donancricchiasaverio
This movie is not a vampire movie. It's a movie about human behavior, religious hypocrisy, animal behavior, social issues, and difficult choices. I don't feel it will translate well to today's expectations. This is one of my favorite movies.
ggspot81
Omg,I remember seeing it in the movie Theater and walking out of it cuz it was so bad.
Wuchak
Released in 1995 and directed by Wes Craven, "Vampire in Brooklyn" stars Eddie Murphy as a Caribbean vampire who travels to Brooklyn seeking the daughter (Angela Bassett) of a vampire he once knew in order to keep his vampire line continuing. Allen Payne plays her detective partner and wannabe beau while Kadeem Hardison plays a streetwise dude whom the vampire enlists in his services. John Witherspoon and Zakes Mokae are also on hand.I can understand why this movie bombed at the box office seeing as how the main cast is all black and this would limit its appeal, but I can't figure out why it has such a low rating since Murphy is commanding in the titular role and the movie hits all the marks of an entertaining blockbuster horror flick. Furthermore, the two main protagonists (Bassett and Payne) are great and their characters have a compelling romantic thread, not to mention Hardison is amusingly effective as the vampire's ghoul; Witherspoon is also notable.Some people complain about the mixed tone, but the mixture of serious horror with comedy was done in 1990's "Arachnophobia" and it was a minor hit. It's a difficult thing to pull off but "Vampire in Brooklyn" does so absolutely convincingly. Yet the producers of "Vampire in Brooklyn" – e.g. Eddie Murphy – decided to go the extreme R-rated route with an overabundance of foul language. That, plus the primarily black cast, seriously limited the film's appeal. If you can handle the foul language, however, there's a lot to appreciate here, as noted above. Murphy is excellent in three different roles, as usual; and Payne is outstanding as the male protagonist, successfully engaging the viewer.The film runs 100 minutes and was shot in Brooklyn.GRADE: B
Michael_Elliott
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.
AD
