Thomas Ian Griffith:
"Hey, this is John Carpenter film, it rocks."

"You hear a lot about really great directors, that the movie is made in their heads before the camera starts. That's John. I'd do my thing, he'd watch a couple of times and then very specifically set up the camera angles and lights, and we'd do it. He's a man of very few words, but all of them count."
"It reads like a Spaghetti Western. You know, good and evil and the big showdown at the end. But it was a cool take on it, because it got you out of what you expected for vampires--you know, with the elegant dinners and the castles and all that stuff. This is real down and dirty. A real gritty movie."
"Santa Fe was a great place to shoot, New Mexico is beautiful. There's a spirituality there that really fit our picture. And you know, the sky and the mountains and the desert, just the whole look, was a great location to be in."
"People are turned on by vampires. Everyone is drawn into the vampire. Obviously the sexuality, the seductiveness is a huge component of that."

"He's a great Vampire. I think he's one of the best since Christopher Lee." (John Capenter about Thomas at the Special Screening of Vampires 1998)

(...) A few days later, the scene where a number of Team Crow perish is being filmed on a realistic-looking motel set built inside Garson Studios in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Griffith, a veteran of extensive action from such films as KULL THE CONQUERER and EXCESSIVE FORCE remembers his reaction to the carnage. "When you read it on the page, it's completely different than acting it out," he says. "You're just doing it and you're into it. At one point, I stopped and looked around. I thought 'Oh, my God.' There was blood everywhere and mass destruction. It was unbelievable, even though I had been doing it all. You don't think about that stuff when you're acting. You have to step back for a second to see it. This film is really hardcore, but it's put together with real style and in a very cool manner."

While Team Crow suffers in this motel sequence, it was no picnic for the vampire actors who were buried alive for a scene in which Valek and his followers take refuge from the hunters in a dry riverbed. "I wasn't happy that day, I'll tell you that," admits Griffith. "I'm a little claustrophobic, and they told us we'd be buried. We were only down a foot, but you have no idea how heavy a foot of dirt is. When it's up to your neck, you're thinking, 'I can't breathe.' And then they cover your face and are timing the sequence before you can come up. I thought, 'You're Valek. Don't let it bother you.' But I couldn't breathe, and it was a bizarre situation.

"Thank God I'm the master vampire and I got to come up first," Griffith continues. "Everyone else had to wait. When we did it, we did the master shot first and then my close-up coming out of the ground. I didn't have to do it anymore, so I watched them shooting the other vampires. That was a tough day, although I hear it looks great. Troy wasn't happy that day either; he was one of the last people up."

"He's [John Carpenter] such a good director," the actor says. "He doesn't talk a lot. On the set, he'd say, 'Let's have a rehearsal,: and he'd just see what you brought to the table. That's a great way to work, because you can really go for it and try different things. Even though Valek is archetypal in this film and an omnipotent figure, I still had to work on the simple things that draw people in. John's a very specific director. He knows his stuff and calls every last shot. He has a wealth of experience, and that comes across."
Griffith also enjoyed working with the rest of the VAMPIRES ensemble. "James is just a fine actor, and there's some great stuff between our characters," he says. "We hit it off, and he was real open and had strong ideas. He listened to everything I had to say and we came up with some real fun stuff. Across the board, everyone was terrific. Maximillian Schell (as Team Crow's Vatican contact) was a real pro, and Sheryl Lee was great. They really pulled together a fine cast.

For Griffith, the mere subject matter was enough to make the film intriguing. "I'm personally drawn to these films." He says. "I love this stuff, and I've always loved anything to do with vampires. As soon as I heard they were doing this film, I was like, 'Yes, get me in there, please.' It's fun as an actor to get to do something you've enjoyed for a long time. Valek is the ultimate vampire-in fact, he's the first one ever. There's so much freedom in playing Valek because he defines what vampires are. He can do anything, since he's the first.

"Villains are always fun," he continues. "The characters I play in KULL and VAMPIRES are so different. I'm such the leading man that getting these character roles is great. As an actor, I love to mix it up."
Fangoria Magazine, 1998




click on pics to enlarge
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It was Sandy King, Carpenter's wife and the film's producer, who cast Griffith.

"John and I knew we needed someone who could be the next Christopher Lee. He was such a compelling vampire in the 1960s," says King. "Like Chris Lee, Thomas is someone who looks formidable, but is also alluring. There always has to be something alluring about the evil nature of the vampire."

Griffith admits he was a bit nervous once he got the role, because he had to find a way to make Valek credible.

"I was watching an episode of PREDATORS on the Discovery Channel, when I saw a sequence with a cougar stalking a boar," says Griffith. "I knew by the cougar's eyes that it was going to be a vicious kill, yet I couldn't avert my eyes."

"That's what I wanted Valek to do to the audiences."
The Calgary Sun, Oct. 25, 1998
 

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Like many screen vampires before him, he has a way with women. "He gives an interesting bite to [actress] Sheryl Lee - it's below the waist... a lot of girls in the [test] audience started applauding." Carpenter said, laughing.
Chicago Sun-Times, Oct. 29, 1998




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As Woods on-screen nemesis Valek, martial arts actor Thomas Ian Griffith resorted to a tv nature show to give him the needed edge to play his ultimate vampire. "As an actor you always hope you'll find one hook to grab onto to make {the character} work," Griffith remarks. "For me, it wasfinding Valeks's voice, how he moved, and bringing his physicality to life. So I was watching the Discovery Channel one night and they had this series on predators; it was all about cats taking down their prey, as this cougar went after a boar--and they always go for the throat. I mean the act is horrific, but it was the cougar's stillness beforehand that made me say, "That's how Valek is, that's how he's gotta move."

Still, there was no tv show Griffith could use to acclimate himself to the grim realities of getting buried just below the earth's surface for Vampires' intense ressurection visuals. "That was a nightmare day," Griffith recalls. "They're burying me and it's up to my throat--the weight of a foot of dirt is HEAVY and your chest can't expand-- and I'm saying 'Guys, I don't think I can do this.' But you don't want to come up because all the other vampires are being buried at the same time, and you don't want to be the one who sits up because it takes another hour to bury you again. They also put{our heads} in little cardboard boxes, where the flaps of this box cover your mouth and when you put your head down there's this little gasp of air--and that's it. You just hope the dirt doesn't cave in. Then when you have to sit up and you hear your cue, 'Go!,' on the headset, you're saying, 'I'm trying to...,' and there's dirt in your eyes and everything.
"Thank God John shot my close-up and the master shot first, because when I stepped behind the camera and I saw what it looked like, {all you see is} a little red flag behind each actor's head--and when they take the flags away, there's nothing but desert, mountains and sky. And I said to myself, "What a sucker I was! Who's gonna do that?" There was anger that day, and it's all there on the screen."
Bill DeLapp, Syracuse New Times: Film Review




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The tall, athletic, highly attractive vampire masters wore the kind of clothing one would see at an after-hours club. Sexy, suited men; women dressed in gauzy fabrics that add movement when they attack. Thomas Ian Griffith's Valek wore a textured velvet duster length coat that draped sensuously from his 6'5" frame.

"Southwest Gothic is the look of the film. The flavor of the vampires comes from the European Middle Ages around the time of the Crusades," explained producer King. "If you look at the architecture of the Southwest, it harkens back to very old architecture in Italy. You can see the influence of Italy and Spain in the colonization of this area through the gates, the arches, the block houses. It looks like Tuscany. It made it more fun to connect here to the southwest because you can believe that the ancient monks brought a cross here and hid it. You believe the connection to Europe and buy that vampires from the old country found their way here to search through these places."

"Thomas moves like a panther. He exudes a sexuality that can overcome the grave," declared producer King. "We wanted somebody incredibly handsome whom we could decay and would still have charisma. I was sitting in my office when a shadow filled the doorway backlit by the Southern California sunshine. One of the things I look for in casting is how other people react, and when Thomas walked through that door, everybody went, 'Whoa!' Men and women alike. Women, of course, offered to follow him home. Men said, 'God...’
John Carpenter's Vampires, Production notes
 

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To play Crow and Montoya's evil adversary Valek, a vicious 600-year-old European bloodsucker, the filmmakers chose 6-foot, 5-inch Broadway actor Thomas Ian Griffith, who was intrigued by Vampires' unique blending of genres: "It reads like a Spaghetti Western. You know, good and evil and the big showdown at the end. But it was a cool take on it, because it got you out of what you expected for vampires--you know, with the elegant dinners and the castles and all that stuff. This is real down and dirty. A real gritty movie."

To get the film's "gritty" look, the makers of Vampires sought out the perfect backdrop. Shooting in the Southwest allowed Carpenter to combine his two loves: horror movies and Westerns. According to Carpenter, Westerns are "one of the few American inventions. There's jazz, and there's the Western. They're the only classic American invention in terms of story that we have--a canvas on which to paint big stories, big people. ... The Western field is just a great, classic good and evil setting."

With its Spanish Colonial stylings, gothic arches and primitive block houses, New Mexico provided a unique "old world" backdrop--what James Woods calls, "The Wild Bunch meets Dracula."

"The original John Steakley novel was set in Texas," explains Sandy King. "Two reasons made me as a producer want to go (to New Mexico). Number one is a political reason. I have friends that have taken companies into Texas to shoot. One of them is a black producer. They had a lot of problems with racism. I have a crew that comes in with gays, blacks, Asians. I'm not gonna subject them to a lot of bullshit. ... Texas was not big on my list. Texas is very gray. If it suits your film, it's a neat look. I felt we needed a little richness and a little color. I had never been to New Mexico, but I had seen a lot of pictures. We looked at southern New Mexico because it has those cool dunes and that otherworldly (look). But that really wasn't right. Northern New Mexico had a lot of accessible areas that we could shoot in. And (the people) were nice."

Daniel Baldwin even brought his dogs and his motorcycle with him to the state. Though he spent his down time cruising the Turquoise Trail on his Harley, Baldwin admits that the action-packed shoot was a lot of work: "Santa Fe is at a significant elevation. To run around with those big pikes and the guns and the crossbows. Those were steel-chromium crossbows. They were very heavy. I know it doesn't seem like much, but when it's 15 hours a day and you're running around at 9,000 feet, you can't breathe. So I started training after about the first three days. I got so tired that I started getting up at 4:30 in the morning and playing full-court one-on-one basketball with a trainer seven days a week just to get acclimated and be able to do things."

"Santa Fe was a great place to shoot," says Griffith. "New Mexico is beautiful. There's a spirituality there that really fit our picture. And you know, the sky and the mountains and the desert, just the whole look, was a great location to be in."

As long as you're in your coffin by sundown, that is.

The Western setting allowed Carpenter to tackle a traditional scare subject like vampires in a whole new light. "There have always been legends of blood-drinking humans," explains Carpenter like a grim professor. "This probably goes back to when we were all sitting around the campfire as a tribe. The medicine man said, 'The evil is out there in the dark someplace. He's going to come and get you.' But some suspect the evil is maybe right here in our own hearts. And we might be like those wild creatures out there: we might eat flesh; we might drink blood. So legends arise out of this. Look at the werewolf--man turns into beast." But, adds Carpenter, "There's a sexual element added to vampires, probably with Dracula, with the romance gothic novels."

King agrees: "There are certain themes that are going to be classic throughout time. No one's really ever going to get tired of vampires. Because they're sex. Who gets tired of sex?"

Griffith, with fangs planted firmly in place and a velvet duster-length coat to enhance his already imposing frame, had no problem getting into his seductive character. "People are turned on by vampires. Everyone is drawn into the vampire. Obviously the sexuality, the seductiveness is a huge component of that."

"When you're dealing with sex and violence," concludes Carpenter, "you're dealing with two very basic human drives."
Devin D. O'Leary, weekly alibi, 1998

 

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