DARKNESS

The Vampire Version

By Brian Thomas     June 09, 2006

During the 1980s, a lot of studios that had been producing exploitation films for grindhouse and drive-in venues saw these films gradually finding a home only on home video. This meant that more money could go toward the production, but instead of taking advantage of this, producers decided that they could cut budgets even more. The thinking was that the videos would rent just as many copies. Some video distributors began saving even more money by buying up independent movies made by first time filmmakers. Many of these independents were youngsters were horror fans inspired by the success of THE EVIL DEAD, and a few produced some promising works. But a lot of the films were amateurish at best, and even filmmakers with the talent and drive to survive the initial disappointment of their first sale to stay in the business found their prospects limited to meeting the demand for more of the same at the same pitiful budget level. And so, filmmakers such as J.R. Bookwalter, who made a good first impression with THE DEAD NEXT DOOR, found himself churning out dreck like ROBOT NINJA and CHICKBOXER. It was in this environment that 19-year old Kansan Leif Jonker made DARKNESS, an 8mm production shot with $5,000 of scrounged money with the ambition to become the DAWN OF THE DEAD of vampire movies.

As Jonker reveals in an introductory insert essay, he transferred his footage to VHS to edit a rough print to shop around, in the hope that a distributor would provide funds to finish the film. Instead, the folks at Film Threat Video decided the film was good enough to release as is, and it went on to garner some good reviews and a cult following worldwide. Ten years later, Jonker was turning down offers from DVD labels to slap the 1993 version onto disc, holding out for a label that would finally let him finish the movie the way he wanted. And it's fortunate that he did this 87-minute "Vampire Version" still looks mighty rough, but a peek at the original version included on disc 2 reveals just how crappy it looked on tape.

In retrospect, much of the positive feeling for DARKNESS may have been the result of lowered expectations, a product of the low budget horror market of the early 1990s. All of the actors are amateurs giving amateurish performances, and the VHS image quality is so horrible that one wonders how anyone could have been impressed. You have to credit Jonker with working around his weaknesses and concentrating on the things he could deliver: chases, shooting, and lots and lots of blood. In this version at least, the number one defect is the fact that almost the entire cast is made up of teenagers, lending the impression of kids at play no matter how professional or unprofessional the results.

Trailer trash teen Tobe (Gary Miller) is at the local Gas & Go when a vampire plague of unexplained origin strikes his town. He tries to save his family, but finds they've already turned and he has to destroy them. Three days later, we find he's taken the task of vampire hunting upon himself, and is following the blood trail from town to town in an effort to get ahead of it, wiping out nests of bloodsuckers when on the way. Some teens in the next town are at a concert when the plague takes their friends and families, and Tobe arrives in time to help some of them survive. However, his companions refuse to leave town without knowing if their friends need help first, and so they end up having to fight their way out before the sun rises.

In the world of DARKNESS, vampirism is still spread via bites, and holy water and sunlight are still effective weapons against them. But they're among the first to break from the fanged nobleman image. Without fangs, they tear into victims with knives, teeth or bare hands like wild beasts, spraying around as much blood as they consume. Jonker borrows further from the zombie genre with plenty of hacked limbs, exploding heads, and spewing entrails. The gore effects aren't particularly artistic, but they are plentiful, climaxing in a crowd-pleasing orgy of splatter and screams. It's the film's apocalyptic attitude and efforts to deliver "the goods" that has endeared it to gorehounds, and now that it can all be viewed more clearly it should earn a new generation of admirers.

The film is prefaced with nostalgia-inducing drive-in ads and trailers for unfinished Jonker films to set the mood for old fashioned genre thrills. The main feature is accompanied by a more than generous three commentraks. The chaotic first track has Jonker joined by whatever cast members could be gathered together for a screening. The second commentrak features Jonker with composer Michael Curtis and star/f/x guy Gary Miller kind of an odd combo, but they talk mostly about the music and miscellany here, and the third and most worthwhile commentrak is simply Jonker by himself catching up on a lot of things he didn't get a chance to say on the first two tracks and revealing how the angst of his aimless youth was channeled into this creative outlet.

"Vampire Bootcamp", which also has a commentrak from Jonker and others, is a 30-minute featurette consisting mostly of retrospective interviews, clips and 1989 casting footage. The commentrak doesn't really pertain to the featurette, but uses another half hour of disc space for folks to talk about the movie. The bulk of disc 2 is taken up with the original release cut of DARKNESS, which has fewer scenes but is about the same length, and suffers further by comparison with the "Vampire Version". Jonker claims several times that the new version is definitive and is the way he would have wanted to polish the film had he been allowed to. But then, he's had a long time to think about his choices, and I'm sure the film benefits from all of his experience and growth over the past ten plus years.

Copyright © 2006 Brian Thomas, author of the massive book VideoHound's DRAGON: ASIAN ACTION & CULT FLICKS.
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