Vampire in Brooklyn (1995)
* (out of 4)
They say sometimes great artists must hit an ultimate low before they can fully bounce back and that has never been more true for both director Wes Craven and star Eddie Murphy. In the film Murphy plays Maximillian, a Caribbean vampire who comes to Brooklyn in search of a woman to carry on his race. He finds the beautiful Rita (Angela Bassett) but his plan isn't going to be as simple as he thought. It's worth noting that Craven's next film was SCREAM and Murphy followed this up with THE NUTTY PROFESSOR so it's easy to see that both of them were just at the bottom of their careers here. The shocking thing revisiting this film for the first time since it was released is that it's actually gotten much, much worse. For the life of me I can't understand what the two were trying to do here but I'm guessing they wanted to take both of what they were great at and put it together but the end result is just a complete disaster. The comedy is so forced and uneven that it's never once funny. The horror elements are just so silly that they're never scary and when the gore does happen it just seems out of place. The entire film has a very ugly pacing and a lot of the blame has to go to Craven for not pulling the picture together but I'd still place more blame on Murphy, the producers, for hiring him. I'm not sure if Murphy and John Landis had a falling out on BEVERLY HILLS COP III but it's clear that he would have been much better with the (bad) material. The performances are all pretty weak with Murphy leading the way in an embarrassing piece of work. Allen Payne is wasted in his supporting role and Kadeem Hardison is just so in-your-face that the entire act just falls apart. VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN is a perfect example of something that has talent but it just never came together for anything.
