Caleb Colton: I sure haven’t met any girls like you.
Mae: No. No, you sure haven’t met any girls like me…

Are you a fan of Katherine Bigelow’s criminally underrated Southern vampire opus, Near Dark (1987)?*  Having a shitty Monday after the holiday weekend? Well, if you have a minute and a half to spare, this’ll turn your mood around fast if given a watch. Even if you felt kind of lukewarm about the movie, this is one of the greatest trailers I’ve ever seen, period. The editing is flawless, and even though I’ve watched it probably hundreds of times since Mr. Horror Boom bought me the Special Edition 2-Disc Boxed set, I never get sick of it. I also end up watching at least part of the movie again if I happen to have time at that moment; it’s that good.

By the way, the box set is amazing. It shows each character with a quote from them, such as Lance Henrickson’s Jesse Hooker: “I fought for the South. We lost.”  There’s a featurette–actually, it’s over an hour-long, so maybe more like a feature– on there that includes interviews with all the main cast except for Jenny Wright (Mia) and the kid. Most are stories from Bill Paxton (Severin),  Henrickson (Jesse), Adrian Pasdar (Caleb —the screenwriters had a talent for picking awesome character names),  and Jenette Goldstein (Diamondback).  Henrickson and Goldstein invented great back-stories for their characters, and share them. Paxton tells an entertaining story about the centerpiece of the movie set in the dive bar where the vampires toy with all the patrons and then kill them viciously (the scene title on the menu is called “Shitkicker Slaughterhouse”).

Turns out Paxton had a migraine so bad, he literally couldn’t get out of bed to film the scene. When he called in to tell them, the production sent a doctor around to inject him with a “B-12 shot” that we can assume had a little more than B-12 in it, since the second it kicked in, Paxton was suddenly feeling no pain and in a really great mood. Fortunately, it actually enhanced his acting performance (“it’s finger-lickin’ gooood“) and he even ad-libbed a little.

Smokin’ in more way than one.

There’s also a .pdf file on the disc that contains the entire screenplay, plus a ton of publicity pics, most of the vampires, all in character and looking seriously bad-ass.

If you’re a fan of Near Dark, it’s well worth the money to pick up. Plus, you can watch the above trailer over and over!

Pray for daylight.

*They better not try to remake this one.