Near Dark
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Near Dark | |
|---|---|
 Near Dark DVD cover |
|
| Directed by | Kathryn Bigelow |
| Produced by | Steven-Charles Jaffe |
| Written by | Eric Red Kathryn Bigelow |
| Starring | Adrian Pasdar Jenny Wright Lance Henriksen Jenette Goldstein Bill Paxton |
| Music by | Tangerine Dream |
| Cinematography | Adam Greenberg |
| Editing by | Howard E. Smith |
| Distributed by | Anchor Bay Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | October 2, 1987 |
| Running time | 95 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $5,000,000 |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Near Dark (1987) is a vampire Western film, written by Eric Red and Kathryn Bigelow, and directed by Bigelow. The movie has a sizable cult following.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
Caleb Colton is a young man in a small Oklahoma town who talks one night with Mae, an attractive young drifter. Shortly before sunrise, while kissing, she bites him on the neck, then runs off. Caleb discovers that the rising sun causes his flesh to burn. As he suffers in the sunlight, Mae and her 'family' of itinerant vampires pick up Caleb and sweep him away from his family's home. Severen and Diamondback are inclined to kill him then and there, but Mae, who has developed a romantic interest in Caleb, points out that she has 'turned him' — made him a vampire. Reluctantly, Jesse Hooker, the leader of the gang, declares that Caleb will remain with them for a week, to see if he can learn to hunt efficiently and be trusted as one of the group. Caleb quickly learns that the vampires are doubly bloodthirsty: not only do they feed on humans, but they hide the evidence of their nature by acts of wanton destruction, particularly arson, lest the mortal population seek them out and destroy them. In a famous setpiece of the film, Caleb accompanies the gang as they feed on several denizens of a roadhouse, kill most of the others, and burn the roadhouse to the ground.
Caleb is of two minds about how to proceed. On one hand, he is infatuated with Mae, and relishes the idea of spending eternity with her, free of responsibilities other than simple survival. On the other hand, Caleb is appalled at the brutal reality of a vampire's existence: the constant need to kill innocent people for food, and the gang's evident lack of remorse for this state of affairs. He cannot bring himself to kill, even at the cost of his own survival, which alienates him from the gang of vampires. Unwilling to permit Caleb to be killed by her companions, Mae repeatedly kills for him, and allows him to drink from her wrist. Jesse and the gang are only temporarily mollified when Caleb puts himself at great risk to rescue them from a police raid during daylight hours.
Meanwhile, Caleb's father, a veterinarian and apparently a widower, searches for his son, who appears in his eyes to have been kidnapped by a simple group of drifters. Caleb's father, who early in the film seems distant and dismissive of Caleb, reveals anguish at the disappearance of his son; with Caleb's little sister Sarah in tow, he canvasses the surrounding towns for news of his son while the police conduct their own investigation. When Sarah stumbles upon the gang at a roadside motel, a standoff develops: the adolescent vampire Homer wishes to transform the girl into a companion for himself, but Caleb demands that she be released. While the gang argues over what to do, Caleb's father arrives, demanding at gunpoint that Sarah be released. Jesse challenges him, and when Caleb's father fires the gun, Jesse responds by regurgitating the bullet and wrenching the gun from the doctor's hand. In the confusion of the moment, Sarah flees out the door, forcing the vampires to hide from the sunlight streaming into the motel room. Caleb chooses to return to his family, and jumps into his father's truck, his skin burning and smoking in the light, begging for help.
At home, Caleb's father transfuses his blood into Caleb's veins, weeping in fear that his son is lost. The transfusion proves to undo the vampiric transformation, and the next day, Caleb is again human. His father resumes his customary gruff manner, although it is now tempered by evident relief at Caleb's return. That night, however, Mae and the rest of the vampires come looking for Caleb to kill him, since he might now identify the drifters and inform the human population of the threat the vampires represent. Additionally, Homer remains fixed on the idea of turning Sarah into his mate; while Mae distracts Caleb with conversation outside the house, the others slip inside and kidnap Sarah. When Mae ascertains that Caleb cannot be convinced to return to her, she runs away, leaving Caleb to discover the kidnapping.
Knowing what it means that Sarah is gone, Caleb goes after her. The gang has taken the precaution of slashing the tires, so Caleb must ride one of the family's horses into town. On the town's main street, Caleb encounters Severen, who attacks him while decrying his lack of loyalty. When a tractor-trailer approaches, Caleb commandeers the truck to run down Severen. Severen, however, is only injured, not killed, and as he climbs up the cab toward the driver's seat, Caleb forces the truck to jackknife before jumping clear, killing Severen in the ensuing explosion. Jesse and Diamondback are now intent on torturing and killing Caleb; Homer remains less interested in Caleb than in Sarah. They begin to chase Caleb, but as dawn breaks, they turn the car around to flee toward the receding dark. Mae, however, is not only reluctant to see Caleb hurt, but concludes that she cannot permit Sarah to become another child-like monster; while the vampires drive away from Caleb in the first light of dawn, Mae escapes out the back of their station wagon, pulling Sarah out with her. Mae is badly burned by the sun as she runs with Sarah into Caleb's arms, and Caleb covers her smoldering body with his coat. Homer, desperate to keep Sarah for himself, leaps out of the car to follow her, and is destroyed in a fiery explosion as he runs after her. With no shelter from the sun nearby, and with the motive of revenge for Homer's death, Jesse and Diamondback turn the car around and attempt to kill Caleb, Sarah and Mae in a suicide attack, but the car runs off the road and explodes when the two vampires are completely engulfed in flames from the sun.
In the final scene, Caleb wakes Mae in the Colton family's barn, where she lies hooked up to transfusion equipment as Caleb had been earlier and her burns are fully healed. As the doors open sunlight floods the barn and Mae's initial reaction is fear, but she herself is human again, and is therefore unharmed by the sunlight as Caleb comforts her with the knowledge that she no longer needs to be afraid of the sun.
[edit] Production
Kathryn Bigelow wanted to film a Western movie that departed from cinematic convention, which at the time was strongly identified with the films of John Wayne and John Ford. When she and co-writer Eric Red found financial backing for a Western difficult to obtain, it was suggested to them that they try mixing a Western with another, more popular genre. Her interest in revisionist interpretation of cinematic tradition led her and Red to the idea of combining two genres that they regarded as ripe for reinterpretation: the Western movie, and the vampire movie, whose conventions largely derived from Bela Lugosi's performance in Dracula. The film was scored by the German electronic music group Tangerine Dream, who also penned the soundtracks for Risky Business and Legend.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Adrian Pasdar | Caleb Colton |
| Jenny Wright | Mae |
| Lance Henriksen | Jesse Hooker |
| Bill Paxton | Severen |
| Jenette Goldstein | Diamondback |
| Joshua John Miller | Homer |
[edit] Trivia
 |
Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones. |
 |
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2008) |
- Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein, and Lance Henriksen all appeared in Aliens, which was directed by James Cameron. All three actors were cast in Near Dark separately, without knowing that they were all auditioning for the same movie for the second time. In one scene, Caleb passes a cinema in which Aliens is screening. Also appearing in a bar scene of the film and further connecting the film to James Cameron was Robert Winley, who later played the cigar-smoking biker ("you forgot to say please") in the bar scene of Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
- On the DVD interviews, Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton explained the lengths to which they went to develop their characters. Among other things, Henriksen constructed an elaborate backstory involving Jesse's service in the Confederate States Navy. This is alluded to in the film when Jesse slyly mentions that he fought for the South and "we lost". Paxton also alludes to the two being responsible for the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
- Henriksen decided that Jesse should appear emaciated; he accordingly lost so much weight to fit the image that he lost much of his muscle tone, and threw his back out while climbing the stairs of his house.
- Despite being about vampires, the word vampire is never uttered in the film.
- Eric Red has mentioned in a recent interview that he had plans for a sequel that took place 15 years after Near Dark, following Sarah fighting relatives of the vampire 'family' from the first film.[1]
- This film was #64 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
The film appears to be the subject of a remake, according to the production blog of Platinum Dunes (responsible for recent Amityville Horror, Texas Chainsaw, and Hitcher remakes.)[2]
