Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) Reviews

• Not The Travesty Some Claim

  gavin69422014-07-24

  Maximillian (Eddie Murphy) is the only survivor from a race of vampires on a Caribbean Island, and as a vampire, he must find a mate to keep the line from ending. Some have said this film is the worst for Murphy and for Wes Craven, with Murphy saying the wig he had to wear was a big part of the problem. Now, looking back almost twenty years later, the wig does not look bad, and this was far from rock bottom for Murphy. For Craven, it may not be his strongest film, but it may also not be his worst ("Cursed" is pretty bad). Seriously, this is not that bad of a film, even if the humor never hits exactly right.

• Underappreciated movie from Wes Craven.

  air-man772018-08-16

  "Vampire in Brooklyn" is probably one of Wes Craven's most underappreciated movies, and that for some weird reasons. The movie contains some chillings horror moments especially the dreams scenes with Angela Bassett. This type of scene is the ones we love from Craven. It's also got a romance between Bassett and Eddie Murphy's character. Their scenes together are great with a really good chemistry from the two actors. The problem about the movie is the comedy part. It's doesn't really match with the movie overall. BUT don't understimate it, it's a really entertaining movie with great scenes from Craven. It got the "People under the Stairs" and "New Nightmare" kind of vibe and it fits the movie perfectly.

• "I would love to have you for dinner"

  Smells_Like_Cheese2003-12-03

  Ever since I was a kid, I've loved vampires. My mom had introduced me to that part of horror movies when I was very young and I always found the vampire to be the most interesting of all monsters. They are the only one's that could appear human, they lure you in making it seem normal, but then before you know it, they turn on you. They're the most terrifying monsters if you really think about it. So Wes Craven, one of the masters of horror, who brought us amazing scary movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Last House on the Left, The Hills have Eyes and Scream tried to take on the vampire genre. Interestingly enough as a mixture of horror and comedy. Not something that is brand new as we see with Love at first Bite, Fearless Vampire Killers and Dracula: Dead and Loving it, but he seems to do an unbalanced job with Vampire in Brooklyn. An abandoned ship crashes into a dockyard in Brooklyn, New York, and the ship inspector, Silas, inspects it, finding it full of corpses. Elsewhere, Julius Jones, has a run-in with some Italian mobsters. Just as the two goons are about to kill Julius, Maximillian, a suave, mysterious vampire, intervenes and kills them. Soon after, Maximillian infects Julius with his vampiric blood, turning Julius into a decaying ghoul; he then explains that he has come to Brooklyn in search of the Dhampir daughter of a vampire from his native island in order to live beyond the night of the next full moon. Now he's in search of Rita, the woman he was meant to be with in Brooklyn, New York. The thing is, I still like this film despite it's flaws. I remember being obsessed with this movie when I was a kid. Growing up, I got the DVD, does it have it's problems? Yeah. Angela Bassett who is normally a great actress really overacts in this film to the point where her character becomes obnoxious. Eddie Murphy does a pretty decent job, he plays a number of characters as usual. Playing not only Maximillian, but the preacher and the crook. He seemed to have fun with the role and had a lot of charisma. I also thought the relationship and chemistry between Kadeem Hardison and John Witherspoon as Julius and Silas was not only great but absolutely hilarious. I couldn't catch my breath from laughing so much when Silas accidentally pulls Julius' arm off and Silas says "Look at this! Now you the fugitive!" and Julius keeps telling him to put it back on and how he needs his arm back. There are some genuine funny moments mainly between Julius and Silas. As for the scary, not so much; there are some good one's here and there, between Nikki's murder and Eddie Murphy's make up was pretty frightening. While it's a flawed film, I think it's still worth checking out over all, it's a good story that just needed a better cast and a little more thought. But I think you'll get a few good chuckles out of this film. 6/10

• A Brilliant twist on the '90s Murphy formula!

  curtis-82001-07-23

  In the 1980s, Eddie Murphy single-handedly recreated the Black Action hero, replacing the old murderous superstud of the 1970s with black characters who depended on their quick wits more than their big guns. That formula was quickly run dry, however, both by Murphy himself and the imitators he inspired. So, Eddie intelligently decided that he needed to recreate a forgotten genre of comedy, one which Peter Sellars had mastered in the 60s, and which only Murphy could do today: he would make movies in which he played multiple characters. The Genesis began with "Coming to America", in which Murphy played not only the lead role, but also all the inhabitants of a Harlem barbershop. The sequences were short, but Murphy was building the road to becoming the most brilliant character actor of our day. Soon followed the "Nutty Professor" movies, "Bowfinger", and his animated TV series, "The PJ's." In all these Murphy played a multiplicity of roles, and played them all brilliantly (the Academy's disdain for streetwise comedies, and--well, lets just say it--their dismissal of black performers not playing slaves or pimps, are the only explanations possible for Murphy not owning an Oscar or two by now). With these projects, Eddie was not only playing different characters, but also honing a new Eddie Murphy genre: raunchy, but intelligent; gross, but heartfelt; hilariously over the top in the particulars of plot, but firmly rooted in emotional reality. He has created or has been involved with, some of the arguably best comedies of the 1990's and onward--and has been responsible for inarguably the best comic performances of the era. So, in this era, Eddie decided to push the envelope by mixing the new Eddie Genre with the Horror films he loved as a kid. The result, "A Vampire in Brooklyn", is unsettling to some because the lines between Eddie's wildly improvisational Black (or African American, if you insist) character comedy to straight vampire horror movie are so starkly drawn. There are very few instances where the comedy and horror overlap. This, I feel, is the brilliance of the film. There are no horror moments broken by a punchline or bad joke, and there are no comedy moments punctuated by some kind of sick horror gag (that has been done to death since John Landis' "American Werewolf in London". Now its being beated to death by "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"). The funny parts are funny and the scary parts are truly scary. And Murphy also gets to shine in multiple well-defined character parts as well, as the shape-shifting African Vampire assumes the physical identity of several of his victims. "Vampire" failed at the box office not because it was a bad film--its definitely is not. But because it was too unusual a film for the limited abilities of the studio's marketing department to sell. Those going expecting to see a comedy were disappointed it contained so much pure horror, and those going to see it based on the publicity that painted it as a horror film were dissapointed it contained so much hilarious Murphy style comedy. It dies because of false expectations. Eddie's other films contained quick changes in tone as well--the shifts between bathroom comedy and pathos in the Nutty Professor films is no less abrupt than those between horror and comedy in "Vampire". It's just that the choice of horror as the second element mixed with the comedy is a more daring and unusual one. Years from now, "A Vampire in Brooklyn" will be viewed as one of the highpoints of the second phase of the Eddie Murphy Genre.

• Somehow I Failed to Get This One.

  nycritic2005-05-11

  Wes Craven directs LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, controversy ensues. Wes Craven directs THESE HILLS HAVE EYES and maims his audience. Wes Craven directs A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and revitalizes a genre with a super-bad villain. Wes Craven directs THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW, hit. Wes Craven directs A VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN? I don't know what to make of this one. It does have an interesting take on the vampire genre in a way that should have worked in the way he would spoof the horror genre in SCREAM, but where SCREAM had loads of in-jokes, references to other horror movies and a young cast of actors who were playing very self-conscious people who knew what to do and what not to do in a horror film, here the results just don't mix. Had he gotten a much more skilled team of writers who could come up with wicked pop-culture references to blaxploitation films (and why not make this an ultra-hip version of BLACULA?), had he nixed the fatalistic seriousness that comes through like leftovers from both BRAM STOKER'S Dracula and countless vampire films and turned this into an edgy satire a la FRIGHT NIGHT or something crazier like THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, maybe it would have fared better. Actually I stand corrected: it would have fared much better. But having Eddie Murphy play his role totally straight, having Angela Bassett who seems like she's in a whole other movie, and then having that totally ludicrous epilogue which seems straight out of the Friday franchise... I don't know where to make heads or tails from it. I just don't.