Vampires Is the Closest We’ll Ever Get to a John Carpenter Western

John Carpenter loves Westerns. 

Yes, the Master of Horror, best known for scary classics like Halloween and The Thing, is a big fan of stories of outlaws and cowboys and scenic desert vistas, with deep respect for classics like Rio Bravo, Red River, and The Searchers. But despite his love of the genre, Carpenter’s career trajectory meant that he never quite got to make a Western, though he did get to create tales of outlaws (Escape From New York) and ramblers (Big Trouble in Little China) along the way. 

And Carpenter did get to at least make one film that captures a lot of the American Western aesthetic, along with a lot of the genre’s swagger and tales of moral absolutes tested by circumstance. Released in 1998, Vampires is not one of the director’s best-remembered horror releases, but looking back on it now, it’s something of an action-horror gem, and the closest thing we might ever get to a Carpenter Western. It’s also airing on SYFY this month, so you’ll have a chance to look back at it with us.

What is John Carpenter’s Vampires?

One of the final three films in Carpenter’s filmography as a director, Vampires is adapted from a novel by John Steakley, with a story assembled by Carpenter from both the book and elements of other shots at adaptation, including those by credited screenwriter Don Jakoby. Set in a world where the Vatican is not only very aware of the existence of vampires, but actively backing designated and trained “slayers” to eradicate them, the movie focuses on Jack Crow (James Woods), arguably the most experienced and talented of the church’s slayers. 

We pick up the action with Jack and his crew in New Mexico, where they’re eradicating vampire nests and searching for a “master” vampire who controls the more savage “goon” vampires living in hiding throughout the desert. After clearing out what they hoped would be the master’s hiding place without successfully finding him, Jack and company retreat to a hotel to celebrate their kills, only to find the master has followed them. This vampire, possessing superhuman power and untold savagery, is a 600-year-old creature named Valek (Thomas Ian Griffith), and he successfully slaughters the entire crew save Jack, his right hand man Tony (Daniel Montoya), and a sex worker named Katrina (Sheryl Lee) who was at the party. 

After learning that Valek plans to use an ancient, hidden cross to conduct a ritual that will allow him to walk in the daylight, Jack and Tony set off on a mission to stop him, using Katrina, who was bitten by Valek, as a kind of telepathic surveillance camera for the vampire, turning the film into a combination road movie and revenge Western. 

Why you should watch Vampires

If you’re a John Carpenter completist, chances are you’ve experienced Vampires already, but if you’re still looking for a reason to dive into this latter-day effort from the Master of Horror, let’s take a little bit of a closer look.

As a vampire film, Vampires works within a lot of accepted lore, but allows Carpenter his chance to remake the bloodsuckers exactly the way he wants them, as a mixture of savage pitifulness and almost Godlike intensity. Valek is a villain in the classic vampiric sense, dressed all in black and always plotting evil, and the effects by Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero, and Howard Berger only add to that aura. It’s a brutal little vampire film, but that’s only half the appeal.

Through Carpenter’s eyes, and the eyes of his trademark widescreen camera, Vampires also becomes a Western about hired killers figuring out what to do when a killer even more experienced and deadly than they are is on their trail. You see elements of some of Carpenter’s favorite films, including the Howard Hawks classic Red River and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, sprinkled throughout, as the director clearly relishes the desert landscapes and his story of morally gray people just trying to survive. In a career full of films that play with time-honored, often pulpy concepts in new ways, Vampires is a riff on many of the classic Western tropes, with vampires thrown in for good measure, and deserves to be seen for the big stylistic showcase that it is.

John Carpenter’s Vampires airs February 12 and February 13 on SYFY, check listings for details. You can also stream the film anytime through the SYFY Movies hub and the SYFY app.