Trivia / John Carpenter's Vampires

• Approval of God: John Steakley, the original author of the book it’s based on, reportedly liked the movie despite the plot being different from his original vision.
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • John Carpenter signed on to the movie as it was a chance for him to direct a horror film that had the look and feel of a western.
  • James Woods signed on because he'd never been offered a horror film before.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $20 Million. Box Office, $20.3 Million. Funny enough this was still Carpenter's most financially successful film in The '90s.
• Completely Different Title: Became Vampire's Final Holy War in Japan.
• Creator Backlash:
  • According to Starlog magazine, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa was unhappy with his role in the film. He tried speaking to John Carpenter several times about his character's back story and motivation, but Carpenter rebuffed him. This left Tagawa feeling like he was little more than a glorified stuntman.
  • Jon Bon Jovi was very embarrassed with how Vampires Los Muertos turned out and never misses out on a chance to dunk on the film. When a fan jokingly asked for his money back, Jon responded, "Yes, please. Frankly, I'd like my time back."
  "Did you know we had a ten million dollar budget? Not that you saw any of it on the screen."
• Creator Couple: John Carpenter's wife Sandy King was producer on the film.
• Creator Recovery: John Carpenter had been considering quitting filmmaking after a string of flops in the 90s, but this persuaded him to keep going. Despite the film's divisive reception, he had a great time working on it.
• Deleted Scenes: While some shots of gore had to be cut to avoid an NC-17 rating, the only full scene that had to be cut for the rating was one of the vampires slaughtering a pack of coyotes.
• Dueling Works: With Blade, both vampire films with an action horror leaning, focusing on vampire hunters and featuring a female character slowly turning into a vampire throughout. Tim Guinea appears in both as well. Blade easily won out in terms of critical and commercial success.
• Executive Meddling: The studio slashed the budget and the shooting schedule. While John Carpenter's background in low-budget filmmaking meant this wasn't a big problem, Carpenter cited this as the reason film deviated so much from the novel.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: John Carpenter was able to work with the notoriously difficult James Woods by allowing him to improvise a variation of every scene, with a large amount of what he came up with left in the finished film.
• Star-Derailing Role: James Woods was a respected actor with Academy Award nominations for Salvador and Ghosts of Mississippi before this film underperformed. While his live-action career fizzled out, he remained afloat with voice work in animation for several years before being saddled with multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Russel Mulcahy was the studio's first choice as director before settling with John Carpenter. Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi were also considered for the directors chair.
  • Bruce Campbell, Clint Eastwood, R. Lee Ermey, Danny Glover, Tommy Lee Jones, Al Pacino, Bill Paxton, Joe Pesci, and Kurt Russell were also considered for the part of Jack Crow.
  • Alec Baldwin was to play Montoya, but quickly dropped out. His brother Daniel Baldwin replaced him out of recommendation from Alec himself.
  • Back when Russell Mulcahy was attached to direct, one possible idea was that the film would take place in a distant future, where a decent amount of the human population has been turned into vampires, and vampire hunters are as abundant as police officers. The vampire hunters would've used futuristic high-tech gadgets and equipment to hunt down the vampires, who were plotting to take over the world by transforming the Pope into one of them. Dolph Lundgren was slated to play Jack Crow while Willem Dafoe was being eyed to play Valek. When John Carpenter came on board and James Woods was cast as Jack Crow, Dolph Lundgren was offered Valek instead but turned it down.

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