Review of Vampires (1998) by Schizoidnight — 25 May 2020

A corny vampire flick with decent performances and gruesome special effects... There's some unusually inefficient means of killing vampires used... They could have just set fire to the places isolated in the country suspected of harbouring vampires... It's also improbable that a large organization like the Vatican could be involved in the systematic extermination of vampires, yet have nobody spill the beans. With the dawn of video cameras and the Internet, it should make public's awareness of them spread like wildfire.

The master (master?) vampire is recklessly violent, drawing considerable attention to his activities from the authorities... Although this is partly justified due to his desperation to find a particular religious artifact and perform a ceremony... All to gain the ability to move about during the day... Still, even if he achieves such, he would be up against billions of humans with access to weapons of mass destruction.

All that aside, the film doesn't take itself too seriously and the vampires are at least depicted as evil and foul rather than romanticized (or worse: sexualized). Given the stresses of having a job killing vampires, the characters are suitably depicted as rough and sleazy-although the maltreatment of sex workers is a bit over the top.