When Blade came out in 1998 it was a revelation, it was one of the first serious Hollywood comic-to-film movies that was actually good. I know, I know, the first Batman was good, and I’ll agree with that, but it still had too much of a comic book feel to it. Sue me.

The movie opens up with a blonde pretty boy being escorted by hottie Traci lords to some kind of rave in a meat packing plant? Blood starts spraying out of the sprinkler system and we learn that pretty boy isn’t a date, he’s a hors d’oeuvre. Meaning that he’s the single human in a rave full of “new generation” young vampires, but Blade quickly steps in to bust up the party, and save pretty boy from being a hemoglobin donor.

This opening scene just happens to be my absolute favorite part of the movie. Snipes was cast perfectly as the daywalker (born to a woman who was bitten by a vampire while pregnant, he’s got all of their strengths, none of their weaknesses) and no one quite captures the essence of bad ass mofo with a supreme zeal for slaying suckheads like Snipes does in this flick. Actually I think the casting overall was done really well. Notably, Kris Kristofferson is great as Whistler, Blade’s crotchety old buddy.

My only beef with the casting, (here we go again) is with Stephen Dorff as Deacon Frost, anyone who’s read my review of Cold Creek Manor will already know that I have a problem with Stephen Dorff being cast as a “heavy.” I just don’t see Dorff as being intimidating or scary. I have no problem with his acting abilities (he was great in Fear Dot Com even though the movie sucked, and he’s been great in other movies) but his role in Blade is that he’s trying to raise a coup against the pureblood elder vampires, and Dorff to me just doesn’t measure up to the task. Maybe it’s because I remember him as the little scared kid in The Gate, I don’t know, so Stephen, if you ever read this (yeah right!) no hard feelings.

Sure there are some major exaggerations of reality in Blade (like the part where he throws a normal human out a window, across the street, and down about 6 stories with no harm done except for her dislocated shoulder) but let’s face it, the story was taken from a comic book. Plus, I watch movies to escape the true horror of reality, so I’m not very critical of “oh yeah, like that could happen” scenes in movies that are supposed to be unrealistic.

There are some pretty copious amounts of blood and gore interspersed throughout the movie, the CGI isn’t too badly done, there’s an impressively gory CGI scene where we get to see a graphic representation of what happens to a vampire in the sun, but they get a little carried away at the end of the movie with the final “monster” and by carried away I mean way too obviously CGI.

Finally, without a doubt, the most disturbing part of the movie is when Blade happens upon the vampires’ record keeper, Pearl. Pearl is a big, huge, disgusting, obese, twelve-sandwich-eatin’, big ol’ blob of vampiric goo, with the biggest set of horrific man-tits you’ll EVER see! Ugh.

A great horror/action movie with plenty of both to keep fans of each genre happy. Recommended!

9 out of 10 Frivolously fat fuckers fluoroscopically fried for fun