“You have to learn how to kill.”
In Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, the vampires aren’t sexy. There’s nothing particularly interesting about them. They’re not Eurocentric romantics; they’re pure Americana, highway drifters chasing the night. They burn. They kill. Nihilism is fundamental to their vampirism—a Vampira Americana, if I may be so bold.
In fact, the word “vampire” isn’t even used once in the film.
On the dark, dusty roads of Texas and Oklahoma, we know what they are. It doesn’t need to be said out loud. Near Dark doesn’t weigh you down with exposition or vampire lore that stretches back through the annuals of time. The only thing we need to feel is the dusty grit in the desert blood, as we drink it.
Released in 1987, and overshadowed by Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys, Near Dark is the bastard stepchild of nocturnal damnation. Both films circle the same themes: family, addiction, the seduction of belonging. But where Lost Boys is feathered hair and teen heartthrobs for a generation being weaned on music videos, Bigelow made a vampire film for people who wanted to reject the slick polish of MTV. You won’t find saxophones or eyeliner here. Her undead don’t pose, they prowl. There’s no underlying principle for us to weigh our sense of morality against. Just sun-sick drifters, feral for blood, possessed by a hunger that feels more like a sickness than a choice.
Ultimately, Near Dark is about violence for the sake of violence. While The Lost Boys flirts with rebellion, it’s just cosplay—rebellion as aesthetic, not the kind of nihilism that comes from outliving your own humanity. It’s not trying to be a synth soaked noir or Neo-Western. It’s both those things without even trying, which is why Near Dark ends up being the better of the two films.
The story is simple, and takes the shape of a road movie. Caleb (Adrian Pasdar), a clean-cut farm boy from Oklahoma, meets a mysterious woman named Mae (Jenny Wright) who turns out to be a vampire. After biting him, she drags him into her nomadic family of undead drifters whose entire modus is carnage and chaos. Or as she tells him tenderly during his transformation: “The night has its price.” Unfortunately for Caleb, these vampires are entirely fringe. They exist on the margins. Vagabonds. Truck thieves. Arsonists. They sleep in blacked-out vans, despise humans, and hunt without remorse. Their family unit is a found one, forged through necessity and violence. In other words: Their kinship is through consequence, not love. Because their only love is driven by hunger and hate.
Leading this nomadic brood is Jesse Hooker, played with a preternatural menace by Lance Henriksen (who had an incredible run of villain roles in the late 80s, and early 90s, with films like Stone Cold, Hard Target, and Pumpkin Head). Hooker is a Confederate veteran whose immortality has only sharpened his contempt for anything still clinging to life. By his side is Diamondback, played by Aliens and Terminator 2 alum Jenette Goldstein, delivering a performance that’s maternally merciless. Then there’s Severen, played by Bill Paxton in what might be the most unhinged performance of his too-short career. Drenched in blood, smeared with soot, and grinning like a lunatic, Severen feels like a stand-in for every runaway punk nightmare of the Reagan era. He’s pure violence, pure appetite.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the infamous bar scene, which ranks near the top of the leaderboard for ultraviolence in modern cinema. Backed by The Cramps’ cover of Fever, Severen turns a dive bar into a slaughterhouse. It’s not just the film’s centerpiece—it’s the mission statement. For these vampires, it’s not about survival. It’s about the sheer joy of burning it all down.
Near Dark, lives in that vast expanse of America, where towns are only a by-product of the roads they connect. The vampires ghost these roads, moving between them like a death cult. There’s no grand plan. Just dirt and diesel. And the unspoken knowledge that time is meaningless while the sun eternally shines. Nevertheless, what makes this film truly compelling is its refusal to explain itself. There’s no vampire manual on this ride. Unlike Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which layers its thesis into every narrative beat, this film offers no wisdom. It doesn’t guide or explain. As the viewer, you’re left to do the weary work yourself. It’s a kind of filmmaking that feels almost forgotten now.
Near Dark bombed at the box office, buried beneath the pop-cultural wave The Lost Boys surfed in on. Critics didn’t quite know what to make of it. Too savage for the art house crowd, too strange for mainstream audiences. The Los Angeles Times said it was “probably too violent for any but hard-core horror audiences.” But like all good cult films, it lingered, and as Bigelow’s prestige grew, so did her back catalogue. And today, Near Dark stands as one of the most original vampire films ever made—even if it refuses to call itself one.
So why should you watch Near Dark? Easy, Bill Paxton. But also because there’s nothing else quite like it. It’s a Western. A neon noir. A horror film. A road movie. Decidedly punk. It never played by the rules and outlived the moment that tried to kill it. As a testament to that, it’s still hard to find outside physical media, and is not currently streaming on any of the major platforms. But you can still find it on YouTube, right here —94 minutes well spent.
And just to complete your Vampira Americana experience, there’s a special VHS Club playlist below: 15 songs from 1987 that will set the mood for your Near Dark watch party.
VHS Club is our journey into the dark alleys and neon-lit backstreets of forgotten cinema history. Every other week we’ll revisit a film that still lurks in the culture, celebrating cult-classics, B-movie brilliance, and exploitation epics that are too métier for the digital overlords controlling our streaming algorithms. These films come from our personal collection, living on those old tapes which can still be found in the back of thrift-stores and antique malls; passed around by cinephiles, horror heads, crime connoisseurs, and action junkies. Some are cinematic masterpieces, while others are just beautiful, glorious trash.
Let us know if there is a film you want reviewed for VHS Club by sending an email to hello@rvamag.comwith VHS Club in the subject line.
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