Forget everything you've learned about vampires. Especially the part about them being scary.

Let's start with the title, because that's where weakness manifests first. Looks like they never got past a working title, because they ended up calling it Vampires. Not exactly a title that pops out at you, or sticks in your mind. In fact, you probably forgot it was released just two years ago. Technically the full title is John Carpenter's Vampires, which adds the illusion of credibility. I have to admit, they roped me in. I've heard the name John Carpenter before, although all I could remember exactly was The Thing (1982). Apparently he also made Halloween and the Village of the Damned remake (1995), but I was getting him confused with Cronenberg because James Woods made me think of Videodrome.

At least they have the director's name over the title, I thought, so it can't suck too hard. Foolish mortal that I am.

James Woods spends much of his time in this movie trying to bear the weight of a crossbow in his hand, in addition to the formidable weight of his monstrously disproportionate head teetering atop his puny frame. Other big names include Maximillian Schell as a Catholic bishop; the chunky-style made-for-TV Baldwin brother as Woods' sidekick vamp slayer; and Sheryl Lee in the role she was born for -- psychic vampire hooker.

You can tell from the first five minutes (if you missed the signal in the weak, generic title) how very bad this movie is going to be. James Woods and Tonto Baldwin stand on a hillside, spying a boarded-up house through binoculars.

"Looks like your standard New Mexico shithole," Woods advises. Wish he would advise why they're wearing jackets in New Mexico at high noon.

Behind them are a jeep and an armored truck. They discuss the house a little more, needlessly wondering whether it could be a "nest." This is the kind of obvious exposition meant to tell the audience what's going on, even when the characters don't need to explain this crap to each other. Obviously they already suspect it's a nest or else they wouldn't be hanging out watching it through binoculars.

Our heroes drive down the hill and park near the house. One of them moves to the back of the armored truck and pops open the doors to reveal their cache of weapons -- and a half-dozen more men! Why were they kept in the back of the truck? Wouldn't they want to be involved in the reconaissance of the place? The scene is set up like a surprise, but it's not an important surprise, just goofy.

The team makes a show of strapping their gear on in front of the house. Guns and wooden stakes and bandoliers and harpoons, boots and steel-reinforced dickies to protect their necks from fangs.

Someone throws a big, blocky crossbow to James Woods and the team is almost ready, except for having the priest, played by Julio from Sanford and Son, say a blessing on them.

Besides Woods and Baldwin, the team consists of a slobby guy with curly hair, a Native American, and some other guys who are going to die too soon to bother describing them.

They creep up to the rickety front porch like a herd of ninja elephants. Woods tries the doorknob, but it's locked. I guess they want to keep the element of surprise, so instead of kicking down the door, they apply this device that punches or stamps or drills a hole around the doorknob in a quick burst.

Somewhere around this time, Woods hands his crossbow to a lackey and takes out his pistol. Now vamp-afficianados can tell you that you need a gun sometimes to deal with Renfield or one of the hypnotized humans who comes out to defend the master. But why choose this moment to re-assess who he's going to need to shoot?

No time to worry about quibbling over weapons, because he's about to get way stupider. With a four-inch diameter hole neatly cut into the front door, Woods brings his face close to peer into the dark. Of course it's totally pointless, because it's too dark to see inside. Does he expect chandaliers or candles lit all day in vampire dens? When he's satisfied there are no boogiemen rushing at him, he thrusts his arm through the hole and reaches in to unlock the deadbolt a few inches higher on the door.

Rewind for a moment and let me figure out the logic here. You have some kind of drill or jigsaw that can bore a four-inch hole around a doorknob in three seconds. You have a team of dudes outfitted with ridiculous wooden stakes and big floodlights attached to spears, even crossbow bolts hooked by long cables to a winch on the front of the jeep, so the vampires shot with the crossbow can be dragged out into the sunlight. All this preparation, and the best way you can think of to unlock the door of the nest of dangerous vampires is to reach your hand into the dark hole and flip the lock from the inside?

If this had been an eager young vampire slayer (as the Native American dude gets characterized a few moments later), then I would have expected a vamp to attack his arm as he reached in, maybe rip it off, maybe just bite it. But it's James Woods, so nothing happens to him. It's really a missed opportunity. Christ only knows what they were thinking.

Everybody comes inside and pokes around slowly. After a few minutes, a female vampire jumps out of a wall and lands on somebody's back. They replay your typical piggy-back monster ride, as standardized by the Gr'up who attacks Shatner in that Star Trek episode called "Miri" (and if that doesn't ring any bells then "Bonk bonk on the head!"). They can't shoot the vamp yet, because they might accidentally hit their partner who's giving her a piggy back ride. Soon another vamp jumps out, yada yada. Their standard way of dealing with these idiotic vampires (who never manage to connect with their fangs) is to blast them with shotguns or machine-guns, then poke them with a wooden stake while they're sorta "stunned" by the bullet wounds. James Woods shoots them with crossbow bolts, which are so powerful and accurate that they can find their targets even with a thick cable attached. Then he radios out to Tonto standing out at the Jeep, who turns on the winch, effectively towing the vampire out of the house and into the daylight, where they always burst into flames.

It's a cute idea. No need to double-check closely whether your stake hit the heart, or whether they're just playing dead. You drag the body into the sunlight, and you're sure. But all of this assumes that you're dealing with vampires who can't pull a little crossbow bolt out of their shoulder while getting dragged out the house. One vampire later in the movie grabs onto a pole inside a house, and is able to hold on tightly enough that the cable breaks. If she's that damn powerful, why couldn't she or any of the other vamps pull the bolts out, or break the cable near their body?

This first assault illustrates the team's modus operandi. Their post-game celebration at the Sun-God Motel continues to show day-to-day operations. Booze and music and whores. James Woods talks with Julio and the local sheriff about the team's plans, and the fact that there seemed to be no "master" at this raid, only a bunch of lower level vampires. "Almost as if the master had been tipped off that we were coming."

This master is called Valek, and he's walking up alongside the big sign that says Sun-God Motel. Valek has time to sneak into a back room and seduce Sheryl Lee, biting her on the stomach while doing something familiar down by her lower abdomen/upper thigh area, before slipping out and knocking at the front door. When slobby expendable #1 opens the door, Valek pokes his fingers into expendable's belly, then whips his fingers up and to the side. Slobby's head and torso fall sideways from the spot where he's been cut clear through.

After that, they should have called Rick Baker, because the gore through the rest of the movie was just silly and boring. Valek punches people through their bodies and cuts their heads off and blah blah blah. Woods is too distracted to do anything, in a long, annoying, slow motion sequence where he's trying to dodge around people to get in range of shooting the vamp. Valek has plenty of time to massacre every man and hooker in the place before Woods finally takes a few shots, dives across the room to get his crossbow. But there's no bolt, so he has to keep shooting, a really idiotic moment where Baldwin and Woods are both trying to "cover themselves" as they run out the door together, diving and stumbling and trying to hold the guns out of each other's way. Valek just stands there roaring and taking the shots.

They manage to jump into a pickup truck ahead of the vampire. Maybe he's still finishing off the last few people inside? Woods notices the stumbling woman and throws her over his shoulder to get her in the truck. Baldwin says, "Just leave the whore and let's go!" They go back and forth through the rest of the movie arguing if a vampire-bitten hooker is worth saving.

Suddenly, we're told Valek is tailing them, and he's getting closer and closer! We're not shown whether he's running or driving or flying behind them, but he's gaining on them somehow. He lands on the bed of the truck like a long-jumper and punches through the back window. They do one of those funny bits where the humans are able to fend off a super-vampire for a minute while he snaps and snarls at them. Finally Baldwin shoots the vampire point-blank in the forehead, which is enough to blast the beast off the back of the truck, and he must be too hurt to follow.

The passage of time is totally blown here, as the three in the truck are shown fleeing for another few seconds, just driving as fast and as far away as they can go. Suddenly it's full daylight again, and James Woods shouts, "SHIT!" because there's a horse-trailer stopped in the middle of the road in front of them. The pickup swerves to the right, off the road, rolls a few times, and they drag themselves out. I can construct a somewhat logical chain of events from this: Tonto drove all night and fell asleep at the wheel. Woods woke just in time to warn him. But I shouldn't have to piece together the shitty transition here. There ought to be something to clearly indicate a lot of hours passing. Instead, it's a matter of seconds from the time they finally shake off Valek to the fright of the car-wreck.

It's tempting to play out the whole movie scene by scene, since the stupidity flows heavier than blood in this movie. But I'll try to stick to the biggest screw-ups.

They decide to keep the soon-to-be-vampire hooker against her will, because she has a psychic link with Valek. Woods says he's going to dispose of their dead team mates, make sure none of them turn into vamps, and orders Tonto to get the girl into a motel and lay low. Tonto refuses, citing "Rule Number Seven" of the vampire slayers' code, "Never leave just one slayer to clean up a nest" or some such nonsense. Other rules are cited through the rest of the movie, a memorized set of rules like you might hear from boy scouts instead of whore-mongers. They must not be important rules, because Woods ignores this one.

While Baldwin is alone with the girl, she bites him. He slaps her around, bandages his arm, and later keeps it a secret from Woods. "Is there something you want to tell me?" No, I'm just tired. "Do you suppose this will pop up later in the movie somehow?" No, no, think nothing of it. I was just kidding around when I got this tattoo on my forehead that says "LOUSY FORESHADOWING."

Woods goes to the Bishop to get some info and to bitch about someone on the inside tipping off the vampire. I was thinking in terms of old school rules for Agatha Christie mysteries, like the betrayer has to be someone we've seen since the start of the story. The audience would find it unsatisfying if you had some shmuck brought in late in the story as the betrayer. Couldn't be Woods, so I figured it had to be Tonto Baldwin. I was wrong to expect that Carpenter would follow any rules of logical storytelling, but I wasn't wrong about the rule being solid. It was underwhelming to find the Bishop had betrayed them in the end. You can't care about the betrayal if you haven't seen enough of the character to care about him.

During that first meeting, the Bishop orders that they take a young priest as a new member of their team (since Fr. Julio died with all the others). This is a device to show how macho Woods is supposed to be, by contrasting him with the novice priest, and earlier with the Native American who got spooked on the first assault. During later scenes, everybody has to yell at the young priest to hurry up and shoot the vamp, hurry up and stake her, quit stalling. I figured for sure he'd get wasted after he volunteered to be the "bait" in an ambush straight out of Scooby Doo Mysteries. No such luck.

At one point, when Velma, I mean the soon-to-be-vampire hooker goes clairvoyant, she describes to the slayers that she sees Valek and seven other vampires rising after sunset. The vamps poke their clawed hands out of loose beach sand, then slowly sit up. It's the same thing over and over again, but we have to watch all seven of them through every step of the process, poking arms above the ground, then sitting up, then standing. They have to stand there in the little holes for another minute and look ominous until Valek takes a step up from his hole, and then the others are allowed to follow. This was not as dramatic as they hoped. Should have been a ten-second bit, but they stretched it to three minutes.

2. Soundtrack could have been worse. Strangely enough, Carpenter composed the music himself, and it's not half bad. Sorta bluesy, road movie honky-tonk with electric slide guitar. Not exactly on a par with Ry Cooder, but not bad.

3. The raw idea of vampire slayers sanctioned by the Catholic Church has potential. I don't know if it's been done before, but there's plenty of room to run with it. Especially with all the occult rumors about the Vatican. Some say the Vatican has the greatest porn and/or sorcery archives of all Western civilization. Whether they use it to fight filth & witchcraft or to party heartily depends on who you listen to.

4. Steel-belted dickies to protect from vampire bites. I love it. Like a vampire couldn't plunge fangs through your pantleg, he has to go for the neck.