This vampire movie from 1987 has been in my Netflix cue forever but I've spent some time bumping it down for other, sometimes not-so-great movies. I've finally gotten around to seeing it. Near Dark has garnered something of a cult following if only for the sake that it reunites not one, not two but three of the actors from Aliens: Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton and Jenette Goldstein.

One night, "innocent country boy" Caleb comes across "a beautiful girl," Mae, in the middle of the night. They hit it off pretty good but she seems a little weird. Why? She's a vampire. She's a nice vampire but ends up biting Caleb anyway and turning him into a vampire. Her company, unfortunately, isn't so nice. They consist of the Aliens trio and a little kid named Homer, essentially a grown man trapped in a little boys body. Basically, these guys travel in a tinted caravan cross country killing people, drinking blood, causing mischief and burning stuff. Unfortunately, they don't take as kindly to Caleb as Mae does but are willing to give him a shot so long as he learns to kill, an undertaking that Caleb isn't particularly keen on.

I'd say Near Dark is sort of a precursor to the "it's-cool-to-be-a-vampire" shtick popularized by True Blood, Twilight and Buffy and Anne Rice before them. Near Dark is a little more down-and-dirty than the rest. These guys are cool and charismatic but also savage and sadistic. Bill Paxton steals the show as Severan, a total psychopath. Lance Henriksen is also surprisingly good. I didn't think his laid back style would fit such a character. Even the kid's nasty. Naturally, Caleb and Mae are both compassionate souls, which helps make the film a lot more suspenseful. No matter how close Caleb comes to being accepted, there's always the feeling that these guys can turn on him at any moment.

I liked the presentation of being a vampire a lot in this movie. Half the time, Caleb is blood starved and either looks like he's got hypothermia or like he's in heroine withdrawal. Yet the price of being a vampire means giving up one's humanity completely. Feeding on humans is gross in this movie. As Severan comments when he nearly pukes from draining a scraggly old booze hound, "I hate when they're not shaved."

Overall, very hip and stylish as these "cool-to-be-vampire" flicks are but without sacrificing the ugliness the vampire condition entails. Highly recommended, if only for Bill Paxton. When is this guy not loads of fun? See it now before Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes remakes it (not a joke, they're just waiting for Twilight's popularity to die down supposedly).

I've seen this many times, including at the theater when it originally came out.  I always remember the scene at the bar where one of the vamps (Henrikson, I think) kills a person and drains their blood into a glass and drinks it right in front of all the other patrons, who are quite freaked out by this.  At least, that's what I remember...am I close, James, since you just saw it?

A pretty good flick and I agree that Bill Paxton is great...very funny and over the top.

That's basically what happens, yeah.

Vampires re-imagined as the Manson Family, basically!

It is interesting to look at the development of Vampires in literature and film - the latter in particular. They always represent some threat, and the fact that for many years they are always foreigners, and Eastern Europeans in particular, is worth noting.

After the hippy dream turned into a nightmare, and society began to break down in the 1970s, they began to be portrayed more as vicious serial killers who stalk the country killing at will (which is still found in stories like "30 Days of Night)- and "lost boys" plays on the idea of teenage rebellion.

Now, of course, things are moving back a bit with the idea of the vampire as romantic/sexual creature (very obviously a AIDS metaphor where sex is death) - something that, despite Rice and Harris and the rest, goes back to Stoker! (there is a scene in Dracula where Mina licks Dracula's blood from a wound he inflicts on his own stomach - tell me that isn't Freudian!)