Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormack. And on today's Weird House Cinema Rewind,
Speaker 2: we are bringing you an episode that aired July eighth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. This was our episode on Blade. What
Speaker 2: more could you ask for?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seemed fitting. You know, we were kind of
Speaker 1: trying to ice skate Uphill this week with our workload,
Speaker 1: and so we had to call on Blade to come
Speaker 1: in and help us out a little this Friday. But
Speaker 1: I think it's fitting. Blade's been on my mind a
Speaker 1: little bit, but I'm checking out this video game Midnight
Speaker 1: Suns and when you get to control Blade and turn
Speaker 1: based combat, it's pretty fun. And we're still, I guess
Speaker 1: some ways away from the next Blade movie with Marshall Ali.
Speaker 1: I understand that one has had some setbacks and changes occur,
Speaker 1: but hopefully they're going to get buy back on track.
Speaker 1: They're going to shoot that like in our neighborhood, and
Speaker 1: then it'll be ready for us sometime in like twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five or something.
Speaker 3: Beautiful.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 5: Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick, and hey today, are we
Speaker 3: getting into the Marvel Cinematic universe? Is this a Marvel
Speaker 3: superhero movie?
Speaker 5: Well, no, not quite for the first question, but yes
Speaker 5: for the second question, because we're going to be talking
Speaker 5: about the nineteen ninety eight movie Blade, a movie that
Speaker 5: is kind of it is kind of the precursor to
Speaker 5: the Marvel Cinematic universe, but unlike the PG era and
Speaker 5: PG I guess thirteen probably era of Marvel films that
Speaker 5: we have today, and even the darker DC films that
Speaker 5: we have, and certainly those have more in common with Blade.
Speaker 5: We're talking about a solid R here, mostly for violence
Speaker 5: and language, a little bit of sexuality, but you know,
Speaker 5: several different things that wouldn't fly in the Marvel movies
Speaker 5: that are so popular right now.
Speaker 3: It is hilarious that this is essentially, I would say,
Speaker 3: a movie for kids, but absolutely not for kids, hardcore
Speaker 3: R rated comic book movie. Like basically every other word
Speaker 3: is the F word. It's relentless.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Blade as a superhero has several different superpowers, but
Speaker 5: one of them is definitely that he gets to say
Speaker 5: the F and he gets to say the f as
Speaker 5: many times as he wants to, as far as I
Speaker 5: can tell, I don't think there's a limit.
Speaker 3: And there's constantly blood spraying everywhere on everything.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, there's a lot of blood in this one,
Speaker 5: and a lot of attitude. So this is a movie
Speaker 5: where we're once more getting pretty close up to the
Speaker 5: dawn of the millennium here and in the end of
Speaker 5: the millennium that we spend most of our time in
Speaker 5: than the century we spend most of our time in.
Speaker 5: Because this is ninety eight, I think the closest we've
Speaker 5: come to to breaking the millennium point has been Deep
Speaker 5: Blue Sea?
Speaker 3: Is that ninety nine?
Speaker 5: I think that was ninety nine, But we're pushing the
Speaker 5: boundaries again here.
Speaker 3: Well. So I was thinking about this and about how
Speaker 3: Blade is not only a vampire superhero movie. It is
Speaker 3: also very much in terms of like the cinematography, the
Speaker 3: way this movie looks, and the way the fight senat
Speaker 3: are staged. It is very much a millennial R rated
Speaker 3: action thriller. And so what does that mean? I would
Speaker 3: characterize it as follows sets with tons of slick, gleaming
Speaker 3: surfaces and gun metal gray coloration. Everything is wet, lots
Speaker 3: of casual depiction of futuristic digital devices like laptops and
Speaker 3: cell phones doing things that they absolutely did not do
Speaker 3: at the time in nineteen ninety eight, and no one
Speaker 3: finding this unusual, even though the movie is set in
Speaker 3: the present and just lots of wires everywhere. Beyond that,
Speaker 3: I would say muted colors in general, with kind of
Speaker 3: harsh white lighting, like not soft yellow lighting, harsh white
Speaker 3: lighting reflecting off of all the slickness in the sets.
Speaker 3: And then extreme gratuitous gun violence where like rooms of
Speaker 3: bad guys are sprayed with bullets causing huge panes of
Speaker 3: glass to explode and shower down in slow motion, and
Speaker 3: then finally sunglasses inside all the time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the gun violence is interesting in this film because
Speaker 5: it's not the thing that I think of when I
Speaker 5: think of Blade, but it's it's clearly part of these movies,
Speaker 5: you know, When I look back fondly, I'm thinking about
Speaker 5: the times that he's he's kicking vampires and stabbing vampires
Speaker 5: and using that katana sword and so forth. But yeah,
Speaker 5: he's also blasting room fulls of vampires. But I don't
Speaker 5: know that stuff doesn't seem to I don't know with
Speaker 5: me anyway, it doesn't resonate as much as the martial
Speaker 5: arts action.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the martial arts is clearly where it's at.
Speaker 3: Blade kicks and he you just imagine like when you're
Speaker 3: watching this movie, like if Blade kicked, you be like
Speaker 3: getting hit by a bus.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, every time Blade, really, anytime anyone is hit
Speaker 5: in this movie, I buy it. Like it does a
Speaker 5: really good job of selling the physical violence. Now, before
Speaker 5: we go and eat any deeper, I'm gonna I guess
Speaker 5: I'll mention this. We've we've started mentioning where to watch
Speaker 5: a film earlier on in the episode for folks who
Speaker 5: want to go in unspoilt. But basically, you can watch
Speaker 5: Blade everywhere. You can get it on DVD, you can
Speaker 5: get it on Blu ray. I think there's a three
Speaker 5: pack of Blade films out there, and there's also you
Speaker 5: can simply go to. I think HBO Max as of
Speaker 5: this recording in the US has all three of the
Speaker 5: original Blades of streaming. So Blade one, the excellent, Blade two,
Speaker 5: and also Blade three or Blade Trinity if you will.
Speaker 3: Now, I think you're more of a connoisseur of Blade
Speaker 3: than I am of my earliest experience. It's well, basically,
Speaker 3: I think i'd only ever seen this first movie before
Speaker 3: I saw it, probably like eighth or ninth grade, so
Speaker 3: not too long after it came out. I think I
Speaker 3: watched a VHS tape of it in a friend's garage.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's the setting.
Speaker 5: Whistler, No, come on here for some reason put a
Speaker 5: movie on for you.
Speaker 3: No, he just just he had a TV in his garage.
Speaker 3: I don't know why. We go in there and we
Speaker 3: watch Blade, because that's what you do. You're in eighth grade,
Speaker 3: it's nineteen ninety nine, and there you go.
Speaker 5: So, wait, have you not seen Gamma Do Toro's Blade too?
Speaker 3: No, I haven't seen any of the sequels.
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness, Blade two is amazing. Blade two is
Speaker 5: everything that this film brings to the table. But then
Speaker 5: Gamma to Toro weirdness on top of that, so all
Speaker 5: sorts of like weird, quasi catholic imagery and strangeness. So
Speaker 5: I'll touch on a little bit of this as we perceive,
Speaker 5: but I'll try not to get into Blade two too
Speaker 5: much because oh, it's its own special treat.
Speaker 3: Well, so that made me want to raise something. Germo
Speaker 3: del Toro obviously loves magic, and I wonder how his
Speaker 3: influence affects what I would consider the mostly materialist vampire
Speaker 3: idiology in Blade. So Blade, the Blade universe is full
Speaker 3: of vampires, but with a few exceptions, they don't really
Speaker 3: seem to be supernatural. Like the vampires are not affected
Speaker 3: by holy objects. They don't seem to be spiritually demonic
Speaker 3: in nature, though they are evil. They're treated as products
Speaker 3: of genetic mutation, you know that, like they have a
Speaker 3: virus or a mutation in their bodies. I would say
Speaker 3: the only major exception to this is suddenly at the
Speaker 3: end of the movie they bring in this like apparent
Speaker 3: magic ritual that does seem to have effect, like it
Speaker 3: actually works to summon a blood god.
Speaker 5: Yeah, i'd say when Del Toro comes along, you know,
Speaker 5: granted he was beholden to what was established in the
Speaker 5: first film, but he seems to embrace the materialist view
Speaker 5: of the vampire. But with the key difference being for
Speaker 5: Norrington and company in this film, yeah, vampires are kind
Speaker 5: of people with supernatural powers, but for Del Toro, obviously
Speaker 5: a vampire is a monster. He is a man of monsters,
Speaker 5: and his vampires are going to be monsters.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's interesting, I would say. In this yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right, the vampires are just like people who are
Speaker 3: universally bad and they have super strength and they drink blood.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Though then again I should stress for del Toro,
Speaker 5: monster has different connotations perhaps than it does for other people.
Speaker 5: Like he loves his monsters. It doesn't mean the monster
Speaker 5: doesn't have a lot of personality and depth. In fact,
Speaker 5: there's a good chance that the monster will have more
Speaker 5: personality and depth than any human character that he might
Speaker 5: be dealing with.
Speaker 3: Now, another thing that sort of sets Blade apart that
Speaker 3: I think I noticed when I first watched it back
Speaker 3: in the day was that this is a movie that
Speaker 3: has a vampire hunter character of the classic Van Helsing type.
Speaker 3: I would have, you know, seen movies with Peter Cushing
Speaker 3: doing this role on TV, probably when I was younger.
Speaker 3: But a big difference is that this is a high
Speaker 3: tech vampire hunter. And this was not the first movie
Speaker 3: to have characters like this. I mean, I'm sure there
Speaker 3: were plenty. I can think of. John Carpenter's Vampires came
Speaker 3: out earlier, and in that one, the vampire hunters have
Speaker 3: all kinds of technology and stuff. Don't they now.
Speaker 5: Actually, John Carpenter's Vampires came out the same year. I'm
Speaker 5: not sure exactly like where they fall in terms of
Speaker 5: each other, though.
Speaker 3: Well either way, I mean, I'm sure this was not
Speaker 3: the first movie to do this, but that was kind
Speaker 3: of a change up on my expectations because the earlier
Speaker 3: you know, the vampire hunter is more of a sort
Speaker 3: of a holy warrior, kind of a kind of a
Speaker 3: priest slash professor who wields a stake and a cross
Speaker 3: and all that. Again, you know, you're your Peter Cushing type. Here.
Speaker 3: It is like the toughest dude you've ever met, and
Speaker 3: he's decked out in all kinds of with like gizmo's
Speaker 3: and gadgets. He's like Batman. He's got a you know,
Speaker 3: utility belt full of stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he is a secular vampire hunter as opposed to
Speaker 5: the holy man that we see certainly in the in
Speaker 5: European traditions but also in Eastern traditions as well, stuff
Speaker 5: like mister vampire. You know, that's the throw of a
Speaker 5: holy man to deal with the vamps. I wish they
Speaker 5: had had some rice in this movie, though, oy they
Speaker 5: use the garlic, but they don't use any rice.
Speaker 3: A glutinous rice dealer scene was really set Blade apart.
Speaker 5: Oh, that would have been It would have been brutal.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine the dressing down a corrupt rice dealer
Speaker 3: would get from Wesley Snipes as Blade, Because that's one
Speaker 3: more thing that really sets Blade apart is the way
Speaker 3: Wesley Snipes completely embodies this character. I don't know what
Speaker 3: so this is based on comics. I have no idea
Speaker 3: what Blade is like in the comics, but it is
Speaker 3: hard to imagine this character as anything other than Wesley Snipes.
Speaker 3: Wesley Snipes brings a kind of I don't know, a
Speaker 3: like a weird poise and a sort of almost ironic
Speaker 3: sense of line delivery. It's it's beautiful and it's very singular.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I will come back to this, but I think
Speaker 5: Wesley Snipes is as perfect in this role as anyone
Speaker 5: you can point to in a given role. Like he
Speaker 5: everything he does as Blade is just spot on. You
Speaker 5: buy it, you believe it. It's absolutely perfect.
Speaker 3: It's like Robert Shaw as Quint just is the character.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, All right, before we go any further, let's
Speaker 5: let's have it. Let's hear part of the trailer. I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't really love this trailer, So we'll just listen
Speaker 5: to a little bit of it, just to remind you
Speaker 5: what you're dealing with. In nineteen ninety eight's Blade.
Speaker 3: Eh, better wake up.
Speaker 5: The world you live in is just a sugar coated topper.
Speaker 5: There's another world. Believe it the real world. For thousands
Speaker 5: of years, they have existed among us. You keep your
Speaker 5: eyes open there everywhere. Chances are you're seeing him yourself
Speaker 5: and didn't know it a secret nation. Our livelihood depends
Speaker 5: on our ability to blend in with the lust for power.
Speaker 3: We should be ruling the humans. These people are our food.
Speaker 4: They've got their clauset everything, politics, finance, real estate.
Speaker 3: There's a war going on out there.
Speaker 5: He mixed the weapons I use the Warder Group. Now
Speaker 5: one will lead them to conquer mankind. Tonight the age
Speaker 5: of man comes to an end. We're going to be.
Speaker 1: Gods, and one will try to stop him dead.
Speaker 5: There were things out tonight than vampires like me.
Speaker 3: Blade trailers were bad in the nineties.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't love it. Maybe it's
Speaker 5: different depending on an age and what one is nostalgic for.
Speaker 5: But yeah, this is a trailer where I'm like, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: the movie's great trailer. I can I can take it
Speaker 5: to leave it? All right, Well, let's let's get into
Speaker 5: the folks involved in this film, shall we?
Speaker 3: Oh please?
Speaker 5: All right? Starting at the top, the director is Stephen
Speaker 5: Norrington born nineteen sixty four. This is This isn't the
Speaker 5: first time we've discussed Stephen Norington, as he did creature
Speaker 5: designs on nineteen ninety two Split Second. That really fun,
Speaker 5: Rutger Hower, what soft post environmental apocalypse Monster Hunter film?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, Now, let's see. My memory is that in
Speaker 3: Split Second we did not get much of a look
Speaker 3: at the creature. They kind of kept it mostly obscured.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you don't see much of it. If memory serves,
Speaker 5: there were like a lot of last minute changes. But
Speaker 5: it ends up working pretty well because you don't see
Speaker 5: a lot of it. But when you do see more
Speaker 5: of it, you realize it's kind of a mix between
Speaker 5: a Xeno morph and Judge Death from the Judge Dread
Speaker 5: comic books. All right. So, Norrington is a London born
Speaker 5: effects makeup artist who worked on such films as Aliens,
Speaker 5: Young Sherlock Holmes, Hardware, Alien three, and Jim Henson's The Storyteller,
Speaker 5: and then he would go on to direct the film
Speaker 5: Death Machine, which had Brad Dorif and Richard Brake in it,
Speaker 5: and he followed this up with Blade. From here he
Speaker 5: went on to make The Last Minute and the film
Speaker 5: that reportedly kind of made him step back from actually
Speaker 5: directing The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But I believe he
Speaker 5: has continued to work in effects in other areas of filmmaking,
Speaker 5: and every now and then catch some buzz of some
Speaker 5: possible project coming together with Norrington involved. But at any rate,
Speaker 5: I like his work in this film.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. And I'm really impressed that he did effects
Speaker 3: on The Storyteller, which has marvelous special effects. I love it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, Storyteller is a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: Those oh the Medusa statue coming to life and all
Speaker 3: the ooh, yeah, that's great stuff. Wow. I never saw
Speaker 3: a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, But I distinctly remember the
Speaker 3: day that my friends went to see it in the
Speaker 3: theater and they were talking about it for the rest
Speaker 3: of the day. It made an impression on them, and
Speaker 3: it was not a good one.
Speaker 5: It seemed to be one of those films that it
Speaker 5: caused a lot of people involved in it were kind
Speaker 5: kind of had to question what they were doing with
Speaker 5: their lives at that point. Yeah, I guess, but I
Speaker 5: don't know. But I haven't seen it. Maybe I would
Speaker 5: actually enjoy it, I don't know. I will say that.
Speaker 5: With Blade, however, you mentioned like some of the stylistic choices,
Speaker 5: and I think some of those definitely are just tied
Speaker 5: to the style of the day, but I also really
Speaker 5: like some of the choices that they made in terms
Speaker 5: of how they portrayed night and day. Like a lot
Speaker 5: of the night scenes tend to feel hyper and alive,
Speaker 5: like they're literally twitching, like they're just going to start
Speaker 5: dancing at any second, while the daylight world often feels
Speaker 5: languid and underwater, you know, kind of in a sense
Speaker 5: that that really meshes with this idea of like creatures
Speaker 5: of the night and creatures of that are mostly of
Speaker 5: the night are being drawn further into that world.
Speaker 3: I know exactly what you're talking about, that underwater feeling,
Speaker 3: and also that this movie has a lot of Again
Speaker 3: this is as I said earlier, this is common to
Speaker 3: a lot of these action movies of the time, but
Speaker 3: lighting often feels harsh in this movie, like even lights
Speaker 3: just coming out of the ceiling are like, oh, oh,
Speaker 3: I don't like that. It feels bad.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, so that's Norington, that's the director. Screenwriter
Speaker 5: on this is David S. Goyer born. Yeah, this is
Speaker 5: a huge name in the screenwriting world. His earliest screenplay
Speaker 5: credit is for Death Warrant, a Jean Claude van Dam
Speaker 5: martial arts movie from nineteen ninety and he followed that
Speaker 5: up with Albert Pyne's Kickboxer two, which did not start
Speaker 5: Jean Claude van Dam. And he also did the Charles
Speaker 5: Band produced Peter Minoogian directed horror film Demonic Toys in
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 3: Is this just a parallel to the puppet Master movies
Speaker 3: or was it trying to sort of copycat them.
Speaker 5: I think it was part of you know, this is
Speaker 5: certainly getting into the area of Charles Band and company
Speaker 5: figuring out what works and then like then continuing to
Speaker 5: pump pump that out. I've never seen a Demonic Toys movie,
Speaker 5: but I know they like later Demonic Toys have crossover
Speaker 5: adventures with their Charles Band.
Speaker 3: Properties Jetson's Meet the Flintstones, except their toys with like
Speaker 3: drills and razors attached to them.
Speaker 5: Now. He went on to work again for band Camp
Speaker 5: on the nineteen ninety three film Arcade, but he quickly
Speaker 5: moved up from there, working in TV and film projects
Speaker 5: until he collaborated with Alex Proys and Lim Dobbs on
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety eight Dark City. Just an xyent weird film.
Speaker 3: In my opinion, Dark City is amazing that one. I
Speaker 3: haven't watched it in a while, but for a long
Speaker 3: time that was one of my favorite movies.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Same here. I haven't watched it recently, but back
Speaker 5: in the day, absolutely loved it. Totally blew me away
Speaker 5: when I watched it, So it definitely made a huge
Speaker 5: impression on me now. I should also mention though, that
Speaker 5: same year, Goyer was also involved in the Nick Fury
Speaker 5: Agent of Shield TV movie that starred David Hasselhoff. So
Speaker 5: and he was already getting in and getting a little
Speaker 5: marvelly with his screenwriting.
Speaker 3: I did not know that existed, but in any rate, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Then he moves on to Blade and Blade it's kind
Speaker 5: of the perfect Goyer screenplay, when you say, especially when
Speaker 5: you consider many of the projects that came afterwards. It's
Speaker 5: a dark largely serious comic book adaptation. He followed this
Speaker 5: up with screenplays for again the excellent and weird Blade two,
Speaker 5: also Blade Trinity, which Goyer himself directed. Blade Trinity did
Speaker 5: not continue the upward trajectory of the Blade franchise, but
Speaker 5: it does have at least one great bladeism in it,
Speaker 5: so it has that going for it.
Speaker 3: There are so many great Blade lines that I would
Speaker 3: love to quote, but we can't do it without making
Speaker 3: this episode need a parental advisory stickers.
Speaker 5: Right, because again Blade will say the F and all
Speaker 5: his best lines have the F in them. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 5: Blade Trinity was said to be a difficult shoot, but
Speaker 5: Goyer didn't give up on directing. He came back with
Speaker 5: some various TV projects and the films The Invisible and
Speaker 5: The Unborn, and on the screenwriting end of things, he
Speaker 5: went on to work on Christopher Nolan's Batman movies, Jumper,
Speaker 5: Man of Steel, the upcoming Hell Raiser Rebooty at least
Speaker 5: has a story credit on that Terminator Dark Fate, and
Speaker 5: the upcoming adaptation of the Sandman graphic novels. So yeah,
Speaker 5: Goyer is a huge name. You can't really no matter
Speaker 5: what you think of some of these films. There's no
Speaker 5: denying it now. Of course, we should drive home that
Speaker 5: Norrington and Goyer did not invent Blade. This was the
Speaker 5: work of two comic book creators, credited to first of all,
Speaker 5: Marv Wolfman. This is a character creator credit. He was
Speaker 5: born nineteen forty six. He worked on Marvel Comics The
Speaker 5: Tomb of Dracula. So this was a horror comic that
Speaker 5: ran for seventy issues between nineteen seventy two and nineteen
Speaker 5: seventy nine. It concerns vampire hunters, including you know, the
Speaker 5: Van Helsings, and of course it has Dracula in it.
Speaker 5: Like straight up Marvel Comics version of Dracula, Blade was
Speaker 5: introduced as one of these vampire hunters, and the original
Speaker 5: incarnation was more of a like a thoroughly nineteen seventies affair,
Speaker 5: like he had wooden teak daggers. I believe he had
Speaker 5: like a large afro hairdow. So you know, he's very
Speaker 5: much inspired by some of the cinema of that time period.
Speaker 5: And the other character creator, Gene call It Klan, was
Speaker 5: born nineteen twenty six through twenty eleven. He was the
Speaker 5: artist and I think he has said in past interviews
Speaker 5: that he based part of the look of Blade on
Speaker 5: Jim Brown, as well as other famous black actors of
Speaker 5: the time. Now, Colom worked on the comics Daredevil Is
Speaker 5: where well as Howard the Duck. He also co created
Speaker 5: the heroes Falcon and Carol Danvers. But going back to Wolfman, Yeah,
Speaker 5: the following this film there was apparently a legal dispute
Speaker 5: between Wolfman and Marvel. He does get an official character
Speaker 5: credit on Blade two. He's written some TV shows over
Speaker 5: the years, including a few episodes of Fraggle Rock if
Speaker 5: I am is correct on that and fun fact, there
Speaker 5: was actually a previous Japanese animated adaptation of The Tomb
Speaker 5: of Dracula comic came out in nineteen eighty, but I
Speaker 5: do not believe it has Blade in it, though the
Speaker 5: character does show up in the nineteen ninety Spider Man cartoon.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you watched this, Joe, but you
Speaker 5: know this was a fun cartoon. It came on the
Speaker 5: afternoons after you got him from school, and they eventually
Speaker 5: just throw every Spider Man related character in so blades
Speaker 5: showing up. Morbius is showing up all these various weird
Speaker 5: Spider Man like second and third tier characters and villains.
Speaker 3: Spider Man met Morbius.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Morbius was totally in the mix. Fun fact,
Speaker 5: Morbius was originally going to be in this film. If
Speaker 5: you go on YouTube, you can even find some rough
Speaker 5: looking footage where originally at the end of it, Blade
Speaker 5: was going to have kind of like a stare down
Speaker 5: with Morbius, like setting up Blade versus Morbius in the sequel.
Speaker 3: I followed your link on this and I looked at
Speaker 3: the scene and my thought was, like, how's anybody supposed
Speaker 3: to know this as Morbius. It's just a guy standing there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, maybe that's one of the reasons they cut
Speaker 5: it out. All right, let's get to the actors here.
Speaker 5: So yes, Blade is Wesley Snipes. Wesley Snipes is Blade.
Speaker 5: Wesley Snipes was born nineteen sixty two and really requires
Speaker 5: no introduction. I mean, he's He appears as the character
Speaker 5: in both of the Blade additional Blade movies that I mentioned,
Speaker 5: Blade two in two thousand and two, Blade Trinity in
Speaker 5: two thousand and four. One of his earliest credits is
Speaker 5: a nineteen eighty four episode of All My Children, followed
Speaker 5: by early roles in such films as Wildcats eighty six,
Speaker 5: Streets of Gold same year, Critical Condition from eighty seven,
Speaker 5: but then in eighty nine he appeared in Major League,
Speaker 5: followed by King of New York starring Christopher Walkin in
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety, and then a whole string of just huge
Speaker 5: films in the early nineties, New Jack City, Jungle Fever,
Speaker 5: White Men Can't Jump, Passinger fifty seven, Rising Sun, and
Speaker 5: Demolition Man.
Speaker 3: Demolition Man is a deeply stupid movie, but it is
Speaker 3: also Wesley Snipes is just great in it. He is
Speaker 3: so much fun.
Speaker 5: He's what a criminal from the past future? Yeah, something
Speaker 5: that is okay.
Speaker 3: The premise is they froze. It takes place in a
Speaker 3: sort of in a very softened do you in future,
Speaker 3: where like where there's no crime or littering or even
Speaker 3: swearing anymore, and everything's all just like nice. And suddenly
Speaker 3: they accidentally unthaw a frozen criminal from the nineteen nineties
Speaker 3: and that's Wesley Snipes, and nobody knows how to deal
Speaker 3: with them. So they also have to unfreeze a tough
Speaker 3: cop from the nineties and that's Sylvester Stallone. It's whoever
Speaker 3: came up with that premise. Chef's kiss.
Speaker 5: I should see that one at some point. I hear
Speaker 5: that people enjoy it, at least in retrospect. I don't
Speaker 5: know how I did at the time, all right. Now,
Speaker 5: of course, Snipes post Blade Trinity, he had some well
Speaker 5: known legal issues, but I believe he's worked pretty steadily
Speaker 5: since then. He notably showed up in The Expendables three
Speaker 5: Dolomite is My Name and Coming to America. That's Coming
Speaker 5: Numeral to America, the sequel that came out recently. And
Speaker 5: I have to say I've long wanted to check out
Speaker 5: his twenty twelve movie Gallo Walkers, in which he plays
Speaker 5: a cursed gunman who fights the undead. Patrick Bergen is
Speaker 5: in it, so you know it's worth looking at, right.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. I Also, I don't want to spoil too
Speaker 3: much about that. I mean, obviously we're going to spoil
Speaker 3: everything about Blade because you know, we got to talk
Speaker 3: about the like the ritual at the end and stuff.
Speaker 3: But for a different show, I'll limit it to just
Speaker 3: saying that Wesley Snipes has an amazing cameo in the
Speaker 3: in the What We Do in the Shadows TV series.
Speaker 5: Nice just to go back to something we discussed in
Speaker 5: the previous weird House. I also have to say that
Speaker 5: when I think about Snipes now, I can't help but
Speaker 5: think about Steven Sagall, because both actors are of the
Speaker 5: same era. Both actors were allegedly difficult on set, or
Speaker 5: could be difficult on set in some cases. However, Snipes
Speaker 5: was clearly the bigger star, and I feel like in Blade, especially,
Speaker 5: Snipes manages to actually capture the essence of a modern
Speaker 5: action movie warrior priest, certainly a vibe that Sigal was
Speaker 5: always going for in these films, but not quite an
Speaker 5: al So Snipes kind of captures what Sigal always aspired for.
Speaker 3: That's an interesting way to put it. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 3: would say another difference is that while Snipes does plenty
Speaker 3: of these silly action hero roles, Snipes is actually a
Speaker 3: good actor, and I don't think that can be said
Speaker 3: of Steven Sagall.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's an important distinction to make. Now,
Speaker 5: you know what they say, every great hero needs at
Speaker 5: least a mediocre villain, and that's where we turn to
Speaker 5: Deacon frost Our van Beier, villain in this film, played
Speaker 5: by Stephendorf born nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think Dwarf as Deacon Frost is better than mediocre.
Speaker 3: I found him delightfully fun as the villain in this
Speaker 3: He's fun.
Speaker 5: I don't know, something always felt a little lacking for
Speaker 5: me in this character. Not bashing the performance at all.
Speaker 5: I feel like he delivers on what they were going
Speaker 5: for here, and maybe ultimately he goes beyond that. Like
Speaker 5: Deacon Frost is a is a villain that I am
Speaker 5: not rooting for, Like I don't like him, and ultimately
Speaker 5: maybe that's the point, Like I'm not supposed to like
Speaker 5: Deacon Frost. He's an upstart, you know, he's a He
Speaker 5: insults everybody, whether you're you know, other vampires or you're
Speaker 5: a vampire hunter. You know, he's a He's a consummate
Speaker 5: bad guy in that regard.
Speaker 3: He I love the premise for the character though it's hilarious.
Speaker 3: He's basically the idea is Deacon Frost is taking this
Speaker 3: vampire thing a little too far, you know. He's like,
Speaker 3: I can understand the killing people and drinking their blood,
Speaker 3: but Frost is a little extreme.
Speaker 5: He is he's an extremist. He's a young extremist, and
Speaker 5: the old establishment doesn't really know what to do with him,
Speaker 5: and he's hilariously inept and dealing with any internal threats clearly. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He gets taken before the Board of Directors of Vampires
Speaker 3: and they're like, Frost, you're you're you're a loose cannon,
Speaker 3: you know, you're you're like.
Speaker 5: No, yeah, Well, they don't even really kick him off
Speaker 5: the force. They're just like you shouldn't you shouldn't be
Speaker 5: like this Frost, and he's like, well I am, and
Speaker 5: then he walks off and like smokes a cigarette.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they're like theres what can you do?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then later just wipes them out and Yeah,
Speaker 5: it completely takes over without any real sense of like
Speaker 5: you don't get the sense that, oh man, Frost really
Speaker 5: was pulling those political strings, like I don't know, it
Speaker 5: looks like he just put at least marginal effort into it.
Speaker 5: And the old Vampire lords were just totally inept. They
Speaker 5: didn't see it coming. They couldn't come up with with
Speaker 5: even like they had every reason in the world to
Speaker 5: get rid of Stephen, get rid of Deacon Frost here,
Speaker 5: and there's no line in the film where they're kind
Speaker 5: of where they even acknowledge why they haven't done, so
Speaker 5: they're not like oh, Deacon Frost, you're so out of line,
Speaker 5: You're so you're so lucky that we have this one
Speaker 5: provision in Vampire Love that says we cannot kill you,
Speaker 5: or or something like, oh, Deacon Frost, thank goodness you
Speaker 5: are doing the blood harvesting for us. Otherwise if you
Speaker 5: want so important, and we would just get rid of you.
Speaker 5: There's no reasons for us to believe that Frost has
Speaker 5: any importance to the vampire authority here, and yet they
Speaker 5: do nothing about him, and then he kills them all.
Speaker 3: You're right. It's not even like Tony Soprano being like, oh,
Speaker 3: I want to whack him, but he's a good earner.
Speaker 3: They're just they're just like he's constantly causing problems and
Speaker 3: threatening us. Oh what are we gonna do? I'mudokier.
Speaker 5: I don't know, all right. So Dwarf, though he's been
Speaker 5: around a while, started off as a child actor, appearing
Speaker 5: in the nineteen eighty seven film. One of his earlier
Speaker 5: roles was the eighty seven film The Gate, about kids
Speaker 5: summoning up demons at home, but most of his earlier
Speaker 5: credits or TV roles, but some bigger screen rolls would
Speaker 5: come around with nineteen ninety two is the Power of
Speaker 5: one ninety four's Backbeat, as well as Stuart Gordon's Space
Speaker 5: Truckers in nineteen ninety six. Post Blade, he was in
Speaker 5: such films as John Waters Cecil Beat Him ented in
Speaker 5: two thousand The If Memory Serves Terriblefear dot Com and
Speaker 5: thousand and.
Speaker 3: Two, Wait, what are you saying bad about Fear dot Com?
Speaker 5: I mean, maybe it would be fun in retrospect, but
Speaker 5: at the time even I remember watching Fear dot Com
Speaker 5: and it was just, oh, it was bad.
Speaker 3: No, it's bad, but it's part of the series of
Speaker 3: movies all came out around that time about telecommunications technology
Speaker 3: that kills you. So like in The Ring you get
Speaker 3: a phone call and it kills you, and then in
Speaker 3: this movie you go to a website and it kills you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Fear dot Com is like the one of the
Speaker 5: worst Ring knockoffs, I guess of the era.
Speaker 3: I think it actually might have come out first, slightly
Speaker 3: before the American Ring at least. Oh okay, I'm not
Speaker 3: positive about that.
Speaker 5: At any rate. It's bad. Now. I don't have much
Speaker 5: to say about a lot of these roles, but I
Speaker 5: do think that Dwarf was pretty great in the third
Speaker 5: season A True Detective. He really wowed me in that. Like,
Speaker 5: I hadn't really seen him play this sort of character before. Generally,
Speaker 5: I had only seen him play these cool characters from
Speaker 5: the younger phase of his career. But as this character,
Speaker 5: Detective Roland West in A True Detective, I really liked
Speaker 5: him in that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, he grizzled. Well.
Speaker 5: Oh, one more thing about him. A fun fact. He's
Speaker 5: the son of composer Stevedorf, who composed the score for
Speaker 5: the nineteen eighty seven film My Best Friend as a vampire.
Speaker 5: All right, next actor we're going to talk about here,
Speaker 5: Chris Christofferson is in this was the character Whistler. The
Speaker 5: Whistler is blades tech man, his backup. He's his Q,
Speaker 5: always providing him with cool new gadgets with which to
Speaker 5: kill the blood drinkers.
Speaker 3: Except he's not whimsical like Q. You know, don't touch
Speaker 3: that Doublo seven. Instead, he's a well to come back
Speaker 3: to the theme of grizzled, he is as grizzled as
Speaker 3: it gets.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he is grizzled to the max. And you can
Speaker 5: imagine Norrington being like cut All right, can we try
Speaker 5: it again? Chris, but this time more grizzled. Can you
Speaker 5: make it more grizzled and and reckless and gruff? And
Speaker 5: Chris stofferins it's like, yep, yep, I can do it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: smoking constantly guzzling. Jack Daniels, it's great.
Speaker 3: Out of the bottle without pouring it in the glass.
Speaker 5: Smoking while sloppily putting gasoline in a car.
Speaker 3: Smoking while fueling up a car. He always looks like
Speaker 3: he just stepped on a nail a few minutes ago.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it has like his leg and
Speaker 5: a brace too. Right. So this is Chris Christofferson, very
Speaker 5: well known name singer, songwriter turned actors. Some of his
Speaker 5: biggest songs that he wrote were Me and Bobby McGhee
Speaker 5: for the Good Time, Sunday Morning, coming Down and helped
Speaker 5: Me make It through the Night. His first movie was
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy one's The Last Movie, written and directed by
Speaker 5: Dennis Hopper, and he also starred in the movie Cisco
Speaker 5: Pike the same year, and he followed these up with
Speaker 5: such nineteen seventies films as well a pair of Sam
Speaker 5: peckinpop films, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, as well
Speaker 5: is Bring Me the head of Alfredo Garcia. He was
Speaker 5: also in Martin Scorsese's nineteen seventy four film Alice Doesn't
Speaker 5: Live Here Anymore, And in nineteen seventy six he starred
Speaker 5: opposite Barbara Streisand in A Star Is Born.
Speaker 3: Oh was he playing the Bradley Cooper role in that
Speaker 3: version of it?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah, he's the character that Bradley Cooper. Would revisit
Speaker 5: the remake. Now, I can't. We can't touch on all
Speaker 5: the films that Christopherson has been. He was in a
Speaker 5: ton of stuff during his career, but some of the
Speaker 5: others that stand out, at least to me are nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty Seven's Gate, nineteen eighty eight's Big Top Peewee, nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty nine's Millennium. He was in John Sayliss's Lone Star
Speaker 5: in ninety six, and in two thousand and one he
Speaker 5: was in Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 3: The Planet of the Apes remake, the Tim Burton one.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, yeah, that one has a great cast, and
Speaker 5: I believe I've seen it. I don't know. Sometimes I
Speaker 5: feel like I need to revisit that one see exactly
Speaker 5: what was up. It has some great ape suits. So
Speaker 5: obviously he plays Whistler in all three Wesley Snipes Blade movie,
Speaker 5: So wait of a shocker to you, Joe.
Speaker 3: I distinctly recall him dying in the movie. I just watched.
Speaker 5: It didn't take. It didn't take. The character was too good.
Speaker 5: People working more Whistler. So even though, okay, but he
Speaker 5: comes back very early. It's not really a big plot,
Speaker 5: but basically early on in Blade Too, they're like, you
Speaker 5: remember Whistler, Well he's back. We're bringing him.
Speaker 3: Back from the dead, Like, is he a vampire?
Speaker 5: I think there's a little vampireeness involved in his him
Speaker 5: coming back, but I'm a little foggy on how it happened.
Speaker 5: It Also, it really, even at the time, as much
Speaker 5: as I love Blade Too, it felt like, what we
Speaker 5: killed Whistler. No, he's great, bring him back, okay. Chris
Speaker 5: Christofferson was also in the weird movie Trouble in Mind
Speaker 5: from nineteen eighty five, directed and written by Alan Rudolph,
Speaker 5: which is a film that I think I would there'd
Speaker 5: be a lot to talk about if we were to
Speaker 5: cover this on Weird House Cinema, if it were not
Speaker 5: for some of the less savory aspects of the character
Speaker 5: he plays in the film and now, Chris Kostofferson is
Speaker 5: really good in it, and so Our Divine Keith Carrodine
Speaker 5: and Joe Morton. But for my taste anyway, Rudolph makes
Speaker 5: some choices with the protagonist that end up tarnishing the
Speaker 5: film for me anyway. At this point in his career,
Speaker 5: Christofferson is still alive as of this recording, but is
Speaker 5: retired from acting in music these days. His last film
Speaker 5: role was twenty eighteens Blaze, directed and written by Ethan Hawke.
Speaker 3: Not Blade, but Blaze Blaze.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it kind of went out. I guess I
Speaker 5: kind of a blaze of glory. I don't know. I
Speaker 5: haven't seen Blaze. I'm not not sure what it's about,
Speaker 5: but I don't think it's about an off brand vampire killer.
Speaker 3: Okay, so we got Blade, he's our vampire hunter, and
Speaker 3: then we got Whistler, he is our vampire hunter's assistant
Speaker 3: slash tech slash mechanic. But let's see, in a sort
Speaker 3: of materially based vampire scenario, you need a hematologist in this.
Speaker 3: It wouldn't be a movie without a hematologist, somebody who
Speaker 3: can explain all the blood science. And wouldn't you know it,
Speaker 3: we happen to run across a hematologist quite early in
Speaker 3: the film.
Speaker 5: Yep, it's Karen, played by bouche Wright born nineteen seventy,
Speaker 5: known for such films as nineteen ninety five's Dead Presidents,
Speaker 5: ninety two zebra Head, and nineteen ninety four is Fresh.
Speaker 5: So yeah, she kind of this is in more of
Speaker 5: a modern film, you know, So she's not merely a
Speaker 5: damsel in distress. She is in distress a few times
Speaker 5: and Blade does saf her, but then she also pulls
Speaker 5: through and is of course a brilliant hematologist who starts
Speaker 5: cracking the vampire medical problem, as well as proving herself
Speaker 5: very eager to grab a shotgun or a UV light
Speaker 5: torch and jump in and kill some vampires as well.
Speaker 3: I think in bouchet Right is great in this and
Speaker 3: I like her characters arc. So at first she is, yeah,
Speaker 3: she's just like she gets bitten by a vampire and
Speaker 3: needs rescuing by Blade. But yeah, over the course of
Speaker 3: the film, she becomes more and more active in fighting back,
Speaker 3: and yeah, so she invents some chemical weapons to use
Speaker 3: against the vampires, and she gets a really good sword
Speaker 3: stab in on Donald Logue at one point and makes
Speaker 3: some vampires explode with some garlic spray. She's great.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Another actor of note in this is Sina Lathan,
Speaker 5: who plays Blade's mom Vanessa, we see at the very
Speaker 5: beginning in this flashback. Born nineteen seventy one, she had
Speaker 5: a much bigger career post Blade, actually starring in two
Speaker 5: thousand eleven Basketball and Brown Sugar from two thousand and two,
Speaker 5: directed by Rick Familuwa. She's also the lead in two
Speaker 5: thousand and fours Alien Versus Predator, whoa. She had a
Speaker 5: recurring role on such TV shows as Niptock, Secession and Family.
Speaker 3: Guy, So she's the main character in Alien Versus pres Editor,
Speaker 3: I haven't seen that in a long time, but I
Speaker 3: remember having a thought about her character in that, which
Speaker 3: is that in the end, she and the predators like
Speaker 3: defeat all the aliens, and the predators are like, good job, human,
Speaker 3: you know, you did good back there, and then I
Speaker 3: think they give her a trophy or something, and then
Speaker 3: they fly off and then she is left standing by
Speaker 3: herself in the middle of Antarctica. So it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: she would definitely die.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, the predators they don't really know how
Speaker 5: humans work all that much.
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, they should have given her a ride.
Speaker 5: I think all right. The next actor of note, Donald Logue,
Speaker 5: is in this playing the character Quinn, an excellent vampire
Speaker 5: hinchman to mister Frost here.
Speaker 3: This character is a lot of fun. This is a
Speaker 3: great villain, and I kind of get the feeling that
Speaker 3: with this character. Somebody watched Catherine Bigelow's Near Dark and
Speaker 3: they saw Bill Paxton's character as the always going nuts
Speaker 3: vampire dancing on tables, taunting people with the kind of
Speaker 3: Southern accent, and to use a goyrism, they said, I
Speaker 3: got to get me one of those.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think I can see the connection here. You
Speaker 5: both also get crispy and keep on vamping, you know,
Speaker 5: both fun characters with similar traits. I think Paxton and
Speaker 5: Log each kind of make them their own. I think
Speaker 5: Paxton's characters may be a little more Texan and Log's
Speaker 5: character Quinn here's a little more dude, you know. But yeah,
Speaker 5: I can see the connection between these two anyway. In
Speaker 5: my opinion, Quinn is the best villain role in the
Speaker 5: film by far, though. I do like the relationship that
Speaker 5: they develop between Quinn and Frost, like they have a
Speaker 5: good vibe. So it's never one of these. It's not
Speaker 5: a situation where I'm like, oh, I wish it was
Speaker 5: just Quinn. Like, I love Quinn when he's on the screen,
Speaker 5: but I also love his moments with Frost. They really
Speaker 5: work those out. Well.
Speaker 3: There's a great scene where you think Fraud is gonna
Speaker 3: like cut off Quinn's arm, but he's just joking with him.
Speaker 3: He's like, no, no, it's I'm playing.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's there's some some nice little nods
Speaker 5: like this, the very the subtle manipulation that Frost has
Speaker 5: him play over Quinn.
Speaker 3: But yeah, they're bros.
Speaker 5: But there are bros. Yeah, but are they real? Like
Speaker 5: you know that Frost really is going he never gets
Speaker 5: the chance to actually betray Quinn. But but yeah, it's
Speaker 5: heavily implied that, Yeah, the second that Frost has what
Speaker 5: he needs, Quinn is no longer necessary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when he becomes the Blood God, in the Blood
Speaker 3: God does not have any bros.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So Log's TV screen career kicks off in the
Speaker 5: early nineties with a smattering of small TV roles. You
Speaker 5: see him on X Files, you see him on Northern Exposure,
Speaker 5: as well as such films as ninety two Sneakers, ninety
Speaker 5: three's Gettysburg, and these smaller roles continue. He even pops
Speaker 5: up in nineteen ninety six Jerry Maguire. He played Jimmy
Speaker 5: the Cab Driver and several MTV promos in the early
Speaker 5: nineties as well. I don't know if you remember these, No,
Speaker 5: just kind of a chance for outlandish character work from
Speaker 5: logan those. He's worked a lot since Blade, but some
Speaker 5: of the highlights include David Fincher's Zodiac. In two thousand
Speaker 5: and seven, he was on the TV series Vikings and
Speaker 5: oh Man. He has a really fun role in the
Speaker 5: biker series Sons of Anarchy. He plays an opiate addicted
Speaker 5: renegade x Us Marshall named Lee Torrek. He's not on
Speaker 5: the show a lot, but he really eats up the
Speaker 5: screen when he's on there.
Speaker 3: Well, he's definitely a scene stealer in this movie too,
Speaker 3: as a vampire who just repeatedly gets like burned and
Speaker 3: chopped up and stuff, but then comes back.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and he's just full of energy. You know, he's
Speaker 5: all about enjoying the party, but he's also all about
Speaker 5: bringing the fight to Blade.
Speaker 3: But you know it wouldn't be a vampire movie if
Speaker 3: it didn't have Udo Kier in it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and Udo Kier in it plays Dragonetti. U is
Speaker 5: our top vampire lord or vampire baron, at least in
Speaker 5: the local what is I don't even know what city
Speaker 5: this was supposed to be. I think they filmed parts
Speaker 5: of it in Canada and parts of it in California.
Speaker 5: It's vaguely, it's not important. It is just the city,
Speaker 5: so American, big city.
Speaker 3: It's never specified. Parts of it look more like an
Speaker 3: East Coast city like New York. Parts of it definitely
Speaker 3: look like La So. I'm not sure, but yeah, Udo Kier,
Speaker 3: he is the CEO of the vampires in this movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So Kier oh Man Kier has been in a
Speaker 5: lot so German born actor with two hundred and seventy
Speaker 5: five credits on IMDb. I don't know if I said
Speaker 5: I may have said it already. Born nineteen forty four,
Speaker 5: still very much alive, still active. He's one of these
Speaker 5: actors who seems to have been in everything and become
Speaker 5: an icon for this weird mix of popular but also
Speaker 5: art house and just utter B movies. And in less
Speaker 5: than be Like, there's some some really really really low
Speaker 5: budget looking like video game adaptations.
Speaker 3: He's beIN in Are you making a movie that you're
Speaker 3: filming on your cell phone? Udo Kier will be in it.
Speaker 5: Give him a call, Yeah, if you meet the price,
Speaker 5: he will. He will show up. And he's one of
Speaker 5: these guys that like, like, no, no, none of these
Speaker 5: movies have slowed him down, So he's he just keeps
Speaker 5: keeps acting in things, and he'll pop up in some
Speaker 5: really good stuff here and there, but then he'll also
Speaker 5: be in something that's just, you know, complete trash, and
Speaker 5: nothing sticks to him. He started acting on screen in
Speaker 5: the late sixties, and appeared in such films as a
Speaker 5: nineteen seventies Mark of the Devil opposite Herbert Lohm. In
Speaker 5: seventy three and seventy four, he played both Baron Frankenstein
Speaker 5: and Count Dracula in Fresh Flesh for Frankenstein Not Fresh
Speaker 5: Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for dragt Ala, both famously
Speaker 5: produced in part by Andy Warhol, so pretty legendary for
Speaker 5: those roles. In nineteen seventy seven, he played doctor Frank
Speaker 5: mandel Is in Mandel or Mandel I don't remember, but anyway,
Speaker 5: the movie is Dario Argento's Suspiria.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like a character that the main character goes
Speaker 3: to talk to in a like a park outside an
Speaker 3: office building and he tells her about witches.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So Kier has been in lots of European films
Speaker 5: and in general just lots of films. He was in
Speaker 5: ninety five's Johnny Numonic, He was in nineteen ninety four's
Speaker 5: Ace Venture a Pet Detective. He was in nineteen ninety
Speaker 5: six's Barbed Wire. In two thousand, he was in both
Speaker 5: Shadow of the Vampire and Dancer in the Dark. In
Speaker 5: two thousand and one, he was in both Werner Herzog's
Speaker 5: Invincible I believe that starred Tim Roth, and he was
Speaker 5: also in Magda. It was in the Gido. You'll make
Speaker 5: my guess.
Speaker 3: I saw that in theaters. That's one of those Christian
Speaker 3: apocalypse movies. It's all about the anti Christ and the
Speaker 3: end times. The anti Christ played I think by Michael
Speaker 3: York Basil Exposition from the Austin Powers movies.
Speaker 5: In two thousand and two, Kiera was also in Fear
Speaker 5: dot Com. He's like, let me have some of that
Speaker 5: Fear dot Com action, and.
Speaker 3: I won't go to that website, do not?
Speaker 5: I don't know, we can't vouch for that website. But again,
Speaker 5: artful and terrible movies kind of find a perfect balance
Speaker 5: in udo Kier and this trend continues to this very day.
Speaker 5: Most recently, his twenty twenty one film Swan Song earned
Speaker 5: a great deal of praise, in which he plays a
Speaker 5: formerly flamboyant hairdresser, Ejing flamboyant hairdresser. And yeah, that one.
Speaker 5: I was reading articles about that one on NPR. Oh,
Speaker 5: but Joe, he was in another movie that I know
Speaker 5: that you've mentioned to me before. He was in two
Speaker 5: thousand and fourst Trackla three thousand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Dracula three thousand is a direct to
Speaker 3: video sci fi horror masterpiece starring Casper van Deen, who
Speaker 3: was in the first Omega Code movie by the way,
Speaker 3: to Connections abound, but not just Casper van Deen, so
Speaker 3: it's also got coolioh Erica Elanyak, and Tommy Lister, Tiny Lister.
Speaker 3: I'm going to say I saw Dracula three thousand circa
Speaker 3: two thousand and seven, but the memory is firmly implanted
Speaker 3: because this is one of those movies that is not
Speaker 3: just bad, It's not just really bad. It's unusually bad.
Speaker 3: I think paying attention to this entire movie should be
Speaker 3: like a standard test of willpower and sustained attention used
Speaker 3: in like training airline pilots. You know, if you're the
Speaker 3: safety technician at a power plant, you must watch Dracula
Speaker 3: three thousand and be able to describe everything that happens afterwards.
Speaker 3: It's that would be a feat of the brain. The
Speaker 3: plot is, I think that there's a space ship helmed
Speaker 3: by Casper van Deen. I think he's literally named Captain
Speaker 3: Abraham van Helsing and they run across a derelict ship
Speaker 3: called the Demeter reference to Dracula, of course, and then
Speaker 3: they try to salvage it. But whoops, there's a vampire
Speaker 3: on board, but not a sci fi vampire, so imagine
Speaker 3: frilly shirt, huge collar, black cave. He's a Halloween costume
Speaker 3: of a vampire, but in a spaceship movie.
Speaker 5: Because it sounds like you're working up yet like a
Speaker 5: space vampire, like a yeah, something like from Planet to
Speaker 5: the Vampires or something, or something even more alien. But yeah,
Speaker 5: you had shared a picture of this, and yeah it's
Speaker 5: just straight up department store vampire.
Speaker 3: No, he's literally just like Ivon Tusak your blood and
Speaker 3: so Udo Kierra is in this movie too, but he
Speaker 3: appears in such a way that, as a friend of
Speaker 3: mine put it at the time, it looks like he
Speaker 3: left his car running while he ran in to shoot
Speaker 3: his scenes. He does not interact with the rest of
Speaker 3: the cast as far as I recall. He plays the
Speaker 3: dead captain of the Daryl like Chip, and his only
Speaker 3: scenes where he's acting are like video logs left behind,
Speaker 3: And in these video logs, he's obviously reading his lines
Speaker 3: for the first time as he delivers them, so he's
Speaker 3: going straight off the que cards, and you can see
Speaker 3: his eyes going back and forth as he goes down
Speaker 3: each line of a bunch of whole you know, like, oh,
Speaker 3: there's something on board. We are doomed that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: All right. Next up, I guess we got to try
Speaker 5: and move a little quicker through these other names. But
Speaker 5: so we have Quinn as one of the vampire lackeys.
Speaker 5: We also have a character named Mercury. She's a super fast,
Speaker 5: blonde vampire and played by Arle Hovert born nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 5: Spanish dancer turned actor went on to appear in such
Speaker 5: films as Vampire Slas mirtosire of the Wolves, and David
Speaker 5: Fincher's the girl with the dragon tattoo. She vamps it
Speaker 5: up good here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's great's she does a good like kind of
Speaker 3: wolf snarl. She's got good teeth for the role.
Speaker 5: That's something I was thinking about watching this film. A
Speaker 5: lot of folks have vampire teeth in, and vampire teeth
Speaker 5: look cool, but they can also make your This the
Speaker 5: prosthetic that goes in your mouth can make your cheeks
Speaker 5: a little puffy, So you kind of get that vampire
Speaker 5: teeth cheek puff going on with a lot of the
Speaker 5: actors here. Yeah, all right. We also have Tracy Lord's
Speaker 5: in this playing the character Raquel. This is the vampire
Speaker 5: who leads our bro victim of human to the vampire
Speaker 5: rave early on in the film. Yeah, so just a
Speaker 5: small role, but Lords born sixty eight, who basically transitioned
Speaker 5: out of notoriety into what would become a solid mainstream
Speaker 5: acting career. She was. Her first such role was in
Speaker 5: nineteen eighty eights Not of This Earth, a remake of
Speaker 5: the Roger Corman classic that we've discussed on this show.
Speaker 5: Directed by another name that comes up a lot, Jim Warnarski.
Speaker 3: I've never seen this remake.
Speaker 5: I don't know that you should it that's particularly good,
Speaker 5: but it exists, I mean, especially given how great the
Speaker 5: original Not of This Earth was. But anyway, she's been
Speaker 5: in a bunch of stuff. She's in John Waters Cry Baby.
Speaker 5: Not long after that, she did a lot of TV
Speaker 5: for such series as mcgiver, Highlander, Tales from the Crypt,
Speaker 5: melrose Place, Roseanne Nash Bridges, and Will and Grace. Okay,
Speaker 5: smaller roles. Now, there's a character named Crease. He's basically
Speaker 5: a vampire underling that ends up losing a hand to
Speaker 5: a booby trap, played by Matt Schules born seventy two.
Speaker 5: Matt Schuls is interesting because he returns in Blade two
Speaker 5: as an entirely different vampire, a Blood Pack member named
Speaker 5: Chupa and Matt Schules has been in a number of
Speaker 5: movies over the years, including two thousand and one ones
Speaker 5: Fast and the Furious. In twenty eleven's Fast five, in
Speaker 5: which he plays a character named Vince who's also in
Speaker 5: the Transporter, I think the basic situation is he did
Speaker 5: Blade and then he got jacked to do Fast and Furious,
Speaker 5: and then he came back and Blade too. And played
Speaker 5: a different jacked vampire.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to remember who this guy is in any
Speaker 3: of these movies I've seen, and I can't.
Speaker 5: Okay, well, I mean he was in two of them, right,
Speaker 5: like he was. He must be part of what the family,
Speaker 5: right because he's called back. He came back in twenty eleven,
Speaker 5: I don't think so. I don't recall it. Maybe it
Speaker 5: was a flashback. This is the big.
Speaker 3: This is not Vin Diesel, this is not Ludacris, this
Speaker 3: is yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Well, moving along, we're getting into bit players here now,
Speaker 5: but I have to point out that Greg Okamura is
Speaker 5: in this playing an uncredited vampire. He's one of the
Speaker 5: vampire lords. There are a number of really cool looking
Speaker 5: vampire lords setting around the table with Udo. Most of
Speaker 5: none of them do anything, most of them do not talk,
Speaker 5: but several of them look really cool, and Okamiro certainly
Speaker 5: looks cool. Hawaiian born American actor stuntman and martial artists
Speaker 5: you've definitely seen in something, even if it's just playing
Speaker 5: wingcong hatchet Man in nineteen eighty six is big trouble
Speaker 5: in Little China. He's the one that has like two
Speaker 5: I think golden revolvers in his in his hands. He
Speaker 5: also pops up in such films as The Octagon, Samurai Cop,
Speaker 5: The Shadow, Mortal Kombat, the ninety five version Bloodsport three,
Speaker 5: and much more.
Speaker 3: Oh who was he in the ninety five Mortal Kombat?
Speaker 3: I watched that probably one hundred times.
Speaker 5: I don't remember him specifically, but he has a real
Speaker 5: he has a real cool look. You know, he's got
Speaker 5: this long beard, bald head, you know, kind of a
Speaker 5: tough guy look. So yeah, he's very much this kind
Speaker 5: of guy. He does some stunts, but also you're like, oh,
Speaker 5: he looks too cool to not have him more on camera.
Speaker 5: More can he at least stand in the background.
Speaker 3: I don't remember if he has a line in Blade,
Speaker 3: but you were right about him.
Speaker 5: Is not.
Speaker 3: The sort of board of directors of vampires being very
Speaker 3: ineffectual and not having much to say or do other
Speaker 3: than stand around and like look terrified by Frost. I
Speaker 3: think occasionally one of them will just like like squeak, like, well,
Speaker 3: I'm a coward, so I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, or they'll be a little bit smug and be
Speaker 5: like you, Frost, you have no idea what you're doing,
Speaker 5: or to one of the underlings. You know, he's going
Speaker 5: to get you all killed, right, and that's sort of
Speaker 5: that's all that it ever amounts to, all right. Note
Speaker 5: on the music, Mark Isham did the music here Night
Speaker 5: Moore nineteen fifty one. Solid score in my opinion, you know,
Speaker 5: it hits all the right action beats. But also we
Speaker 5: have a number of sequences that are more ambient and
Speaker 5: ethereal in nature, be it like a blade meditation scene
Speaker 5: or one of those driving through the dreary daytime city
Speaker 5: scene that I feel like, like, really, those are the
Speaker 5: moments where you really have a chance for the score
Speaker 5: to shine.
Speaker 3: Though in as was the style at the time. Note,
Speaker 3: this movie also has a lot of rob would you
Speaker 3: would you call it acid techno?
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, there's there's some. There's some fun hip hop
Speaker 5: in it as well, but yeah, some of the key
Speaker 5: scenes involve some like a massive drop of acid techno.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there are several points where like, oh, Blade
Speaker 3: gets out the sword and then immediately it's down, down,
Speaker 3: down down. Yeah that kind of thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love it. But anyway, the score wise, marc
Speaker 5: Issham also did such films as two thousand and fourth Crash,
Speaker 5: A Bad Lieutenant Port of Carl New Orleans two thousand
Speaker 5: and seven is the missed time Cop Romeo is bleeding
Speaker 5: fire in the sky Point Break the Hitcher, Trouble in Mind,
Speaker 5: which I mentioned earlier, Never cry Wolf from eighty three.
Speaker 5: He was nominated for an oscar for nineteen ninety Two's
Speaker 5: a river runs through it. So yeah, he's a big
Speaker 5: deal and it's still working. Cool now. A quick note
Speaker 5: on the stunts and fights. There are a few different
Speaker 5: names that are tied up in the stunt working choreography.
Speaker 5: Henry King Junior and Jeff and Mata are credit with
Speaker 5: stunt coordinator Honors. Imata is a longtime stuntman and martial
Speaker 5: artists who has worked in tons of notable films including Blade, Runner, Dreamscape,
Speaker 5: Prince of Darkness, and Big Trouble in Little China. While
Speaker 5: he's in Big Trouble Little China, he's one of the
Speaker 5: kidnappers of the Airport. Okay, And on top of this,
Speaker 5: martial arts choreographer credits go to both Wesley Snipes himself
Speaker 5: and Jeff Ward, another longtime stumming All right, let's bust
Speaker 5: into the plot of Blade a bit more. Huh.
Speaker 3: All right, so I guess we will talk about the opening.
Speaker 3: The opening has a kind of prologue that takes place
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty seven, where you're in a hospital. It's
Speaker 3: that dreamy kind of camera work that lets you know,
Speaker 3: this is not the whole movie is not going to
Speaker 3: be like this. You know it'll take place in the present,
Speaker 3: don't worry. But it's sixty seven and you see a
Speaker 3: woman being rushed through a hospital on a stretcher and
Speaker 3: she's about to give birth, but she also has vampire
Speaker 3: byte marks on her neck, and you see like her
Speaker 3: id falls on the ground. I think you see her
Speaker 3: name is Vanessa Brooks, and it's implied that she dies.
Speaker 3: So that's the background, and then we get credits and
Speaker 3: we see over the credits there are some sped up
Speaker 3: time lapse shots of a city. I was trying to
Speaker 3: figure out what city, but I think it's just it's
Speaker 3: intentionally nonspecific. A side note on this cinematography. I was thinking,
Speaker 3: what is the effect on the viewer created by time
Speaker 3: lapse footage of human activity in a city? And to
Speaker 3: my mind, it has a kind of de individuation effect
Speaker 3: because you can't focus on any individual person and instead
Speaker 3: only see kind of trails or lines, you see masses
Speaker 3: of humans blurring together into just patterns of movement, or
Speaker 3: you see the effects of their behavior and projects over time,
Speaker 3: so you might see buildings being assembled or garbage piling
Speaker 3: up or something. And in this sense, it kind of
Speaker 3: makes you think of the humans in the city more
Speaker 3: like ants in a nature documentary, not as individuals, but
Speaker 3: as a kind of collective effect, an undifferentiated mass of
Speaker 3: biology traveling along certain lines, which I think actually works
Speaker 3: really well in the intro for a vampire movie. It
Speaker 3: has the eerie effect of letting us see humans more
Speaker 3: like how the vampires do, kind of like weird herds
Speaker 3: of livestock without individual identities. So I think that's a
Speaker 3: very smart choice of technique for the opening of Blade.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, short lived creatures that burn through
Speaker 5: life so quickly, and it's these older beings, these long
Speaker 5: lived beings that prey upon them.
Speaker 3: Now, then we get to the real opening, which is
Speaker 3: you see two people on a date. I think one
Speaker 3: of them is Tracy Lord's, and they're like winding their
Speaker 3: way through a meat packing warehouse and leading into a
Speaker 3: secret club. There's like a bouncer at the door. They
Speaker 3: go into a club and immediately we're thinking, okay, is
Speaker 3: this a vampire club. It's got to be. It's full
Speaker 3: of you know, dancers. There's one dancer there who can
Speaker 3: kind of teleport. I think that's what's her name?
Speaker 5: Who? Oh Mercury, yeah.
Speaker 3: Mercury yeah, and they're playing. At first, I was like,
Speaker 3: is this e DM? But Robbie corrected me, so this
Speaker 3: would be acid techno.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is definitely acid techno in this scene.
Speaker 3: So there's a very gray and blue color palette, kind
Speaker 3: of pale colors. The DJ has flashlights strapped to his glasses.
Speaker 3: I think we see Stephen Dorf wandering around in the crowd.
Speaker 3: The rave scene is very late nineties. But then we
Speaker 3: see that DJ like unveils a giant banner saying blood
Speaker 3: bath and then what do you know, The sprinkler system
Speaker 3: kicks on and it's just spray and blood on everybody.
Speaker 3: This is before we started recording. Seth was asking me, oh,
Speaker 3: its Blade the movie where the sprinklers come on and
Speaker 3: it's blood, and we talked about it, and I was thinking,
Speaker 3: I don't think that would work because when the blood
Speaker 3: can of like clump up or coagulate and clog up
Speaker 3: the sprinkler system. I just don't think you could do that.
Speaker 5: It's a special system that was probably custom installed. Because
Speaker 5: we find out the vampires are into everything. They can
Speaker 5: have custom tech installed.
Speaker 3: They get human plumbers to do that.
Speaker 5: Well, if they are there, they're vampire familiars. They have
Speaker 5: the glyph on the back of their neck and there
Speaker 5: they know. They install these and cities across the United
Speaker 5: States and Europe and beyond.
Speaker 3: But they so the blood comes on and then the
Speaker 3: human dude who's been led in there, he starts panicking,
Speaker 3: and then all the vampires are like hissing and bearing
Speaker 3: their fangs at him. They're like really salting the meat
Speaker 3: with this guy. They don't just bite and drink his blood.
Speaker 3: They're like trying. It seems like they're trying to scare
Speaker 3: him to death.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this whole sequence is fun to sort of try
Speaker 5: and figure out, because, yeah, so there's the vampires want
Speaker 5: to drink blood, but they also want blood to come
Speaker 5: through the sprinkler system and fall on everything. They want
Speaker 5: to drain this man's blood, but also they kind of
Speaker 5: want to be eat him up and scare him. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so I was the main way I was able to
Speaker 5: make sense of this is that, Okay, nothing that we
Speaker 5: that we as humans in our life, nothing that we
Speaker 5: like or love, do we love as much as a
Speaker 5: vampire loves blood, Like a vampire has so many Like
Speaker 5: the vampire can't feel emotions about most things, but a
Speaker 5: vampire feels like all emotions about blood. And therefore they're like, yes,
Speaker 5: I want blood. I want blood to rain on me.
Speaker 5: I want I want to make love to the blood.
Speaker 5: I also want to beat the blood up. I want
Speaker 5: to drink the blood. I want to just blood, blood, blood.
Speaker 5: That's all they can think about. And so this is
Speaker 5: the very sort of experience, the very sort of room
Speaker 5: that a vampire would want to find itself in.
Speaker 3: That's very astute. I think that is exactly what they're
Speaker 3: going for.
Speaker 5: So this guy's toast right, like there's just no way out.
Speaker 3: Of course, they're going to drain him. I mean it's
Speaker 3: like this club has I don't know, one or maybe
Speaker 3: a few humans in it, and then five hundred vampires.
Speaker 3: This is not a good ratio. So the guy's crawling
Speaker 3: away in terror, slashing through the blood until he like
Speaker 3: crawls up on a big steel toed boot and you
Speaker 3: see the bottom of a long black leather coat flapping.
Speaker 3: What Who's this. Immediately the crowd panics, They're like, that's him,
Speaker 3: it's the day Walker. And then Fight Fight, Fight Blade
Speaker 3: is here. Wesley Snipes looks awesome. He's got the the
Speaker 3: sunglasses indoors, he's got the you know, lots of black leather,
Speaker 3: he's got the body armor on. He's got the Vampire
Speaker 3: Hunter Batman utility belt. So I think he's got a
Speaker 3: shotgun that shoots silver and when it hits the vampires,
Speaker 3: they dissolve into gray and orange cgi ash. And then
Speaker 3: he's got little silver steaks, and he's got a katana
Speaker 3: that I guess must have silver in it, and he's
Speaker 3: got some kind of boomerang made out of silver lasers.
Speaker 3: I think he can throw like bombs of garlic sauce.
Speaker 3: And he of course does martial arts, so he's he's
Speaker 3: just unloading all of all of the fighting skills on
Speaker 3: this club full of monsters.
Speaker 5: It just tears into them and it's marvelous.
Speaker 3: There was a really funny part where a vampire grabs
Speaker 3: two meat hooks off the wall that look like they're
Speaker 3: there for decoration. I guess because it's meatpacking district or something,
Speaker 3: and then runs at Blades, swinging the swinging the meat
Speaker 3: hooks like nunchucks.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm. Yeah, it takes them out.
Speaker 3: But then Donal Logue comes out. This is our vampire Quinn,
Speaker 3: who's got a like big red beard, and he's he's
Speaker 3: he's got a bunch of goons with sunglasses, and he's like,
Speaker 3: that's him. Get him. We're gonna jack you up, make
Speaker 3: him hurt bad. And so you get a big fight scene,
Speaker 3: a bunch of waves of dudes in very distinctive late
Speaker 3: nineties bad guy outfits. So it's all black clothes, sunglasses inside,
Speaker 3: finger gloves, black wool caps that kind of look. Of course,
Speaker 3: Blade beats them all. Then he pins Donal Logue to
Speaker 3: the wall with spikes and and Quinn here he seems
Speaker 3: to be speaking some ancient language. I think there's a
Speaker 3: vampire language in this movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah and yeah. The part of the plot ends up
Speaker 5: revolving around vampire runs and glyphs that can't quite be
Speaker 5: deciphered and so forth.
Speaker 3: But Blade tells him, Okay, I'm tired of he says,
Speaker 3: I'm tired of chopping you up this time I'll try fire,
Speaker 3: and he sets the vampire on fire, and then police
Speaker 3: show up. Blade quickly checks the party guy for bite marks.
Speaker 3: He has none, so he lets him go. Then Blade
Speaker 3: disappears and we cut straight to the hospital where Quinn's
Speaker 3: charred cadaver has arrived. They're like, ooh, charred cadaver for you.
Speaker 3: And so here we're about to meet a major character,
Speaker 3: the hematologist Karen Jensen, played by In bouchet Wright. And
Speaker 3: so at first we have her and some other doctor pathologist.
Speaker 3: I don't remember the character's name, but my main thing
Speaker 3: about this other guy is, I'm sorry, this guy just
Speaker 3: does not look like a doctor. I know a doctor
Speaker 3: can look like anything, but this guy looks like he's
Speaker 3: in a Beatles cover band, and he has a floppy
Speaker 3: like Paul McCartney mop cut. He just I don't buy it.
Speaker 5: He does seem like a pretty useless character at the time,
Speaker 5: but it becomes it becomes clear that it's an economic
Speaker 5: choice later on in the picture.
Speaker 3: Yes so so anyway, so he and he and Karen
Speaker 3: are talking and she's analyzing the blood sample from the
Speaker 3: cadaver and things are not adding up. She seems skeptical
Speaker 3: that the blood she's looking at actually came out of
Speaker 3: a dead person, and she says the red blood cells
Speaker 3: are bi convex, which is impossible a little bit of
Speaker 3: monster science. I did some digging on this. Red blood
Speaker 3: cells are in fact normally by concave, meaning there's a
Speaker 3: little dip in the middle of the disk like a
Speaker 3: like a bally. A bi convex red blood cell would
Speaker 3: be one that bulged out in the middle on both sides,
Speaker 3: really making it more like a sphere. And there are
Speaker 3: in fact medical conditions that cause red blood cells to
Speaker 3: become shaped more like a sphere. These are no as fherrocytosis.
Speaker 3: People with spherrocytosis often experience hemolytic anemia, which is where
Speaker 3: the Spleen mistakes these spherical red blood cells for damaged
Speaker 3: or dead cells and then destroys them, leading to the
Speaker 3: problem that the body is constantly attacking and eliminating its
Speaker 3: own blood supply. Now this may be fleshed out more
Speaker 3: in the comics or the Blade lore, but I feel
Speaker 3: like this is a bit of physiology in the movie
Speaker 3: that they don't go into great detail about, but it
Speaker 3: really fits pretty well with the vampire mythos, like the
Speaker 3: vampires have a condition where their bodies are constantly destroying
Speaker 3: their own blood supply and they must replenish it.
Speaker 5: Fascinating. You know, somebody did their homework, you know, maybe
Speaker 5: Goy or maybe somebody else.
Speaker 3: Anyway, doctor Jensen and this other doctor talk and he's like,
Speaker 3: come look at this body. It's weird. And she says,
Speaker 3: I thought you promised to give me some distance. So
Speaker 3: they clearly have a romantic history, but it's all over now,
Speaker 3: and he's like, no funny business, wants you to come
Speaker 3: to the morgue with me. So, you know, they go
Speaker 3: and investigate the body. She notices, Wow, the maxilla looks
Speaker 3: a little deformed. The maxilla is the upper jaw, and
Speaker 3: she's like, there's some odd muscle structure around the canines.
Speaker 3: They're cutting this charred body with fangs open, and then
Speaker 3: the guy is in fact, he's like, hey, want to
Speaker 3: get back together. They argue about that for a minute
Speaker 3: and then just sudden, vamping the Crispy Donnell pops up.
Speaker 3: He kills the dude, he bites Karen. You think he's
Speaker 3: going to kill her too. You think she's done for it.
Speaker 3: But then suddenly here's blade in the hospital and he's like,
Speaker 3: I came back to finish you off. And there's a
Speaker 3: brief fight, which is funny because the crispy vampire is
Speaker 3: obviously very slippery and sliding around, which is gross. But
Speaker 3: the police show up and shoot Blade a bunch of times,
Speaker 3: and he just yells at them in a moment that's
Speaker 3: quite hilarious. Yeah, he says the ass yeah, and then
Speaker 3: Blade cuts the vampire's arm off, but the vampire escapes,
Speaker 3: jumping out a window, running off into an alleyway. He
Speaker 3: snarls like a puma. And then Karen's down on the
Speaker 3: hospital floor. She's gasping for help, and Blade's about to
Speaker 3: walk away at first, but then he, you know, he
Speaker 3: sort of he has a moment of compassion and he
Speaker 3: picks her up and takes her with him, and the
Speaker 3: cops give chase. They shoot Blade like a hundred times,
Speaker 3: but he's fine. He's got the armor on, he's all,
Speaker 3: you know, he's great. And then Blade jumps across the
Speaker 3: sky to the roof of another building, and then they
Speaker 3: escape in the Blade Mobile, which is great. Blade drives
Speaker 3: like a sick muscle car. They get back to the
Speaker 3: hideout the fortress of blatitude, and it's in some abandoned
Speaker 3: industrial park. You know, there's pipes and chains and catwalks everywhere.
Speaker 3: That's another late nineties action movie thing you gotta have,
Speaker 3: like industrial buildings. It takes place in somewhere that used
Speaker 3: to be a factory. There's catwalks galore. We hear Creden's
Speaker 3: Clearwater Revival playing. It's Bad Moon Rising, of course, and
Speaker 3: we meet Whistler. Here's Chris Christofferson, who's got glory, long
Speaker 3: white hair and a beard to match. Whistler is like
Speaker 3: a rock and roll Santa Claus or like a rogue
Speaker 3: biker grandpa.
Speaker 5: Yep, yep.
Speaker 3: And he's like, oh, you're bringing home strays now. You
Speaker 3: should have killed her, and Blade says, yeah, I know,
Speaker 3: but I didn't. And so they decide, well, okay, we'll
Speaker 3: watch her. We'll see if she turns or see if
Speaker 3: we can treat her. And they give her to try
Speaker 3: to treat her vampire bite. They give her an injection
Speaker 3: of garlic juice, which is straight, goes straight into the neck.
Speaker 3: It's supposed to stave off the transformation or slow it
Speaker 3: down or something. And when they give her the injection,
Speaker 3: you see puffs of smoke coming out of the holes
Speaker 3: in her neck. After this, we do get a scene
Speaker 3: at the Vampire It's like a bank, you know, where
Speaker 3: the vampires hang out. It's the corporate board of Vampire
Speaker 3: dum Rob. How would you describe this scene?
Speaker 5: Oh, it's just like a dark gothic crypt of a
Speaker 5: meeting room occupied by various again scary looking vampire lord,
Speaker 5: very you know, very regal in their own ways. Clearly
Speaker 5: they're going for like this feeling of like these are different,
Speaker 5: you know, from different lineages of the vampire history. But
Speaker 5: again we find out that they are all completely inept
Speaker 5: and utterly harmless.
Speaker 3: Right all they do they gather here to discuss the
Speaker 3: things they are afraid of. They're like, oh, udo Kier
Speaker 3: says Blade, it's a day walker. You know, he's still
Speaker 3: pursuing this ridiculous crusade against us. And then they invite
Speaker 3: in Deacon Frost to tell him that he's a loose cannon.
Speaker 3: Deacon again, this is Stephen Dwarf. He's the young, hip,
Speaker 3: good looking bad boy vampire. He's not like these buttoned
Speaker 3: up square vampires. And they're like, you know, you're you're
Speaker 3: a loose cannon because there is a treaty that I
Speaker 3: think should prevent vampires from gathering in large numbers. And
Speaker 3: Frost runs night clubs that violate this treaty, and they say, like,
Speaker 3: human politicians could make things very difficult for our kind
Speaker 3: if they found out about us, And I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, would they?
Speaker 5: Yeah, what would that look like?
Speaker 3: Frost thinks the vampires are being too timid. He's like, hey,
Speaker 3: humans are food, you know, we should rule them, not
Speaker 3: hide from them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and again, yeah, they're very timid. Well again, one
Speaker 5: of the big positive steps that del Toro makes him
Speaker 5: Blade two is making sure that old vampires are scary.
Speaker 5: Old vampires are inhuman and monstrous, and they have not
Speaker 5: only are they scary, but they have scary plans. And
Speaker 5: Blade one, yeah, they're just smug and complacent.
Speaker 3: Right, And they mock Frost by saying, oh, you're not
Speaker 3: even a pure blood vampire. I think the distinction is
Speaker 3: that they were born vampires to vampire parents, and Frost
Speaker 3: was just bitten and turned by someone and they sort
Speaker 3: of disdain him for that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and this is this is the moment where you're
Speaker 5: just kind of left to imagine this for yourself. The
Speaker 5: idea of vampire mothers giving birth to baby vampires like
Speaker 5: Udoki was once a vampire baby Udo Kier and we
Speaker 5: just have to briefly imagine what that consists of and
Speaker 5: what that was like.
Speaker 3: Did he drink blood as a baby out of a bottle? Okay?
Speaker 3: So then we go back and visit our heroes again.
Speaker 3: Frost Oh, Blade visits like an apothecary shop where he
Speaker 3: buys I don't know, his regular doses of, like essence
Speaker 3: of garlic, and then he also gets a serum which
Speaker 3: he uses to stave off I don't know basically the
Speaker 3: deal is. We'll find this out in more detail later,
Speaker 3: but Blade is like half of a vampire. He's got
Speaker 3: some vampire characteristics but not others. He can go out
Speaker 3: in the daytime and all that, but he does need
Speaker 3: blood and he's like, well, I'm good now, so I
Speaker 3: can't drink people's blood, so I've got to get injections
Speaker 3: of this serum, whatever this is. And there's generally concern
Speaker 3: in the movies, like we hear from Whistler that he's
Speaker 3: building up a tolerance for the serum and it's not
Speaker 3: working as well as it used to, and he's got
Speaker 3: to find a solution. Meanwhile, Karen, who the hematologists who
Speaker 3: they brought back, she like witnesses them talking about all
Speaker 3: this and witnesses Blade getting a dose of his serum,
Speaker 3: and finally, and she's a little bit freaked out, but
Speaker 3: finally like they explain everything to her. Whistler introduces himself.
Speaker 3: His name is Abraham Whistler. Of course, this is the
Speaker 3: scene where he's lighting a cigarette while he's pumping gas
Speaker 3: into the Blade mobile, and Whistler kind of gives her
Speaker 3: like a vampires one oh one. It's like they're called
Speaker 3: Hominus nocturna. And we find that Whistler and Blade hunt them.
Speaker 3: They follow their movements, they go from city to city.
Speaker 3: And she says, oh, so do you use crosses? And
Speaker 3: they say, no, crosses do not work. They're very pointed
Speaker 3: about this. They say vampires are allergic to silver and
Speaker 3: garlic and to sunlight, specifically UV rays. By the way,
Speaker 3: Whistler has rigged up a UV flashlight that I guess
Speaker 3: they can shine at vampires to hurt them. And though
Speaker 3: one thing in this movie is that apparently vampires are
Speaker 3: fine going out in the daytime if they just put
Speaker 3: sunscreen on this is literally a plot point, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: why don't they just do that all the time.
Speaker 5: Then I guess it's a lot of sunscreen's oily, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I know I know that I don't like
Speaker 3: the feeling of sunscreen either, But I mean, if you're
Speaker 3: the other option.
Speaker 5: Is a responsible thing to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. But anyway, so they explained to Karen and
Speaker 3: they're like, look, you got to get out of town.
Speaker 3: Now that you've been exposed to the vampires. They're going
Speaker 3: to be on the hunt for you. And she thinks
Speaker 3: she can go to the police, but nope, vampires own
Speaker 3: the police apparently, and Whistler gives her vampire mace, which
Speaker 3: is a spray canister of garlic and colloidal silver. So
Speaker 3: she's I think she's going to go off and do
Speaker 3: her own thing. Oh and then in the meantime, we
Speaker 3: get a really funny scene with Udo Kier and Frost
Speaker 3: where like Udo Kier goes into the I don't know,
Speaker 3: the vampire computer bank, the archives, I guess, and he
Speaker 3: walks in and Frost is in there with like a
Speaker 3: laptop running doing all kind of weird AI stuff, these
Speaker 3: like glyphs, and and he's like, you're using a computer
Speaker 3: to decipher the ancient text, you fool. The ancient text
Speaker 3: can never be translated. You wouldn't even understand them. And
Speaker 3: Frost is just petulantly like and then I think one
Speaker 3: of them does, does Udo Kier slap Frost in the face?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, this is not at least you know,
Speaker 5: they create the effect of him just really slapping the
Speaker 5: heck out of him, and and Udo has like all
Speaker 5: the veins and his head bulging after he does it.
Speaker 5: It's it's it's very nice. It's a good slap.
Speaker 3: But then Blade drops Karen off in the city and
Speaker 3: he is a reckless driver. He is not he is
Speaker 3: not respecting pedestrians. So she goes into her building and
Speaker 3: then there's a scene. I thought this was very cool
Speaker 3: because you know, he's like, keep your eyes open, and
Speaker 3: she's like, but it's daytime. Shouldn't I be safe now
Speaker 3: at least? But she goes into her building and then
Speaker 3: she gets into the elevator and she notices that there
Speaker 3: are people in the elevator who have these weird tattoos
Speaker 3: on the back of their necks, these little square glyphs.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: And I really liked this scene. I think I remember
Speaker 3: this scene from way back when I watched it in
Speaker 3: the day. I was like, oh, wow, it's a big conspiracy,
Speaker 3: you know, It's like there are humans who are in
Speaker 3: on it. Of course, we find out that the humans
Speaker 3: with the glyphs on their necks are vampire familiars, like
Speaker 3: they belong to a particular vampire and they do work
Speaker 3: for them during the daytime or in other you know,
Speaker 3: other things vampires can't do, and they're hoping that if
Speaker 3: they are a good familiar, the vampire will there. They're
Speaker 3: they're they're appointed vampire will eventually turn them. Just a
Speaker 3: major theme also in what we do in the Shadows.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, this is this is classic vamp stuff. I mean,
Speaker 5: I guess I was. This was this a deal that
Speaker 5: was in place in Dracula between Renfield and his lordship.
Speaker 3: I do not recall what was in it for Renfield.
Speaker 5: I mean, he was in it for the bugs and
Speaker 5: the glory, uh or yeah, but uh, beyond that, I
Speaker 5: don't remember if there was any cause it's it's become
Speaker 5: such a frequent trope of the vampire familiar relationship and
Speaker 5: fiction that I honestly can't remember if it's in Dracula
Speaker 5: or not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't say. Well so anyway, so Karen goes
Speaker 3: back to her apartment, she gets a visit from a
Speaker 3: police officer. He's like, Hi, I'm Officer Krieger. For a second,
Speaker 3: I thought this guy was Matthew Perry from Friends, but no,
Speaker 3: it's it's just a guy who kind of looks like him.
Speaker 3: This is also I thought a great scene can probably
Speaker 3: describe what happens here.
Speaker 5: I mean, basically, he has a a it seems like
Speaker 5: he has a plausible story. He's like, yeah, your front
Speaker 5: door was open. You're a coworker said you're missing, you
Speaker 5: were kidnapped, so I'm just checking in on you. And
Speaker 5: then it becomes but we quickly realize, oh, this guy's
Speaker 5: also a familiar. He's here, he's up to no good.
Speaker 5: But then Blade shows up and proceeds to beat the
Speaker 5: crap out of this cop for like six solid minutes
Speaker 5: of film time.
Speaker 3: Yes, and he's like, you work for this Glyph says
Speaker 3: you belong to Deacon Frost. We've been tracking Frost for
Speaker 3: a long time. And they find out that this is
Speaker 3: transporting blood for a vampire owned blood bank, which that
Speaker 3: was an LOL moment. For me, it was like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, the vampires owned blood banks. Brilliant.
Speaker 5: Of course they did, ye, They're involved in everything, and
Speaker 5: of course they're going to own the blood banks.
Speaker 3: And I love how in the scene right after this,
Speaker 3: Blade gets away with beating up a uniformed police officer
Speaker 3: in the streets and nobody cares. But then the cop
Speaker 3: gets away, like he runs off, and Karen's a little
Speaker 3: upset that she was used as bait, but she decides, well, okay,
Speaker 3: at this point, I just got to stick with Blade.
Speaker 3: It's the only way I'm going to survive long enough
Speaker 3: to find a cure for a vampire bite. So they
Speaker 3: stake out the familiars police car, and then when he
Speaker 3: finally comes back, they tail him to a vampire club,
Speaker 3: and there's there's a great part where Frost like he
Speaker 3: goes into the club after him because they're trying to
Speaker 3: find the I don't know, the archives or the secret place,
Speaker 3: and he's like, give Frost a message from me, tell
Speaker 3: him it's open season on all suck heads. So was
Speaker 3: that line in the script or did Snipes make that up?
Speaker 5: I don't know. I vaguely remember there being some ad libs.
Speaker 5: I think maybe some of the more famous bladisms are
Speaker 5: the creation of Snipes himself, so I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: So meanwhile, Frost is throwing a party in his penthouse,
Speaker 3: but he's not partying. He's busy translating the ancient texts
Speaker 3: like Udokier told him not to do. So he's got
Speaker 3: his Apple laptop really really burning the CPU and it
Speaker 3: finally finishes translating and the translation. I didn't understand how
Speaker 3: this would work at all, but the translation appears to
Speaker 3: somehow construct a virtual reality environment of like a machine
Speaker 3: that would be used in a vampire ritual.
Speaker 5: Well, vampires at the day access to those really advanced MacBooks. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so okay, you know they were working with tech that
Speaker 5: we didn't have yet.
Speaker 3: But here also we see Quinn is back. You know,
Speaker 3: he's regenerated, he grows back the limbs, he's lost and stuff,
Speaker 3: though he still looks kind of nasty. And the cop
Speaker 3: shows up to be like, oh, I got some bad news,
Speaker 3: you know, Blades onto you and then Frost. Frost just
Speaker 3: kills the cop and they're like, okay, we got to
Speaker 3: get Blade alive. So in the next scene, there is
Speaker 3: the next scene I thought was really unpleasant there's this
Speaker 3: like big immobile jab of the Hut type vampire who
Speaker 3: they who blade and Karen torture with a UV flashlight
Speaker 3: in order to get information out of him. And I
Speaker 3: found this scene really nasty.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because the vampire, who we learn its name is
Speaker 5: Pearl comes off is really more to be pitied than
Speaker 5: to be blamed. So it really feels like kind of
Speaker 5: a mean spirited scene that that also doesn't really I
Speaker 5: don't know. Evidently they had to come and get information
Speaker 5: from somebody. This is a the you know, find an
Speaker 5: informant sequence in the investigation, but I don't know it
Speaker 5: would have it seems like it would have worked better
Speaker 5: had Pearl been doing anything other than just setting around
Speaker 5: looking at a computer.
Speaker 3: And I was also like, why is he a different
Speaker 3: type of creature than the other vampires? Like we didn't
Speaker 3: we don't see any other vampires who were like, I
Speaker 3: don't know what whatever this type of vampire is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I mean I'm all for there being you know,
Speaker 5: multiple vampire species and you know, go go go entirely
Speaker 5: vampire the masquerade on this business by all means, but yeah,
Speaker 5: none of it's actually.
Speaker 3: Explained well anyway, So the vampire screams about how Lamagra
Speaker 3: is coming, the spirits of the Twelve will awaken, will
Speaker 3: awaken the Blood God, and they so that they discover
Speaker 3: Blade and Karen discovered this back room with the Book
Speaker 3: of Erebus, which they call the Vampire Bible, so it's,
Speaker 3: you know, get they're getting the backstory, They're they're learning
Speaker 3: what's going on. But then big fight breaks out because
Speaker 3: of course Quinn is back, all his all his goons
Speaker 3: are there with big fight scene, and you think Blade
Speaker 3: is actually done for they like pin him down, how's
Speaker 3: he going to get out of this? But then it's
Speaker 3: DIOSX Whistler Chris Christofferson shows up and saves the day.
Speaker 5: Right before Whistler shows up, there's some great gloating from Quinn,
Speaker 5: including this scene where he pulls off his glove and
Speaker 5: shows off his mostly regenerated monster hand, which is a
Speaker 5: little bit floppy and grotesque. Great sequence. Another great scene
Speaker 5: for Quinn to shine.
Speaker 3: So this is another big action sequence that the fight
Speaker 3: eventually leads off into a subway tunnel next to a
Speaker 3: moving train which must be like six miles long, by
Speaker 3: the way, because it's just constantly going by forever. Once again,
Speaker 3: Blade beats Quinn with Karen's help. This time she like
Speaker 3: stabs in with Blade's sword and helps out on the fight.
Speaker 5: And they also cut off the other hand this time.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, And then Quinn runs away and they escape.
Speaker 3: Blade and Karen escape by hopping onto the subway train.
Speaker 3: Oh and Karen, he pays a favor from earlier. So
Speaker 3: earlier in the movie, her shoulders dislocated and Blade pops
Speaker 3: it back into place. In this scene, his shoulders dislocated
Speaker 3: and she pops it back into place. So you know,
Speaker 3: I pop and you pop.
Speaker 5: There you go.
Speaker 3: So here we get a more backstory. There's exposition about,
Speaker 3: you know, how Blade ended up the way he is,
Speaker 3: how Whistler gives a sermon sort of on how Blade works.
Speaker 3: He says, you know, I found him when he was thirteen.
Speaker 3: He was drinking blood. We also get Whistler's backstory. We
Speaker 3: learned that his family was tragically killed by vampires and
Speaker 3: he's been hunting vampires ever since. And he says, you know,
Speaker 3: we fight them, but it's just getting worse. There's something
Speaker 3: going on in the vampire ranks, and Frost is behind it.
Speaker 3: So they're trying to understand the hidden politics within the
Speaker 3: vampire organization. The basic things we learn about Blade are that,
Speaker 3: you know, he has some vampire attributes but not others
Speaker 3: because his mother was bitten right before he was born,
Speaker 3: so he like can go out in the daytime, and
Speaker 3: he has the super strength of the vampire, so you
Speaker 3: think it's like the best of both worlds. But he
Speaker 3: also does need blood and that's like the seerum problem
Speaker 3: that we learned about earlier. There was a very funny
Speaker 3: soul searching scene that came after this. He says like,
Speaker 3: I'm not human and Karen says you look human to me,
Speaker 3: and he says humans don't drink blood, and then she's like,
Speaker 3: you know that was a long time ago. Maybe you
Speaker 3: need to let that go. You know, you haven't drank
Speaker 3: blood for quite some time. So at this point, I think,
Speaker 3: I think my summary's got to become much more cursory.
Speaker 3: So oh, there's a great moment back at the vampire
Speaker 3: compound where Quinn is back after the fight. His face
Speaker 3: is all torn up because Blade held his face against
Speaker 3: the passing train. He's also got a missing hand again,
Speaker 3: and like their vampire buddies there in the room are
Speaker 3: just like chewing on his stump and he's.
Speaker 5: Cut that out. Yeah, he's supposed to be banging his
Speaker 5: hand or something, and that they can't. Hell, it is
Speaker 5: like a dog, right, just has to has to have
Speaker 5: a bite.
Speaker 3: But they talked more about well, we got to we
Speaker 3: gotta take Blade a lot. Oh, and then we see
Speaker 3: them make moves against the Board of Directors of Vampires.
Speaker 3: They take Udo Kier out to the beach for execution
Speaker 3: by sunrise, which is has some kind of bad looking
Speaker 3: special effects, but I also kind of liked him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a weird special effects sequence because it's not
Speaker 5: it doesn't feel completely cgi. It almost has kind of
Speaker 5: a stop motion quality to it. It's any He kind
Speaker 5: of smolders, then kind of melts, and then kind of
Speaker 5: petrifies and then explodes, So yeah, fit it all in.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Karen has been doing some hematology science, so she's
Speaker 3: working on a cure for herself and for Blade. The
Speaker 3: Blade will end up not taking it in the end
Speaker 3: because not only it would cure his need for blood,
Speaker 3: but it would also make him lose his superpowers, and
Speaker 3: in the end he's like, no, I gotta fight vampires,
Speaker 3: so sorry. But she's able to cure herself, and she
Speaker 3: figures out that an anticoagulant called ed Ta makes vampire
Speaker 3: blood explode. So she makes a bunch of injectors of
Speaker 3: this stuff for Blade, and there are some glorious vampire
Speaker 3: pump up explosions later on.
Speaker 5: Oh, absolutely glorious.
Speaker 3: Yes, let's see. So a few other scenes to mention.
Speaker 3: There's a scene where Blade goes into the city for serum,
Speaker 3: but then Frost shows up like he's just standing in
Speaker 3: a park, it's lathered in sunblock, it is daytime, but
Speaker 3: he's got a human hostage, and then he gives Blade
Speaker 3: the whole weird not so different you and I speech.
Speaker 3: He's like, why don't you join us?
Speaker 5: Yeah, like you're gonna You're gonna make Blade switch sides.
Speaker 5: This is Blade after all. So Crost is totally trying
Speaker 5: to ice Skate Uphill in the scene.
Speaker 3: Right and then, but so, yeah, that does not go
Speaker 3: as Frost planned, though. Frost does try to execute his
Speaker 3: human child hostage and Blade saves the kid's life. So Blade,
Speaker 3: Blade is kind of harsh, like he doesn't show a
Speaker 3: lot of niceness or compassion, but he does come through
Speaker 3: in a pinch and help the humans out.
Speaker 5: Yeah, It's a nice, purely superhero move and a reminder
Speaker 5: that Blade is a superhero and he still has that humanity,
Speaker 5: especially after you know the previous sequences where a lot
Speaker 5: of it is about the struggle for his humanity and
Speaker 5: is he slipping, is he doomed to fall into the night,
Speaker 5: you know, with these vampires and so forth.
Speaker 3: But whoops, while Blade was out in the city, outrunning errands,
Speaker 3: the vampires attacked the hideout and they kidnapped Karen, and
Speaker 3: oh no, Whistler has been turned. And so there's a
Speaker 3: scene where, well you think Whistler kills himself because he's
Speaker 3: going to turn into a vampire. Apparently that doesn't take
Speaker 3: and he's back in the sequel.
Speaker 5: Right right, Yeah, the screenplay tried to kill him, but
Speaker 5: you can't keep a great character down. So yeah, he's
Speaker 5: back for the sequel. Don't worry about him, even though
Speaker 5: it does seem like he is tortured nearly to death
Speaker 5: and then forced to take his own life.
Speaker 3: But here, from this point out, it's just like showdowns
Speaker 3: until the end. So you know, Blade attacks the penthouse
Speaker 3: where he meets his mom, who it turns out how
Speaker 3: she's been alive this whole time because she was turned
Speaker 3: into a vampire and now she's bad. So you think
Speaker 3: it's going to be nice that he meets her, but
Speaker 3: she's like, well, no, I'm a vampire now, and when
Speaker 3: you become a vampire you become evil. So I'm evil
Speaker 3: and I don't like you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And just talking about it here, you might think, well,
Speaker 5: is it was it necessary for Blade to become Hamlet
Speaker 5: for a little bit in this film? And it might
Speaker 5: sound like it's unnecessary, but like beat by beat, I
Speaker 5: feel like this part of the narrative is also really
Speaker 5: important to break up the action and really propel things forward.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so Blade is captured by Frost's vampire army,
Speaker 3: and Frost is going to use Blade's half vampire blood
Speaker 3: for a ritual, which is going to summon the Blood
Speaker 3: God or turn Frost into the Blood God, I think.
Speaker 3: And so Blade is imprisoned and then you do the ritual.
Speaker 3: Blade is saved by Karen. They try to execute Karen
Speaker 3: by throwing her into a zombie pit. Apparently sometimes when
Speaker 3: you bite a human, they don't turn into a vampire.
Speaker 3: Instead they turn into a zombie. And it's hey, it's
Speaker 3: her old friend, her old ex boyfriend, the doctor who's
Speaker 3: got the beatle haircut. He's a zombie now, and he
Speaker 3: tries to eat her in a pit, but she escapes,
Speaker 3: and then she saves the day. She like unlocks Blade's
Speaker 3: cage and gets him out so he can oh oh oh.
Speaker 3: And then she's also like, you need to drink my
Speaker 3: blood to regain your strength so you can fight all
Speaker 3: the bad guys.
Speaker 5: And this is exactly how it goes down. Blade proceeds
Speaker 5: to just absolutely womp all underlings within reach. And this
Speaker 5: is a this is a whole sequence where you know
Speaker 5: it's great martial arts action, but there's certainly some intended
Speaker 5: martial arts physical humor in this. And I'm sure there's
Speaker 5: a name for this in Hong Kong cinema that I'm
Speaker 5: just not aware of. But like, Blade is just taken
Speaker 5: out lack, He's left and right, and it all reaches
Speaker 5: a fever pitch for me. When Blade has he's downed
Speaker 5: a vampire underling, perhaps a vampire, I think it's a vampire,
Speaker 5: and then proceeds to kick the vampire multiple times with
Speaker 5: both feet in the groin, and then finally kicks the
Speaker 5: vampire so hard in the groin that the vampire flies
Speaker 5: up onto his feet again and then he states him
Speaker 5: or something. It's marvelous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are parts that kind of remind me of
Speaker 3: like the the physical comedy within the fight choreography that
Speaker 3: you see in like some Jackie Chan movies.
Speaker 5: And and in all this we also dispense with some
Speaker 5: of the underlings. Mercury gets taken out by Karen. She
Speaker 5: sprays her in the mouth with the garlic silver stuff
Speaker 5: in her head explodes. Quinn has A has a wonderful
Speaker 5: death sequence where basically at the very start of the
Speaker 5: battle he jumps at Blade and it's like, I'm going
Speaker 5: to take you out, and Blade beheads him with a
Speaker 5: with a like a zip line. It's pretty great.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. In fact, when he when he immediately takes
Speaker 3: up Quin, it's very much like the scene in Raiders
Speaker 3: of the Lost Ark where Indy pulls out the revolver.
Speaker 3: It's just like, oh, okay, that's that's done.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Olie catches the shades, puts them on, and then
Speaker 5: it's yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh because because Donald Logue stole his his sunglasses, which
Speaker 3: is you do not take Blade sunglasses.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the final straw. U.
Speaker 3: There is a weird scene where Blade has to stake
Speaker 3: his mom, but he explains that He's like, I'm setting
Speaker 3: you free. I'm releasing you because it's not really her
Speaker 3: anymore because she's a vampire. Is that That's how I
Speaker 3: read that?
Speaker 5: But now it's really it's just final showdown. It is.
Speaker 5: It's Frost versus Blade, except Frost isn't quite Frost anymore
Speaker 5: because he's managed to pull off this ceremony, this ritual.
Speaker 5: There's kind of like a kind of like a Raiders
Speaker 5: of the Lost Ark esque soul capture and absorption of
Speaker 5: the vampire CGI souls, and now Frost is La Maagra.
Speaker 5: Frost has these superhuman blood vampire powers and he might
Speaker 5: just be too much for Blade to take out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a scene where Blade like cuts from aust
Speaker 3: in half, but then the blood jumps out of his
Speaker 3: two halves and like grabs itself and pulls him back together.
Speaker 3: So he's it's destructible now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like, Blade goes to say the f and he
Speaker 5: can't say the F out loud. He has to mount
Speaker 5: the f instead.
Speaker 3: In the end, though, how do you defeat the blood god? Well,
Speaker 3: how about some anti coagulant?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, so yeah, that Finally, there's some wonderful uh
Speaker 5: drama in the fight involving having to get a hold
Speaker 5: of those those vials of the of the anticagulant. Blade
Speaker 5: is able to get it and stabs Frost with one
Speaker 5: of these vials and then proceeds to just pelt him
Speaker 5: with the vials, like a dozen of these vials are
Speaker 5: now stuck in Frost, filling him with the stuff, and
Speaker 5: we get a wonderful like hyper bloat and explode scene
Speaker 5: and a wonderful bladeism from Blade himself where he tells
Speaker 5: us that some mother efforts are always trying to ice
Speaker 5: Skate up hill. You can, we can discoutiful back and
Speaker 5: forth what it means, but you don't even have to.
Speaker 5: It's clear what it means. It's all in the context.
Speaker 5: It's one of the greatest lines in cinematic history.
Speaker 3: It's like poetry. Okay, I think that's everything I have
Speaker 3: to say about Blade.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, What else can you say except you know,
Speaker 5: they imply at the end that there will be more Blade,
Speaker 5: and lo and behold there was more Blade and lo
Speaker 5: and behold, they'll there will be more Blade because we
Speaker 5: know now that maherschela Ali is going to play Blade
Speaker 5: in an upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film, and uh yeah,
Speaker 5: I think this is terrific casting. With Delroy Lindo in
Speaker 5: it as well, I can't help but wonder if he's
Speaker 5: going to play the new Whistler. I have other questions
Speaker 5: as well, like are we going to have to put
Speaker 5: up with scenes of where Blade is hanging out with
Speaker 5: doctor Strange or are they going to let it be
Speaker 5: mostly its own world? Are they going to let Blade
Speaker 5: say the F in this? I have no idea?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, can you make an R rated MCU film?
Speaker 3: I don't I don't really know anything about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, isn't it like sometimes they say, Okay, you can
Speaker 5: say the F X number of times. I can still
Speaker 5: not have an R. But can you ask Blade? Can
Speaker 5: you limit Blade in that fashion? I don't know.
Speaker 3: M Okay, Well, I guess I got to see the
Speaker 3: other older Blade movies first. I'm kind of exciting. I mean,
Speaker 3: I like my herschel Ali, but but it's also hard
Speaker 3: for me to imagine anybody but Wesley Snipes in this role.
Speaker 3: It's like, as we were saying earlier, it just is
Speaker 3: identical to him the actor.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is. It is very hard to imagine anyone
Speaker 5: other than Snipes, but I think Ali could do it.
Speaker 5: I think he has he has the acting chops, he
Speaker 5: has the physicality, and I think I read that he
Speaker 5: got Snipes his blessing. So oh okay, we'll see. But
Speaker 5: who knows, maybe Snipes will be in it. Maybe Snipes
Speaker 5: will be the new whistler. Now that would be something.
Speaker 3: Oooh okay, I don't know.
Speaker 5: We'll see how it develops. All right, all right, we're
Speaker 5: gonna go ahead and close the casket on this one.
Speaker 5: Oh we didn't even talk about the cool space age
Speaker 5: caskets ahead in this the sleeping caskets. But anyway, we're
Speaker 5: gonna go and close the casket on this one. We're
Speaker 5: gonna go and put a stake in it. But we'd
Speaker 5: love to hear from everyone out there who has thoughts
Speaker 5: on Blade, this movie, Blade, other Blade films, films from
Speaker 5: this era right in, we would love to hear from you.
Speaker 5: Weird House Cinema of course publishes and the Stuff to
Speaker 5: Blow Your Mind podcast feed every Friday. We're mostly a
Speaker 5: science and culture podcast, but on Fridays we set aside
Speaker 5: most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.
Speaker 5: I blog about these episodes at somemodamusic dot com. Also,
Speaker 5: if you use letterboxed, you can go to that website
Speaker 5: and you can look us up. We're a weird house
Speaker 5: on that and there's a complete list of all the
Speaker 5: films we've covered there, and sometimes I'll even go ahead
Speaker 5: and include the next film we're going to cover in
Speaker 5: case you want to watch ahead.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 3: say hello, you can email us at contact that Stuff
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