October Horror Challenge - Vampires (1998)

It really was a toss-up for my "Favorite Horror Director." There are so many horror directors I love. Wes Craven and Stuart Gordon was in the running for favorite, but ultimately it came down to Guillermo del Toro and John Carpenter. As you can tell from the blog's title, Carpenter ultimately won out.

Plot

Jack Crow is an orphan that was raised by the Catholic church to hunt vampires. When his team is ambushed and killed by a master vampire, he and his partner team up with a young priest and sex worker that's slowly turning to a vampire to take out the master and get his revenge.

Review

Just going to start this one out by saying I love this flick, despite thinking James Woods is an absolute tool. I 100% cannot stand the dude. All that aside, this is one of my top 5 favorite vampire flicks. Jack Crow, played by Woods, is a pretty badass vampire hunter. I like the supporting cast. Tim Guinee is great as Father Adam. Daniel Baldwin is good as Jack's right hand man Montoya. Thomas Ian Griffith's Valek is classic master vampire and has a great screen presence. 

This one has some great dark humor. There's also some fantastic gore. The scene where Crow's team gets slaughtered is fantastic. Like Carpenter's best flicks, he does the music. It's got a very western sound, and ultimately the flick is kind of a western, disguised as a vampire flick.

In Your Game 

I decided to stat out the movie (and its sequel's) McGuffin for What Shadows Hide and We Die Young. I've included the lore from the movie, but added a bit to it to make it fit into those games (because Valek would definitely not be the first vampire in the setting).

Black Cross of Béziers

This ancient relic was forged in a small French town of the same name. It was used in the brutal reverse exorcism of heretical priest Jan Valek. The process turned him into a vampire, rumored by the Church to be the first, though records show this is definitely not true. 

If a priest performs a reverse exorcism, a vampire can be granted the ability to walk in the sun. This ritual involves the blood of a crusader being fed to the exorcised participant. The priest must complete the exorcism by the first light of dawn to completes the ritual.