Comic Horror Fest - Blade (1998) feat. Paul Waller - A Year in Horror podcast

You better wake up. The world you live in is just a sugar coated topic. There is another world, the real world. For thousands of years, they have existed among us. You keep your eyes open there everywhere.

Chances are you're seeing him yourself and didn't know it. A secret nation. Our livelihot depends on our ability to blend in with the lust for power. We should be ruling the humans. These people are our food.

They've got their claws into everything, politics, finance, real estate. There's a war going on out there. He makes the weapons. I use the word now. One will lead them to conquer mankind.

Tonight the age of man comes to an end. We're gonna be gods, and one will try to stop him dead. There were things out tonight than vampires, like me. Attacked by the vampire while she was pregnant, half immortal. He got the best of both worlds, all our strings, none of our weaknesses.

He is their greatest fear and our only hope. So open Season of Vampires. Wesley snips Stephen Dora one of them a blade boy. What an exciting trailer, and it really tells everything you needed to know. Through dialogue.

Paul, I have a theory. If you can make a fantastic radio ad for your film based solely on dialogue, letting everyone know who all the characters are and what the plot is, you've probably got a terrible screenplay. That wouldn't be a theory, that'd be a fact. Such is the case here, all right, listen, this is a new fest, a brand new fest. HP is on vacation because he does not like horror.

I'm pulling in an array from the galaxy of horror podcasting stars to talk about horror movies based on horror comic books. How fucking niche is that? And I can't think of anybody anybody better to start the entire process off with me, then mister year in Horror himself, mister Paul Waller, how are. You, Paul? Ah?

What an intro? What a smashing voice you've got, sir, And yeah, I do love it. When ever, I speak to our fellow friend Lono, who goes, please don't start liking father Malone more than me. So, yeah, more than happy to be back with you. And yeah, Stephen Norington's he's delivereds a film for the ages here.

Now, okay, we aren't talking blade, we're gonna start this off with Blade Everybody, Blade, which came out in nineteen ninety eight August twenty first, nineteen ninety eight, one hundred and twenty minutes, forty five million dollar budget, pulled in one hundred and thirty one million dollars. People will tell you that this is the actual start of the Marvel cinematic universe. Prior to this, there were no incarnations. That's wrong. There was Howard the Duck before this.

Before that, there was the Doctor Strange television movie or the Captain America TV movies. There have always been cinematic adaptations of Marvel films. Okay, in some way, shape or form, not everything has to be a landmark. Nevertheless, this motherfucking film is a motherfucking landmark because it might be the first time that a non traditional superhero hit the big screen in such a way that was actually goddamn decent. Paul, Yeah, yeah, take me back to nineteen ninety eight, would you where are you, Paul Waller?

Culturally? What are you wearing? Who are you listening to? What are you going to see at the movies? Okay, I was.

I can tell you exactly what was going on. I discovered hardcore. It was the likes of I don't know. The first thing was Nirvana, and when that had finished, I was like, right, that list Kirk Bain's given us, That's what I'm going to do with my life. And I discovered underground American indie music and hardcore and I got so heavily into hardcore and emo with that very first wave bands that people will have never heard of.

But like, I was just obsessed with this stuff. I was so desperate I formed a band and when we were on tour, Blade was one of the watches that we did. It was nineteen ninety nine in fact, when I first saw Blade and we were on tour and we were in Germany at the time. With this's a VHS, I think it must have been like, it's a bit vague that, but it no, Maybe it wasn't because we watched it in English, so yeah, and we were in Germany, so maybe it was. I don't know, but either way, we watched it late one night and the rest of the band were just like you know when you leave a cinema and you're so excited about what you've seen and you're reenacting little parts and things like that.

The rest of the tour was then being Blade and it was so annoying. That's fucking fantastic, man, I love that. Yeah, for me, I saw Blade when it came out. I've been a Blaede fan for a long time. But before I delve in any of that fucking autobiographical bullshit, I gotta ask you, what, at this point, you're seeing Blade for the first time, did you know Blaede was a comic book character.

I did, Yeah, I did, thanks to things like Empire magazine and things like that. I also knew it was a horror as well, although like from what my friends were sort of saying, it wasn't that they were like even in the comics, it really is, right, Oh yeah, it's a horror comic. But yeah, to be honest with you, I knew like a little bit of the history with it because of that Empire article that had come out, and it was something that I did want to see, but I didn't want to go to the cinema, and I had free cinema tickets where I lived, so it was that much of an effort not to actually go and see it. I was just not bothered. Wow, that's incredible.

Note they do need to bring up a couple of things here. This will let you know where Blade was for me in nineteen ninety eight when this movie came out, because I've been an avid reader of the comic for fucking Ever's. Going to be such a nerd here, I can't write. Let's do it all right now. Listen.

In the Marvel universe, all evil comes from their version of the Necronomicon. It's called the Dark Hole. So this evil book and the book begat the first vampire. His name was Varney, and then he gave us Dracula, and then Dracula was the ruler of vampires in the Marvel universe. He got his own comic book in nineteen seventy one called Tomb of Dracula, where he became the antagonist.

But really he's the protagonist. But we can't really say he's the protagonist because he drinks blood and he's trying to take over the world. So what they had was this trio of vampire hunters and they're chasing Dracula all around the globe. A couple of years in the comic is taken over by a guy named Marv Wolfman. No joke, Well, Marv Wolfman and his first order of business is to introduce While the characters are traveling across Europe, they stop in London and there they meet Blade.

He's black and he's English. I'm gonna say that again, everybody, Blade is English. He's from London. Okay. Now, Blade is not an ally of this trio of vampire hunters.

He's just his own independent contractor. He's out to fucking kill Dracula. And he gets his name because he uses these teak wooden daggers that he throws. And okay, this. Gid's even weirder man right, So his origin is the same in the comics.

His mom was bitten while she was pregnant and that imbued him with powers, except he's not a vampire at all in the comics. What he is immune to the vampire infection. If a vampire bites him, he'll still be human, and he can sense when evil is around, so basically he has incorruptible blood. Now, throughout the seventies, Blade would pop up in comics here and there, but by the eighties he completely disappeared for a very good reason, because vampires were banished from the Marvel universe for the entirety of the nineteen eighties, Doctor Strange just got sick of them and got hold of the Dark Hold and he banished them, so we wouldn't see Blade again until the late nineteen eighties, where he shows back up with a group calling them selves the night Stalkers, which is again, this is Hannibal King and Frank Drake that was the third from the other, right.

Now, Hannibal King is a vampire himself, and Frank Drake is the last living relative of Dracula. So before Dracula was turned, he still had a bloodline and this is his last guy, right. So they formed this trio called the night Stalkers who are hunting just they're basically it's like the X Files, okay, because there are no vampires, so they're hunting demons and shit. Now there's this. Whole other group of superheroes that are all the dark versions of Marvel.

So we got two versions of ghost Rider, we got Morbius, the Living Vampire, and oh and Doctor Strange himself. They all get together with the Knight Snalckers and they form a group called the Midnight Suns who have to defeat Lilith. It's a great fucking run of comics. Everyone should be reading these They were fucking great, right. Basically that ends, vampires end up getting reintroduced.

At the end of it, Blade gets his own series, and this is when he gets the attention of Avi A Rod who's running Marvel and trying to sell off properties and movies, who brings it to David Goyer, who's the screenwriter of this movie. And David Goyer sees this as an opportunity to make a superhero movie without a real superhero, and to create a because the Blade's history is still vague at this point, vague enough where he can turn him into something else. So what you end up getting is and this happens rarely, but it happens more in comics than any other sort of media. The movie comes out and is so influential that they go back and rewrite the character. So now Blade is a vampire day walker who has to feed on blood in the comics, where up until nineteen ninety eight he was not.

Okay, isn't this going against your the rules though of this series? With I take it this is episode one, so you've already gone against the rules. So no, this is comic adaptations. There's no rule at play here. This is I want to see what they do with it, and if what they do with it is good, then I'm going to continue to praise it.

And what David Goyer did here was great. Man because he took this character and gave us a real world version of the vampires, and then he built on top of it what we end up getting in this film with the House of Arabas. And the Twelve Clans and all that kind of stuff. That's all Dave Goyer, and that's what this series needed overall. So like his contribution to it, the film ends up being as important as the comic itself, except the comic still stands.

Here's the thing, this is so comic Bookie. I'm such a fucking nerd about this. But they don't go back in retcon anything. What they do is Blade, after the movie has come out, gets attacked by Morbius, the living vampire. Now Morbius is like a scientific vampire, he's not a traditional vampire, so his attack changes blades bloodstream and turns him into a day walker.

There's a rhyme reason then, right, So. I'm not I don't think this is breaking any rules or anything here. This is not a retcon this is. They just continued the character and went, oh, yeah, that's yeah the movie that does actually link up continuity wise because he is. But maybe the events happened after Morbius attack.

Then I've got another question. If that was the case with pre film Blade, Was Whistler part of that pre film? No makes sense. Yeah. Blade was a solo act and Blade had been raised.

He was an orphan obviously because his mom is dead and his father was a fucking his father was absent and a vampire turned his mother. But he received some training, but he didn't have a mentor character who was out there doing it. Certainly not what seems like a lineage of vampire slaying like we did in this movie. But interestingly, now here's okay, here's this weird thing. Now people claim that Whistler did exist in the continuity beforehand, because in between his return in comic Book in this film's debut, there was an episode of an animated series called Spider Man.

The animated series where I think it was season two or three, where Blade shows up for it's season two. Blade shows up for an episode or two because there's a vampire epidemic and in it we meet Whistler. So people are like, Whistler existed, he was created for that cartoon. But here's what happened. They wrote that cartoon and then somebody said, hey, look they're making it into a movie as well, and they gave him the script, and then they wrote Whistler into the cartoon, which ended up coming out long before them because the movie was just it wasn't in production, it was in development at that moment.

So this movie creates so much lore for him. Two things. First of all, I've scrolled down my notes. It was October two thousand in Dresden. They go, so I was completely wrong with regards to when I saw it second European tool, not the first one.

There's that. Secondly, Whistler is it's so important to how I see Blade that I can't see a Blade comic series or anything without him. I can't see it. It doesn't work. And is that because Chris Christofferson is playing him or is it because the character is just so fucking cool?

I think both. I think both may yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can see other people playing different characters, but that character I don't think needs recasting if they're going to remake this or do anything, else with it, because why would. You Okay, I want to go into a couple of things. First of all, I guess because you are such a big fan of this.

I read an article twenty seven years ago or something, and I cannot remember any of it with regards to the introduction of this franchise in this film, with the EDM pumping scene and the blood showers that had to have come from a comic like that had to it can't be original for the screen. It's original for this script. I was gonna ask you, it's so crazy, like you were in Germany in two thousand and this is being displayed on the screen. Are you seeing any raves like this where you're out there in the world. In the music scene, there's no blood showers where you're going, which, by the way, the opening scene always makes me think that DJ has to have really great insurance for that equipment, Like who's spot Deacon Frost is sponsoring that gig?

Is he covering that because that equipment's done right. If that's what you're thinking of, Like, yeah, I guess they've got the like cheap logo in the background as well, like sort of thing, so it looks like a makeshift thing. It doesn't look like it's a regular do. It just looks like just as a one off. He's probably stolen that equipment and like they're.

Most likely, yeah, it probably killed some DJ at some other party and just taking his equipment over there. Yet the opening scene, which is great, amazing, nobody's thought of it prior the a vampire nightclub where they're going to bathe in fountains of blood, like of course they would, why wouldn't they do that? And ultimately that becomes the theme in the movie, which is the sort of old versus the new, And that's I have a complicated relationship with David Goyer. I think he's one of my favorite screenwriters and one of my least favorite screenwriters because he always comes up with such fucking good ideas and then he always delivers a ham fisted dialogue poor. Structure is great, but the characterizations are just okay.

Kind of a screenpoint. But like case in point, this what a way to open your fucking movie. Man, Let's introduce the world of vampires. Let's see what they are up to in the modern age. This is look up until now, there have been plenty of vampire movies and We've seen them in all sorts of guys is, but I can't think of one that kind of dragged them into the technological age the way this movie dispenses with gothic trappings entirely.

It's Tracy Lord's she does this. She literally drags this bloke in off the street and says, get into this meat looker with me. Yeah, I'm yeah, she's the one doing it. Man, she's fantastic. What an opening, Like, You're totally right, it's incredible.

Don't you wish she had survived? Man? Yes, yes, I do. God, the sequels could have been saved if Tracy Lawi's had just kept popping up. What do you mean the sequels are better than this.

I'm just trying. I'm just trying to we're gonna get there. No, I mean we're not gonna get there because I don't want to talk about those movies. But all right, Blade, Oh so let's talk you know what, Let's talk about Blade himself as a character. I want to talk about an anti hero.

I think he's the ultimate perfection of an anti hero. When you have anti heroes in movies, they have to end up caring about other people. I don't get the sense that Blade ever did from beginning to end. I think he has a bit of affection for what people can do for him, and certainly he's sad that his mentor goes. But like, really, this is the distillation of what people expected from an antihero.

Yeah, he doesn't bring a lot to empathize with. That's the word I was trying to think of earlier, But yeah, there isn't. He's like a blank, but for good reason, Like it's difficult to read what he's thinking because he never shows like any emotion apart from revenge for you know, so many things, the way his life's turned out. He just wants revenge. He just wants to kill every other vampire that there is.

But the thing is he doesn't care if someone gets in his way, and yet he every now and again he'll do something to buck that. So I don't know how much sense that that sort of character makes to me, because if you are going to go completely down that line, like he gives the nurse a chance, you know, a fighting chance. The way I would have preferred his character he is if he didn't give a shit, I don't care, Well, don't care. Do you want a child? I don't care.

You won't get it from me. I'm on to my next thing. You know. That's how I would like to see Blade, and I think surely in the comics that's how he's written, like a kick ass doesn't care. I'm on to the next thing.

I've got the same goal. He has to be a little bit more empathetic. Look, and when he came back in the early nineties with the Knight Stalkers, he had to be empathetic then because he's on a team. Prior to that, as a solo guy, no, he didn't give a shit about anybody anywhere, like he would fuck up other heroes who got in his way prior to that. Once he came back with the Knight Stalkers, which, by the way, when we first meet him, he's in an asylum in the comics, so he's a broken man when we finally get back to him.

But the comics don't really matter. We're talking about Blade here on screen and Wesley Snipes's portrayal of him. What do you think of mister Wesley Snipes as Blade? When anyone says Blade, he's all you think of, Like it's just the way it is, Like there's no other way around it, and he was the reason I didn't really gel with the series anyway. I don't really rate him as an actor, But on the really watch of this, like what more does he have to do?

You know what? He nails this character. And it's not that I don't like the character. I just think I don't. You know some actors you just don't like, you don't gel with, and Wesley Snipes is one of them.

But like, if I take myself out of my own like weird likes and dislikes, he kicks us throughout this and like he's so well trained. I can't imagine what the training was like just to get match fit for this film. I know, like he's an action star anyway, but christ like what he brings to this performance is something special. The wirework alone just would have like broke his back for the rest of your life, surely, like amazing. I totally agree with you as far as the Wesley Snipes aspect of it, where I do not like that guy.

There's something arrogant and troubling about Wesley Snipes as a human being, but I love him as a performer, Like I'd never seen a bad performance from him, and for whatever reason, this seems to be the perfect meeting of those two halves, the arrogant prick of a human being and the total perfect action star. And what makes it better is because Blade is something not unemotional, but such a shut down human being. We know all the arrogance is there, but he's keeping it in check, so it's like, what could be better? I got a DVD of another horror film that Wes leads in. I think it's something Walkers.

I can't remember really, Death Walkers, Gargallo Walkers, I think anyway, I got it when it was on Hygen being those shelves that you get at the bottom of like a thing which is like we're just going to sell this stuff cheap, and it was one of them, and I got gifted that and I was like, oh, thanks for that, but I knew in my head I would never watch it. I've still got this unwatched DVD of this thing that he's in, Like that's how much I just don't care for his character that I got given something for free. All I have to do is press play and I'm never gonna actually like pull the trigger on that one. But like, yeah, as I said, he kicks ass in this. I'm glad that, like he's still vocal about it now, Like still whenever anyone brings up this and his name is included, like he's disgusted and too right, like he makes this character his, Like I don't know anything about like the comic book stuff of it, apart from that it was a comic book.

So whenever anyone mentions Blade, I'm just thinking Weresley Snipes, he encompasses that character and as far as acting goes, apart from that film with Demolition Man, like which again I don't mind him in but I wish he wasn't in it, which it was someone else, But like, I just think this is it for Wesley Slip. It's the only film of his that I will watch. I will watch Demolition Man. I think he's a I think he's a fun element to that movie. I think you're if you wanted to make a great movie, then you should take out the Simon Phoenix character altogether and have some other plot at foot for that film.

But if you're gonna make that movie with the taco bell jokes and Sandra Bullock and you know, murder, death kills, then yeah, then Wesley Snipes is the perfect part. Plus seeing him with the fucking with the hair, with the fucking blonde hair and the blue eyes, just a cuckoo like going for broke. Like you want a comic book villain, I'll give you a comic book villain. Speaking of comic book villains, Deacon Frost played by Stephen Dorf, what's your opinion of that performance? Not so much the character.

It's a good character. And so this is where me and my wife differ. She hated it. She was just like, I don't buy him as like this sort of a surpa of like you know, menace from within and he's going to overtake the cartel sort of thing. I'm completely buying him.

I think he's fantastic in it. He it's almost camp in his like villainous the ways. But you mentioned it at the beginning, it's so modern this and for the time it really was modern. There was no of that previous sort of vampire trace and this was a new sort of vampire villain. It was as much as like like a Wolf of Wall Street sort of thing, whereas there was political intrigue in this, like how are you going to overtake this cartel?

I don't know, I think he was great for it, but I completely get what my wife was saying and she doesn't buy it. So I can see both sides, but for me like no complete pass. Yeah, Dwarf comes off kind of a bit, let's say, youthful and whiny at times, but that's Deacon Frost, So I can see being off put by that as a character trait. But that doesn't mean he ain't doing a good job because it is that thing. This is a character who in rewatching it.

I never really noticed how wounded a character he is. He does feel the sting that he's not a pure blood vampire. Like as much as he's going to topple that regime and be and put in the new order, it does really bother him, which that was a nice thing, and I think that's Stephen Dorf bringing that to the character. But he doesn't ever come off as incapable. The thing is, when you look at his face, do you think of the Gate anymore?

Do you think he's not that kid in the Gate? Do you think he's I always think of the Gate? What are you talking about? Because I can't get it out of my head? But I still give him, as I say, a complete pass this like the way that all it would take for them is to be able to and this is the people above him at the beginning of the film.

All it would take is for them to see which way the tide was turning and to stop being such like the Royal family and sticking to like tradition and moving with the times. And they would have, I reckon they would have got Blade, they would have just done Blade over that that would be it. But they don't. They don't stick together, they don't bond together. The Evil Vamps fail and lose the day because of like Stephen Dorf's like oh sorry, Deacon Frost's will to a serpent become like this is what we need to do to, you know, be like we should we need to be like not respecting humans in any way.

We just need to kill is it Eric Bloody Brooks is Blade's name, That's correct? Yeah, Eric Brooks. We need to Eric Brooks, we need to kill him. And yeah, we need to overtake this the cartel. I've got my little posse, my gang behind me.

We can do it, and they do, but all this inner internal fighting costs him the game. Yeah. I love this character and this is again a step up from the original Deacon Frost character, who is just this wandering vampire funck shit up. This guy's got a plan and I love the battle of old versus new. I love the throwing off the marbled old world quiet speaking, we're oh so proper when we're actually just a bunch of fucking monsters, genteel version of the vampire versus the one who will throw a rave at an avatoir and know that there is good to do that, and you should be doing it and there shouldn't be any human interference in that.

Why not? He's right, they are the top of the food chain. I think he goes a little extreme. Maybe you don't want to bring back a blood god who's going to turn to everyone to a vampire. That's counterproductive, Deacon, but he should be fucking smashing the fuck out of the House of arab Us.

I would love to know, like the pre Blade film, like what was going on there? What's the deal with humans? Like, let's go through that, Let's go through the political intrigue, Like there is a TV series set up there just for you know, for the ages, like imagine like all the Cloak and Dagger stuff and like how that first come about and how they quietly live with each other. That's really interesting. I want more of that stuff, and we don't get it, damn it.

We just get it all hinted at, which at the same time does work for this film, because like they just sprinkle enough world building where you know, like any sequel could go anywhere. So yeah, again, I think you're right. Like he's a great actor doing a great role, and I think he's perfect for it, pretty much like Wesley Snipes is perfect for Blade. And I don't know if it's because I've seen it so much that I think that and I can't see it any other way. But as I said at the beginning, you close your eyes, you think of these characters.

You can't think of anyone else in that role. Now we have in Bushy E. Wright as Karen the hypotologist, the human character our proxy. The audience is proxy, because this is still a time and we would still be stumbling through this particular fog for a few more years. With comic book movies, where the filmmakers do not trust us to just go with the fucking premise, they have to give us our human proxy.

So same with hell Boy. We got some agent nobody from Nowheresville who's never going to reappear guy. So that's effectively with Karen is Karen has a little more agency than most of the human proxy characters in that she provides the sort of mcguffin for the climax of the movie at least, and she actually helps along the way. But ultimately so we need her like at all. I do not think we do, and I don't think her character is handled correctly by Blade, but I will say it's believable how quick she gets with the program.

And they do set it up so you would also get with the program at the same speed she does, Like you know how some of these films will be like someone will believe just straight away. Here she's given like the story, she's like, oh come on, she sees the evidence, She's like, oh god, come on quick. So I completely believe it. And that's really well written. Like there are some problems with the writing here, but that isn't one of them.

Yeah, No, there are some minor miracles with the writing here, and I do think that you handle this ultimately completely superfluous character in a really good way. Look the movie, what's funny to me? Is if you go back and read earlier drafts of the screenplays and you listen to David Goyer talk about the movie. He describes this sequence as it is, it is easing us into the story as a character we're going to identify with, and it is our world. Right.

They're working in a hospital and it's very mundane, and he said he very he kept the dialogue basically to melrose Place levels of ness, right, and then when Quinn, the vampire who's been brought in, jumps up and attacks them, then all the all reality goes out the window. For her and for us. And that's true, but I would also say we began with a blood rave. At the end of the Blood Rave, just follow Blade and get in his car and have a fucking narration. Come on and goes, My name's Blade.

I've been doing this for twenty years. The world you see is candy is a candy coated topping to the horrors underneath. Here we go. I got to get this guy, Deacon Frost, that prick, and we as it's happening, you're seeing like everything happen outside of the window, so you can see, oh, like, here's the vampire on the corner of the street, like we're just not We're seeing it, but we just don't look. You know.

Let's talk about that for a minute. The look of this movie, Oh my god, I want to live in that Los Angeles. I was living in Los Angeles when this movie came out, and that's the la. I want to live in a completely darkened Neon Litz Street where not trash but newspapers just loose. Newspapers are blowing everywhere all the time.

What could be better than that? Having them not blowing everywhere? Perhaps, Oh, then there's no atmosphere. I lived in the not blowing everywhere. I blew with the trash everywhere on the ground.

At least it's airborne here. The look of this movie is gorgeous, is what I'm saying. It's Yeah, it's I would say it's sort of post apocalyptic without being post apocalyptic. It has that feel about it still be in without the annihilation. Yeah, there we go perfect.

I would say with the budget that this has, with the cast that this has, with the lead up, they know it's going to be a success, Like that's the very minimum that they should be delivering, though they should be getting that stuff correct first of all before everything else, and mentioned all the stump work. Why work all their effects digital? And otherwise? Well, let's talk about those for a second, shall we. I agree?

Look, we can all agree not only digital effects in general never age well unless they're done supremely well. To begin with the effects, here are early days of CGI. Look, we've had the triumph of Jurassic Park, and now we think we can do anything. And so they come up with a pretty cool innovation here, which is whenever Blade kills a vampire, they immediately combust, which is different, which is funny. If you read the original script, they turn into goo.

They just they dissolved into a pile of go. And then somebody went, we can make them explode. That's more dynamic. What do you think of those though? Now looking at them, I'll tell you what.

If you couldn't get with it, forget this film, like the first time that happens. If you've taken out it, forget it because there is a lot of it, and it's key to key to every fight scene because it is such a thing of awe when you look at it. I'll be honest, like I'm okay with it, Like it doesn't annoy me as I say overall, I don't love this film, but it isn't that I can't pick apart the reason as to why. There are a couple of things that really annoy me, and I'll get to them, but that isn't one of them. And I see how hokey it is, and I can see how much better that's become since.

But that's the onset of technical stuff. You know. I wonder if cgi if this was pushing it at the time, because you know, we're not seeing exploding dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. We're seeing the movement and how they got that correct and the texture and things like that. This is different.

This is like supreme blood splatter, and I get for me, it's I'm okay with it. I'm okay, I'm all right, don't upset me. Two things I would say if they had concentrated all of their effects were force and budget toward the exploding vampires, then I think we would be marveling at them to this day instead of the lamagra ending that we'll get to which we'll get to. Okay, that it, we'll get to it. I do think just as early as like the opening scene, not the opening scene, but the first time you see Blade.

In Blade two, he. Starts killing vampires. The effects had already like it was geometrically better as far as what the look of it was. I do agree with you, though maybe it's nostalgia or something, but it's not like my brain is now looking at the effects and going, oh no, those were bad. They were the My reaction was the exact same in the movie theater.

It wasn't like I was bowled over by how fucking fantastic this computer shit looked. You know what I mean? And you know what's funny to me is on a pure editing level. I think they could have fixed it. If you can probably still do it now, maybe I'll do it.

I've been listening to a podcast, the Lonely Island Podcast, a group of comedians. I don't know if you're familiar with their work, but they were on Saturday Night Live here in America, and they used to do these little digital shorts and there was always esoteric little bits. They had a sketch called people eating food getting punched. The premise is very simple, a person in frame starting to eat something and before as they're getting it to their mouth, Andy Samberg would pop into the frame and just punch them in the face and then dance. What a kiva schaff for the guy who directed it figured out was if he removed one frame of the film right before he connected with the punch, then the punch became savage.

And if you watch it, I'll put a link in the show notes to it so everyone can watch it. If you watch it, you can see, like, what is an innocuous little comedy Skit looks like somebody is really just wrecking people if they I think if you had just taken out one frame, they were so in love with the fact that you were getting to see the skeleton that if you took that one frame of the skeleton out, I think we wouldn't have a problem here at all. You'll have to do it. What about the hospital scene with the burned up vamp me that looked great. That was a great makeup.

That's a great character. Quinn played by Donald Logue, who is that character? As written was a know nothing, no say nothing character who maybe says three lines in the entire movie, was just a right hand man. And then Donald Loge kept improvising all of that shit, and he turns out one of the best characters in the entire movie. But funny thing is, Donald Logue was in a motorcycle accident in his youth that broke his jaw.

So if his jaw gets struck in a certain way, it it locks itself open. So during the hospital sequence when he was wrestling with and busche E Wright, they fell to the ground and that happened, so they had to rush him to the hospital and he's in full burn makeup and they walk into the er and everyone's like, holy shit, and they're like they all rest to. Help him fair as you would, what can you do? But it does look that real as well, you'd be like, I'm not prepared for this. All the practical effects in the movie are great, Like talk about Pearl, for instance, the age old vampire who's grown so morbidly obese that he can no longer move in the archives, I thought that effect looked great.

Yeah, but that for me, that is pushing it to the edge, Like that's at the edge where I don't want to see anything beyond that. Don't go more silly than that, Like you that is right there for me, Like I feel like this should be what am I trying to say? You know? How sometimes in total weekle, it's just like, oh, you've introduced this another mad thing that Arnie's bumped into, you know, like the face coming apart. Oh, it's just another mad thing.

And it becomes so many mad things that are happening that this film's just become mad and completely unbelievable. Like it or loathe it, but it's just crazy. And when you get you're built, you're already into this world. It's already been introduced as like, like we've said, like this post apocalyptic thing without being post apocalyptic, So we've already got this like hype of future real sort of thing, and then we're introducing another wacky sort of aspect to it. We've already got to deal with the whole ending thing.

That's a lot already, and we introduced to another characters. Well, I don't push it, and luckily it doesn't really push it too much further before the ending. Well, let me defend Perl because if you're watching the movie for the first time, yeah, you might feel like it's pushing there, but you have no idea what's coming. Because let's talk about the ending, shall we. There's a mystic gotten ending the once again and look, maybe it wasn't the once again, but the idea of the chosen One I'm so fucking tired of Blade isn't necessarily the chosen one.

He's not going to lead the vampires, but it is his blood that ends up being the key to Unliine. Like this amorphous mcguffin ending of we're going to release La Magra, the blood Tie, the ancient demon that created vamporism to begin with. I think, I mean, we're going there, and it does all make sense. I'm not saying it doesn't, it's just what are your thoughts on the ending that we got. I just think it's too much, and it's probably one of the reasons that I wasn't loving the film, and it's because it's so mad.

I just put that there. It is mad, right, the whole ending is mad. But then on top of it, we've got this most ridiculous, over the top fight going on. It's so crazy. It's do one or the other, choose a lane.

Let's have the face off and we'll deal with that for a sequel. Maybe put it in a post credit scene of like, oh, we've actually kicked this thing off inadvertently or something like that. But the fact that it's all going on at once reminds me of that the return of the Jedi problem, where you've got all these sort of things happening at the ending, you don't know really which one to focus on. The think I think they get away with it because we've all watched it forty thousand times. But it's just a lot going on and we're not concentrating on any one thing.

And I think that's the problem for me, is that I'm not focused enough on whatever. And the fight is so ridiculous that is putting me, starting to make me not likee Blade because he just seems like he's never gonna lose anything no matter what happens, it doesn't matter. He's so tough. Yeah, it started pissing me off a bit far from alone. I'm sorry.

Well, they do throw a lot of minions at him at the end, which leads me to think, like, why you guys aren't dressed the same, aren't you Because they're vampires. These aren't even familiars, like they're exploding when he kills them, which, by the way, not to keep praising or deriding the exploding party this is in this case, it's praising. When you do have a sequence where you're killing tons and tons of faceless minions, having them just explode is great. Like a video game, we don't even have to think about them again. But I think that the main problem for the movie, for the script for me, is in this scene.

Because Dave Goyer, in every one of his movies you can tell has done the scientific research in one way or another, Like he's always trying to figure out a solution to a problem even if no one's noticed the problem. So he's overly scientific here. So we'll find out that it's Alium sativa is from the garlic plant, and if you've synthesized that and make it liquid, you can use it. If you use a UV light, it replicates the sun's rays. Right, So he's all focused on Blade using technology.

He's all focused on Deacon Frost using technology and shaking off all the old world bullshit. To that end, they have Deacon Frost like using a computer program to decipher this old text to bring about this demon. And I would say, we don't need a fucking demon who gives a shit about any of this blood business. At the end of the movie, just. Have a new ending, like just something new.

Like the idea of summoning anything from the past and all we're trying to do is kill the past in this movie seems fucking crazy to me. But it has been like, to defend it a little. It has been brought up throughout the whole film, like it's not like they just brought it out of nowhere. I just don't think it was the best path for the film to end on whilst all that battle's going on. Oh would much rather just like I just have the like an exciting battle, you know where then a blade might introduce something that we haven't seen or what's worth maybe even frost, like having something that we didn't know about.

But it is just has been like laid like, oh, there's a little clue in the first twenty minutes or something. Do you know anything like that would have improved it. And I tell you the worst moment for me when he mouths what the fuck and it was just like, oh man, it's so cheesy. Yeah, it's very superhero. It turns into a very superhero movie in the last ten or fifteen minutes.

Unfortunately, did you see the did you ever see the original ending? Oh? Please? No, I have not oh. Boy, there is no battle TwixT Deacon Frost and Blade.

What happens is Deacon Frost immediately turns into a blood tornado that completely engulfs the room. It is literally a spinning vortex of blood, and Blade is hanging on to debris and trying to work his way up toward his the serum, the anticoagulant that will make the bloody explode. You can see it. It's on YouTube. It only exists a pre visual.

They've already filmed this. Oh yeah, it's done. You can watch it, so the effects aren't finished, so you can't really ding it for the effects looking pad. And it gets even worse because they cg in or they just layer in Stephen Dwarf like they filmed him and you can tell they were going to do some blood version of him, but instead it's just him going. Hey, Blade, I'm gonna go fuck the world in a minute.

So see, yuh. It's awful. And you can tell fight that we get is an improvement over it, but not by much. That fight only becomes interesting when Blade lops off Deacon Frost's arm and it comes back to him Like at that moment, I thought, oh this could be interesting. This could be a whole fight of this unstoppable blood thing that he Deacon Frost has now become like that to me is interesting, but they don't do anything with it because they were just so desperate to have a fucking ending that wasn't a blood tornado that we just got a quick sword fight.

I've got a question for you. And this was my most frustrating thing of the whole film. Blade's mum is introduced. She talked about but then we get her introduced. She's been kept alive, she's a vampire, and she makes an appearance to try and sort weaken Blade and to make Blade question things and things like that, and unfortunately, I if you're going to do that, you can't just introduce so like this is Blade's mum.

I want way more. You can't just throw that in there as like that's another five minutes tops, and then Blade's going to get out of it like a cinch anyway, Like no, like, let's go into that. Let's I mean, that is such heavy dialogue, friendly, loads of potential. Let's deal with it, and it's not. It's just washed out so quick.

Yes, this is the main problem with the movie because when at that moment it's revealed Blade's mom is still alive and she's in league with Deacon Frost. She's just as she's just as villainous as Deacon Frist that I thought, Oh my god, this is what a turn for our hero. How will he deal with this for the rest? Oh no, she's dead, and isn't that Blade's reason for being Blade? Right?

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, And here's the thing. It's my understanding that when the script first was coming together, he was writing it for Ernest Dickerson to direct. Ernest Dickerson was Spike Lee's DP. He did tell from the Crypt Demon Knight, and then the second director was going to be David Fincher, and David Fincher's contribution to the screenplay was he told David Goyer about this, like kne or some Buddhist philosophy, that in order to be your own person, you have to kill your mother, kill your father, kill the Buddha.

That's why during the course of this movie, Blade does exactly those things. He kills his mother, he kills Deacon Frost, his father, he kills Buddha, who is or does. He provides the gun for Whistler to kill himself. So that's there, and that's really fascinating. But it also, as you said, it's we're given such short shrift here because his mom should have been introduced halfway through this movie.

That should have been a complication running throughout the movie. He's dealing with his father figure Whistler, his now figured out his other father figure Deacon Frost, and his actual mother. What a fucking cocktail? Why do we have? Karen correct, Yeah, so this is it just feels so messy.

It feels like all the ingredients are there and they have been put together in such a I want to say that it feels like as a viewer, and as I say, I've seen this four times in five years for some reason. I do not know why, but it just seems so haphazardly bummed together when there is so many ingredients for such a wonder. I watched Spider Man. Let's just say that, I watched Spider Man Sam Raimi's one the other day and it worked so well, like everything seemed to be clicking, and it was like it completely makes sense in the world that it's built up around it, and I left it completely satisfied. And I haven't watched it since when it came out of the cinema and I was just like, Wow, that really held up, really loved it.

Coming back to this, I don't know. I wish people would stop asking me to watch it. God, and they're going through after this, and yet look, I still give this a really good score. Like I feel like Blade is iconic. I feel like the action work, especially in the first half, is some of it's incredible.

I still can't figure out how they did it. As I say, some of that why work must have just been intense. I just don't know how you can make your body go through that, because it definitely wasn't like a you could tell at this age when it's a c cgi human bouncing around the room and things like that. They'll see it in the fucking sequel, you certainly will, But this is Wesley Snipe's going through it. So yeah, I, as I say, I give it a good rating, I think it's a solid seven for me.

But I really just think this could have even been a ten with some care and attention given to it, because all the ingredients are already there. Rip Whistler couldn't. Have said it better myself. This is an almost their movie. This could have been a perfect movie.

Let's get another one going. How about that Marvel? You've been talking about it for fucking five years, Paul Waller, thank you so much for joining us in my inaugural episode. When people are looking for you, where do they find you in a Year in Horror? Honestly, just go to wherever you search your podcasts out put in a Year in Horror.

If you want to listen to some horrible doom music, go and put Ome's double HMS India Music platform listening preference. But like, yeah, all I would say is over last year, Father Malone, I've been sort of addicted to your shows, So keep it up, keep the keep this spunk pummeling. I want all that energy. Don't give up on this, because you make my days better for being there. I'll do it just for you.

Everybody, keep listening here, Patrons, thank you for patroning, and listeners, thank you for listening. We've got so many fests going on right now, Star trek Fest, We've got Climb Barker's Books of blood Fest, and now we have our comic book horror Fest. I don't really have a name for this one yet. We'll figure that one out anyway, Thank you all for listening. We'll check you out next time.

I got to come up with a comic book phrase at the end. God damn itent