John Carpenters Vampires: Los Muertos

Gotta take my hat off to Carpenter....putting his name up as exec producer here. Gives new meaning to the term low budget! Little more than a juvenile re-make of the original. Vampire Hunter (Jon Bon Jovial), girl who has been bit but not turned....Priest-for-a-partner, snatch of the old "locked into the vampire's wavelength" nonsense and a few sporadically exploding vampires that wouldn't look out of place on Guy Fawkes night!

But man...have a look at the hack editing, the childish and garish colors everywhere (MUST have been made ostensibly for the Mexican video market)the totally awesomely vapid acting....its a classic! For some indefinable reason though, the film takes itself soo seriously its almost enchanting.

In the upshot, about as frightening as Sesame Street, as intelligent as Mike Tyson and as relevant as a 1972 typewriter! The one decent scene...the two girls about to KISS and they wimp out!

This movie was messed up. A sequel to "John Carpenter's Vampires", this didn't add up right. I'm not sure that I enjoyed this much. It was a little strange. Stick to the first "Vampires", it's a good movie. "Vampires: Los Muetos" wasn't a good attempt of a sequel.

4/10

I'm amazed at some of these reviews, a low budget vampire movie starring James Woods is a modest success in 1998. Four years later we get a lower budget sequel starting Jon Bon Jovi.

Plot In A Paragraph: In Mexico, vampire slayer, Derek Bliss (Jon Bon Jovi), is hired by an unknown client provided he build a team of slayers. Father Adam Guiteau (from the first film) is shown to have been killed in this one. This team ends up including the vampiress Zoe, who is fighting her affliction with medication, Father Rodrigo, and Sancho, a teenage boy in finding a large nest of "suckers" and their powerful leader, a vampire princess named Una (Arly Jover). She is seeking a legendary black crucifix: the Berziers Cross, the same crucifix used unsuccessfully in the first movie to perform a ritual which will enable vampires to walk in sunlight and be invulnerable.

It's, silly, rude, crude, over the top violent and ridiculous. But it's also fun. Jon Bon Jovi will never be an Oscar winner, but he has enough talent and charisma to get by in fare like this!! In fact he is the best actor in this movie.

I was expecting a poor sequel, similar in nature to the Dusk to Dawn franchise, but I was somewhat surprised. This movie follows the same pattern as the first John Carpenters' Vampires (1998), but features none of the same actors. John Bon Jovi does a quite credible job as the vampire hunter, and Natasha Wagner performs well as the partially infected vampire, rounded out by a resonable supporting cast of hunter assistants, who actually manage to survive the second scene. The problems with this movie mainly come from lack of motivation of several of the characters, particularly Zoey, and strange mistakes made by the villan Arly Jover (from Blade), who up until the final was quite intelligent and managed to fool the hunters at every point. And a general lack of energy from the cast. If you liked the first one you will like this as well. Well worth a rental for anyone who likes the vampire genre.

I had some expectations for Vampires: Los Muertos. They weren't exactly high ones, however. I expected a let's-make-a-quick-buck rehash of Carpenter's original. I expected that there would be no way in hell that I could take Jon Bon Jovi seriously. I expected something terrible, especially considering Tommy Lee Wallace's track record with taking over for John Carpenter. I was wrong. I was wrong and I gladly admit it. I liked this movie. It was able to retain some originality while sticking rather closely with the source material. Bon Jovi convinced me, the entire cast was good (even Eddie from Family Matters), it had some unexpected gore moments, and Wallace doesn't butcher anything. It just didn't feel like a straight-to-video B sequel. It felt like a well done vampire flick that is nearly on par with Carpenter's original. Never in my life did I think I would be writing that. Sure it borrowed a little from other vamp flicks, but I don't care. The only thing that bothered me was the fact that I really missed James Woods. I would have enjoyed a direct sequel following James Woods and Daniel Baldwin's characters. But for now, this will do. I'm surprised Bon Jovi didn't write a theme for the movie: "Wanted Undead or Alive."