It's a dark largely serious comic book adaptation. He followed this up with screenplays for again the excellent and weird Blade two,
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 bladeism in it, so it 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 the F in them. Yeah. Now, Blade Trinity was said to be a difficult shoot, but Goyer didn't give up on directing. He 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 yeah, Goyer is a huge name. You can't really 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 Goyer did not invent Blade. This was the work of two comic book creators, credited to first of all, Marv Wolfman. 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 Helsings, 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, and the original incarnation was more of a like a thoroughly nineteen seventies affair, like he had wooden teak daggers. I believe he had
like a large afro hairdow. So you know, he's very much inspired by some of the cinema of that time period. And the other character creator, Gene call It Klan, was born nineteen twenty six through twenty eleven. He was the artist and I think he has said in past interviews that he based part of the look of Blade on Jim Brown, as well as other famous black actors of the time. Now, Colom worked on the comics Daredevil Is where well as Howard the Duck. He also co created
the heroes Falcon and Carol Danvers. But going back to Wolfman, 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 is correct on that and fun fact, there was actually a previous Japanese animated adaptation of The Tomb of Dracula comic came out in nineteen eighty, but I do not believe it has Blade in it, though the character does show up in the nineteen ninety Spider Man cartoon. I don't know if you watched this, Joe, but you
know this was a fun cartoon. It came on the afternoons after you got him from school, and they eventually just throw every Spider Man related character in so blades showing up. Morbius 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 stare 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 as Morbius. It's just a guy standing there.
Yeah, well, maybe that's one of the reasons they cut it out. All right, let's get to the actors here. So yes, Blade is Wesley Snipes. Wesley Snipes is Blade. Wesley Snipes was born nineteen sixty 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 two in two thousand and two, Blade Trinity in
two thousand and four. One of his earliest credits is a nineteen eighty four episode of All My Children, followed by early roles in such films as Wildcats eighty six, Streets of Gold same year, Critical Condition from eighty seven, but then in eighty nine he appeared in Major League, followed by King of New York starring Christopher Walkin in nineteen ninety, and then a whole string of just huge films in the early nineties, New Jack City, Jungle Fever,
White Men Can't Jump, Passinger 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? Yeah, something that is okay.
The premise is they froze. It takes place in a sort of in a very softened do you in 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 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, Snipes post Blade Trinity, he had some well known legal issues, but I believe he's worked pretty steadily since then. He notably showed up in The Expendables three Dolomite 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 twenty 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 worth looking at, right.
Oh yeah. I Also, I don't want to spoil too much about that. I mean, obviously we're going to spoil everything about Blade because you know, we got to talk about the like the ritual at the end and stuff. But for a different show, 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 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 Sagall, because both actors are of the same era. Both actors were allegedly difficult on set, or
could be difficult on set in some cases. 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 Sigal was always going for in these films, but not quite an al So Snipes kind of captures what Sigal 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 silly action hero roles, Snipes is actually a good actor, and I don't think that can be said of Steven Sagall.
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 where we turn to Deacon frost Our van Beier, villain in this film, played by Stephendorf born nineteen seventy three.
Oh, I think Dwarf as Deacon Frost is better than mediocre. I found him delightfully fun as the villain in this He's fun.
I don't know, something always felt a little lacking for me in this character. Not bashing the performance at all. I feel like he delivers on what they were going for here, 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, 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 idea is Deacon Frost is taking this vampire thing a little too far, you know. He's like, 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, and he's hilariously inept and dealing with any internal threats clearly. 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.
No, 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.
Yeah, and they're like theres what can you do?
Yeah, and then later just wipes them out 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. 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 Love that says we cannot kill you, or or something like, oh, Deacon Frost, thank goodness you
are doing the blood harvesting for us. Otherwise if you want so important, and we would just get rid of you. There's no reasons 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'mudokier.
I don't know, all right. So Dwarf, though he's been around a while, started off as a child actor, appearing in the nineteen eighty seven film. One of his earlier roles was the eighty seven film The Gate, about kids summoning up demons at home, but most of his earlier credits or TV roles, but some bigger screen rolls would come around with nineteen ninety two is the Power of one ninety four's Backbeat, as well as Stuart Gordon's Space
Truckers in nineteen ninety six. Post Blade, he was in such films as John Waters Cecil Beat Him ented in two thousand The If Memory Serves Terriblefear dot Com and thousand and.
Two, Wait, what are you saying bad about Fear dot Com?
I mean, maybe it would be fun in retrospect, but at the time even I remember watching Fear dot Com and it was just, oh, 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 is like the one of the worst Ring knockoffs, I guess of the era.
I think it actually might have come out first, slightly before the American Ring at least. Oh okay, I'm not positive about that.
At any rate. It's bad. Now. I don't have much to say about a lot of these roles, but I do think that Dwarf was pretty great in the third season A True Detective. He really wowed me in 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 his career. But as this character, Detective Roland West in A True Detective, I really liked him in that.
Yeah, I agree, he grizzled. Well.
Oh, one more thing about him. A fun fact. He's the son of composer Stevedorf, who composed the score for the nineteen eighty seven film My Best Friend as a vampire. All right, next actor we're going to talk about here, Chris Christofferson is in this was the character Whistler. The Whistler is blades tech man, his backup. He's his Q, always providing him with cool new gadgets with which to kill the blood drinkers.
Except he's not whimsical like Q. You know, don't touch that Doublo seven. Instead, he's a well to come back to the theme of grizzled, he is as grizzled as it gets.
Yeah, he is grizzled to the max. And 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 Chris stofferins it's like, yep, yep, I can do it. Yeah, smoking constantly guzzling. Jack Daniels, it's great.
Out of the bottle without pouring it in the glass.
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, it has like his leg and a brace too. Right. So this is Chris Christofferson, very well known name singer, songwriter turned actors. Some of his biggest songs that he wrote were Me and Bobby McGhee for the Good Time, Sunday Morning, coming Down and helped
Me make It through the Night. His first movie was nineteen seventy one's The Last Movie, written and directed by Dennis Hopper, and he also starred in the movie Cisco Pike the same year, and he followed these up with such nineteen seventies films as well a pair of Sam peckinpop films, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, as well
is Bring Me the head of Alfredo Garcia. 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 Barbara Streisand in A Star Is Born.
Oh was he playing the Bradley Cooper role in that version of it?
Yeah? Yeah, he's the character that Bradley Cooper. Would revisit the remake. Now, I can't. We can't touch on all the films that Christopherson has been. He was in a ton of stuff during his career, but some of the others that stand out, at least to me are nineteen eighty Seven's Gate, nineteen eighty eight's Big Top Peewee, nineteen eighty nine's Millennium. He was in John Sayliss'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. 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 movie, So wait 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 working more Whistler. So even though, okay, but he comes back very early. It's not really a big plot, but 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?
I think there's a little vampireeness 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. Chris Christofferson was also in the weird movie Trouble in Mind from nineteen eighty five, 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 on Weird House Cinema, if it were not for some of the less savory aspects of the character he plays in the film and now, Chris Kostofferson is really good in it, and so Our Divine Keith Carrodine
and Joe Morton. But for my taste anyway, Rudolph makes some choices with the protagonist that end up tarnishing the film for me anyway. At this point in his career, Christofferson is still alive as of this recording, but is retired from acting in music these days. His last film role was twenty eighteens Blaze, directed and written by Ethan Hawke.
Not Blade, but Blaze Blaze.
Yeah, so it kind of went out. I guess I 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 hunter's assistant slash tech slash mechanic. But let's see, in a sort of materially based vampire scenario, you need a hematologist in this. It wouldn't be a movie without a hematologist, somebody who can explain all the blood science. And wouldn't you know it, we happen to run across a hematologist quite early in the film.
Yep, it's Karen, played by bouche Wright born nineteen seventy, known for such films as nineteen ninety five's Dead Presidents, ninety two zebra Head, and nineteen ninety four is Fresh. So yeah, she kind of this is in more of a modern film, you know, So she's not merely a
damsel in distress. She is in distress a few times and Blade does saf her, 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 bouchet 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 a vampire and needs rescuing by Blade. But yeah, over the course of the film, she becomes more and more active in fighting back, and yeah, so she invents some chemical weapons to use against the vampires, and she gets a really good sword stab in on Donald Logue at one point and makes some vampires explode with some garlic spray. She's great.
Yeah. Another actor of note in this is Sina Lathan, who plays Blade's mom Vanessa, we see at the very beginning in this flashback. Born nineteen seventy one, she had a much bigger career post Blade, actually starring in two thousand eleven Basketball and Brown Sugar from two thousand and two, directed by Rick Familuwa. She's also the lead in two thousand and fours Alien Versus Predator, whoa. She had a recurring role on such TV shows as Niptock, Secession and Family.
Guy, So she's the main character in Alien Versus pres Editor, I haven't seen that in a long time, but I remember having a thought about her character in 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 did good back there, and then I think they give her a trophy or something, and then they fly off and then she is left standing by
herself in the middle of Antarctica. So it's like, oh, she would definitely die.
Well, you know, the predators they don't really know how humans work all that much.
I guess, yeah, 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, an excellent vampire hinchman to mister Frost here.
This character is a lot of fun. This is a great villain, 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 always going nuts vampire dancing on tables, taunting people with the kind of Southern accent, and to use a goyrism, they said, I got to get me one of those.
Yeah, I think I can see the connection here. You both also get crispy and keep on vamping, you know, both fun characters with similar traits. I think Paxton and Log each kind of make them their own. I think Paxton's characters may be a little more Texan and Log's character Quinn here's a little more dude, you know. But yeah, I can see the connection between these two anyway. In my opinion, Quinn is the best villain role in the
film by far, though. I do like the relationship that they develop 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 work those out. Well.
There's a great scene where you think Fraud is gonna like cut off Quinn's arm, but he's just joking with him. He's like, no, no, it's I'm playing.
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.
But yeah, they're bros.
But there are bros. Yeah, but are they real? 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 Log's 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's Gettysburg, and these smaller roles continue. He even pops up in nineteen ninety six Jerry Maguire. He played Jimmy the Cab Driver and several MTV promos in the early
nineties as well. I don't know if you remember these, No, just kind of a chance for outlandish character work from logan those. He's worked a lot since Blade, but some of the highlights include David Fincher's Zodiac. In two thousand and 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 Torrek. He's not on the show a lot, but 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 just full of energy. You know, 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 movie if it didn't have Udo Kier in it.
Yeah, and Udo Kier in it plays Dragonetti. U is our top vampire lord or vampire baron, at least in the local what is I don't even know what city this was supposed to be. I think they filmed parts of it in Canada and parts of it in California. It's vaguely, it's not important. It is just the city, so American, big city.
It's never specified. Parts of it look more like an East Coast city like New York. Parts of it definitely look like La So. I'm not sure, but yeah, Udo Kier, he is the CEO of the vampires in this movie.
Yeah, So Kier oh Man Kier has been in a lot so German born actor with two hundred and seventy five credits on IMDb. I don't know if I said I may have said it already. Born nineteen forty four, still very much alive, still active. He's one of these actors who seems to have been in everything and become an icon for this weird mix of popular but also art house and just utter B movies. And in less than be Like, there's some some really really really low budget looking like video game adaptations.
He's beIN in 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 he's one of these guys that like, like, no, no, none of these movies have slowed him down, 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. He started acting on screen in the late sixties, and appeared in such films as a
nineteen seventies Mark of the Devil opposite Herbert Lohm. 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 dragt Ala, both famously produced in part by Andy Warhol, so pretty legendary for those roles. In nineteen seventy seven, he played doctor 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 he tells her about witches.
Yeah. So Kier has been in lots of European films and in general just lots of films. He was in ninety five's Johnny Numonic, He was in nineteen ninety four's Ace Venture a Pet Detective. He was in nineteen ninety six's 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 Magda. It was in the Gido. You'll make my guess.
I saw that in theaters. That's one of those Christian apocalypse movies. It's all about the anti Christ and the end times. The anti Christ played I think by Michael York Basil Exposition from the Austin Powers movies.
In two thousand and two, Kiera was also in Fear dot Com. He's like, let me have some of that Fear dot Com action, and.
I won't go to that website, do not?
I don't know, we can't vouch for that website. But again, artful and terrible movies kind of find a perfect balance in udo Kier and this trend continues to this very day. Most recently, his twenty twenty one film Swan Song earned a great deal of praise, in which he plays a formerly flamboyant hairdresser, Ejing flamboyant hairdresser. And yeah, that one. I was reading articles about that one on NPR. Oh, but Joe, he was in another movie that I know
that you've mentioned to me before. He was in two thousand and fourst Trackla three thousand.
Yeah, that's right. Dracula three thousand is a direct to 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, so it's also got coolioh Erica Elanyak, and Tommy Lister, Tiny Lister. I'm going to say I saw Dracula three thousand circa two thousand and 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 be able to describe everything that happens afterwards. It's that would be a feat of the brain. The plot is, I think that there's a space ship helmed
by Casper van Deen. I think he's literally named Captain Abraham van Helsing and they 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 cave. He's a Halloween costume of a vampire, but in a spaceship movie.
Because it sounds like you're working up yet like a space vampire, like a yeah, something like from Planet to the Vampires or something, or something even more alien. But yeah, you had shared a picture of this, and yeah it's just straight up department store vampire.
No, he's literally just like Ivon Tusak your blood and so Udo Kierra is in this movie too, but he appears in such a way that, 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. He does not interact with the rest of
the cast as far as I recall. He plays the dead captain of the Daryl like 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 kind of stuff.
All right. Next up, I guess we got to try and move a little quicker through these other names. But so we have Quinn as one of the vampire lackeys. We also have a character named Mercury. She's a super fast, blonde vampire and played by Arle Hovert born nineteen seventy one. Spanish dancer turned actor went on to appear in such films as Vampire Slas mirtosire of the Wolves, and David Fincher's the girl with the dragon tattoo. She vamps it up good here.
Yeah, she's great'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 This the prosthetic that goes in your mouth can make your cheeks a little puffy, So you kind of get that vampire teeth cheek puff going on with a lot of the actors here. Yeah, all right. We also have Tracy Lord's in this playing the character Raquel. This is the vampire who leads our bro victim of human to the vampire
rave early on in the film. Yeah, so just a small role, but Lords born sixty eight, who basically transitioned out of notoriety into what would become a solid mainstream acting career. She was. Her first such role was in nineteen eighty eights 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 that's particularly good, but it exists, I mean, especially given how great the original Not of This Earth was. But anyway, she's been in a bunch of stuff. She's in John Waters Cry Baby. Not long after that, she did a lot of TV for such series as mcgiver, Highlander, Tales from the Crypt, melrose Place, Roseanne Nash Bridges, and Will and Grace. Okay,
smaller roles. Now, 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 Schules born seventy two. Matt Schuls is interesting because he returns in Blade two as an entirely different vampire, a Blood Pack member named Chupa and Matt Schules has been in a number of movies over the years, including two thousand and one ones
Fast and the Furious. In twenty eleven's Fast five, in which he plays a character named Vince who's 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 too. And played a different jacked 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 twenty eleven, I don't think so. I don't recall it. Maybe it was a flashback. This is the big.
This is not Vin Diesel, this is not Ludacris, this is yeah, 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. There are a number of really cool looking vampire lords setting around the table with Udo. Most of none of them do anything, most of them do not talk, but several of them look really cool, and Okamiro certainly
looks cool. Hawaiian born American actor stuntman and martial artists you've definitely seen in something, even if it's just playing wingcong hatchet Man in nineteen eighty six is big trouble in Little China. 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, the ninety five version Bloodsport three, and much more.
Oh who was he in the ninety five Mortal Kombat? I watched that probably one 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 long beard, bald head, you know, kind of a tough guy look. So yeah, 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 him.
Is not.
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, Frost, you have no idea what you're doing, or to one of the underlings. You know, he's going to get you all killed, right, and that's sort of that's all that it ever amounts to, all right. Note on the music, Mark Isham did the music here Night Moore nineteen fifty one. 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 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 involve some like a massive drop of acid techno.
So yeah, there are several points where like, oh, Blade gets out the sword and then immediately it's down, down, down down. Yeah that kind of thing.
Yeah, I love it. But anyway, the score wise, marc Issham also did such films as two thousand and fourth Crash, A Bad Lieutenant Port of Carl New Orleans two thousand and seven is the missed time Cop Romeo is bleeding fire in the sky Point Break the Hitcher, Trouble in Mind, which I mentioned earlier, Never cry Wolf from eighty three. He was nominated for an oscar for nineteen ninety Two's a river runs through it. So yeah, he's a big deal and it's still working. Cool now. A quick note
on the stunts and fights. There are a few different names that are tied up in the stunt working choreography. Henry King Junior and Jeff and Mata are credit with stunt coordinator Honors. Imata is a longtime stuntman and martial artists who has worked in tons of notable films including Blade, Runner, Dreamscape, Prince of Darkness, and Big Trouble in Little China. While he's in Big Trouble 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 longtime stumming All right, let's bust into the plot of Blade a bit more. Huh.
All right, 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, 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 sixty seven and you see a woman being rushed through a hospital on a stretcher and she's about to give birth, but she also has vampire byte marks on her neck, and you see like her id 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 lapse shots of a city. I was trying to figure out what city, but I think it's just it's
intentionally nonspecific. A side note on this cinematography. I was thinking, what is the effect on the viewer created by time
lapse footage of human activity in a city? And to my mind, it has a kind of de individuation 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, it 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, an 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 weird 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 burn 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 Lord's, 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, dancers. There's one dancer there who can kind of teleport. I think that's what's her name?
Who? Oh Mercury, yeah.
Mercury yeah, and they're playing. At first, I was like, is this e DM? But Robbie corrected me, 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. The DJ has flashlights strapped to his glasses. I think we see Stephen Dorf wandering around in the crowd. The rave scene is very late nineties. But then we see that DJ like unveils a giant banner saying blood bath and then what do you know, The sprinkler system kicks on and it's just spray and blood on everybody.
This is before we started recording. Seth was asking me, oh, its Blade 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 when the blood can 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.
They get human plumbers to do that.
Well, if they are there, they're vampire familiars. They have the glyph on the back of their neck and there they know. They install these and cities across the United States and 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 bearing 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 be eat him up and scare him. Yeah, 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 very sort 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 going to 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. This is not a good ratio. So the guy's 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 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 cgi 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 look like they're there for decoration. I guess because it's meatpacking district or something, and then runs at Blades, swinging the swinging the meat hooks like nunchucks.
Mm hmm. Yeah, it takes them out.
But then Donal Logue comes out. This is our vampire Quinn, who'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, make him hurt bad. And so you get a big fight scene, a bunch of waves of dudes 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 Logue to the wall with spikes and and Quinn here he seems to be speaking some ancient language. I think there's a vampire language in this movie.
Yeah and yeah. The part of the plot ends up revolving around vampire runs 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. They're like, ooh, charred cadaver for you. And so here we're about to meet a major character,
the hematologist Karen Jensen, played by In bouchet Wright. And so at first we have her and some other doctor pathologist. I don't remember the character's name, but 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, and he has a floppy like Paul McCartney 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 so 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 bi 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 bi convex 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 no as fherrocytosis.
People with spherrocytosis often experience hemolytic anemia, which is where the Spleen mistakes these spherical red blood cells for damaged or dead cells and then destroys them, leading to the problem that the body is constantly attacking and eliminating its
own blood supply. Now this may be fleshed out more 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. You know, somebody did their homework, you know, maybe Goy or maybe somebody else.
Anyway, doctor Jensen and this other doctor talk and he's like, come look at this body. It's weird. And 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, wants you to come to the morgue with me. So, you know, they go and investigate the body. She notices, Wow, the maxilla looks
a little deformed. The maxilla is 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. They argue about that for a minute and then just sudden, vamping the Crispy Donnell pops up. He kills the dude, he bites Karen. You think he's going to kill her too. You think she's done for it. But then suddenly here's blade in the hospital and he's like,
I came back to finish you off. 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. Yeah, he says the ass yeah, and then Blade cuts the vampire's arm off, but the vampire escapes, jumping out a window, running off into an alleyway. He snarls like a puma. And then Karen's down on the
hospital floor. She's gasping for help, and Blade's about to walk away at first, but then he, you know, he 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. 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 buildings. It takes place in somewhere that used to be a factory. There's catwalks galore. We hear Creden's Clearwater Revival playing. It's Bad Moon Rising, of course, and
we meet Whistler. Here's Chris Christofferson, who's got glory, long white hair and a beard to match. Whistler is like a rock and roll Santa Claus or like a rogue biker grandpa.
Yep, yep.
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. And 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, goes 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, 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 Rob. How would you describe this scene?
Oh, it's just like a dark gothic crypt of a meeting room occupied by various again scary looking vampire lord, very you know, very regal in their own ways. Clearly they're going for like this feeling of like these are different, you know, from different lineages of the vampire history. But again we find out that they are all completely inept and utterly harmless.
Right all they do they gather here to discuss the things they are afraid of. They're like, oh, udo Kier says Blade, it's a day walker. You know, he's still pursuing this ridiculous crusade against us. And then they invite in Deacon Frost to tell him that he's a loose cannon. Deacon again, this is Stephen Dwarf. He's the young, hip, good looking bad boy vampire. 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 night clubs 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, would they?
Yeah, what would that look like?
Frost thinks the vampires are being too timid. He's like, hey, humans are food, you know, we should rule them, not hide from them.
Yeah, and again, yeah, they're very timid. Well again, one of the big positive steps that del Toro makes him Blade two 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, 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 mothers giving birth to baby vampires like Udoki was once a vampire baby Udo Kier and we just have to briefly imagine what that consists of and 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 Oh, 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 basically the deal is. We'll 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 generally concern in the movies, like we hear from Whistler that 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, and finally, 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, 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 Hominus nocturna. And we find that 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 and to sunlight, specifically UV 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 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 I guess it's a lot of sunscreen's 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 and they're like, look, you got to get out of town. Now that you've been exposed to the vampires. They're going to be on the hunt for you. And she thinks she can go to the police, but nope, vampires own 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, these like glyphs, and 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 and then I think one of them does, does Udo Kier slap Frost in the face?
Oh yeah, yeah, this is not at least you know, 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. So she goes into her building and then there's a scene. I thought this was very cool because you know, he's like, keep your eyes open, and she's like, but it's 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 necks, 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 there. They're they're they're appointed vampire will eventually turn them. Just 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 Renfield and 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 or yeah, but uh, beyond that, I don't remember if there was any cause it's it's become such a frequent trope of the vampire 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, 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 it's just a guy who kind of looks like him. This is also I thought a great scene can probably describe what happens here.
I mean, basically, he has a a it seems like he has a plausible story. He's like, yeah, your front door was open. You're a coworker said you're missing, you were kidnapped, so I'm just checking in on you. And then it becomes but we quickly realize, oh, this guy's 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, and he's like, you work for this Glyph says you belong to Deacon Frost. We've been tracking Frost for a long time. And they find out that this is transporting blood for a vampire owned blood bank, which that was an LOL moment. For me, it was like, oh my god, the vampires owned blood banks. Brilliant.
Of course they did, ye, They're involved in everything, and of course they're going to 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. But then the cop gets away, like he runs off, and Karen's a little upset that she was used as bait, but she decides, well, okay, at this point, I just got to stick with Blade. It's the only way I'm going to 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 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 suck heads. So was that line in the script or 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 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 Udokier told him not to do. So he's got his Apple laptop really really burning the CPU 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 access to those really advanced MacBooks. Yeah, 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 grows back the limbs, he's lost and stuff, though he still looks kind of nasty. And the cop shows up to be like, oh, I got some bad news, you know, Blades onto you and then Frost. Frost just kills the cop and they're like, okay, we got to
get Blade alive. So in the next scene, there is 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 learn its name is Pearl comes off is really more to be pitied than to be blamed. So it really feels like kind of a mean spirited scene that that also doesn't really I don't know. Evidently they had to come and get information
from somebody. This is a 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 there being you know, multiple vampire species and you know, go go go entirely vampire the masquerade on this business 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, get 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 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 DIOSX 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 in with Blade's sword and helps out on the fight.
And they also cut off the other hand this time.
Yes, yeah, And then Quinn runs away and they escape. Blade and Karen escape by hopping onto the subway train. Oh and Karen, he pays a favor from earlier. So earlier 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.
There you go.
So here we get a 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 Whistler's 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 Frost is behind it. So they're trying to understand the hidden politics within the vampire organization. The basic things we learn about Blade are that, you know, he has some vampire attributes but not others because his mother was bitten right before he was born, so he like can go out in the daytime, 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 seerum 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 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 drank
blood for quite some time. So at this point, I think, I think my summary's got to become much more cursory. So oh, there's a great moment back at 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. He's also got a missing hand again, and like their vampire buddies there in the room are just like chewing on his stump and he's.
Cut that out. Yeah, he's supposed to be banging his hand or something, and that they can't. Hell, it is like a dog, right, just has to has to have a bite.
But they talked more about well, we got to we gotta take Blade a lot. 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 him.
Yeah, it's a weird special effects sequence because it's not it doesn't feel completely cgi. It almost has kind of a stop motion quality to it. It's any He kind of smolders, then kind of melts, and then kind of petrifies and then explodes, So yeah, fit it all in.
Meanwhile, Karen has been doing some hematology science, so she's working on a cure for herself and for Blade. The Blade will end up not taking it in the end because 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 fight vampires, so sorry. But she's able to cure herself, and she figures out that an anticoagulant called ed Ta makes vampire
blood explode. So she makes a bunch of injectors of this stuff 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, it's lathered in sunblock, it is daytime, but he's got a human hostage, and then he gives Blade the whole weird 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 Crost is totally trying to ice Skate Uphill in the scene.
Right and then, but so, yeah, that does not go as Frost planned, though. Frost does try to execute his human child hostage and Blade saves the kid's life. 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 a 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 slipping, is he doomed to fall into the night, 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 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, Yeah, the screenplay tried to kill him, but you can't keep a great character down. 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, it's just like showdowns until the end. So you know, Blade attacks the penthouse where he meets his mom, who it turns out how she's been alive this whole time because she was turned into a vampire and now she's bad. So you think it's going to 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, well, is it was it necessary for Blade to become Hamlet for a little bit in this film? And it might sound like it's unnecessary, but like beat by beat, I feel like this part of the narrative is also really important to break up the action and really propel things forward.
Yeah. And so Blade is captured by Frost's vampire army, and Frost is going to use Blade's 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 Blade is imprisoned and then you do the ritual. Blade is saved by Karen. They try to execute Karen by throwing her into a zombie pit. Apparently sometimes when you bite 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 beatle haircut. 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 Blade's cage and gets him out so he can oh oh oh. 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 taken out lack, He's left and right, and it all reaches
a fever pitch for me. When Blade has he's downed 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 are parts that kind of remind me of like the 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 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 and it's like, I'm going to take you out, and Blade 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 Quin, it's very much like the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy pulls out the revolver. It's just like, oh, okay, that's that's done.
Yeah, Olie catches the shades, puts them on, and then it's yeah.
Oh because because Donald Logue stole his his sunglasses, which is you do not take Blade sunglasses.
Yeah, that's the final straw. U.
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 Ark esque soul capture and absorption of the vampire CGI souls, and now Frost is La Maagra. Frost has these 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 from aust in half, but then the blood jumps out of his two halves and like grabs itself and pulls him back together. So he's it's destructible now.
Yeah, Like, Blade goes to say the f and he can't say the F out loud. He has to mount the f instead.
In the end, though, how do you defeat the blood god? Well, how about some anti coagulant?
Oh yeah, so yeah, that Finally, there's some wonderful uh drama in the fight involving having to get a hold
of those those vials of the of the anticagulant. 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 up hill. You can, we can discoutiful 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. 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, they'll there will be more Blade because we know now that maherschela 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. I have other questions as well, like are we going to have to put up with scenes of where Blade is hanging out with doctor Strange or are they going to let it be mostly its own world? Are they going to let Blade say the F in this? I have no idea?
Oh yeah, can you make an R rated MCU film? I don't I don't really know anything about that.
Yeah, isn't it like sometimes they say, Okay, you can say the F X number of times. I can still not have an R. But can you ask Blade? Can you limit Blade in that fashion? I don't know.
M Okay, Well, I guess I got to see the other older Blade movies first. I'm kind of exciting. 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 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 I think I read that he got Snipes his blessing. So oh okay, we'll see. But who knows, maybe Snipes will be in it. Maybe Snipes will be the new whistler. Now that would be something.
Oooh okay, I don't know.
We'll see how it develops. All right, all right, we're gonna go ahead and close the casket on this one. Oh we didn't even talk about the cool space age caskets ahead in this the sleeping caskets. 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, this movie, Blade, other Blade films, films from this era right in, we would love to hear from you.
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