Vampires: Los Muertos (2002)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Written by Tommy Lee Wallace
Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace
Starring Jon Bon Jovi, Christian de la Fuente, Arly Jover, Darius McCrary, and Natasha Wagner

Features:

• Theatrical trailers
  
• Director’s commentary
  
• English, French, Chinese, Thai, and Korean subtitles
  

Rating: R

Anamorphic: Yes

My advice: Forget I even mentioned it.

Vampires: Los Muertos is one of those cinematic exercises of adding insult to injury. John Carpenter’s adaptation of Steakley’s novel Vampire$ was bad enough to immediately fall into the “forgettable” category of vampire and vampire hunting cinema, yet someone decided to take another stab at the concept by producing this sequel. With a weaker cast, weaker plot, and weaker acting, I’m not sure how anybody thought they would breathe life into the already flatlined franchise, but nobody at Sony called me up for my thoughts on the matter.

Derek Bliss is a solo vampire hunter working on commission for a group known as the Van Helsing Foundation (some day, someone will make a film about vampire hunters that doesn’t have to namecheck the crazy doctor from Stoker’s classic, but today is not that day). He goes out, hunts them down, whacks them, videotapes the whole process, and submits the video as evidence so that large amounts of money will be deposited to his accounts. It’s not clear what good the money does him, as he’s driving a battered jeep and wearing crappy clothes while slumming it in the heart of Mexico, but there you have it.

He gets an assignment from a mysterious client, who insists that this needs to be a team effort, thereby setting Bliss on the road to round up some troops--but all the troops he goes to round up are dead, including Crow’s priest friend from the first film (a nice way to avoid having to drag Fisher Stevens into another blot on his career). Despite setbacks, he manages to piece together a group consisting of a priest, a middle school dropout, a badass from Memphis, and a girl who has been bitten by a vampire, but has somehow managed to beat the whole vampire rap by taking experimental medication as a treatment (this miracle of science is never explained, but given how lame the explanation would have to have been, I count it a good thing).

With this team of screw-ups, Bliss goes hunting the female master vampire responsible for slaughtering all his prospective agents. His Memphis badass does something incredibly stupid, gets brought under the vampire’s influence, and sets the whole team up for a slaughter. It’s only through some really silly tactical tricks and plot developments that strain suspension of disbelief to the breaking point that our hero manages to survive and win the day, but it is not without some cost.

To this film’s credit, it isn’t the worst thing I’ve seen. In fact, it’s not even substantially worse than the first film in the franchise--of course, that’s not saying a great deal. On a day where TBS reruns of Tremors weren’t available, this would make an acceptable way to burn a couple hours away on the couch. I would not, however, encourage anyone to shell out their hard-earned green for the privilege of watching it. Jon Bon Jovi deserves some credit, as he actually displays decent acting chops (of course, he’s pretended to be a heavy metal musician for years, so perhaps it’s not too great a stretch). Snide remarks aside, he does do a good job, but he’s not given a great deal to work with here. He does the best with what he has, and eclipses the performances of everyone else in the production.

The DVD is more than one might expect, including a director’s commentary, though there’s not much information there to redeem the production. It mostly revolves around how cool it was to work with Bon Jovi, how he surprised them as an actor, and how they tried to tie this to the first film (none of this last is particularly convincing, but since Carpenter is listed as an executive producer, I imagine they had to say something for fear of looking ungrateful). No additional features to speak of, which is a shame. I’d like to have heard Bon Jovi’s thoughts on the role and the procedure of getting the movie made.

Unless you simply must own every vampire movie to come down the pike, have a serious thing for Jon Bon Jovi, or just groove on seriously mediocre action/horror films, there’s not much here for you. As stated before, it’s not so offensive that burning an hour and a half on it when it shows up on cable is a bad idea, but paying for it will only make you want your dollars back.