#31 - Near Dark (1987)
(dir. Kathryn Bigelow)
Late one night, small-town farm boy Caleb meets the beautiful and mysterious Mae, and immediately falls for her. It's pretty obvious to the audience that she is a vampire, but clearly Caleb doesn't know what kind of movie he is in, and is too dumb/horny to understand her comment about being alive in a billion years. Anyway, they lose track of time, and when Mae realizes that dawn is approaching, she panics and demands that Caleb take her home. In an awkward #metoo moment where he demands a kiss, she bites him on the neck and then runs away. Bitten but not drained, Caleb turns into a vampire himself, and has no choice but to go on the run with Mae's traveling crew.
This is a pretty excellent vampire movie. It starts off as sort of a star-crossed lovers thing, and in fact was re-released and marketed as such when Twilight came out (I imagine many teenage girls were disappointed and horrified). It spends much more time focusing on Caleb's struggle to adapt to his new lifestyle than it does on the romance. The real highlights, though, are Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen in supporting roles as members of the vampire gang. Henriksen barely needs to do anything to be a complete badass, and Bill Paxton absolutely steals every scene he is in. He's cocky, vicious, and slightly psychotic, and it rules. There's a reason he is on the poster instead of the actual leads.
This is definitely one of the best vampire movies of the '80s. It isn't perfect - the whole Caleb/Mae romance didn't do much for me - but Paxton alone is worth the price of admission.
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