After spending the previous decade in sexploitation films, vampires re-emerged in the 1980s as postmodern leather-clad punks.
That look gave filmmakers new angles to play with: gangs, bikers and junkies.
All of those groups run in packs and engage in more dangerous behaviors than the old-fashioned singular vampires of old. These were a new breed of terrorizing clans and Lost Boys.
Kathryn Bigelow‘s Near Dark, the most interesting of the 1980s vampire movies, catapulted her to the league of major directors to watch.
She puts them in a generic hybrid of both the neo-Western and the road movie that became popular in the 70s. These vampires are more like modern bandits, rolling down the highways.
In the best scene, they pick a bar fight: Severen (Bill Paxton) has blades at the tip of his cowboy boots, which removes the need to bite, and the intimacy of feasting that most vampires engaged with their victims.
There is also romantic intimacy in Near Dark–-the young love that starts at a convenient store (between Adrian Pasdar and Jenny Wright).
