And what’s behind door #2?!
I think someone took an initial story idea and ran with it in Cowboys And Vampires (2010), and that’s too bad, because the elements surrounding the story, such as the acting, cinematography, even the cheapo special effects, are actually competently done. But the story? It needed a few more drafts.
It tells the story from the viewpoint of Johnny Dust, a fading B-Movie Western star, who, between movie gigs, works as an everyday performer at a movie studio’s tourist attraction, a Western shootout, in Tucson. The story is given an intriguing framework, or rather two of them. The first is an interview with Johnny after the incident, told in isolated shards which let’s Johnny do some of his best work. The other framework are flashes from some of his best movies where a side-kick character keeps encouraging him to do the right thing.
And then the studio lot is sold to a company that wishes to redevelop it for a theme-park experience, and with Halloween, we can fairly much guess where this is going, so we lose some tension there? But why? Why would the vampire owners of the company moving in want to setup for a massacre of Tucsonites? Think of the future – the Feds swoop in and soon the vampires are extinguished or on the run – and their secret might be revealed.
Parasites rarely want to signal their existence.
And then there’s the time Johnny is bitten by one of the vampires. Does he change and begin sucking blood? Well, not really. They trowel on the makeup a little more deeply, but was I really supposed to believe this womanizer’s faith is going to save him when the faith of everyone else does not?
On Opening Night, the fun begins, and after a while we’re down in a mine, where the screaming and the running starts. And lasts way, way too long. You might have to admire the bravery of killing a young child by slapping him against a rock, but that strikes me as a taboo too far.
And all along the tension doesn’t really mount. Perhaps it’s because we don’t have a deep reason to connect with these characters, or maybe it’s because the title is a dead giveaway. In the end, I found myself just shaking my head in disappointment. I said there were enjoyable, competent elements to the movie, but its heart and soul, the story, just stank.
