Horror comedies are a schizophrenic lot: More often then not, they go overboard in one direction while falling flat in the other. John Landis’ American Werewolf in London and the Nicolas Cage vehicle Vampire’s Kiss are the exceptions that prove the rule, but unfortunately, the take on the genre adopted by Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Hills Have Eyes) only reinforces the stereotype. Murphy is Maximillian, the last in a long lineage of Egyptian vampires searching for a half-breed female vampire (Bassett) with whom to mate. For some unknown reason, she’s gravitated to Brooklyn, where, unaware of her heritage, she works as a police detective alongside her partner Justice (Payne). Once ensconced in a Brooklyn tenement, Maximillian creates a Renfield-esque henchman out of local clocker Julius (Hardison) and gets to work trying to woo Bassett’s Rita with fine food and piercing looks. Murphy seems to have patterned his nosferatu after Gary Oldman’s turn in Coppola’s Dracula, down to the elaborately coifed hair and spectacles, but what worked for one wurdelak won’t necessarily work for another. Murphy’s vampire comes off as Dracula lite, full of pithy quips one moment and cheesy, oft-repeated special effects the next. Bassett, for her part, adds the only real flair to a film that suffers from everything-but-the-kitchen-sink syndrome. Torn between this mysterious stranger and her unresolved feeling towards her partner Justice, she’s the emotional hub of a stunningly unemotional film. Craven does his best to imbue the proceedings with simple terror — the opening shots of Maximillian’s ghost ship cruising unchecked into the Port of Brooklyn are nicely staged, but there’s nothing at all to equal the dreadnaught chills of that one scene for the remainder of the film. Neither all that scary nor all that hilarious, Vampire in Brooklyn falls directly between the two, into the valley of mediocrity.
This article appears in October 27 • 1995 (Cover).