Near Dark

Our tribute episode to the late, great Bill Paxton, who puts a chilling yet lovable turn on the classic vampire-biker-western genre.

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Near Dark (1987)

Episode 73, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys in a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, Craig, we lost another hero last week. Bill Paxton, one of our, uh, favorite actors, died pretty suddenly. I think he was 61 years old. Not very old, but had some complications from, I believe it was a heart surgery. And, um, passed away.

Big, big surprise for all of us.

Craig: Yeah, it was a shock, and a sad one too, because I think that he had a lot of life left in him. I know he was, you know, currently working on some TV projects, and he was just a great actor, and, yeah. You know, of course, we never know these people personally, but everything that I had seen of him, he seemed just like a really stand up guy.

Um, and it was a shock, and a sad one.

Todd: Yeah, it’s funny how you get these connections to people who you don’t really know. But you kind of feel like you know them, right? Through their characters, you just see them all the time. It’s like an old friend, and so it always feels bad when you have somebody from, like, one of your favorite movies.

I know, you know, for me, Aliens was when I was probably first introduced to him. Yeah. And I just loved that movie, and I loved his character in that movie, or, or loved to hate his character in that movie, maybe is the better way of putting it. And so we decided, uh, that we would pay some tribute to Bill by doing one of his horror films, and this would be Near Dark.

Near Dark came out in 1987, and it actually has quite a bit of connection to that Aliens movie I was, I was mentioning earlier. He himself, of course, starred, uh, was one of the main stars in Aliens. He is one of the stars in this film, along with a couple others. Lance Hendrickson, uh, plays a character, Jesse, in this film.

He played Bishop, of course, in, in Aliens, the android. And, uh, Jeanette Goldstein, who, uh, Plays like a hispanic What’s her name? Yeah, what’s

Craig: her name in aliens? I I don’t remember what her name is in aliens, but she’s she’s pretty badass She’s this really tough character. I want to say Marquez. Maybe

Todd: yeah, it’s like something like

Craig: that

Todd: Yeah,

Craig: and, and she’s fantastic.

Uh, she, uh, was in that. I, I also always remember her, um, from Titanic. She played, uh, a really touching character in Titanic. She was an Irish immigrant mother who ends up, um, kind of having to put her children to bed as, uh, the, the ship goes down. Yeah, all three of these folks from Aliens. I guess what had happened was James Cameron, the director of Aliens, knew, uh, Catherine Bigelow, who is the director of this film.

Um, and in fact, they were later married for a while. They’re not married anymore, I don’t believe. James

Todd: Cameron doesn’t stay married for long.

Craig: Right, right. Um, and I guess that they, that, um, Aliens had wrapped, and she was going to be doing this project. And Cameron said to her, you know, I’ve got this great cast assembled.

Why don’t you just, uh, make use of them? And so she did. They were also interested in casting Michael Bean, Michael Bein, I’m not sure what his name is, but, um, also from Aliens, but, uh, he wasn’t quite satisfied with the script. But we still got, um, Lance Henrickson, Bill Paxton, and Jeanette Goldstein, and all three of them, Uh, really great actors and and excellent range.

I mean, that’s one of the things that I like so much about Bill Paxton is that he had such versatility as an actor. You know, he could be funny. Um, he could be really charming and endearing. Um, and he could also be, you know, pretty scary and intimidating. And I think that he really kind of displays all of that.

You know, arguably he is One of the central villains of this movie, but at the same time he’s also really charismatic. I mean, there’s just something about him. That’s sexy and and And it works. He’s great in this movie. He’s in fact, I would say probably my favorite part of this movie

Todd: Yeah, he can he could turn on the charm and be smiling and then he just gets those wild eyes that you’re like Oh my gosh, this man is unhinged And at the same time, he gets an opportunity in this movie to play, you know, the ...