Vampires: Los Muertos



Vampire hunter Derek Bliss has just been given a new assignment from the Van Helsing Group from an anonymous benefactor: Put together a team of the best vampire hunters around and take out the local vampire master and their underlings before they can perform a sacred ritual that will allow them to walk in the daylight. Small problem though, every time Derek goes to track down one of his potential partners he finds that the vampires have inexplicably managed to find them first. So instead of a group of professionals all Derek can manage to scrounge up are an out of towner from Memphis, a lone priest, a 16-year-old boy, and a gal he met at a diner who’s already been bitten, but is holding off the vampire infection by taking some pills. So now it’s up to Derek and his rag-tag group of stabby-stabbers to stop the vampire master from obtaining her ultimate goal: getting a tan.


To be fair, she does kinda need it.

Vampires: Los Muertos is an American western horror film from 2002, and is a sequel to John Carpenter’s Vampires from 1998. But if you haven’t seen the first film you don’t need to worry about it, because while it’s a sequel it is in no way a “direct” sequel. The only crossover is a sacred relic that the vampires need to perform the ritual, and a reference to one character from the first film that never actually makes an appearance here (cause he dead). So if you haven’t seen that, no worries, all the characters present are brand new and you ain’t missin’ much. What inexplicably isn’t brand new however, is the plot, because it’s basically almost a point-for-point retread of the first film. You’ve got similar characters, similar motivations, similar tropes, and they’re all facing the exact same problem: keeping a bunch of vampires from using a priest and a sacred cross to perform some magic juju, all so that they can blood-suck at their leisure. The only difference is that the head vampire is much sexier, and instead of watching James Woods stab people through the heart, his bag of grisled character tropes has been replaced by… Jon Bon Jovi? What? Why?

Whatever. At least now you know why I chose this for “Horror Movies Starring Celebrities You Weren’t Expecting” week.


And yes, he was shirtless for one scene. What a shock.

I feel like it’s kind of expected of me to say that Bon Jovi’s acting is atrocious and yadda yadda yadda. But honestly, it wasn’t that bad. Partially because there were actually actors in this that were far worse than him (shocking, I know), but also because the film primarily kept his role pretty concentrated to three simple tasks: looking pretty, pointing a gun, and scowling at whatever he was pointing said gun at. Now, when he deviates from that formula, yes, problems arise (Emote, damn you! Emote!), but the movie keeps him pretty on-task to those three main points, so for the most part he performed admirably with what he was hired to do. Other characters? Eh. This was a Direct-to-Video film (though it was released theatrically in Mexico and Japan – And my sincerest apologies to those two countries), so don’t expect anything stellar. Some people are okay, decent even, but half the cast is decidedly “meh” or even cringe-worthy. Though you do get the bonus of being able to look at Cristián de la Fuente and Arly Jover for most of the movie, so maybe the filmmakers thought the added eye-candy would make up for some of the other’s acting deficiencies.


I mean, it doesn’t, but the attempt is appreciated nonetheless.


It’s certainly better than staring at everyone else.

So the one part of the film that I thought would truly suck ended up just being mediocre. Instead, the real suckage comes in two parts. The First? The writing. Because, good gravy, this thing almost feels like it was written in AI before AI even existed. Like they just typed in “Make a sequel to John Carpenter’s Vampires and be bloody quick about it, because we start shooting tomorrow.” Because not only do they just rehash the exact same plot, but they also rehash the same characters along with their subplots. It’s really kinda sad (and a bit annoying). Especially considering that the plot to the first film wasn’t all that great to begin with. Though the first film does at least have a leg up in the dialogue and character motivation department, because whoever wrote this thing must have been… You know what, no. Scratch that. I don’t know what they were thinking. I mean, it’s not ALL horrible, but when your professional vampire hunters act dumber than the 16-year-old, whom they allowed to come along with them on this murder expedition because he brought a note from his mother (no, really!), then I’m afraid things have gone awry. Ray from Memphis is an especially egregious example. Dude is supposed to be a professional vampire slayer, yet seemingly has Zero common sense or self preservation. He shoots off and wastes several rounds of customized ammo just to show off, and then later doesn’t even question why this random woman shows up at their camp in the middle of the desert one night and suddenly comes onto him. Did he just think she was part of some band of desert roving prostitutes who are all immeasurably turned on by humidity and sand? How in the seven circles of hell did this idiot survive so long?


Good gracious are you dumb.

On the upside though, they did give him the most ridiculous line in the film, which he uttered right before he croaked: You ain’t lived til you got head from a vampire. Personally I wouldn’t have chosen those to be my final words, but he was laughing the whole time he said it, so I guess he thought it was worth it. For his sake, I hope that when the other characters buried him they fulfilled his unspoken final request and etched that immortal line on his tombstone, just so that everyone else walking through the cemetery could have a good laugh.


Uh, at least he died laughing at his own dumb joke?

The film’s greatest sin though is that it’s just horribly, nay criminally, DULL. There are a couple of moments where the movie looks very pretty, and the action is kinda fun, and yes, there are even a couple of instances where you can tell that they were blessed with a small, brief jolt of filming inspiration. But unfortunately the movie encapsulates some of the worst traits often associated with cheap westerns: it’s slow, it’s plodding, the main character is one dimensional, and the story is so bare-bones that you can easily predict what’s going to happen before it happens. And that last point feels especially egregious because… The movie is about killing bloody vampires! Use that! This isn’t Gunsmoke, where the good guys are up against a band of horse rustlers and they needed to point out some sort of stuffy morality tale at the end. They’re fighting vampires! Shoot them, stab them, burn them in the sun. How the hell do you make any of that boring!?  I don’t know. But somehow this film pulled it off and made fighting the ultimate evil feel like a slog. That’s the true horror of this movie.


See, this was fun! Why wasn’t there more of this?



So, uh, I can’t say I was impressed with old Vampires: Los Muertos. I know some of the problems mostly boil down to the film being little more than a cheap cash-in, but that’s not an excuse for everything going on here. Because there are a couple of moments where the film WAS actually a little fun and inventive. The problem is I can’t remember much beyond those handful of instances, because the rest of the movie is so friggin’ boring. Even now I’m having trouble remembering most of the plot, because it felt like a lot of stuff was just thrown at us all willy-nilly, rather than explained. Thinking about it, the filmmakers may have legitimately been expecting you to have seen the original film first to better understand some things. That probably would have helped explain some of the random junk like the “linking” they expect you to accept with zero background or connection to most other vampire lore. But based on some other 90s films Carpenter attached his name to, I’m kinda skeptical on that front. Besides, I’d have to go back and watch that one again to confirm and I’m too lazy to do that now. I think I’m burned out on horror westerns for a bit. Anyway, this one was a smidge better than I expected, buy I had low expectations going in, so that isn’t saying much. If you enjoy horror western type films you may find a bit of enjoyment out of this (and the stupid dialogue), but if that’s your jam there are definitely better examples of that genre out there for you to choose from instead.

Vampires: Los Muertos is available on a variety of streaming services.

Vampires: Los Muertos is also available on DVD.

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