Monday, 2 April 2018

Marvel Mondays #21 - Blade (1998)

Similar to "Men In Black" which we covered on here a couple of weeks ago, "Blade" was a film that I actually did see first time around albeit on VHS from the local video rental store (ah, there's a heartwarming nostalgic phrase) rather than at the cinema. However, I seem to recall I ended up watching it at around 3am after staggering in from the pub one night with my vampire obsessed then-girlfriend meaning my critical faculties weren't, shall we say, at their full level. So this is going to be an interesting trip down memory lane...


Anyway, following on from the success of MIB, this was the second big-budget Marvel film and was just as much of a success as its forerunner, paving the way for two sequels although compared to the almost family-friendly "Men In Black", this was much more of a video nasty. Mind you, it did nicely at surfing the vampire craze started by "Buffy" a couple of years earlier so let's see how well it's held up.




We're introduced to Blade's backstory in the first scene as a heavily pregnant woman is brought into a hospital having just been bitten by a vampire. She dies during childbirth but the baby is born and grows up to be the half-human half-vampire hunter Blade. We see him in action early doors breaking up a blood-soaked vampire rave organised by one of the vampire council Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff). Frost sends his three chief minions Mercury, Quinn and Raquel (played by adult actress Traci Lords) but Raquel ends up getting staked while Quinn is torched with a flamethrower and Mercury only just manages to beat a retreat.



Quinn's body is taken to the hospital where we see him being examined by two pathologists, Karen Jenson and Curtis Webb (who it turns out are ex-boyfriend and girlfriend). However, it turns out Blade didn't quite kill him and Quinn comes back to life and feeds on both of the pathologists. Webb is killed but luckily for Jenson, Blade shows up and rescues her, taking her back to his hideout. There she meets Blade's mentor Whistler (played by Kris Kristofferson!) who explains Blade's back story and about the secret war that the two of them have been waging against the vampires.


Meanwhile, back at vampire HQ, Frost is summoned before the council and reprimanded - apparently the vamps prefer to do their business in secret and having massive raves with blood cannons isn't exactly helping things on that front. Unlike the council, it turns out that Frost wasn't born a vampire which means the others look down on him. He throws a strop and storms off back to his flat where it turns out he's working on transcribing an ancient prophecy which will summon a vampire blood god called La Magra and essentially bring about vampageddon. The elders have long since dismissed this as a pointless exercise saying the code can never be cracked which, of course, means that Frost has just managed to successfully do so.



Jenson is kept in overnight by Blade and Whistler and once they've ascertained that she wasn't infected to the extent that she's going to turn into a vampire they let her go (with Blade quickly injecting himself with a serum to suppress his bloodlust before they do so - however, it is revealed that the serum is losing its effectiveness due to how often Blade is using it). However, upon returning to her apartment, she's attacked by a policeman who it turns out is a familiar of Frost. Blade turns up, having trailed her, and helps her fight him off. After interrogating him, they get information regarding the location of Frost's secret history archive. Upon turning up there, they come across a grotesquely fat vampire/hellbeast thing called Pearl who they torture using a sun lamp to get the secret location of the vault where Frost is storing his information.



However, Frost has got word of the group's approach after his familiar 'fessed up (which leads to the guy being drained by Frost and Mercury and then chucked in a swimming pool) and has sent a now-healed Quinn and Mercury down to intercept the team. We get a punch-up in the museum with Blade and Jenson escaping to a subway tunnel where they get rid of Quinn by ramming his head into the side of a passing subway train (ouch!).



Back at the lab, Jenson and Whistler have been working on a possible antidote for Blade's bloodlust which would also stop people who've been bitten from turning into vampires. However, their calculations are a bit off and the formula actually makes vampire blood explode when it comes into contact with it! However, while Blade is out having a confrontation with Frost (who has now taken over the vampire council by exposing his chief nemesis there to sunlight and taking his place) in a park, Frost's minions raid the lair, drain Whistler and kidnap Jenson (who ends up chucked in a cell with her old co-worker Webb who has now become a vampire after being drained by Quinn). Whistler isn't quite dead when Blade returns but asks him to pass him his shotgun so that he can kill himself before he turns into a vampire.



Blade tracks Frost down to his lair but is surprised to encounter his mother there who it turns out didn't die in 1967 but was actually turned into a vampire and has been part of Frost's harem ever since. He's captured and taken to the Temple of Eternal Night where Frost is planning to summon La Magra by draining both Blade and the other council elders to turn himself into a vampire god. Will he succeed? Well, I think you know the answer from the fact that there's two sequels but I won't give away any major spoilers as this film is decent enough to be worth watching in its own right and I'm sure finding a used copy on Amazon won't break your bank...


Although it takes a few liberties from the comic book (where Blade is actually a human who can't be killed by vampires - weirdly, in the wake of the film the comic character was updated to be more like Snipes' portrayal in the film when it's usually the other way round) and suffers from some slightly shaky action sequences and a couple of plot holes (bad editing?), "Blade" hasn't held up too badly over the 20 years since it was released. Suitably gory and gruesome with Snipes doing his job as the main hero and Dorff stealing the show by being a suitably nasty and vicious antagonist, it has enough action and suspense to keep you entertained for a couple of hours. While it's not quite of the same caliber as "Men In Black", it's still not a bad effort at all and you can see why it became such a lucrative franchise for Marvel for a bit, pointing the way forward to the bigger budget films that would emerge in the early noughties.

FINAL RATING: 👹👹👹👹👹👹👹 (7/10)

CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE

1. Men In Black (1997) (8/10)
2. Blade (1998) (7/10)
3. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
4. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
5. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
6. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
7. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
8. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
9. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
10. Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD (1998) (4/10)
11. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
12. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
13. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
14. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
15. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
16. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
17. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
18. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
19. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
20. Generation X (1996) (2/10)
21. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: The X-Men make the first of MANY appearances on this blog...

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