UNCLE DON’S VIEWS OF NIL REPUTE

You can call me Dracula, or you can call me Nosferatu, or you can call

me Vlad, but in this week’s vampire flick you’d better call me “Blade.”

In fact, that’s Mr. Blade to you, you weak helpless humans. I’m here to

save your butts and drag out a 10-minute idea into a nearly two-hour

flick.

Wesley Snipes is back in this poor man’s version of Jackie Chan meets

“The Matrix” meets “Salem’s Lot” meets “Alien” meets “Ghostbusters,”

where semi-bad guys help bad guys take down badder guys who are led by

the baddest guy. Look, that ain’t good English, but “Blade II” isn’t a

very good movie.

It’s a bloody sucker though. There’s enough exsanguination going on to

fill multiple Olympic-sized pools as vampires hunt each other down in

their varying quests to control the world.

But hey, “Blade II” is more than just another exercise in nonsensical

violence. We’ve got enough plots and subplots and sub-subplots to keep

any Area 51, Sasquatch-spotting, Art Bell-listening conspiracy buffs tied

up in knots trying to figure out who’s doing what to whom.

The basic idea is pretty simple. The government or some equally

nefarious and shadowy organization hires a half-vampire (Snipes) to kill

other vampires. Snipes takes command of a Dirty Half-Dozen of vampire

killers that has your usual quorum of the scarred, scared and stupid,

dressed all by the clothier from “Mad Max.”

Vampires, even in this day and age, are still susceptible to the same

old garden variety ills. Silver and light seem to be the preferred

slaughter du jour in “Blade II.” I didn’t see anyone floundering around

with garlic and wooden stakes.

Snipes and his compadres arm themselves with enough silver to open a

mint and disappear into the tombs and catacombs of Prague loaded for bear

and headed for trouble.

Turns out the bad vampires don’t want to croak and, lo and behold,

with apparently the government’s assistance, are developing a super

vampire who is immune to light, silver and garlic but has the desire to

act in really stupid movies. Sho nuff, they’ve created one of these

suckers (pun, get it, ha-ha), and looky here, Super Vamp is now feeding

on the regular vampires, spreading some sort of disease around the

neighborhood and generally making a pest of himself.

Snipes, in one of the sub-subplots, before he can nail down Super

Vamp, must find and rescue his old master (Kris Kristofferson, still

alive and “acting” it seems) from some other vampires. Find him Snipes

does, hauling this wide-load back to a safe house where we can listen to

him complain and bellyache about being held captive by vampires for a few

years.

Why Kristofferson is a “master” and what he is master of is either not

made very clear or I slept through that part. Meanwhile, we’ve got the

rest of the movie to listen to this coot pontificate annoyingly like Judd

Hirsch in “Independence Day.”

But you know, once you’ve seen one blood-sucking vampire skulking in

the shadows, you’ve seen them all. Most of them are as scary as the

flying monkeys in “The Wizard of Oz,” (yeah, yeah, they freaked me out

till I was about 30), have more tattoos that a fleet of sailors, wear

more leather than a herd of cows, and are generally more persistent than

used car salesmen.

When killed, they just don’t rot away like in the old days. Nope, they

explode like M-80s, flame like sparklers and litter the general vicinity

with miscellaneous body parts. Disneyland should definitely fit these

guys into their nightly fireworks show.

Meanwhile, Snipes, gloomier than a winter’s day in Maine, affects

hardly a scratch, a bruise, a bead of sweat while fighting off more

vampires than cockroaches in a tenement.

Ultimately, “Blade II” is just an old-fashioned love story, as Snipes

falls for the daughter of the head vampire. She’s kind, sweet, moral, not

as disfigured as her brethren and as this flick drags itself to a close,

wants to die a vampire. Snipes takes her into the sunlight, where she

crumbles away like an Enron document.

How nice, how cute, how trite. How dumb.

“Blade II” is rated for strong pervasive violence, language, some drug

use and sexual content.

* UNCLE DON reviews b-movies and cheesy musical acts for the Daily

Pilot. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected]