BLADE takes cues from so many genres and styles that even at 120 minutes, it’s hard to catch your breath. There’s no doubt the makers of BLADE have been watching a lot of movies lately. It has enough style to fill 2 Hong Kong movies (not to mention the furious opening and closing that are standard in that genre), enough blood to satisfy most horror fans and just enough bad comic book melodrama and dialogue to feed those fans. Did I forget to mention Blaxploitation? Well, there’s plenty of that, too (“Muthafucka, are you outcha fuckin’ mind”).

Just in case you don’t know, BLADE is the latest in a long line of comic book adaptations and has the distinct honor of being the bloodiest one I can think of. You see, Blade (Wesley Snipes — who else?) was born to a woman that was bitten by a vampire shortly before going into labor. So what do you think happened to our hero? That’s right, half-human, half-vampire. Which means he has all the strength and thirst of a vampire, without all of their weaknesses (i.e. he can walk in the sun).

The story is your typical black-vampire-vs-pasty-white-bread-Euro-trash-vampire-movie (Udo Kier of ANDY WARHOL’S DRACULA and AW’S FRANKENSTEIN plays the vampire “president”), with lots of elaborate fight scenes thrown in for good measure. Of course, the evil white vampires have some bad things up their sleeves and they need our hero to help them bring back their “Blood God” (in a very obvious rip-off of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK).

BLADE takes itself a little too seriously at times and takes a turn toward the heavy-handed during the middle of the film. That aside, the action scenes are glorious and the movie is just gorgeous to look at and listen to (techno mixed with a thick Carpenteresque synth score). Also, some of the liberties that they have taken with the vampire mythos are a bit silly. Did you know you can cure the recently-bitten by injecting them with garlic juice or that you can make a nice “vampire mace” with the same juice? Neither did I, but you know what, it is based on a comic book, so who cares? The bottom line is that BLADE’s a good time at the movies and a lot better than SPAWN, STEELE and especially BATMAN & ROBIN — and none of them had Traci Lords!