Violence/Gore: Tons and tons. More than can be detailed in this little line of text. Absolutely drenched.

Sex/Nudity: Pretty much just referential. Damn.

Best Line: “I’m going to be a naughty vampire god!”

Score:

I saw this movie in ‘98 when it first came out, with a bunch of friends at 1am after the theater closed (our friend was the manager), and it was a party. We had a blast, loved the movie, bought the soundtrack, etc., and then moved on to the next thing. I came back to the film recently in a reviewer’s capacity for Cinejunkie, and the reality doesn’t live up to the memory.

The opening scene is pretty much the plot in a nutshell: gore and violence set to techno. Now don’t get me wrong, I like gore and violence and techno, but as Man does not live by bread alone, neither does Movie survive without plot. Most of the expository scenes in BLADE seem to have mysteriously disappeared, presumably replaced with fight scenes, and there’s no background or any other reason why or who these vampires are and what they’ve been doing around for years (this info appears textually in the DVD special features, but it might have been nice to see it actually in the film). All we see by way of any sort of an explanation is a brief depiction of two factions of vampires fighting for supremacy: the corporate vampire ruling class led by Udo Kier, who believes in working undercover to control the world politically and financially, and the young-turk fashion model vampires led by Stephen Dorff, who basically want to look pretty, turn everyone into vampires, take over the world, and let chaos, in the form of ancient vampire gods, ensue.

That lame attempt at exposition really just serves as support for many blood-drenched fight scenes, none of which are very logical or interesting. These basically consist of evil vampire peons attacking Blade one at a time and attempting to out-martial-arts him, despite the fact that they have more weapons than many third-world countries.

The music, though, is great. I love techno. I just wish the soundtrack had been applied to a movie with an actual plot to speak of. Characterization is damn near nil, and we are only able to infer the characters’ goals and drives by the way they act (wooden) and what they say (mostly bad one-liners).

The special effects are truly sad; they date this movie so badly. At the time, I thought that they looked great, but on review, CG effects that looked amazing in ‘98 really look silly now.

One of the only other untarnished good things about BLADE is that it opened the door for so many other great comic book films. I think that it’s true to say that without BLADE, there wouldn’t have been a SPIDER-MAN…or a SPIDER-MAN 2 for that matter.

DVD Extras: ‘La Magra,’ a featurette which contains cut footage, including the movie’s original, more apocalyptic ending, and ‘Designing Blade,’ an interview with make-up artist Greg Cannom. Other extras include featurettes on vampire history and a piece on Blade’s origins in Marvel Comics; and a rundown on the various vampire families, which should have been incorporated into the film itself to actually explain stuff.

SS