At first glance, I thought I was staring at a copy of Twilight (2008).
The pale, brooding face staring down from the top right corner of the key art was a dead ringer for Robert Pattinson after all, and the far more human face of the fawning woman in his shadow told me all I thought I needed to know. I nearly passed it by; were it not for the cocky, bloody visage of Bill Paxton just below the title, I doubt I would’ve given it a second thought.
In actuality, the movie was titled Near Dark (1987), a vampire-western mash-up which could not have been more different than the cover described above suggested (painting Mae as a human, cover— really??). I glanced the name above the title: Kathryn Bigelow. It struck a chord. I had heard of this movie. And, from what I had read on countless internet lists/forums/etc, Twilight it was not. I picked up the case and considered its $14.99 price tag. I shrugged— I had spent more on worse.
In those days the vampire sub-genre was neither something I knew a lot about or was all too excited to get into. Admittedly, the extent of my knowledge came from a fleeting understanding of the Bela Lugosi Dracula (1931), an undying love of the movie Fright Night (1985) and the fact that my brother and I had watched Dracula: Dead and Loving it (1995) on repeat for most of our teenage years. Sure, I had seen Interview with a Vampire (1994) and, like I said, I was well aware of what Twilight was, but I had not been exposed to any of Christopher Lee’s turns in the coffin or even seen The Lost Boys (1987).
I know.
I guess my point is, I was not prepared for Near Dark.
Blood. An addiction. A gateway into an untethered world of excess and action, one controlled by outlaws bonded by a code only honoured by the dishonourable— this was the world of Near Dark. It depicted a group, a family, each fulfilling a different role: father, mother, daughter, son… and, of course, Severen. The film tracks their relationships as they take in a newcomer, a recently turned boy that must be taught the ways of their lifestyle. He’s birthed into their crew through fire and fury, earning their respect and even their affection— that is, until his true family ties come home to roost.
The film is a surprisingly heartfelt tale of choosing to follow one’s own heart in the face of familial obligation. A brutal, funny, shocking tale created in the stead of so many classic westerns— right down to the elongated showdown in a seedy saloon. It honours the horror genre while using it as a jumping off point to explore the supernatural elements of its world in the more true-to-life dramatic beats of the story.
The screenplay is raw, straightforward and very much action based. The action description is broken down into single sentences, each spaced to form their own independent line. Every sentence feels purposeful and important while at the same time grounded and simple. Obvious. Still, there’s a brutality to the simplicity and an ease to its flow, regardless of what is or isn’t happening.
The film carries this mentality forward into its runtime, delivering intense set-piece sequences and a narrative progression that’s just enigmatic enough to keep the viewer on their toes. Regardless of whether the characters are sitting around talking or if they’re involved in a high-stakes shoot out with the local law enforcement, the film invites the viewer to be alert and engaged as if every second mattered.
But it’s the genre duality on display in the film that makes it so strong, helping its themes to resonate and its emotional core to land as well as it does. Many moments and sequences throughout the film embody the bombastic spirit shared between the western and horror picture, laying out the fun, the intensity and the inherent seriousness without discretion, but few execute it as well as the final confrontation between Severen and Caleb.
A fierce encounter, the moment elicits shades of classic showdowns under the high noon sun (despite it being the dead of night) complete with a horse and sagebrush. The screenplay is specific and direct in its depiction of action and reaction, while the film is made with a kinetic visual energy, driving the sequence from scene to scene in an exciting way that’s as fun as it is thrilling. The dazzling make-up and effects bring the power and mystique of Severen’s monstrous side to life, amplifying his insanity at the hands of his addiction and making physical his more villainous tendencies.
From the words on the page to the events on screen, the scene represents everything that works about Near Dark.
THE SCENE
Caleb rides his horse down the road. It’s quiet. Suddenly, the horse rears, throwing Caleb off. The horse runs away and Severen appears. Severen lifts Caleb into the air and throws him back. As Severen explains his plans to kill Caleb, a semi-truck approaches. Caleb stands and runs toward the truck, convincing the driver to stop. He gets in and attempts to reason with the driver, to take him away but Severen shoots the driver in the head before they can escape. Caleb gets behind the wheel and runs Severen down. Severen reemerges from beneath the grill, his face torn off. The vampire digs into the truck’s engine, attempting to disable it in an effort to get to Caleb. Caleb jack-knifes the truck and dives out. The truck careens forward, exploding and destroying Severen once and for all.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
A lone figure of the boy on horseback slows to a trot.
The scene opens in a wide shot, the street glistening with the remnants of rainfall and the night obscured in a thick, rolling coat of fog. Then, small in the frame, a man on horseback emerges from the white, smoky depths of the evening. The figure is silhouetted against the dense vapor, only illuminated by the street lights and neon signs surrounding it.
Each block of action description in the script reads like a stanza from a poem: each sentence stands alone, evoking a specific action, mood or emotion. Half the page here is dedicated to Caleb’s long, slow, horseback trod which will lead him to the story’s inescapable climax. One line reads: The hooves on the asphalt. Another describes: Silence so strong you could read by it. A bit further down the page, it reads:
The whole little town deathly deserted.
Like the boy is the last person in the world.
The unorthodox presentation of the world the script is attempting to create positions the reader to interpret the words in a more cerebral manner, helping to visualize not only the onscreen occurrences but the feeling of the space and the interactions between the characters and their environment.
The film encompasses these 20 some odd lines into a few seconds of horseback riding in the fog, but the emotionality and eerie deserted nature of the place absolutely comes across. The wide shot cuts to a close up of the horse’s hooves as they pass by a moving sagebrush, again reminding the viewer of the film’s western influences. Still, the nighttime setting and the green and yellow light reflecting off of the blacktop from lit neon signs in shop windows transports the western aesthetic into someplace entirely new.
A blur of action.
The screenplay interrupts the solemn calm of Caleb’s approach with the nondescript idea of chaos. Then: The animal rears and Severen Van Sickle connects a steam shovel roundhouse punch to the side of the animal’s head. In the film, this exchange occurs without damage to the horse as the animal rears without explanation in a close up and throws Caleb to the street. Severen appears from a very low angle, peering down at Caleb as the sound of pounding hooves signify the horse’s safe escape.
The screen accomplishes the same sense of surprise with a higher degree of efficiency. The image cuts to a medium shot, eyeing Caleb, crumpled on the ground, through Severen’s opened legs. The shot is a mockery of classic western blocking, emasculating Caleb instead of empowering him in the light of the creature by whom he has been bested.
The dialogue plays out as scripted with a few flourishes added in here and there (Severen remarking that he’d sell the horse and Caleb calling Severen an “asshole” spring to mind). The shift in power is immediately apparent, Severen’s attitude more lackadaisical as he faces down Caleb, clearly unthreatened by him.
Severn grabs Caleb’s hand and gives him a pull.
Full strength.
Hurling him over his shoulder twenty feet through the air.
Beginning in a medium and landing in a wide, the shot reverses the angle from between Severen’s legs. Now Caleb’s body lies in a heap in the foreground, with Severen presiding over him some twenty or thirty feet away— center frame. In the screenplay, Severen plays with Caleb a little, using dialogue more sparingly.
Severen smiles.
Spitting on his fingers.
Pointing at one of them.
SEVEREN
You got one of two choices, you come back with us or you don’t come back.
In the film, Severen addresses the injured Caleb more matter-of-factly and with a faux friendly demeanor. However his expression shifts casually from pleasant to threatening as he speaks. In a close up, he says: “I hate to be an Indian giver, I really do. But you disappointed me. Now you’re gonna have to pay.”
The screenplay describes Severen’s laconic stride down the deserted strip of road and continuously references his SPUR. The film provides a bit of additional context, presumably in an attempt to remind the viewer of the significance of his gift to Caleb earlier in the story. Severen continues in the film: “First you’re gonna give me back my spur, then I’m gonna knock your tonsils out your asshole.” Caleb remains unresponsive throughout Severen’s approach, the camera cutting from close up to a wide shot to show the shortening distance between them.
Back in the wide, Caleb’s body still laid out on the pavement, an approaching rumble accompanied by bright, white light causes the boy to finally stir. In the screenplay:
The farmboy hears an ENGINE THUNDER in the other direction in the distance.
Big, big headlights.
A KENWORTH EIGHTEEN WHEELER tractor trailer rig is coming down Main Street on its way to the highway.
Caleb’s strained expression is illuminated by the headlights as he turns in its direction. The image cuts to a wide shot of the semi, emerging from the darkness and the fog much like the horse— more a beast of the night than a machine. The script and the screen match up here as Caleb jumps to his feet and tears off for the vehicle and standing directly in its onrushing path. The only addition the film makes to the page is Severen, striding forward nonchalantly as before, amused… but that amusement waning.
The image continues to intercut between Caleb and Severen in wide shots, Caleb waving down the truck, jumping inside and Severen losing patience whilst drawing his gun. The script and film have some fun with this moment, describing the truck driver as giving the boy one heck of a serious look and saying “Git the fuck outa my truck” (although in the film, the word Hell inexplicably replaces fuck).
The incorrect spelling of the word “git” alone tells the reader everything they need to know about the driver. Having him provide the boy with an ultimatum and not being able to correctly count to five is the icing on the cake, again evoking the sort of character-actor walk-ons that famously populate the classic Hollywood western.
The script deals some with Caleb’s concern over not being able to drive the truck. The film progresses forward efficiently, Caleb immediately throwing the thing into gear and continuing its barreling tread forward toward his adversary. Once more, the image intercuts between Severen and Caleb. Severen’s excitement grows, egging his counterpart on by making kissy faces and muttering “C’mon!” The script follows suit, emphasizing the animal-like nature of the truck:
The truck lurches forward.
Lunging like a fifteen foot high, eighteen-wheeler behemoth.
The film stays on Caleb for the moment of impact, showing the truck bump and rumble as it plows over Severen. Caleb releases an excited “WOO!” and a celebratory look. The screenplay is more explicit when it comes to Severen’s fate, describing how the titanic front grill and bumper bash into him and further describing Twenty tons of truck draggin him under the wheels.
The aftermath of the collision is frenzied in the script as Caleb attempts to control the speeding truck:
Scared spitless behind the gigantic machine he is trying to restrain like breaking a wild mustang.
The film refuses to provide Caleb with much time to consider this, however, as seconds after Severen falls below the grill, an arm reaches up and slams against the hood of the truck. While the screenplay mentions Severen’s head is the first body part to appear, the film focuses first on the left side of the vampire’s body as it’s thrust into view from the perspective of the interior of the truck’s cab.
The cut is quick, giving the viewer barely enough time to register the blackened, bloody flesh peeking out from beneath the torn sleeve of Severen’s leather jacket or the clumps of hair poking through the exposed sinew of his barely visible skull as he rises from the grill. The view cuts back to a close up of Caleb, his grin falling just before Severen reemerges into full view.
Half of his face raked with tire tread marks.
The screenplay provides only a hint of what has become of Severen, allowing the imagination of the reader to fill in the blanks. In the film, he appears as his true self: monstrous and bloody, blackened and charred, his teeth gritted and his eyes alert and focused on his prey. As scripted, he digs into the hood:
One of his steel sinewed hands comes smashing onto the hood with such force his fingers put holes in it.
Instead of ripping the hood off, Severen begins to tear out pieces of the engine. His playfulness is still very much present, but there is an evil twinge to it which now lacks even the pretense of humanity. He laughs as he rips out various components and the sparks fly. Again, the image intercuts between the frightened visage of Caleb and the snarling, unreasonable thing that is Severen in a series of tight close ups. The screenplay mirrors this fast succession of cuts and moments with its vignette-like sensibility:
The Savage One begins to shear off pieces of the engine.
Showers of sparks.
Spewing gas.
Electrical shorts.
While he doesn’t mutter “Jackknife” in the cab as scripted, calling back to an earlier mention of it in the film, Caleb’s worried expression and quick moving actions in the truck mirror what the screenplay calls for:
The farmboy knows he is out of time.
His hand goes to the twin brakes for the cab and trailer.
His eyes harden.
His other hand opens the driver’s door.
In seconds, Caleb is leaping out of the truck in a wide shot, leaving Severen atop the hood as it goes careening forward. While the screenplay describes the cab crumpling like a tin can as the trailer crashes into it, the film leans further into the notion of the truck as a fellow, untamable beast.
Severen rides the truck, as one might a raging bull, his arm in the air and howling with laughter. That’s when the thing jack-knifes in a wide shot and explodes into flame. The final moments of Severen’s vampiric life are spent in chaotic ecstasy, untethered and thrilling as his addiction to those sorts of feelings requires.
EXPLODES into a million pieces.
Spreading the remains of Severen Van Sickle across half the state.
There’s a sense of honour to that sentence, the spreading of his ashes as though his memory might be immortalized in the place somehow. This sensibility continues as the scene concludes:
The rowel of the Savage One’s silver spur flips in the air end over end, dropping down on the tarmac, spinning on the ground like a nickel.
Caleb flips it like a coin and sticks it in his back pocket.
The spur as a representation of Severen’s approval and a metaphor for his sharp-edged nature is brought to its final resting place in this moment. A souvenir of the creature that could not be tamed, that electric feeling of being so close to something so wild. Caleb claims the spur perhaps as a way to signify his victory. Or, maybe, the spur’s importance runs deeper than that, into something more primal than Caleb would care to admit. Either way, he collects the item and pockets it.
This sentiment of honour and respect is further echoed by the quiet moment Caleb has as he views the flames in a wide shot. Once more he is silhouetted, this time by the bright flames of the truck instead of the murky glow of the fog. He removes his hat and stands silently, as the screenplay puts it: His awed face framed with flames. The solemnity of the moment is palpable as the young man quietly acknowledges the crazed thing he very nearly called brother.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“Now this sequence required a bit of engineering and logistics,” remarked Kathryn Bigelow on the commentary track found on the Near Dark blu-ray disc regarding the confrontation between Caleb and Severen, later continuing “nothing should feel arbitrary, everything should feel as though it has a purpose.”
The cover to Near Dark may have presented itself like a mirror image of a movie with sparkly vampires and clunky romance, but its true nature could not have been more distinct. A western-horror hybrid, Near Dark utilized vampirism as a metaphor for addiction, both physical and emotional, bringing to a head the crisis which occurs when one is forced to choose between personal desire and familial duty. Its lyrical screenplay paints a picture of scarcity and understated emotional fullness that translated beautifully to the screen, particularly in the moment where Caleb is forced to confront the monstrous vampire Severen.
Although the screenplay does describe Severen’s transformation from cavalier cowboy to unrelenting beast, the filmmakers brought it to life with more than just words. “I had about a 3 hour make-up job every night to do the whole wreck make-up after the truck had hit me and kind of torn off my face,” actor Bill Paxton recalls in the Near Dark blu-ray featurette “Living in Darkness”. The care and detail put into the grotesque practical effects work in this scene reveals the truth behind the vampire’s facade, the actual nature of the beast behind the charming grin. This also extends to the blocking and execution of the sequence:
“We had to build a kind of undercarriage underneath the truck that the stuntman could hold onto when he was being dragged,” Kathryn Bigelow said on the previously mentioned featurette, “and then have a platform in the front that the actor could stand on, and create, obviously, a rigged set that he could put his hand in for the engine parts.”
The very nature of the scene comes out of western lore, Kathryn Bigelow commenting on her commentary track, “true to the western form, we need the shootout in the middle of the street.” In lieu of pistols, the tools take on, as she points out, “a slightly different proportion”, referring to Caleb using the semi-truck as his chosen “weapon”. Each element in the scene works on an immediate, visceral level, all the while standing in as metaphors for the classical genre storytelling she is reinventing in an effort to explore the nature of the characters and their situation.
I was not ready for Near Dark when I first saw it. Unprepared in that way a person is unprepared to experience something dramatically new and yet fully informed by every influence that may have preceded it. Over the years, as my knowledge and experience grew, so did my appreciation for Near Dark, a film which now stands, for me, as a defining component of the vampire sub-set of horror as a whole.
Vampires offer an avenue toward a pining sense of belonging. A need for other people. An addiction to be close to them, but in the most selfish way possible. There is a telling romanticism embedded within such a mythology and the more I grew to embrace it, the more I understood why movies like Twilight existed in the first place. Then again, there’s a big difference between exploring that romanticism and exploiting it.
Of course, the same can be said about the western. The journey of the solitary figure as they traverse the barren landscape on horseback, either protecting the peace or making their own law. A freedom that is, if anything, equally romantic— and, potentially, just as selfish.
Again, as Kathryn Bigelow puts it quite simply in her commentary track: “doing a western but creating a hybrid with the horror movie… they’re both very romantic.”
Regardless of my first impression, Near Dark is a revelatory film befitting the poetic words from which it was derived. At times raw and cruel, at others sincere and affable, with all of its conflicting emotions colliding in its explosive finale, I suppose now I understand why the cover looked the way it did (popular property cash-in aside).
If nothing else, it’s romantic. That is, if you’re willing to rethink the standard definition of the word. After all, it isn’t Twilight.
Near Dark (1987): Written by Eric Red and Kathryn Bigelow and Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
 and the show down between Severen and a semi-truck.){kind=link}