Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird How Cinema. This
Speaker 1: is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and Hey today,
Speaker 1: are we getting into the Marvel Cinematic universe? Is this
Speaker 1: is this a Marvel superhero movie? Um? Uh, well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not quiet for the first question, but yes for
Speaker 1: the second question, because we're gonna be talking about the
Speaker 1: movie Blade, a movie that is kind of it is
Speaker 1: kind of the precursor to the Marvel Cinematic universe, but
Speaker 1: unlike the PG era and PG I guess thirteen probably
Speaker 1: era of Marvel films that we have today, and even
Speaker 1: the darker d C films that we have, and certainly
Speaker 1: those have more in common with Blade. Uh. We're talking
Speaker 1: about a solid are here, mostly for violence and language,
Speaker 1: a little bit of sexuality, but you know, several differ
Speaker 1: and things that wouldn't fly in the Marvel movies that
Speaker 1: are so popular right now. It is hilarious that this
Speaker 1: is essentially I would say, a movie for kids, but
Speaker 1: absolutely not for kids, hardcore R rated comic book movie. Uh. Like,
Speaker 1: basically every other word is the F word. It's relentless. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Blade as a superhero. He has several different superpowers, but
Speaker 1: one of them is definitely that he gets to say
Speaker 1: the F and he gets to say the F as
Speaker 1: many times as he wants to, as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, I don't think there's a limit. And there's
Speaker 1: constantly blood spraying everywhere on everything. Yes, yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of blood in this one, um and a lot
Speaker 1: of attitude. So it's this is a movie where we're
Speaker 1: once more getting pretty close up to U the dawn
Speaker 1: of the millennium here, uh, and in the end of
Speaker 1: the millennium that we say spend most of our time,
Speaker 1: and then the century we spend most of our time.
Speaker 1: And because this is ninety eight, I think I think
Speaker 1: the closest we've come to to to to breaking the
Speaker 1: millennium point has been Deep Blue Sea is that. I
Speaker 1: think it was ninety nine, But we're pushing the boundaries
Speaker 1: again here. Well. So I was thinking about this and
Speaker 1: about how Blade is not only a vampire superhero movie.
Speaker 1: It is also very much in terms of like the cinematography,
Speaker 1: the way this movie looks and uh, in the the
Speaker 1: way the fight senator stage. It is very much a
Speaker 1: millennial R rated action thriller, and so what does that mean?
Speaker 1: I would characterize it as follows sets with tons of slick,
Speaker 1: gleaming surfaces and gun metal gray coloration. Everything is wet. Uh,
Speaker 1: lots of casual depiction of futuristic digital devices like like
Speaker 1: laptops and cell phones doing things that they absolutely did
Speaker 1: not do at the time in and no one finding
Speaker 1: this unusual even though the movie is set in the present. Uh,
Speaker 1: and just lots of wires everywhere. Uh. Beyond that, I
Speaker 1: would say muted colors in general, with kind of harsh
Speaker 1: white lighting, like not not soft yellow lighting, harsh white
Speaker 1: lighting reflecting off of all the slickness in the sets.
Speaker 1: And then extreme gratuitous gun violence where like rooms of
Speaker 1: bad guys are sprayed with bullets causing huge panes of
Speaker 1: glass to explode and shower down in slow motion, and
Speaker 1: then finally sunglasses inside all the time. Yeah, the gun
Speaker 1: violence is interesting in this film because it's not the
Speaker 1: thing that I think of when I think of Blade,
Speaker 1: but it's it's clearly part of of of these movies. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, when I've looked back fondly that I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about the times that he's he's kicking vampires and stabbing
Speaker 1: vampires and using that katana sword and so forth. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he's also blasting room fulls of of vampires. But but
Speaker 1: I don't know. That stuff doesn't seem to I don't
Speaker 1: know with me anyway, it doesn't resonate as much as
Speaker 1: the martial arts action. Oh yeah, the martial arts is
Speaker 1: clearly where it's at. Blade kicks and he you just
Speaker 1: imagine like when you're watching this movie, like if Blade kicked,
Speaker 1: you be like getting hit by a bus. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every every time Blade, really, anytime anyone is hit in
Speaker 1: this movie. I buy it. Like it. It does a
Speaker 1: really good job of selling the physical violence. Now, before
Speaker 1: we go and eat any deeper, I'm gonna, I guess
Speaker 1: I'll mention this. We we started mentioning where to watch
Speaker 1: a film earlier on in the episode for folks who
Speaker 1: want to go in unspoilt. But basically, you can watch
Speaker 1: Blade everywhere. You can get it on DVD, you can
Speaker 1: get it on Blu Ray. I think there's a three
Speaker 1: pack of Blade films out there. Uh, and there's also
Speaker 1: you can simply go to I think HBO Max as
Speaker 1: of this recording in the US has has all all
Speaker 1: three of the original blades of streaming. So Blade one,
Speaker 1: the excellent Blade Too, and also Blade three or Blade
Speaker 1: Trinity if you will. Now, I think you're more of
Speaker 1: a connoisseur of Blade than I am of my earliest experience.
Speaker 1: Uh well, they Sally, I think i'd only ever seen
Speaker 1: this first movie before I saw it, probably like eight
Speaker 1: through ninth grade, so not too long after it came out.
Speaker 1: I think I watched a VHS tape of it in
Speaker 1: a friend's garage. Uh so, yeah, that's the setting. Uh, Whistler,
Speaker 1: for some reason put a movie on for you know,
Speaker 1: you just just he had a TV in his garage.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. We go. We go in there
Speaker 1: and we watch Blade because that's what you do. You're
Speaker 1: in eighth grade and there you go. So, wait, have
Speaker 1: have you not seen Gamma do Toro's Blade Too? No?
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any of the sequels. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: Blade two is amazing. Blade Too is is everything that
Speaker 1: this film brings to the table. But then Gammada to
Speaker 1: a weirdness on top of that, So all sorts of
Speaker 1: like weird um quasi catholic imagery and uh and and strangeness.
Speaker 1: I'll touch on a little bit of this as we perceive,
Speaker 1: but I'll try not to get into Blade to too
Speaker 1: much because it's its own special treat Well, so that
Speaker 1: made me want to raise something. Uh. Germo del Toro
Speaker 1: obviously loves magic, and I wonder how his influence affects
Speaker 1: what I would consider the mostly materialist vampire ideology and Blade.
Speaker 1: So Blade, the Blade universe is full of vampires, but
Speaker 1: with a few exceptions, they don't really seem to be supernatural.
Speaker 1: Like the vampires are not affected by holy objects. They
Speaker 1: don't seem to be spiritually demonic in nature, though they
Speaker 1: are evil. Uh, they're treated as products of genetic mutation,
Speaker 1: you know that, like they have a virus or a
Speaker 1: mutation in their bodies. I would say the only major
Speaker 1: exception to this is suddenly at the end of the
Speaker 1: movie they bring in this like apparent magic ritual that
Speaker 1: does seem to have effect, like it actually works to
Speaker 1: summon a blood God. Yeah, i'd say, when del Toro
Speaker 1: comes along, you know, granted he's he was beholden to
Speaker 1: what was established in the first film, but he seems
Speaker 1: he seems to embrace the materialist view of the vampire,
Speaker 1: but with the key difference being for for Norrington and
Speaker 1: company in this film, Uh, vampires are kind of people
Speaker 1: with supernatural powers. But for del Toro, obviously a vampire
Speaker 1: is a monster. He is a man of monsters and
Speaker 1: his vampires are going to be monsters. Oh yeah, that's interesting,
Speaker 1: I would say in this Yeah, you're right. The vampires
Speaker 1: are just like people who are universally bad and they
Speaker 1: have super strength than they drink blood. Yeah, so then
Speaker 1: again I should stress for Del Toro, monster has different
Speaker 1: connotations perhaps than it does for other people. Like he
Speaker 1: loves his monsters. It doesn't mean the monster doesn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of personality and depth. In fact, there's a
Speaker 1: good chance that the monster will have more personality and
Speaker 1: death than any human character h that he might be
Speaker 1: dealing with. Now. Another thing that sort of sets Blade apart, Uh,
Speaker 1: that I think I noticed when I first watched it
Speaker 1: back in the day A was that this is a
Speaker 1: movie that has a vampire hunter character of the classic
Speaker 1: Van Helsing type. I would have, you know, seen movies
Speaker 1: with Peter Cushing doing this role on TV, probably when
Speaker 1: I was younger. Um, But a big difference is that
Speaker 1: this is a high tech vampire hunter and this was
Speaker 1: not the first movie to have characters like this. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there were plenty. I can think of. John
Speaker 1: Carpenter's Vampires came out earlier, and and that one. The
Speaker 1: Vampire Hunters have all kinds of technology and stuff, don't
Speaker 1: they now. Actually, John Carpenters Vampires came out the same year.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly like where they fall um in
Speaker 1: terms of each other though, well either way, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure this was not the first movie to do this,
Speaker 1: but that that was kind of a change up on
Speaker 1: my expectations because the the earlier you know, the vampire
Speaker 1: hunter is more of a uh, sort of a holy warrior,
Speaker 1: kind of a kind of a priest slash professor who
Speaker 1: wields a steak and across and all that. Again, you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're Peter Cushing type. Here it is like the
Speaker 1: toughest dude you've ever met, and he's decked out in
Speaker 1: all kinds of with like gizmos and gadgets. He's like Batman.
Speaker 1: He's got a you know, utility belt full of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has a secular vampire hunter as opposed to the
Speaker 1: holy man that we see certainly in the in European traditions,
Speaker 1: but also in in Eastern traditions as well, there's stuff
Speaker 1: like Mr Vampire. You know that's that's the roll with
Speaker 1: a holy man to deal with the vamps. I wish
Speaker 1: they had had some rice in this movie though. Hey,
Speaker 1: they used the garlic, but they don't use any any rice.
Speaker 1: A glutinous rice dealer scene would have really set Blade apart.
Speaker 1: That would have been it would have been brutal. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine the dressing down a corrupt rice dealer would
Speaker 1: get from Wesley Snipes as Blade, Because that's one more
Speaker 1: thing that really sets Blade apart is the way Wesley
Speaker 1: Snipes completely embodies this character. I don't know what so
Speaker 1: this is based on comics. I have no idea what
Speaker 1: Blade is like in the comics, but it is hard
Speaker 1: to imagine this character as anything other than than Wesley Snipes.
Speaker 1: Wesley Snipes brings a kind of uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: a like a weird poise and and sort of almost
Speaker 1: ironic sense of line delivery. It's it's beautiful and it's
Speaker 1: very singular. Yeah, I will come back to this, but
Speaker 1: I think Wesley Snipes is as perfect in this role
Speaker 1: as anyone you can point to in a given role
Speaker 1: like he everything he does as Blade is just spot on.
Speaker 1: You buy it, you believe it. It's absolutely perfect. It's
Speaker 1: like Robert Shaw as Quint just is the character. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: all right, before we go any further, let's let's have it.
Speaker 1: Let's here part of the trailer. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: really love this trailer, so we'll just listen to a
Speaker 1: little bit of it, just to remind you what you're
Speaker 1: dealing with in Blade. Better wake up. The world you
Speaker 1: live in is just a sugar cot top. There was
Speaker 1: not the world, real world. For thousands of years, they
Speaker 1: had existed among us. You keep your eyes open. They're everywhere.
Speaker 1: Chances are you see him yourself and didn't know it.
Speaker 1: A secret nation. Our Livelihoart depends on our ability to
Speaker 1: blend in with the lust for power. We should be
Speaker 1: ruling the humans. These people are food. They've got their claws.
Speaker 1: That everything politics financed real estate. There's a war going
Speaker 1: on out there. He mixed the weapons I use of.
Speaker 1: Now one will lead them to conquer mankind Tonight, at
Speaker 1: the age of man comes to an end, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be gods, and one will try to stop him dead.
Speaker 1: There worst things out tonight than vampires like me Blade. Yeah,
Speaker 1: trailers were bad in the nineties. Yeah, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't love it. Um you know, maybe it's different
Speaker 1: depending on an age and what one is nostalgic for.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is a trailer. I'm like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: the movie is great trailer. I can I can take
Speaker 1: it to leave it all right, Well, let's let's get
Speaker 1: into the folks involved in this film, shall we? Oh please? Alright?
Speaker 1: Starting at the top, the director is Stephen Norrington, sixty four.
Speaker 1: This is this isn't the first time we've discussed Steven Norrington,
Speaker 1: as he did creature designs on Split Second. That that
Speaker 1: really fun? Rugger Howard, what soft post environmental apocalypse monster
Speaker 1: Hunter film? Yeah? Yeah, Now let's see. My memory is
Speaker 1: that in Split Second we did not get much of
Speaker 1: a look at the creature. They kind of kept it
Speaker 1: mostly obscured. Yeah, you don't see much of it. I
Speaker 1: I if memory serves, there were like a lot of
Speaker 1: last minute changes. But it ends up working pretty well
Speaker 1: because you don't see a lot of it. But when
Speaker 1: you when you do see more of it, you realize
Speaker 1: it's kind of a mix between a Xena Morph and
Speaker 1: Joege Death from the Judge Dread comic books. Alright, So
Speaker 1: Norrington is a London born effects makeup artist who worked
Speaker 1: on such films as Aliens, Young Sherlock Holmes, Hardware, Alien
Speaker 1: three and Jim Hinson's The Storyteller, and then he would
Speaker 1: go on to direct the film Death Machine, which had
Speaker 1: Brad Dorriff and Richard Brake in it, and he followed
Speaker 1: this up with Blade. From here he went on to
Speaker 1: make The Last Minute and the film that reportedly kind
Speaker 1: of made him step back from actually directing The League
Speaker 1: of Extraordinary Gentleman. But I believe he has continued to
Speaker 1: work in effects and other areas of filmmaking, and every
Speaker 1: now and then catch some buzz of some possible project
Speaker 1: coming together with Norrington involved. But at any rate, I
Speaker 1: like his work in this film. Oh yeah. And I'm
Speaker 1: really impressed that he did effects on Storyteller, which has
Speaker 1: marvelous special effects. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, Storyteller is
Speaker 1: a lot of fun like those uh the meducest at
Speaker 1: You Coming to Life and all that. Oh yeah, it's that.
Speaker 1: That's great stuff. Uh wow, I never saw a League
Speaker 1: of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But I distinctly remember the day that
Speaker 1: my friends went to see it in the theater and
Speaker 1: they were talking about it for the rest of the day. Uh.
Speaker 1: It made an impression on them, and it was not
Speaker 1: a good one. It seemed to be one of those
Speaker 1: films that it caused a lot of people involved in
Speaker 1: it were kind of kind of had to question what
Speaker 1: they were doing with their lives at that point. I guess,
Speaker 1: but I don't know, but I haven't seen it. Maybe
Speaker 1: I would actually enjoy it. I don't know. Um, I
Speaker 1: will say that. With Blade, however, you mentioned like some
Speaker 1: of the stylistic choices, and I think some of those
Speaker 1: definitely are just tied to the style of the day,
Speaker 1: But I also really like some of the choices that
Speaker 1: they made in terms of how they portrayed night and day.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of the night scenes tend to feel
Speaker 1: hyper and alive, like they're they're literally twitching, like they
Speaker 1: they're just gonna start dancing at any second, while the
Speaker 1: daylit world often feels languid underwater, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: in a sense that that really meshes with this idea
Speaker 1: of like creatures of the night and creatures of that
Speaker 1: are mostly of the night, are being drawn further into
Speaker 1: that world. I know exactly what you're talking about, that
Speaker 1: underwater feeling, and also that this movie has a lot
Speaker 1: of Again this is as I said earlier, this is
Speaker 1: common to a lot of these action movies of the time.
Speaker 1: But lighting often feels harsh in this movie, Like even
Speaker 1: lights just coming out of the ceiling are like, I
Speaker 1: don't like that. It feels bad. All right. So that's Norrington,
Speaker 1: that's the director. Screenwriter on this is David S. Goyer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a huge name in the screen screenwriting world. Um.
Speaker 1: His earliest screenplay credit is for Death Warrant, a Jean
Speaker 1: Claude van Dame martial arts movie from and he followed
Speaker 1: that up with Albert Pions Kickboxer two, which did not
Speaker 1: start Jean Claude van Damme hand. He also did the
Speaker 1: Charles Band produced Peter Manoogian directed horror film Demonic Toys
Speaker 1: in Is this just a parallel to the puppet Master
Speaker 1: movies or was it trying to sort of copycat them? Um?
Speaker 1: I think it was part of you know, this is
Speaker 1: certainly getting into the area of of Charles Band and
Speaker 1: company figuring out what works and then like and then
Speaker 1: continuing to pump pump that out. I've never seen a
Speaker 1: Demonic Toys movie, but I know they like later Demonic
Speaker 1: Toys have crossover adventures with their Charles band properties. The
Speaker 1: Jetson's made the flint Stones, except their toys with like
Speaker 1: drills and razors attached to them. Now. He went on
Speaker 1: to work again for band Camp on the film Arcade,
Speaker 1: but he quickly moved up from there, working in TV
Speaker 1: and film projects until he collaborated with Alex Proyas and
Speaker 1: Limb Dabbs on Dark City. Just an excellent weird film
Speaker 1: in my opinion, A Dark City is amazing that that one.
Speaker 1: I haven't watched it in a while, but for a
Speaker 1: long time that was one of my favorite movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: same here. I haven't watched it recently, but back in
Speaker 1: the day, absolutely loved it. Totally blew me away when
Speaker 1: I watched it, so definitely made a huge impression on me. Now.
Speaker 1: I should also mention though, that same year, uh Goya
Speaker 1: was also involved in the Nick Fury Agent of Shield
Speaker 1: TV movie that started David Hasselhoff. So he was and
Speaker 1: he was already getting in and getting a little marvel
Speaker 1: e with his screenwriting. I did not know that existed,
Speaker 1: but at any rate. Yeah, then he moves on to
Speaker 1: Blade and Blade it's kind of the perfect goy or
Speaker 1: screenplay when you say, especially when you consider many of
Speaker 1: the products that came afterwards. It's a dark, largely serious
Speaker 1: comic book adaptation. He followed this up with screenplays for
Speaker 1: the again the Excellent and Weird Blade, to also Blade Trinity,
Speaker 1: which Goyer himself directed. Blade Trinity did not continue the
Speaker 1: upward trajectory of the Blade franchise, but it does have
Speaker 1: at least one great Blade ism in it, so has
Speaker 1: that going for it. There are so many great Blade
Speaker 1: lines that I would love to quote, but we can't
Speaker 1: do it without making this episode need a parental advisory stickers, right,
Speaker 1: because again Blade will say the F and all his
Speaker 1: best lines have to f in them. Yeah. Now, Blade
Speaker 1: Trinity was said to be a difficult shoot, but Gotya
Speaker 1: didn't give up on directing and came back with some
Speaker 1: various TV projects and the films The Invisible and The Unborn,
Speaker 1: and on the screenwriting end of things. He went on
Speaker 1: to work on Christopher Nolan's Batman movies, Jumper, Man of Steel,
Speaker 1: the upcoming Hell Raiser Rebooty at least has a story
Speaker 1: credit on that Terminator, Dark Fate and the upcoming adaptation
Speaker 1: of the Sandman graphic novels. So um, yeah, Goyer is
Speaker 1: a huge name. You can't really uh no matter what
Speaker 1: you think of some of these films, there's no denying it. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, we should drive home that Norrington and Goya
Speaker 1: did not invent Blade. This was the work of two
Speaker 1: comic book creators, credited to first of all, Marv Wolfman. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a character creator credit. He was born nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six. He worked on Marvel Comics The Tomb of Dracula.
Speaker 1: So this was a horror comic that ran for seventy
Speaker 1: issues between nineteen seventy two and nineteen seventy nine. It
Speaker 1: concerns vampire hunters, including you know, the Van Helsing's, and
Speaker 1: of course it has Dracula in it. Like straight up
Speaker 1: Marvel Comics version of Dracula, Blade was introduced as one
Speaker 1: of these vampire hunters. Uh. And the original incarnation was
Speaker 1: more of a like a thoroughly nineteen seventies affair, like
Speaker 1: he had wooden teque daggers. I believe he had like
Speaker 1: a like a large afro hair doue so you know,
Speaker 1: he's very much inspired by some of the cinema of
Speaker 1: that time period and the other character creator, Jean Colon
Speaker 1: was born through eleven. He was the artist and I
Speaker 1: think he's He has said in past interviews that he
Speaker 1: based part of the look of Blade on Jim Brown
Speaker 1: as well as other um famous black actors of the time. Now.
Speaker 1: Colon worked on the comics Daredevil is Where It well
Speaker 1: as Howard the Duck. He also co created the heroes
Speaker 1: Falcon and Carol Danver's. But going back to Wolfman, um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the following this film, there was apparently a legal dispute
Speaker 1: between Wolfman and Marvel. He does get an official character
Speaker 1: credit on Blade two. He's written some TV shows over
Speaker 1: the years, including a few episodes of Fraggle Rock. If
Speaker 1: I am maybe is correct on that um and fun fact,
Speaker 1: there was actually a previous Japanese animated adaptation of The
Speaker 1: Tomb of Dracula comic came out in eighty but I
Speaker 1: do not believe it has Blade in it. Um though
Speaker 1: the character does show up in the Spiderman cartoon. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you watched this, Joe, but um, you
Speaker 1: know this was this was a fun cartoon that came
Speaker 1: on in the afternoons after you got him from school,
Speaker 1: and they eventually just throw every Spider Man related character
Speaker 1: in there. So Blades showing more Bias is showing up
Speaker 1: all these various weird Spider Man like second and third
Speaker 1: tier characters and villains. Spider Man met Morbius. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Morbius was totally in the mix. Fun fact, Morbius was
Speaker 1: originally going to be in this film. If you go
Speaker 1: on YouTube, you can even find some rough looking footage
Speaker 1: where originally at the end of it, Blade was going
Speaker 1: to have kind of like a stair down with Morbius,
Speaker 1: like setting up Blade versus Morbius in the sequel. I
Speaker 1: followed your link on this and I looked at the
Speaker 1: scene and my thought was, like, how's anybody supposed to
Speaker 1: know this is Morbious. It's just a guy standing there. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: maybe that's one of the reasons they cut it up.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to two the actors here. So yes,
Speaker 1: Blade is Wesley Snipes. Wesley Snipes is Blade. Wesley Snipes
Speaker 1: was born two and really requires no introduction. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's he appears as the character in both of the
Speaker 1: Blade additional Blade movies that I mentioned Blade Too in
Speaker 1: two thousand two, Blade Trinity in two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: One of his earliest credits he is a episode of
Speaker 1: All My Children, followed by early roles in such films
Speaker 1: as Wildcats eighty six, Streets of Gold same year, Critical
Speaker 1: Condition from eight seven, but then in eighty nine he
Speaker 1: appeared in Major League, followed by King of New York
Speaker 1: starring Christopher Walkin in nine, and then a whole string
Speaker 1: of just huge films in the early nineties, New Jack City,
Speaker 1: Jungle Fever, White Men Can't Jump, Passing Your fifty seven
Speaker 1: Rising Sun, and Demolition Man. Demolition Man is a deeply
Speaker 1: stupid movie, but it is also Wesley Snipes is just
Speaker 1: great in it. He is so much fun. He's what
Speaker 1: a criminal from the past future something that is okay
Speaker 1: the premises they froze. It takes place in a sort
Speaker 1: of um in a very softened utopian future, where like
Speaker 1: where there's no crime or littering or even swearing anymore,
Speaker 1: and everything's all just like nice. And suddenly they accidentally
Speaker 1: unthaw a frozen criminal from the nineteen nineties, and that's
Speaker 1: Wesley Snipes, and nobody knows how to deal with them,
Speaker 1: so they also have to unfreeze a tough cop from
Speaker 1: the nineties, and that's Sylvester Stallone. It's uh, whoever came
Speaker 1: up with that premise Chef's Kiss. I should see that
Speaker 1: one at some point. I hear that people enjoy it,
Speaker 1: at least in retrospect. I don't know how I did
Speaker 1: at the time. All right. Now, of course, Snip's post
Speaker 1: Blade Trinity, he had some well known legal issues, but
Speaker 1: I believe he's He's worked pretty steadily since then. He
Speaker 1: notably showed up in The Expendables three. Uh Dolo, Mine
Speaker 1: is my Name and Coming to America. That's Coming Numeral
Speaker 1: to America, the sequel that came out recently. And I
Speaker 1: have to say I've long wanted to check out his
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve movie Gallo Walkers, in which he plays
Speaker 1: a cursed gunman who fights the undead. Patrick Bergen is
Speaker 1: in it, so you know it's it's worth looking at, right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And I also I don't want to spoil
Speaker 1: too much about I mean, obviously we're gonna spoil everything
Speaker 1: about Blade because you know, we got to talk about
Speaker 1: the like the ritual at the end and stuff. But uh,
Speaker 1: but for a different show, I'll I'll limit it to
Speaker 1: just saying that Wesley Snipes has an amazing cameo in
Speaker 1: the in the What We Do in the Shadows TV series. Nice,
Speaker 1: I just to go back to something we discussed in
Speaker 1: the previous Weird House. I also have to say that
Speaker 1: when I think about Snipes now, I can't help but
Speaker 1: think about Steven Seagal, because both actors are of the
Speaker 1: same era. Both actors were allegedly difficult on set, or
Speaker 1: could be difficult on set in some cases. Uh. However,
Speaker 1: Snipes was clearly the bigger star, and I feel like
Speaker 1: in Blade, especially, Snipes manages to actually capture the essence
Speaker 1: of a modern action movie warrior priest, certainly a vibe
Speaker 1: that C. Seagal was was always going for in these
Speaker 1: films but not quite nailing. So Snipes kind of captures
Speaker 1: what Segal always aspired for. That's an interesting way to
Speaker 1: put it. Yeah, well, I would say another difference is
Speaker 1: that while Snipes does plenty of these, uh, these silly
Speaker 1: action hero roles, Snipes is actually a good actor, and
Speaker 1: I don't think that can be said of Steven Seagal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's an important distinction to make Now you
Speaker 1: know what they say, every great hero needs at least
Speaker 1: a mediocre villain. And that's that's where we turn to
Speaker 1: Deacon Frost, our Vambhire villain in this film, played by
Speaker 1: Stephen Dorff. Oh, I think uh Dorf as Deacon Frost
Speaker 1: is better than mediocre. I found him a delightfully fun
Speaker 1: as the villain in this He's fun. I don't know,
Speaker 1: something always felt a little lacking from me in this character. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not not bashing the performance at all. I
Speaker 1: feel like he delivers on what they were going for
Speaker 1: here and and maybe ultimately he goes beyond that. Like
Speaker 1: Deacon Frost is a is a villain that I am
Speaker 1: not rooting for, Like I don't like him, and ultimately
Speaker 1: maybe that's the point, Like I'm not supposed to like
Speaker 1: Deacon Frost. He's an upstart. Um, you know, he's a
Speaker 1: He insults everybody, whether you're you know, other vampires or
Speaker 1: you're a vampire hunter. You know, he's a He's a
Speaker 1: consummate bad guy in that regard. He I love the
Speaker 1: premise for the character though it's hilarious. He's basically the
Speaker 1: ideas Deacon Frost is taking this vampire thing a little
Speaker 1: too far, you know. He's like, well, I can understand
Speaker 1: the killing people and drinking their blood, but Frost is
Speaker 1: a little extreme. He is he's an extremist. He's a
Speaker 1: young extremist, and the old establishment doesn't really know what
Speaker 1: to do with him. Um, he's hilariously inept and dealing
Speaker 1: with any internal threats clearly. Um. Yeah. He gets taken
Speaker 1: before the Board of Directors of Vampires and they're like, Frost,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're a loose cannon, you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: like yeah, though, yeah, Well, they don't even really kick
Speaker 1: him off the force. They're just like, you shouldn't you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be like this, Frost, And he's like, well I am.
Speaker 1: And then he walks off and like smokes a cigarette
Speaker 1: and they're like the lass, what can you do? And
Speaker 1: then later just wipes them out and and yeah, it
Speaker 1: completely takes over without any real sense of like you
Speaker 1: don't get the sense that, oh man, Frost really was
Speaker 1: pulling those political strings, like I don't know, it looks
Speaker 1: like he just put at least marginal effort into it,
Speaker 1: and the old vampire lords were just totally inept. Uh.
Speaker 1: They didn't see it coming. They couldn't come up with
Speaker 1: with even like they had every reason in the world
Speaker 1: to get rid of Stephen, get rid of Deacon Frost here,
Speaker 1: And there's no line in the film where they're kind
Speaker 1: of where they even acknowledge why they haven't done. So
Speaker 1: they're not like, oh, Deacon Frost, you're so out of line,
Speaker 1: you're so you're so lucky that we have this one
Speaker 1: provision in vampire law that says we cannot kill you,
Speaker 1: or or something like, oh, Deacon Frost, thank goodness you're
Speaker 1: doing the uh the blood harvesting forests. Otherwise, if if
Speaker 1: you want it so important, we would just get rid
Speaker 1: of you. There's no reason for us to believe that
Speaker 1: Frost has any importance to the vampire authority here, and
Speaker 1: yet they do nothing about him and then he kills
Speaker 1: them all. You're right. It's not even like Tony Soprano
Speaker 1: being like, oh, I want to whack him, but he's
Speaker 1: a good earner. They're just they're just like he's constantly
Speaker 1: causing problems and threatening us. Oh what are we gonna do?
Speaker 1: I'm mudokire, I don't know alright. So Doriff, though he's
Speaker 1: been around a while I started off as a child actor,
Speaker 1: appearing in the seven film. One of his earlier roles
Speaker 1: was the eighties seven filmed The Gate about kids summoning
Speaker 1: up demons at home. But most of his earlier credits
Speaker 1: are TV roles, but some bigger screen roles would come around.
Speaker 1: With the Power of One is Backbeat, as well as
Speaker 1: Stewart Gordon's Space Truckers in post Blade. He was in
Speaker 1: such films as John Waters Cecil Beatdimented in two thousand,
Speaker 1: the uh if Memory Serves Terrible, Fear dot Com in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. What wait, what are you saying
Speaker 1: bad about fear dot Com? I mean maybe maybe would
Speaker 1: be fun in retrospect, but at the time even I
Speaker 1: remember watching Fear dot Com and it it was just
Speaker 1: a whole it was bad. No, it's bad, but it's
Speaker 1: part of the series of movies all came out around
Speaker 1: that time about telecommunications technology that kills you. So like
Speaker 1: in The Ring, you get a phone call and it
Speaker 1: kills you, and then in this movie you go to
Speaker 1: a website and it kills you. Yeah, Fear dot Com
Speaker 1: and like the one of the worst, like Ring knockoffs.
Speaker 1: I guess of the era. I think it actually might
Speaker 1: have come first lightly before the American ring at least. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not positive about that at any rate. Uh, it's bad. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't have much to say about a lot of
Speaker 1: these roles, but I do think that Dorff was pretty
Speaker 1: great in the third season of True Detective. He really
Speaker 1: wowed me, and that, like, I hadn't really seen him
Speaker 1: play this sort of character before. Generally, I had only
Speaker 1: seen him play these cool characters from the younger phase
Speaker 1: of the career. But as this character, Detective Roland West
Speaker 1: in True Detective, I really liked him in that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, he grizzled. Well. One more thing about him,
Speaker 1: A fun fact. He's the son of composer Steve Dorff,
Speaker 1: who composed the score for the seven film My Best
Speaker 1: Friend as a vampire. All right, next actor we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about here, Chris ger Stafferson is in this with
Speaker 1: the character Whistler. Whistler is Blade's tech man, his back up,
Speaker 1: his He's his Q, always providing him with cool new
Speaker 1: gadgets with which to kill a little blood drinkers. Except
Speaker 1: he's not whimsical like Q. You know, don't touch that table. Seven. Instead,
Speaker 1: he's a well to come back to the theme of grizzled,
Speaker 1: he is. He is as grizzled as it gets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has grizzled to the max um. And then you
Speaker 1: can imagine Norrington being like, cut, all right, can we
Speaker 1: try it again, Chris, but this time more grizzled. Can
Speaker 1: you make it more grizzled and and reckless and gruff
Speaker 1: and Christophers It's like, yeah, I can do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: smoking constantly guzzling Jack Daniels, it's great. Out of the
Speaker 1: bottle without pouring it in the class, smoking while sloppily
Speaker 1: putting gasoline in a car, smoking while fueling up a car.
Speaker 1: He always looks like he just stepped on a nail
Speaker 1: a few minutes ago. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he has
Speaker 1: like his leg and a brace too. Right. So this
Speaker 1: is Chris Kristofferson, very well known name singer, songwriter turned actor.
Speaker 1: Some of his biggest songs that he wrote were Me
Speaker 1: and Bobby McGee for the Good Time, Sunday Morning, Coming Down,
Speaker 1: and help Me Make It through the Night. His first
Speaker 1: movie was Ones, the Last movie written and directed by
Speaker 1: Dennis Hopper, and he also starred in the movie um
Speaker 1: Cisco Pike the same year and He followed these up
Speaker 1: with such nineteen seventies films as While a pair of
Speaker 1: Sam Peck and pop films Patt Pat Garrett and Billy
Speaker 1: the Kid, as well as Bring Me the Head of
Speaker 1: Alfredo Garcia. Uh. He was also in Martin Scorsese's nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six he starred opposite Barbra streisand in A
Speaker 1: Star Is Born. Oh was he playing the the Bradley
Speaker 1: Cooper role in in that version of it? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's there, the character that Bradley Cooper would revisit the remake. Now,
Speaker 1: I can't We can't touch on all the films that
Speaker 1: Christophers since been. He was in a ton of stuff
Speaker 1: and during his career, but some of the others that
Speaker 1: stand out, at least to me are nineteen eighties, Seven's
Speaker 1: Gate nine eight, Big Top Peewee nineteen eighty nine is Millennium.
Speaker 1: He was in John Saylis's Lone Star in ninety six,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand and one he was in Planet
Speaker 1: of the Apes, the Planet of the Apes remake, the
Speaker 1: Tim Burton one. Right, Yeah, yeah, that one has a
Speaker 1: great cast, and I believe I've seen it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I sometimes I feel like I need to revisit that
Speaker 1: one see exactly what was up. It has some great
Speaker 1: ape suits. So obviously he plays Whistler in all three
Speaker 1: Wesley Snipes Blade movies, so we're well weight of a
Speaker 1: shocker to you, Joe. I distinctly recall him dying in
Speaker 1: the movie. I just watched. It didn't take. It didn't take.
Speaker 1: The character was too good. People wanting more Whistler. So
Speaker 1: even though, okay, but he comes back very early, it's
Speaker 1: not really a big plot. Basically early on in Blade Too,
Speaker 1: they're like, you remember Whistler, Well he's back. We're bringing
Speaker 1: him back from the dead. Like is he a vampire? Um?
Speaker 1: I think there's a little vampire nous involved in his
Speaker 1: him coming back, but I'm a little foggy on how
Speaker 1: it happened. It Also, it really, even at the time,
Speaker 1: as much as I love Blade Too, it felt like,
Speaker 1: what we killed Whistler. No, he's great, bring him back, okay. Um.
Speaker 1: Chris Christofferson was also in the weird movie Trouble in
Speaker 1: Mind from directed and written by Alan Rudolph, which is
Speaker 1: a film that I think I would there'd be a
Speaker 1: lot to talk about if we were to cover this
Speaker 1: some weird how sin him muh uh, if it were
Speaker 1: not for some of the less savory aspects of the
Speaker 1: character he plays in the film. Um and now, Chris
Speaker 1: Kostofferson is really good in it, and so are Divine,
Speaker 1: Keith Carroteene and Joe Morton. But for my taste anyway,
Speaker 1: Rudolph makes some choices with the protagonist that end up
Speaker 1: tarnishing the film for me. Uh anyway. At this point
Speaker 1: in his career, Christofferson is is still alive as of
Speaker 1: this recording, but is retired from acting in music these days.
Speaker 1: His last film role was two thousand Eighteens Blaze, directed
Speaker 1: and written by Ethan Hawk. Not Blade, but Blaze Blaze. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when I kind of went out, I guess in
Speaker 1: kind of a blaze of glory. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen Blaze. I'm not not sure what it's about,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's about an off brand vampire killer. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we got Blade, he's our vampire hunter, and then
Speaker 1: we got Whistler, he is our Vampire Hunters assistant slash
Speaker 1: tech slash mechanic. But let's see in a in a
Speaker 1: sort of materially based vampire scenario, you need a hematologist
Speaker 1: in this. It wouldn't be a movie without a hematologist, somebody,
Speaker 1: somebody who can explain all the blood science. And wouldn't
Speaker 1: you know it, we we happen to run across a
Speaker 1: hematologist quite early in the film. Yep, it's Karen, played
Speaker 1: by and boucher Right born seventy known for such films
Speaker 1: as Dead Presidents, zebra Head, and Fresh Uh. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: she she kind of this has been more of a
Speaker 1: modern film, you know. So she's she's not merely a
Speaker 1: damsel in distress. She is in distress a few times
Speaker 1: and Blade does safer, but then she also pulls through
Speaker 1: and is of course a brilliant hematologist who starts cracking
Speaker 1: the vampire medical problem as well as proving herself very
Speaker 1: eager to grab a shotgun or a UV light torch
Speaker 1: and jump in and kill some vampires as well. I
Speaker 1: think in boucher Right is great in this and I
Speaker 1: like her characters arc So at first she is, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's just like she gets bitten by vampire and needs
Speaker 1: rescuing by Blade. But yeah, over the course of the film,
Speaker 1: she she becomes more and more active in fighting back
Speaker 1: and yeah, so she invents, uh invents some chemical weapons
Speaker 1: to use against the vampires and she uh she she
Speaker 1: gets a really good sword stab in on Donald Log
Speaker 1: at one point and makes some vampires explode with some
Speaker 1: garlic spray. Uh. She's great. Yeah. Another actor of note
Speaker 1: in this is um Sana Lathan, who plays Blades mom Vanessa.
Speaker 1: We see her at the very beginning in this flashback Borde.
Speaker 1: She had a much bigger career post Blade, actually starting
Speaker 1: in two thousands of Love and Basketball and Brown Sugar
Speaker 1: from two thousand two, directed by Rick Famulula. She's also
Speaker 1: the lead in two thousand four's Alien Versus Predator. She
Speaker 1: had a recurring role on such TV shows as Niptuck, Secession,
Speaker 1: and Family Guy. So she's the main character and Alien
Speaker 1: Versus Predator. I haven't seen that in a long time,
Speaker 1: but I remember having a thought about her character and
Speaker 1: that which is that in the end, she and the
Speaker 1: predators like defeat all the aliens, and the predators are like,
Speaker 1: good job, human, you know you you did good back there,
Speaker 1: and then I think they give her a trophy or
Speaker 1: something and then they fly off, and then she has
Speaker 1: left standing by herself in the middle of Antarctica. So
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, she would definitely die. Well, you know, predators,
Speaker 1: they don't really know how humans work all that much.
Speaker 1: I guess she they should have given her a ride.
Speaker 1: I think all right, the next actor of note, Donald
Speaker 1: Logue is in this playing the character Quinn uh an
Speaker 1: excellent vampire henchman. Uh to Mr Frost here, this character
Speaker 1: is a lot of fun. This is a great villain.
Speaker 1: Uh And I kind of get the feeling that with
Speaker 1: this character. Somebody watched Catherine Bigelow's Near Dark and they
Speaker 1: saw Bill Paxton's character as the as the all ways
Speaker 1: going nuts vampire, dancing on tables, taunting people with the
Speaker 1: with the kind of southern accent, and to use a
Speaker 1: Goyeri ism, they said, I gotta get me one of those. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I can see their connection here. You both
Speaker 1: also get crispy and keep on vamping um the you know,
Speaker 1: both fun characters with similar traits. I think Paxiston and
Speaker 1: Logue each kind of make them their own. I think
Speaker 1: Paxiston's characters maybe a little more um Texan and Logues
Speaker 1: character Quinn here's a little more dude, you know, but
Speaker 1: but yeah, I can see the connection between these two anyway.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, Quinn is the best villain role in
Speaker 1: the in the film by far. Though. I do like
Speaker 1: the relationship that they developed between Quinn and Frost, Like
Speaker 1: they have a good vibe. So it's never one of
Speaker 1: these it's not a situation where I'm like, oh, I
Speaker 1: wish it was just Quinn. Like I love Quinn when
Speaker 1: he's on the screen, but I also love his moments
Speaker 1: with Frost. They really worked those out. Well. There's a
Speaker 1: great scene where you think Frost is gonna like cut
Speaker 1: off Quinn's arm, but he's just joking with him. He's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: let's yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's there's some some nice little
Speaker 1: nods like this, the very the subtle manipulation that Frost
Speaker 1: has him play over Quinn. Um, but there bros that
Speaker 1: there are bros. Yeah, but are they really like you
Speaker 1: know that Frost really is going he never gets the
Speaker 1: chance to actually betray Quinn. But but yeah, it's heavily
Speaker 1: implied that, Yeah, the second that Frost has what he needs,
Speaker 1: Quinn is no longer necessary. Yeah, when he becomes the
Speaker 1: Blood God. In the Blood God does not have any Bros. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Logs TV screen career kicks off in the early
Speaker 1: nineties with a smattering of small TV roles. You see
Speaker 1: him on X Files, you see him on Northern Exposure,
Speaker 1: as well as such films as ninety two Sneakers, ninety
Speaker 1: three Gettysburg, and these smaller roles continue. He even pops
Speaker 1: up in Jerry McGuire Um. He played Jimmy the Cab
Speaker 1: Driver and several MTV promos in the early nineties as well.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember these. Joe No just
Speaker 1: kind of a chance for outlandish character work from from
Speaker 1: logan those um. He's worked a lot since Blade, but
Speaker 1: some of the highlights include David Fincher's Zodiac. In two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, he was on the TV series Vikings and
Speaker 1: Oh Man. He has a really fun role in the
Speaker 1: biker series Sons of Anarchy. He plays an opiate addicted
Speaker 1: renegade x Us Marshall named Lee Torrik. He's not on
Speaker 1: the show a lot, but he's he really eats up
Speaker 1: the screen when he's on there. Well. He's definitely a
Speaker 1: scene stealer in this movie too, as a vampire who
Speaker 1: just repeatedly gets like burned and chopped up and stuff,
Speaker 1: but then comes back. Yeah, and he's he's just full
Speaker 1: of energy. You know, he's he's all about enjoying the party,
Speaker 1: but he's also all about bringing the fight to blade.
Speaker 1: But you know, it wouldn't be a vampire move if
Speaker 1: it didn't have Udo Kier in it. Yea, and Udo
Speaker 1: Kier in it plays Dragonetti is our our top vampire
Speaker 1: lord or vampire baron, at least in the local. Um. Uh,
Speaker 1: what does I don't even know what city this is
Speaker 1: supposed to be. I think they filmed parts of it
Speaker 1: in Canada, in parts of it in California. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: vaguely it's it's not it's unimportant. It is just the city,
Speaker 1: South American big city. It's never specified. Parts of it
Speaker 1: look more like an East coast city like New York.
Speaker 1: Parts of it definitely looked like l A. So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. But but yeah, Udo Kier, he is the
Speaker 1: CEO of the vampires in this movie. Yeah. So Kira
Speaker 1: oh Man, Kira has been in a lot so German
Speaker 1: bor an actor with two d and seventy five credits
Speaker 1: on IMDb. Um, I don't know if I said I
Speaker 1: may have said it already born, still very much alive,
Speaker 1: still active. He's one of these actors. He seems to
Speaker 1: have been in everything and become an icon for this
Speaker 1: weird mix of pop ler but also art house and
Speaker 1: just utter B movies and and and less than B.
Speaker 1: Like there's some some really really really low budget looking
Speaker 1: like video game adaptations he's been in. Um, are you
Speaker 1: making a movie that you're filming on your cell phone?
Speaker 1: Udo Kier will be in it. Give him a call. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you meet the price, he will, he will show up.
Speaker 1: And that they and he's one of these guys that
Speaker 1: like even like, no, no, none of these movies have
Speaker 1: slowed him down. Uh So he's he just keeps keeps
Speaker 1: acting in things, and he'll pop up in some really
Speaker 1: good stuff here and there, but then he'll also be
Speaker 1: in something that's just you know, complete trash and nothing
Speaker 1: sticks to him. Um. He started acting on screen in
Speaker 1: the late sixties and appeared in such films as a
Speaker 1: nine seventies Mark of the Devil opposite Herbert Loam. In
Speaker 1: seventy three and seventy four, he played both Baron Frankenstein
Speaker 1: and Count Dracula in Fresh Flesh for Frankenstein Not Fresh
Speaker 1: Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula, both famously produce
Speaker 1: used in part by Andy Warhol, so it pretty legendary
Speaker 1: for those roles. Um In nineteen seventy seven he played
Speaker 1: Dr Frank mandel Is in Mandel or Mandel I don't remember,
Speaker 1: but anyway, the movie is Dario Argento's Suspiria. Yeah. He's
Speaker 1: like a character that the main character goes to talk
Speaker 1: to in a like a park outside an office building
Speaker 1: and and he tells her about witches. Yeah. So Kierre
Speaker 1: has been in lots of European films and in general
Speaker 1: just lots of films. He was in ninety five Johnny Nemonic. Uh,
Speaker 1: he was Ince Fincher, a pet detective. He was in
Speaker 1: nineteen six is barbed Wire. In two thousand he was
Speaker 1: in both Shadow of the Vampire and Dancer in the Dark.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and one he was in both Werner
Speaker 1: Herzog's Invincible I believe that starred Tim Roth and he
Speaker 1: was also in Uh Meghito, was in Meghito Toho. I
Speaker 1: saw that in theaters. That's one of those uh Christian
Speaker 1: apocalypse movies. It's all about the anti Christ in the
Speaker 1: end times, the anti Christ played I think by Michael
Speaker 1: York Basil exposition from the Austin Powers movies. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, Kira was also in Fear dot Com.
Speaker 1: He's like, let me have some of that fear dot
Speaker 1: Com action, and I will go to that website. Don't
Speaker 1: do not try. I don't know, we can't vouch for
Speaker 1: that website. Um. But but again, artful and terrible movies
Speaker 1: kind of find a perfect balance in udeau Kier and
Speaker 1: this trend continues to this very day. Most recently, his
Speaker 1: film Swan Song earned a great deal of praise, in
Speaker 1: which he plays a formerly flamboyant hairdresser aging flamboyant hairdresser.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that that one was can I was reading
Speaker 1: articles about that one on MPR. Oh, but Joe, he
Speaker 1: was in another movie that I know that you've mentioned
Speaker 1: to mean before. He was in two thousand four. Is
Speaker 1: Dracula three thousand, that's right? Uh. Dracula three thousand is
Speaker 1: a directive video sci fi horror masterpiece starring Casper van Deen,
Speaker 1: who was in the first Omega Code movie by the way,
Speaker 1: to Connections abound, but not just Casper van Deen, and
Speaker 1: so it's also got coolioh Uh. Erica Lank and Tommy
Speaker 1: Lister Tiny Lister. Um. I'm gonna say I saw Dracula
Speaker 1: three thousand circa two thousands seven, but the memory is
Speaker 1: firmly implanted because this is one of those movies that
Speaker 1: is not just bad. It's not just really bad, it's
Speaker 1: unusually bad. I think paying attention to this entire movie
Speaker 1: should be like a standard test of willpower and sustained
Speaker 1: attention used in like training airline pilots. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're the safety technician at a power plant, you must
Speaker 1: watch Dracula three thousand and and be able to describe
Speaker 1: everything that happens afterwards. It's a it's that would be
Speaker 1: a feat of the brain. The plot is, I think
Speaker 1: that there's a spaceship helmed by Casper van Deen. I
Speaker 1: think he's literally named Captain Abraham van Helsing, and they
Speaker 1: they've run across a derelict ship called the Demeter reference
Speaker 1: to Dracula, of course, and then they try to salvage it,
Speaker 1: but whoops. There's a vampire on board, but not a
Speaker 1: sci fi vampire, so imagine frilly shirt, huge collar, black cape.
Speaker 1: He's a Halloween costume of a vampire. But in this
Speaker 1: spaceship movie because it sounds like you're working up he
Speaker 1: had like a space vampire, like a something like from
Speaker 1: Planet of the Vampires or something, or something even more alien.
Speaker 1: But you had shared a picture of this, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just straight up department store vampire. No, he's literally
Speaker 1: just like Ivan tor Blood and so Udo Kier is
Speaker 1: in this movie too, But he appears in such a
Speaker 1: way that, as as a friend of mine put it
Speaker 1: at the time, it looks like he left his car
Speaker 1: running while he ran in to shoot his scenes. Uh.
Speaker 1: He does not interact with the rest of the cast.
Speaker 1: As far as I recall. He plays the dead captain
Speaker 1: of the Darrelict Chip, and his only scenes where he's
Speaker 1: acting are like video logs left behind. And in these
Speaker 1: video logs, he's obviously reading his lines for the first
Speaker 1: time as he delivers them, so he's going straight off
Speaker 1: the que cards, and you can see his eyes going
Speaker 1: back and forth as he goes down each line of
Speaker 1: a bunch of whole you know, like, oh, there's something
Speaker 1: on board. We are doomed that that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: All right. Next up, I guess we we got to
Speaker 1: try and move move a little quicker through these other names,
Speaker 1: but we so we have Quinn as one of the
Speaker 1: vampire lackeys. We also have a character named Mercury. She's
Speaker 1: a super fast blonde vampire. Um May played by Arley Joverte,
Speaker 1: Spanish dancer turned actor went on to appear in such
Speaker 1: films as Vampire Slas Mirtos, Empire of the Wolves and
Speaker 1: David Finchers The girl with the dragon tattoo. She she
Speaker 1: vamps it up good here. Yeah, she's great. She she's
Speaker 1: she does a good like kind of wolf snarl. She's
Speaker 1: got good teeth for the role. That's something I was
Speaker 1: thinking about watching this film. A lot of folks have
Speaker 1: vampire teeth in and vampire teeth look cool, but they
Speaker 1: can also make your uh this, the prosthetic that goes
Speaker 1: in your mouth can make your your cheeks a little puffy.
Speaker 1: So you kind of get that that vampire teeth cheek
Speaker 1: puff going on with a lot of the actors here.
Speaker 1: Yeah alright, Um, we also have Tracy Lords in this
Speaker 1: playing the character Raquel. Uh. This is the vampire who
Speaker 1: leads our bro victim of human to the vampire rave
Speaker 1: early on her film. Um yeah, so just a small role,
Speaker 1: but uh Lords Born who basically transitioned out of notoriety
Speaker 1: into what would become a solid mainstream acting career. She was.
Speaker 1: Her first such role was in Not of This Earth,
Speaker 1: a remake of the Roger Corman classic that we've discussed
Speaker 1: on this show, directed by another name that comes up
Speaker 1: a lot, Jim Warnarski. I've never seen this remake. I
Speaker 1: don't know that you should. It doesn't particularly good, but
Speaker 1: it exists, I mean, especially given how great the original
Speaker 1: Not of This Earth was. But anyway, she's been a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff. She was in John Waters Cry Baby
Speaker 1: not long after that. She did a lot of TV
Speaker 1: for such series as mcgever, Highlander, Tales from the Crypt,
Speaker 1: melrose Place, Roseanne Nash Bridges, and Will and Grace. Okay,
Speaker 1: smaller roles now, Uh, there's a character named Crease. He's
Speaker 1: basically a vampire underling that ends up losing a hand
Speaker 1: to a booby trap, played by Matt Schulz born seventy two.
Speaker 1: Matt Schultz is interesting because he returns and Blade two
Speaker 1: as an entirely different vampire um a blood Pack member
Speaker 1: named Chupa and Matt Schulz has has been in a
Speaker 1: number of movies over the years, including two thousand ones
Speaker 1: Fast and the Furious in two th was an eleventh
Speaker 1: Fast five in which he plays a character named Vince.
Speaker 1: Was also in The Transporter. I think the basic situation
Speaker 1: is he did Blade and then he got jacked to
Speaker 1: do Fast and Furious, and then he came back and
Speaker 1: Blade two and played a different Jack vampire. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to remember who this guy is in any of these
Speaker 1: movies I've seen, and I can't. Okay, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: he was in two of them, right, like he was.
Speaker 1: He must be part of what the family, right, because
Speaker 1: he's called back he came back in I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I don't recall he's maybe it was a flashback. This
Speaker 1: is This is not Vin Diesel. This is not ludicrous.
Speaker 1: This is you know, I don't. I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: moving along, we're getting into bit players here now. But
Speaker 1: I have to point out that Greg Okamura is in
Speaker 1: this playing an uncredited vampire. He's one of the vampire lords.
Speaker 1: Their number of really cool looking vampire lords sitting around
Speaker 1: the table with Udo. Most of none of them do anything,
Speaker 1: most of them do not talk, but several of the
Speaker 1: him look really cool, and Okamarro certainly looks cool. Hawaiian
Speaker 1: born American actor, stuntman and martial artists. You've definitely seen
Speaker 1: in something, um, even if it's just playing Wing Kong.
Speaker 1: Hatchet Man is Big Trouble and Little China. Uh. He's
Speaker 1: he's the one that has like two I think golden
Speaker 1: revolvers in his in his hands. He also pops up
Speaker 1: in such films as The Octagon, Samurai Cop, The Shadow,
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat version, Blood Sport three, and much more. Who
Speaker 1: was he in The Mortal Kombat? I watched that probably
Speaker 1: a hundred times. I don't remember him specifically, but he
Speaker 1: has a real he has a real cool look. You know,
Speaker 1: he's got this uh this long beard, bald head, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of a tough guy looks. So he's very much
Speaker 1: this kind of guy. He does some stunts, but also
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, he looks too cool to not have
Speaker 1: him more on camera. More can he at least stand
Speaker 1: in the background. I don't remember if he has a
Speaker 1: line in Blade, but you were right about he does
Speaker 1: not the the sort of board of directors of vampires,
Speaker 1: being very ineffectual and not having much to say or
Speaker 1: do other than stand around and like look terrified by frost.
Speaker 1: I think occasionally one of them will just like like
Speaker 1: squeak like, well, I'm a coward, so I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or they'll be a little bit smug and be like
Speaker 1: you have you have frost, you have no idea what
Speaker 1: you're doing. Or to one of the underlings, you know
Speaker 1: he's gonna get you all killed, right, and that's sort
Speaker 1: of that's all that ever announced to alright. Note on
Speaker 1: the music, Mark Isham did the music here um nine
Speaker 1: solid score in my opinion, you know, it hits all
Speaker 1: the right action beats. But also we have a number
Speaker 1: of sequences that are more ambient and ethereal in nature,
Speaker 1: be it like a Blade meditation scene or one of
Speaker 1: those driving through the dreary daytime city scene that I
Speaker 1: feel like like, really those are the moments where you
Speaker 1: really have a chance for the score to shine though
Speaker 1: in and as was the style at the time. Note,
Speaker 1: this movie also has a lot of rob would you
Speaker 1: would you call it acid techno? Yes, yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: some there's some fun hip hop in it as well,
Speaker 1: but yeah, some of the key scenes involves some like
Speaker 1: a massive drop of acid techno. So yeah, there there
Speaker 1: are several points where like oh, Blade gets out the
Speaker 1: sword and then immediately it's down to go down, down, down,
Speaker 1: down down down. Yeah that kind of thing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love it. But anyway, the score wise mark is Sham
Speaker 1: also did such films as two thousand fours, Crash Bad, Lieutenant,
Speaker 1: Port of Called New Orleans, two thousand sevens, The Missed
Speaker 1: Time Cop Romeo is Bleeding Fire in the Sky Point Break,
Speaker 1: the Hitcher Trouble in mind when if I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: Never Cry Wolf from eight e three. Uh he was
Speaker 1: nominated for an oscar for River runs through It. Uh
Speaker 1: So yeah, he's a he's a big deal and he's
Speaker 1: still working. Cool now. A quick note on the stunts
Speaker 1: and fights. Uh. There are a few different names that
Speaker 1: are tied up in the stunt working choreography. Henry King Jr.
Speaker 1: And Jeff Amata are credited with stunt coordinator honors. Imata
Speaker 1: is a long time stuntman and martial artists who has
Speaker 1: worked in tons of notable films including Blade Runner, Dreamscape,
Speaker 1: Prince of Darkness, and Big Trouble and Little China. He's
Speaker 1: in Big Troumble a Little China. He's one of the
Speaker 1: kidnappers of the Airport Okay and on Top of this
Speaker 1: martial arts choreographer. Credits go to both Wesley Snipes himself
Speaker 1: and Jeff Ward another long time stumming. All right, let's
Speaker 1: let's let's bust into the plot of Blade a bit more. Huh. Alright,
Speaker 1: so I guess we will talk about the opening. The
Speaker 1: opening has a kind of prologue that takes place in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, where you're in a hospital. It's that
Speaker 1: dreamy kind of camera work that lets you know that
Speaker 1: this is not the whole movie is not going to
Speaker 1: be like this. You know it'll take place in the present,
Speaker 1: don't worry, But it's a sixty seven. You see a
Speaker 1: woman being rushed through a hospital on a stretcher and
Speaker 1: she's about to give birth, but she also had as
Speaker 1: vampire bite marks on her neck, and you see like
Speaker 1: her I d falls on the ground. I think you
Speaker 1: see her name is Vanessa Brooks, and it's implied that
Speaker 1: she dies. So that's the background, and then we get credits,
Speaker 1: and we see over the credits there are some sped
Speaker 1: up time laps shots of a city. I was trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what city, but I think it's just
Speaker 1: it's intentionally non specific. A side note on this cinematography.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, what is the effect on the viewer
Speaker 1: created by time laps footage of human activity in a city,
Speaker 1: And to my mind, it has a kind of d
Speaker 1: individual add effect because you can't focus on any individual
Speaker 1: person and instead only see kind of trails or lines.
Speaker 1: You see masses of humans blurring together into just patterns
Speaker 1: of movement, or you see the effects of their behavior
Speaker 1: and projects over time, so you might see buildings being assembled,
Speaker 1: or garbage piling up or something, And in this sense
Speaker 1: kind of makes you think of the humans in the
Speaker 1: city more like ants in a nature documentary, not as individuals,
Speaker 1: but as a kind of collective effect and undifferentiated mass
Speaker 1: of biology traveling along certain lines, which I think actually
Speaker 1: works really well in the intro for a vampire movie.
Speaker 1: It has the eerie effect of letting us see humans
Speaker 1: more like how the vampires do, kind of like we're
Speaker 1: herds of livestock without individual identities. So I think that's
Speaker 1: a very smart choice of technique for the opening of Blade. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: short lived creatures that burned through life so quickly, and
Speaker 1: it's these older beings, these long lived beings that prey
Speaker 1: upon them. Now, then we get to the real opening,
Speaker 1: which is you see two people on a date. I
Speaker 1: think one of them is Tracy Lords, and they're like
Speaker 1: winding their way through a meat packing warehouse and leading
Speaker 1: into a secret club. There's like a bouncer at the door.
Speaker 1: They go into a club and immediately we're thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: is this a vampire club. It's got to be. It's
Speaker 1: full of you know. Answer is there's one dancer there
Speaker 1: who can kind of teleport. I think that's um, what's
Speaker 1: her name? Who? Mercy Mercury? Yeah, and they're playing. At
Speaker 1: first I was like, is this e d M? But
Speaker 1: Robbie corrected me, is, so this would be acid techno? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is definitely acid techno in this scene. So there's
Speaker 1: a very gray and blue color palette, kind of pale colors. Uh.
Speaker 1: The DJ has flashlights strapped to his glasses. I think
Speaker 1: we see Stephen Dorff wandering around in the crowd. The
Speaker 1: rave scene is very late nineties. But then we see
Speaker 1: the DJ like unveils a giant banner saying blood bath
Speaker 1: and then what do you know of the sprinkler system
Speaker 1: kicks on and it's just spraying blood on everybody. This
Speaker 1: is before we started recording, Seth was asking me, who
Speaker 1: is bladed the movie where the sprinklers come on and
Speaker 1: it's blood, and we talked about it, and I was thinking,
Speaker 1: I don't think that would work because wouldn't the blood
Speaker 1: kind of like clump up or coagulate and clog up
Speaker 1: the sprinkler system. I just don't think you could do that.
Speaker 1: It's a special system that was probably custom installed. Because
Speaker 1: we find out the vampires are into everything. They can
Speaker 1: have custom tech installed. Um the human plumbers to do that, Um, well,
Speaker 1: if they are, they're they're vampire familiars. They have the
Speaker 1: glyph on the back of their neck and they're they
Speaker 1: know exactly. They install these in cities across the United
Speaker 1: States and in Europe and beyond. But they So the
Speaker 1: blood comes on and then the human dude who's been
Speaker 1: led in there, he starts panicking, and then all the
Speaker 1: vampires are like hissing and baring their fangs at him.
Speaker 1: They're like really salting the meat with this guy. They
Speaker 1: don't just bite and drink his blood. They're like trying.
Speaker 1: It seems like they're trying to scare him to death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this whole sequence is fun to sort of try and
Speaker 1: figure out because yeah, so there's the vampires want to
Speaker 1: drink blood, but they also want blood to come through
Speaker 1: the sprinkler system and fall on everything. They want to
Speaker 1: drain this man's blood, but also they kind of want
Speaker 1: to beat him up and scare him. And so I
Speaker 1: was the main way I was able to make sense
Speaker 1: of this is that, Okay, nothing that we that we
Speaker 1: as humans in our life, nothing that we like or love,
Speaker 1: do we love as much as a vampire loves blood
Speaker 1: like a vampire has so many Like the vampire can't
Speaker 1: feel emotions about most things, but a vampire feels like
Speaker 1: all emotions about blood. And therefore they're like, yes, I
Speaker 1: want blood, I want blood to rain on me, I
Speaker 1: want I want to make love to the blood. I
Speaker 1: also want to beat the blood up. I want to
Speaker 1: drink the blood. I want to just blood, blood. Blood.
Speaker 1: That's all they can think about. And so this is
Speaker 1: the the very sort of of of experience, the very
Speaker 1: sort of room that a vampire would want to find
Speaker 1: itself in. That's very astute. I think that is exactly
Speaker 1: what they're going for. So this guy's toast right, like
Speaker 1: there's just no way out. Of course, they're gonna drain him.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like this club has I don't know,
Speaker 1: one or maybe a few humans in it, and then
Speaker 1: five hundred vampires. I mean it's not a good ratio.
Speaker 1: Um So the guys crawling away in terror, slashing through
Speaker 1: the blood until he like crawls up on a big
Speaker 1: steel toed boot and you see the bottom of a
Speaker 1: long black leather coat flapping. What Who's this? Immediately the
Speaker 1: crowd panics, They're like, that's him, It's the day Walker.
Speaker 1: And then fight Fight, Fight Blade is here. Wesley Snipes
Speaker 1: looks awesome. He's got the sunglasses indoors, he's got the
Speaker 1: you know, lots of black leather, he's got the body
Speaker 1: armor on. He's got the Vampire Hunter Batman utility belt.
Speaker 1: So I think he's got a shotgun that shoots silver
Speaker 1: and when it hits the vampires, they dissolve into gray
Speaker 1: and orange. C g I ash. And then he's got
Speaker 1: little silver steaks, and he's got a katana that I
Speaker 1: guess must have silver in it. And he's got some
Speaker 1: kind of boomerang made out of silver lasers. I think
Speaker 1: he can throw like bombs of garlic sauce, and he
Speaker 1: of course does martial arts. So he's he's just unloading
Speaker 1: all of all of the fighting skills on this club
Speaker 1: full of monsters. It just tears into them and it's marvelous.
Speaker 1: There was a really funny part where a vampire grabs
Speaker 1: two meat hooks off the wall that looked like they're
Speaker 1: there for decoration, I guess because his meatpacking district or something,
Speaker 1: and then runs at Blades swinging the swinging the meat
Speaker 1: hooks like nun chucks. Yeah, it takes him out, but
Speaker 1: then donal Loge comes out. This is our vampire, Quinn.
Speaker 1: He's got a like big red beard and he's he's
Speaker 1: he's got a bunch of goons with sunglasses and he's like,
Speaker 1: that's him. Get him. We're gonna jack you up and
Speaker 1: make him hurt bad. And so you get a big
Speaker 1: fight scene, a bunch of waves of dudes in in
Speaker 1: very distinctive late nineties bad guy outfits. So it's all
Speaker 1: black clothes, sunglasses inside finger gloves, black wool caps that
Speaker 1: kind of look. Of course, Blade beats them all. Then
Speaker 1: he pins donal Loge to the wall with spikes and
Speaker 1: uh uh and Quinn here he seems to be speaking
Speaker 1: some ancient language I think there's a there's a vampire
Speaker 1: lang Widge in this movie. Yeah and yeah. That part
Speaker 1: of the plot ends up revolving around vampire runes and
Speaker 1: glyphs that can't quite be deciphered and so forth. But
Speaker 1: Blade tells him, Okay, I'm tired of He says, I'm
Speaker 1: tired of chopping you up. This time, I'll try fire,
Speaker 1: and he sets the vampire on fire, and then police
Speaker 1: show up. Blade quickly checks the party guy for bite marks.
Speaker 1: He has none, so he lets him go. Then Blade
Speaker 1: disappears and we cut straight to the hospital where Quinn's
Speaker 1: charred cadaver has arrived. There like oh, chard cadaver for you,
Speaker 1: and so here we're about to meet a major character,
Speaker 1: the hematologist Karen Jensen played by and Bouche Wright and
Speaker 1: uh some of so at first we have her and
Speaker 1: some other doctor or pathologist. I don't remember the character's name,
Speaker 1: but uh, my main thing about this other guy is,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, this guy just does not look like a doctor.
Speaker 1: I know a doctor can look like anything, but this
Speaker 1: guy looks like he's in a Beatles cover band. He
Speaker 1: has a floppy like Paul my Cartney mop cut. He
Speaker 1: just I don't buy it. He does seem like a
Speaker 1: pretty useless character at the time, but it becomes it
Speaker 1: becomes clear that it's an economic choice later on in
Speaker 1: the picture. Yes, um so, uh so. Anyway, so he
Speaker 1: and he and Karen are talking and she's analyzing the
Speaker 1: blood sample from the cadaver and things are not adding up.
Speaker 1: She seems skeptical that the blood she's looking at actually
Speaker 1: came out of a dead person, and she says, the
Speaker 1: red blood cells are by convex, which is impossible a
Speaker 1: little bit of monster science. I did some digging on this.
Speaker 1: Red blood cells are in fact normally by concave, meaning
Speaker 1: there's a little dip in the middle of the disk,
Speaker 1: like a like a bally. A biconvex red blood cell
Speaker 1: would be one that bulged out in the middle on
Speaker 1: both sides, really making it more like a sphere. And
Speaker 1: there are in fact medical conditions that cause red blood
Speaker 1: cells to become shaped more like a sphere. These are
Speaker 1: known as ferocytosis. People with spirocytosis often experience u hemolytic anemia,
Speaker 1: which is where the spleen mistakes these spherical red blood
Speaker 1: cells for damage to dead cells and then destroys them,
Speaker 1: leading to the problem that that the body is constantly
Speaker 1: attacking and eliminating its own blood supply. Now, this may
Speaker 1: be fleshed out more in the in the comics or
Speaker 1: the Blade lore, but I feel like this is a
Speaker 1: bit of physiology in the movie that they don't go
Speaker 1: into great detail about. But it really fits pretty well
Speaker 1: with the vampire mythos, like the vampires have a condition
Speaker 1: where their bodies are constantly destroying their own blood supply
Speaker 1: and they must replenish it. Fascinating. Yeah, somebody did their homework, man,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe Goya or maybe somebody else. Anyway, Dr
Speaker 1: Jensen uh and this other doctor talk and he's like,
Speaker 1: come look at this body. It's weird, and she's she says,
Speaker 1: I thought you promised to give me some distance. So
Speaker 1: they clearly have a romantic history, but it's all over now,
Speaker 1: and he's like, no funny business. I just want you
Speaker 1: to come to the morgue with me. Uh. So, you know,
Speaker 1: they go and investigate the body. She notices, Wow, the
Speaker 1: maxilla looks a little deformed, the maxillos the upper jaw,
Speaker 1: and she's like, there's some odd muscle structure around the canines.
Speaker 1: They're cutting this charred body with fangs open, and then
Speaker 1: the guy is in fact, he's like, hey, want to
Speaker 1: get back together, and they argue about that for a minute,
Speaker 1: and then just sudden, vampening the Crispy Donald, pops up.
Speaker 1: He kills the dude, he bites Karen. You think he's
Speaker 1: gonna kill her too, You think she's done for But
Speaker 1: then suddenly here's Blade in the hospital and he's like,
Speaker 1: I came back to finish you off. Uh. And there's
Speaker 1: a brief fight, which is funny because the crispy vampire
Speaker 1: is obviously very slippery and sliding around, which is gross.
Speaker 1: But the police show up and shoot Blade a bunch
Speaker 1: of times, and he just yells at them in a
Speaker 1: moment that's quite hilarious. He says yeah um, and then
Speaker 1: Blade cuts the vampire's arm off, but the vampire escapes,
Speaker 1: jumping out a window, running off into an alleyway. He
Speaker 1: snarkles like a puma. And then Karen's down on the
Speaker 1: hospital floor. She's gasping for help, and Blades about to
Speaker 1: walk away at first, but then he, you know, he's
Speaker 1: sort of he has a moment of compassion and he
Speaker 1: picks her up and takes her with him, and the
Speaker 1: cops give chase. They shoot Blade like a hundred times,
Speaker 1: but he's fine, he's got the armor on, he's all,
Speaker 1: you know, he's great. Uh. And then Blade jumps across
Speaker 1: the sky to the roof of another building, and then
Speaker 1: they escape in the Blade Mobile, which is great. Blade
Speaker 1: drives like a sick muscle car. They get back to
Speaker 1: the hideout, the Fortress of Blatitude, and it's in some
Speaker 1: abandoned industrial park. You know, there's pipes and chains and
Speaker 1: catwalks everywhere. That's another late nineties action movie thing you
Speaker 1: gotta have, like industrial building. It takes place in somewhere
Speaker 1: that used to be a factory. There's catwalks galore. We
Speaker 1: hear Credence Clearwater Revival playing it's Bad Moon Rising, of course,
Speaker 1: and we meet Whistler. Here's Chris Christofferson, who's got glorious
Speaker 1: long white hair and a beer to match. Whistler is
Speaker 1: like a rock and roll Santa Claus or like a
Speaker 1: rogue biker grandpa. And he's like, oh, you're bringing home
Speaker 1: strays now. You should have killed her, and Blade says, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, but I didn't. Uh. And uh So they decide, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll watch her. We'll see if she turns or see
Speaker 1: if we can treat her. And they give her to
Speaker 1: try to treat her vampire bite. They give her an
Speaker 1: injection of garlic juice which is straight go straight into
Speaker 1: the neck. It's supposed to stave off the transformation or
Speaker 1: slow it down or something. And when they give her
Speaker 1: the injection, you see puffs of smoke coming out of
Speaker 1: the holes in her neck. After this, well, we we
Speaker 1: do get a scene at the vampire it's like a bank,
Speaker 1: you know, where the vampires hang out. It's the corporate
Speaker 1: board of vampire dum uh rob, How would you describe
Speaker 1: this scene? Oh, it's like a dark gothic crypt of
Speaker 1: a meeting room occupied by various again scary looking vampire lords,
Speaker 1: very you know, very egal in their own ways. Clearly
Speaker 1: they're going for like this feeling of like these are different,
Speaker 1: uh you know, from different lineages of the vampire history.
Speaker 1: But again we find out that they are all completely
Speaker 1: inapt and utterly harmless right there. All they do they
Speaker 1: gather here to discuss the things they're afraid of. Their
Speaker 1: Like Judo Kier says, Blade it's a day walker. You know,
Speaker 1: he's still pursuing this ridiculous crusade against us, And then
Speaker 1: they invited Deacon Frost to tell him that he's a
Speaker 1: loose canon deacon. Again, this is Stephen dor If. He's
Speaker 1: the young, hip, good looking bad boy vampire. Uh, he's
Speaker 1: not like these buttoned up square vampires. And they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're a loose cannon because there is
Speaker 1: a treaty that I think should prevent vampires from gathering
Speaker 1: in large numbers, and Frost runs nightclubs that violate this treaty,
Speaker 1: and they say, like, human politicians could make things very
Speaker 1: difficult for our kind if they found out about us,
Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't know what they Yeah,
Speaker 1: what would that look like? Frost thinks the vampires are
Speaker 1: being too timid. He's like, hey, humans are food that
Speaker 1: you know, we should rule them, not hide from them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again yeah, they're very timid. Uh. Well again. One
Speaker 1: of the big positive steps that del Toro makes him
Speaker 1: Blade Too is making sure that old vampires are scary.
Speaker 1: Old vampires are inhuman and monstrous, and they have not
Speaker 1: only are they scary, but they have scary plans and
Speaker 1: Blade one, Yeah, they're just smug and complacent, right, and
Speaker 1: they mock Frost by saying, like, oh, you're not even
Speaker 1: a pure blood vampire. I think the distinction is that
Speaker 1: they were born vampires to vampire parents, and Frost was
Speaker 1: just bitten and turned by someone and they sort of
Speaker 1: disdain him for that. Yeah, and this is this is
Speaker 1: the moment where you're just kind of left to imagine
Speaker 1: this for yourself, the idea of vampire mother's giving birth
Speaker 1: to baby vampires like Bokire was once a vampire baby
Speaker 1: Udo Kier and we just have to to briefly imagine
Speaker 1: what that consists of what that was like, did he
Speaker 1: drink blood as a baby out of a bottle? Okay?
Speaker 1: So then we go back and visit our heroes again.
Speaker 1: Frost uh Um. Blade visits like an apothecary shop where
Speaker 1: he buys I don't know his regular doses of like
Speaker 1: essence of garlic, and then he also gets a serum
Speaker 1: which he uses to stave off I don't know he
Speaker 1: Basically the deal is we will find this out in
Speaker 1: more detail later, but Blade is like half of a vampire.
Speaker 1: He's got some vampire characteristics but not others. He can
Speaker 1: go out in the daytime and all that, but he
Speaker 1: does need blood and he's like, well, I'm good now,
Speaker 1: so I can't drink people's blood, so I've got to
Speaker 1: get injections of this serum whatever this is. And there's
Speaker 1: there's generally concerned in the movie, Like we hear from
Speaker 1: Whistler that, uh, he's building up a tolerance for the
Speaker 1: serum and it's not working as well as it used
Speaker 1: to and he's got to find a solution. Meanwhile, Karen,
Speaker 1: who the hematologists who they brought back, she like witnesses
Speaker 1: them talking about all this and witnesses Blade getting a
Speaker 1: dose of his serum. Uh and finally uh, and she's
Speaker 1: a little bit freaked out, but finally like they explain
Speaker 1: everything to her. Whistler introduces himself. His name is Abraham Whistler.
Speaker 1: Of course. Uh. This is the scene where he's lighting
Speaker 1: a cigarette while he's pumping gas into the Blade mobile
Speaker 1: and Whistler kind of gives her like a vampires one
Speaker 1: oh one. It's like they're called hominous nocturna And we
Speaker 1: find a Whistler and Blade hunt them. They follow their movements.
Speaker 1: They go from city to city and she says, oh,
Speaker 1: so do you use crosses? And they say, no, crosses
Speaker 1: do not work. They're very pointed about this. They say
Speaker 1: vampires are allergic to silver and garlic into sunlight, specifically
Speaker 1: U V rays. By the way, Whistler has rigged up
Speaker 1: a UV flashlight that I guess they can shine at
Speaker 1: vampires to hurt them. And though one of the one
Speaker 1: thing in this movie is that apparently vampires are fine
Speaker 1: going out in the daytime if they just put sunscreen on.
Speaker 1: This is literally a plot point, and I'm like, why
Speaker 1: don't they just do that all the time? Then, um,
Speaker 1: I guess it's a lot of sunscreens oily. You know. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I know I know that I don't like the feeling
Speaker 1: of sunscreen either, but I mean, if you're the other
Speaker 1: option is a responsible thing to do. Yeah, yeah. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so they explained to Karen, They're like, look, you gotta
Speaker 1: get out of town. Now that you've been exposed to
Speaker 1: the vampires. They're gonna be on the hunt for you.
Speaker 1: And she thinks she can go to the police, but nope,
Speaker 1: vampires owned the police apparently, and Whistler gives her vampire mace,
Speaker 1: which is a spray canister of garlic and colloidal silver.
Speaker 1: So she's I think she's going to go off and
Speaker 1: do her own thing. Oh and then in the meantime,
Speaker 1: we get a really funny scene with Udo Kier and Frost,
Speaker 1: where like Udo Kier goes into the I don't know,
Speaker 1: the Vampire computer Bank the archives, I guess, and he
Speaker 1: walks in and Frost is in there with like a
Speaker 1: laptop running doing all kind of weird AI stuff on
Speaker 1: these like glyphs and indea, and he's like, you're using
Speaker 1: a computer to decipher the ancient text, you fool. The
Speaker 1: ancient text can never be translated. You wouldn't even understand them.
Speaker 1: And Frost is just petulantly like yeah uh. And then
Speaker 1: there I think one of the does does Udo Kier
Speaker 1: slap Frost in the face? Oh yeah, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: not at least you know that they create the effect
Speaker 1: of him just really slapping the heck out of him,
Speaker 1: and and Udo has like all the veins and his
Speaker 1: head bulging after he does it. It's it's it's very nice.
Speaker 1: It's a good slap. But then Blade drops Karen off
Speaker 1: in the city and he is a reckless driver. He
Speaker 1: is not he is not respecting pedestrians. Um, so she
Speaker 1: goes into her building, and then there's a scene. I
Speaker 1: thought it was very cool because you know, he's like,
Speaker 1: keep your eyes open, but she's like, but it's the daytime.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't I be safe now at least? But she goes
Speaker 1: into her building and then she gets into the elevator
Speaker 1: and she notices that there are people in the elevator
Speaker 1: who have these weird tattoos on the back of their next,
Speaker 1: these little square glyphs. Uh. And I really liked this scene.
Speaker 1: I think I remember this scene from way back when
Speaker 1: I watched it in the day. I was like, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: it's a big conspiracy, you know, It's like there are
Speaker 1: humans who are in on it. Of course, we find
Speaker 1: out that the humans with the glyphs on their necks
Speaker 1: are vampire familiars, like they belong to a particular vampire
Speaker 1: and they do work for them during the daytime or
Speaker 1: in other you know, other things vampires can't do, and
Speaker 1: they're hoping that if they are a good familiar, the
Speaker 1: vampire will they're there, they're they're appointed vampire will eventually
Speaker 1: turn them, which is a major theme also in what
Speaker 1: we do in The Shadows. Yeah, yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is classic vamp stuff. I mean I guess I was
Speaker 1: this was this a deal that was in place in
Speaker 1: Dracula between Rinfield and uh his lordship. I do not
Speaker 1: recall what was in it for Renfield. I mean he
Speaker 1: was in it for the bugs and the glory. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh, beyond that, I don't remember if there was
Speaker 1: any because it's it's become such a frequent trope although
Speaker 1: they empire familiar relationship and fiction that I honestly can't
Speaker 1: remember if it's in Dracula or not. Yeah, I couldn't say.
Speaker 1: Well so anyway, So Karen goes back to her apartment. Um,
Speaker 1: she gets a visit from a police officer. He's like, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Officer Krieger. For a second, I thought this guy
Speaker 1: was Matthew Perry from Friends, But no, it's not. It's
Speaker 1: just a guy who kind of looks like him. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is also I thought a great scene. UH can
Speaker 1: probably describe what happens here. I mean, basically, he has
Speaker 1: a it seems like he has a plausible story. He's like,
Speaker 1: your front door was open, your coworker said you're missing.
Speaker 1: You were kidnapps, So I'm just checking in on you.
Speaker 1: And then it becomes that were quickly realized, oh, this
Speaker 1: guy is also a familiar. He's here, he's up to
Speaker 1: no good. But then Blade shows up and proceeds to
Speaker 1: beat the crap out of this cop for like six
Speaker 1: solid minutes of film time. Yes. Uh, and he's like,
Speaker 1: you work for this Glyph says, you belong to Deacon Frost.
Speaker 1: We've been tracking Frost for a long time. Uh. And
Speaker 1: they find out that this cop is transporting blow for
Speaker 1: a vampire owned blood bank, which that was an l
Speaker 1: O L moment for me. It was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: the vampire's own blood banks. Brilliant. Of course they did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're involved in everything, and of course they're gonna I
Speaker 1: own the blood banks, and I love how. In the
Speaker 1: scene right after this, Blade gets away with beating up
Speaker 1: a uniformed police officer in the streets and nobody cares. Um.
Speaker 1: But then the cop gets away, like he runs off
Speaker 1: and um, and Karen's a little upset that she was
Speaker 1: used as bait, but she decides, well, okay, at this point,
Speaker 1: I just gotta stick with Blade. It's the only way
Speaker 1: I'm gonna survive long enough to find a cure for
Speaker 1: a vampire bite. So they stake out the familiars police car,
Speaker 1: and then when he finally comes back, they tail him
Speaker 1: to a vampire club and there's uh uh, there's a
Speaker 1: great part where Frost like he goes into the club
Speaker 1: after him because they're trying to find the I don't
Speaker 1: know the archives or the secret place, and he's like,
Speaker 1: give Frost a message from me, tell him it's open
Speaker 1: season on all suckheads. So was that line in the
Speaker 1: script or did did did Snipes make that up? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I vaguely remember there being some ad libs.
Speaker 1: I think maybe some of the more famous bladisms are
Speaker 1: the creation of of Snipes himself, So I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: So meanwhile, Frost is throwing a party in his penthouse,
Speaker 1: but he's not partying. He's busy translating the ancient texts
Speaker 1: like Udo Kier told him not to do. So he's
Speaker 1: got his Apple laptop really really burning the cpu. Uh
Speaker 1: and it finally finishes translating and the translation. I didn't
Speaker 1: understand how this would work at all, but the translation
Speaker 1: appears to somehow construct a virtual reality environment of like
Speaker 1: a machine that would be used in a vampire ritual. Well,
Speaker 1: vampires at the day had access to those those really
Speaker 1: advanced MacBooks, so okay, you know they were working with
Speaker 1: tech that we didn't have yet. But here also we
Speaker 1: see Quinn is back, you know, he's regenerated, he he
Speaker 1: grows back the limbs, he's lost and stuff, though he
Speaker 1: still looks kind of nasty. And the cops shows up
Speaker 1: to be like, oh, I got some bad news, you know,
Speaker 1: Blades onto you, and then Frost just uh, Frost just
Speaker 1: kills the cop and they're like, okay, we gotta get
Speaker 1: Blade alive. So and the next scene there is uh,
Speaker 1: the next scene I thought was really unpleasant. There's this
Speaker 1: like big immobile jab of the Hut type vampire who
Speaker 1: they who Blade and Karen torture with a UV flashlight
Speaker 1: in order to get information out of him. And I
Speaker 1: found this scene really nasty. Yeah, because the vampire, who
Speaker 1: we learned its name is Pearl comes off, is really
Speaker 1: more to be pitied than to be blamed it so
Speaker 1: it really feels like kind of a mean spirited scene
Speaker 1: that that also doesn't really I don't know, And evidently
Speaker 1: they had to come and get information from somebody. This
Speaker 1: is a find the you know, find an informant sequence
Speaker 1: in the investigation. But I don't know it would have
Speaker 1: It seems like it would have worked better had Pearl
Speaker 1: been doing anything other than just setting around looking at
Speaker 1: a computer. And I was also like, why is he
Speaker 1: a different type of creature than the other vampires, Like
Speaker 1: we didn't we don't see any other vampires who were like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what whatever this type of vampire is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean I'm all for their being, you know,
Speaker 1: multiple vampire species and you know, go go go entirely
Speaker 1: vampire the masquerade on this business, but by all means,
Speaker 1: but yeah, none of it's actually explained well anyway, So
Speaker 1: the vampire screams about how Lamagra is coming, the spirits
Speaker 1: of the Twelve will awaken, will awaken the Blood God,
Speaker 1: and they so that they discover Blade and Karen discovered
Speaker 1: this back room with the Book of Erebus, which they
Speaker 1: call the Vampire Bible. So it's you know, they're getting
Speaker 1: the backstory. They're they're learning what's going on. But then
Speaker 1: big fight breaks out because of course Quinn is back,
Speaker 1: all his all his goons are there with him. Big
Speaker 1: fight scene, and you think Blade is actually done for
Speaker 1: they like, pin him down, How's he going to get
Speaker 1: out of this? But then it's day a sex whistler
Speaker 1: Chris Christofferson shows up and saves the day. Right before
Speaker 1: Whistler shows up, there's some great gloating from Quinn, including
Speaker 1: this scene where he pulls off his glove and shows
Speaker 1: off his mostly regenerated monster hand, which is a little
Speaker 1: bit floppy and grotesque. Great sequence. Another great scene for
Speaker 1: Quinn to shine. So this is another big action sequence
Speaker 1: that the fight eventually leads off into a subway tunnel
Speaker 1: next to a moving train, which must be like six
Speaker 1: miles long, by the way, because it's just constantly going
Speaker 1: by forever. Once again, Blade beats Quinn with Karen's help.
Speaker 1: This time she like stabs him with blade sword and
Speaker 1: helps out on the fight. And they also cut off
Speaker 1: the other hand this time. Yes yeah, and then Quinn
Speaker 1: runs away uh and they escape a Blade and Karen
Speaker 1: escape by hopping onto the subway train. Oh and Karen
Speaker 1: repays a favor from earlier. So here in the movie,
Speaker 1: her shoulders dislocated and Blade pops it back into place.
Speaker 1: In this scene, his shoulders dislocated and she pops it
Speaker 1: back into place. So you know, I pop and you
Speaker 1: pop you go. So here we get more backstory. There's
Speaker 1: exposition about you know, how Blade ended up the way
Speaker 1: he is, how Whistler gives a sermon sort of on
Speaker 1: how Blade works. He says, you know, I found him
Speaker 1: when he was thirteen. He was drinking blood. We also
Speaker 1: get Whistlers backstory. We learned that his family was tragically
Speaker 1: killed by vampires and he's been hunting vampires ever since.
Speaker 1: And he says, you know, we fight them, but it's
Speaker 1: just getting worse. There's something going on in the vampire
Speaker 1: ranks and and Frost is behind it. Uh So they're
Speaker 1: trying to understand the hidden politics within the vampire organization.
Speaker 1: The basic things we learned about Blade are that you know,
Speaker 1: he can he has some vampire attributes but not others
Speaker 1: because his his mother was bitten right before he was born,
Speaker 1: so uh so he like can go out in the daytime.
Speaker 1: Uh and he has the super strength of the vampire,
Speaker 1: so you think it's like the best of both worlds.
Speaker 1: But he also does need blood and that's like the
Speaker 1: serum problem that we learned about earlier. There was a
Speaker 1: very funny soul searching scene that came after this. He says, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not human and um and Karen says, you look
Speaker 1: human to me, and he says humans don't drink blood,
Speaker 1: and then she's like, you know that was a long
Speaker 1: time ago. Maybe you need to let that go. You know,
Speaker 1: you haven't drink blood for quite some time. So at
Speaker 1: this point I think, I think my summary, he's got
Speaker 1: to become much more cursory. Uh so, Oh, there's a
Speaker 1: great moment back in the vampire compound where Quinn is
Speaker 1: back after the fight. His face is all torn up
Speaker 1: because Blade held his face against the passing train. Um.
Speaker 1: He's also got a missing hand again, and like their
Speaker 1: vampire buddies there in the room or just like chewing
Speaker 1: on his stump and he's yeah, he's supposed to be
Speaker 1: banging his hand or something, and that they can't hail.
Speaker 1: It's like a dog, right, just has to has to
Speaker 1: have a bite. But they talked more about well, we
Speaker 1: gotta we gotta take Blade alive. Oh, and then we
Speaker 1: see them make moves against the Board of Directors of Vampires.
Speaker 1: They take Udo Kier out to the beach for execution
Speaker 1: by sunrise, which is has some kind of bad looking
Speaker 1: special effects, but I also kind of liked them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a weird special effects sequence because it's not it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel completely c g I. It almost has kind
Speaker 1: of a stop motion quality to it. Uh, it's any
Speaker 1: kind of he kind of smolders, than kind of melts
Speaker 1: and then kind of petrifies and then explodes. So they
Speaker 1: fitted all in. Meanwhile, Karen has been doing some hematology science,
Speaker 1: so she's working on a cure for herself and for Blade. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Blade will end up not taking it in the
Speaker 1: end because it not only it would cure his need
Speaker 1: for blood, but it would also make him lose his superpowers,
Speaker 1: and in the end he's like, no, I gotta I
Speaker 1: gotta fight vampires, So sorry, Um. But she's able to
Speaker 1: cure herself and she figures out that an anticoagulant called
Speaker 1: E D T A uh makes vam pire blood explode.
Speaker 1: So she makes a bunch of injectors of this stuff
Speaker 1: for for Blade, and there are some glorious vampire pump
Speaker 1: up explosions later on. Oh, absolutely glorious. Yes, let's see.
Speaker 1: So a few other scenes to mention. There's a scene
Speaker 1: where Blade goes into the city for serum, but then
Speaker 1: Frost shows up like he's just standing in a park
Speaker 1: slathered in sun block. It is daytime, but he's got
Speaker 1: a human hostage, and then he gives Blade the whole
Speaker 1: we're not so different you and I speech. He's like,
Speaker 1: why don't you join us? Yeah, like you're gonna You're
Speaker 1: gonna make Blade switch sides. This is Blade after all.
Speaker 1: So Frost is totally trying to ice Skate Uphill in
Speaker 1: this scene, right. Uh and then but so yeah, that
Speaker 1: that does not go as Frost planned, though. Frost does
Speaker 1: try to execute his human child hostage and Blade saves
Speaker 1: the kid's life. Uh so Blade, Blade is kind of harsh,
Speaker 1: like he doesn't show a lot of niceness or compassion,
Speaker 1: but he does come through in a pinch and help
Speaker 1: the humans out. Yeah, it's nice, purely superhero move and
Speaker 1: a reminder that Blade is a superhero and he still
Speaker 1: has that humanity, especially after you know the previous sequences
Speaker 1: where a lot of it is about the struggle for
Speaker 1: his humanity and is he's slipping, is he doomed to
Speaker 1: fall into the night? Um? Uh, you know with these
Speaker 1: vampires and so forth. But whoops. While Blade was out
Speaker 1: in the city outrunning errands, the vampires attacked the hideout
Speaker 1: and they they kidnapped Karen and oh no, Whistler has
Speaker 1: been turned. And so there's a scene where, well you
Speaker 1: think Whistler kills himself because he's going to turn into
Speaker 1: a vampire. Apparently that doesn't take and he's back in
Speaker 1: the sequel, right right, Um, yeah, the screenplay tried to
Speaker 1: kill him, but you can't keep a great character down. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, he's back for the sequel. Don't worry about him,
Speaker 1: even though it does seem like he is tortured nearly
Speaker 1: to death and then forced to take his own life.
Speaker 1: But here from this point out is just like showdowns
Speaker 1: until the end. So you know, Blade attacks the penthouse
Speaker 1: where he meets his mom, who it turns out she's
Speaker 1: been alive this whole time because she was turned into
Speaker 1: a vampire and now she's bad. So you think it's
Speaker 1: gonna be nice that he meets her, but she's like, well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm a vampire now, and when you become a vampire,
Speaker 1: you become evil. So I'm evil and I don't like you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And just talking about it here, you might think, what, well,
Speaker 1: is it was it necessary for Blade to become Hamlet
Speaker 1: for a little bit uh in this film? And it
Speaker 1: might sound like it's unnecessary, but like beat by beat,
Speaker 1: I feel like this this part of the narrative is
Speaker 1: also really important to break up the action and really
Speaker 1: propel things forward. Uh yeah. And so Blade is captured
Speaker 1: by Frost's vampire army, and Frost is going to use
Speaker 1: Blades half vampire blood for a ritual which is going
Speaker 1: to summon the blood God or turn Frost into the
Speaker 1: blood God, I think. And so, so Blade is imprisoned
Speaker 1: and then you do the ritual. Uh he Blade is
Speaker 1: saved by Karen. They try to execute Karen by throwing
Speaker 1: her into a zombie pit. Apparently sometimes when you buy
Speaker 1: a human, they don't turn into a vampire. Instead they
Speaker 1: turn into a zombie. And it's hey, it's her old friend,
Speaker 1: her old ex boyfriend, the doctor who's got the beetle haircut.
Speaker 1: He's a he's a zombie now, and he tries to
Speaker 1: eat her in a pit, but she escapes and then
Speaker 1: she saves the day. She like unlocks blades cage and
Speaker 1: gets him out so he can he can ohh. And
Speaker 1: then she's also like, you need to drink my blood
Speaker 1: to regain your strength so you can fight all the
Speaker 1: bad guys. And this is exactly how it goes down.
Speaker 1: Blade proceeds to just absolutely womp all underlings within reach.
Speaker 1: And this is a this is a whole sequence where
Speaker 1: you know it's great martial arts action, but there's certainly
Speaker 1: some intended martial arts physical humor in this. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's a name for this in Hong Kong cinema
Speaker 1: that I'm just not aware of. But like, Blade is
Speaker 1: just taking out Lack, He's left and right, uh, and
Speaker 1: it all reaches a fever pitch from me when Blade
Speaker 1: has he's down a vampire underling, perhaps a vampire. I
Speaker 1: think it's a vampire, and then proceeds to kick the
Speaker 1: vampire multiple times with both feet in the groin and
Speaker 1: then finally kicks the vampire so hard in the groin
Speaker 1: that the vampire flies up onto his feet again and
Speaker 1: then he states him or something. It's marvelous. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: there are parts that kind of remind me of like
Speaker 1: the uh, the physical comedy within the fight choreography that
Speaker 1: you see in like some Jackie Chan movies. And and
Speaker 1: in all this we also dispense with some of the underlings.
Speaker 1: Mercury gets taken out by Karen. She's sprays her in
Speaker 1: the mouth with the garlic silver stuff in her head explodes.
Speaker 1: Quinn has a has a wonderful death sequence where basically
Speaker 1: at the very start of the battle, he jumps at Blade,
Speaker 1: It's like, I'm gonna take you out, and Blade uh
Speaker 1: beheads him with a with a like a zip line.
Speaker 1: It's pretty great. Oh yeah. In fact, when he when
Speaker 1: he immediately takes up, it's very much like the scene
Speaker 1: in Raiders of the Lost Ark where and d pulls
Speaker 1: out the revolver. It's just like, okay, that's that's that's done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he catches the shades, puts them on, and then
Speaker 1: it's oh because because Donald Log stole his his sunglasses,
Speaker 1: which is you do not take Blade sunglasses. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the final straw. There is a weird scene where Blade
Speaker 1: has to stake his mom, but he explains that he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm setting you free. I'm releasing you because it's not
Speaker 1: really her anymore because she's a vampire. Is that that's
Speaker 1: how I read that? But now it's really it's just
Speaker 1: final showdown. It is it's Frost versus Blade, except Frost
Speaker 1: isn't quite Frost anymore because he's managed to pull off
Speaker 1: this ceremony. This ritual, there's kind of like a kind
Speaker 1: of like a Raiders of the Lost darc esque soul
Speaker 1: capture and absorption of the vampire c g I souls.
Speaker 1: Now Frost is Lamagra. Frost has the superhuman blood vampire powers,
Speaker 1: and he might just be too much for Blade to
Speaker 1: take out. Yeah, there's a scene where Blade like cuts
Speaker 1: Frost in half, but then blow jumps out of his
Speaker 1: two halves and like grabs itself and pulls him back together.
Speaker 1: So he's it's destructible now that. Yeah, Blade goes to
Speaker 1: say the f and he can say the F out loud.
Speaker 1: He has to mount the f instead. In the end, though,
Speaker 1: how how do you defeat the blood god? Well, how
Speaker 1: about some anti coagulant? Oh yeah, so yeah that Finally
Speaker 1: there's some some wonderful drama and the fight involving having
Speaker 1: to get ahold of those those vials of the of
Speaker 1: the anticoagulant. Blade is able to get it and stabs
Speaker 1: Frost with one of these vials and then proceeds to
Speaker 1: just pelt him with the vials. Like a dozen of
Speaker 1: these vials are now stuck in Frost, filling him with
Speaker 1: the stuff, and we get a wonderful like hyper bloat
Speaker 1: and explode scene, and a wonderful bladeism from Blade himself
Speaker 1: where he tells us that some mother efforts are always
Speaker 1: trying to ice Skate uphill. Um. You can, we can
Speaker 1: discuss back and forth what it means, but you don't
Speaker 1: even have to. It's clear what it means. It's all
Speaker 1: in the context you it's It's one of the greatest
Speaker 1: lines in cinematic history. It's like poetry. Okay, I think
Speaker 1: that's everything I have to say about Blade. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what else can you say, except you know, they imply
Speaker 1: at the end that there will be more Blade and
Speaker 1: lo and behold there was more Blade and lo and
Speaker 1: behold there there will be more Blade because we know
Speaker 1: now that mahrschela Ali is going to play Blade in
Speaker 1: an upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film, And uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: think this is terrific casting. With Delroy Lindo in it
Speaker 1: as well. I can't help but wonder if he's going
Speaker 1: to play the new Whistler. Um. I have other questions
Speaker 1: as well, like are we gonna have to put up
Speaker 1: with scenes of where Blade is hanging out with Doctor Strange,
Speaker 1: or are they gonna let it be mostly uh its
Speaker 1: own world? Are they gonna let Blade say the F
Speaker 1: in this? I have no idea. Oh yeah, can you
Speaker 1: make an R rated m c U film? I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't really know anything about that. Yeah, isn't. It's
Speaker 1: like sometimes they say, Okay, you can say the F
Speaker 1: X number of times and still not have an R.
Speaker 1: But can you ask Blade? Can you limit Blade in
Speaker 1: that fashion? I don't know. Okay, Well, I guess I
Speaker 1: gotta see the other older Blade movies. First. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of I mean, I like my herschel Ali, but but
Speaker 1: it's also hard for me to imagine anybody but Wesley
Speaker 1: Snipes in this role. It's like, as we were saying earlier,
Speaker 1: it just is identical to him the actor. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It is very hard to to imagine anyone other than Snipes.
Speaker 1: But I think Ali could do it. I think he
Speaker 1: has he has the acting chops, he has the physicality.
Speaker 1: And uh, I think I read that that he got
Speaker 1: Snipes his blessing. So okay, well we'll see. But who knows.
Speaker 1: Maybe Snipes will be in it. Maybe Snipes will be
Speaker 1: the new Whistler. Now that would be something. Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't know. We'll see, we'll see how it develops. All right,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna go ahead and close the casket
Speaker 1: on this one. We didn't even talk about the cool
Speaker 1: space age caskets the head in this sleeping baskits um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, we're gonna go and close the casket on
Speaker 1: this one. We're gonna go and put a stake in it.
Speaker 1: But we'd love to hear from everyone out there who
Speaker 1: has thoughts on Blade, Uh, this movie Blade, other Blade films,
Speaker 1: films from this era right in, we would love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. Weird House Cinema of course, publishes and
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed every Friday.
Speaker 1: We're mostly a science and culture podcast, but on Friday's
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns and just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird film. I blog about these episodes at some
Speaker 1: New to music dot com. Also, if you use letterboxed,
Speaker 1: you can go to that website and you can look
Speaker 1: us up. We're a weird House on that and there's
Speaker 1: a complete list of all the films we've covered there.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I'll even go ahead and include the next
Speaker 1: film we're gonna cover in case you want to watch
Speaker 1: ahead huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer
Speaker 1: Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: H