A half-vampire, half-mortal man becomes a protector of the mortal race, while slaying evil vampires.
I love this movie. Wesley Snipes was perfectly cast as the titular Blade while director Stephen Norrington infused the film with some amazing set-pieces and revolutionary CGI for its time. Early on, you see special effects that were later upgraded to hypnotic effect in “The Matrix,” one year later, but they originated here. Kris Kristofferson is outstanding as Blade’s mentor, Abraham Whistler, who rescued him from becoming a vampire as a young boy, and Stephen Dorff gleefully sinks his teeth into the film’s vampiric antagonist, Deacon Frost, with plans of world domination.
Blade is known as the Daywalker, a man who is half-human, half-vampire, and who can walk around during the day with no fear of sunlight. He also possesses a vampire’s strength and none of their weaknesses, with the exception of bloodlust but thanks to his mentor, Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), he has concocted a serum that can suppress Blade’s thirst for blood.
After Blade raids a Los Angeles rave club which is owned by Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff), a particularly vicious vampire that Blade has been hunting for years, he massacres a lot of the vampires attending the rave and slices off one of the arms of his top henchman, Quinn (Donal Logue), and then sets him on fire using an incendiary device. After the police lock the building down, Quinn’s body is taken to the morgue and he is pronounced dead but while Dr. Curtis Webb (Tim Guinee) and hematologist Karen Jenson (N’Bushe Wright) are examining the body, Quinn springs to life, killing Webb in the process. Karen tries to escape but Quinn catches up with her and sinks his teeth into her neck but before he can finish her off, Blade appears and slices off his other arm, causing Quinn to flee. Just as he is about to leave, he looks down at Karen lying on the floor and gets a flashback of his mother who died the exact same way after having been bitten by a vampire while she was pregnant with him, thereby giving him his superhuman abilities, and against his better judgment, he takes her with him.
Once back at his safe house, he tells Whistler what happened and Whistler injects her with garlic to burn out the venom. She recovers and Whistler tells her who Blade is and that they are tracking down vampires and killing them as they are planning to take over the world. He informs her that Balde is building up a resistance to the serum he created for him and that eventually, without it, he could turn into a vampire himself. As a hematologist, Karen sets out to develop a new serum for Blade, one that will allow him to keep his superhuman strength but will do away with his bloodlust, once and for all. As they continue with their vampiric hunt, Blade discovers that Frost is trying to awaken the ancient blood god, La Magra, by sacrificing 12 pureblood vampires but in order for Frost to become all-powerful and virtually unstoppable, he must also harness the blood of a daywalker, and since Blade is the only one alive, he realizes that he has now become the hunted. With the fate of humanity at stake, Blade must face off against Frost before he assumes the form of La Magra. Otherwise, all of humankind will fall.
We have been inundated with vampire movies and TV shows since the very first vampire film, “Nosferatu,” was released to an unsuspecting public in 1922. Some have been great; “Salem’s Lot,” “Interview With the Vampire,” “30 Days of Night,” and “Near Dark,” while others have been, well, meh; “Fright Night,” “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” “Blade: Trinity,” and “Bloodrayne” to name but a few. “Blade” spawned two sequels, “Blade II,” which was directed by Guillermo del Toro and was a good follow-up, and the horrendous “Blade: Trinity,” and the less we say about that, the better. It also generated a TV show, “Blade: The Series,” which starred Sticky Fingaz (who?) in the starring role after Wesley Snipes refused to move to the small screen, probably because he was in prison for tax evasion. It only lasted one season but wasn’t that bad. With a new remake in the works, being produced by Marvel, and starring Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali, it looks like we won’t have a shortage of bloodsuckers any time soon. Director Stephen Norrington has only made four feature films in his career, the last being 2003’s “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” and that is a shame as “Blade” showcased his impressive visual aesthetics as well as his grasp on character development and story structure. If you haven’t seen “Blade” yet, what are you waiting for?
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