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Vamping it up

January 23, 2004

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Underworld's Kate Beckinsale looks for the pigeon that "decorated" her leathers.

The vampire/werewolf movie is back from the dead. Phillip McCarthy sinks his teeth into Underworld.

Director: Len Wiseman
Stars: Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Bill Nighy
Rated MA
Screening Now

Something sad has happened to vampires and werewolves since the heyday of Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee.

Just look at Wesley Snipes in Blade or Kate Beckinsale in Underworld. The modern creature of the night seems to work out like crazy with a personal trainer, has a stylist to put together a sexy gothic wardrobe, and has an orthodontist to laminate unsightly fangs.

Since blood-to-blood contact is a medical no-no in virally challenged times, unprotected neck piercing and general mauling has given way to Hong Kong-inspired, slo-mo fight choreography and semi-automatics that can blow away the living and the undead. It's The Howling-meets-weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, that's not the spin people such as Underworld director Len Wiseman like to put on it. To him, it's bringing a creaky genre into the 21st century.

"This actually started out as a werewolf movie and I wasn't too thrilled when it first came up," he says. "It was my first film and I didn't want to make one of those films where the sheriff investigates some mysterious killings on the forest: 'Is it a wild dog or something much worse?'

"It just seemed like the traditional approach was a bit of a cliche and that it would be cool to do something with a contemporary vibe."

So Wiseman combined the vampire and werewolf movie traditions, mixed in modern action in the identifiable style of The Matrix and added a dash of Romeo and Juliet.

The back story is that vampires and werewolves used to be allies but a centuries-old feud has left them at each other's, um, throats. It's a cold war that might be about to turn hot because the werewolves have developed some serious genetics weapons, but they need to put the bite on a human with the right corpuscles and, apparently, a really hot bod: Scott Speedman's Michael.

Fortunately, Beckinsale, as the conflicted vampire Selene, takes him under her vampire wing. In her shiny black catsuit, she looks like she attended the same How to Save Your Man classes as Carrie-Anne Moss's Trinity in The Matrix. Selene and Michael do, of course, fall for each other, providing a love-will-find-a-way subplot and a few moments of potential tragedy during the climax.

Wiseman shot the film in Budapest, which is not a million miles from Transylvania. The city's baroque air helped create the desired aesthetic, but that wasn't what led the Underworld crew to Hungary. It's just they could film the movie there for $US23 million ($30 million) rather than $US60 million in the US or western Europe.

"But it worked because I wanted the characters and the settings to have an old-world feel to it to contrast to the really slick weaponry, the fast cars and all the other modern gadgets that say that it is a modern action film," says Wiseman.

The vampires' lair is like Dracula's castle refurbished as a particularly chic hotel: lots of candlelight, billowing curtains, smooth, angular surfaces and fun-looking, red-hued cocktails. The werewolves, on the other hand, seem to spend a lot of time in the dilapidated subway that provides the cover for their lab.

"I was out to make a living, breathing graphic novel," says Wiseman. "I really wanted it to feel like a comic book, which is why I had these very detailed sketches that, happily, Scott and Kate saw and got hooked.

"That's why it also has this very blue-tinted colour palette. I had this idea of the audience sitting down and, with the exception of actually turning the pages, basically have the experience of watching a comic book play out."

Beckinsale, 30, falls for Speedman, 28, on-screen, but off-screen the 30-year-old director turned out to be the lucky man. After the movie was completed, the London-based Beckinsale moved to Hollywood, and she and Wiseman are now engaged.

Wiseman's background was in music videos - he shot bands ranging from Megadeth to En Vogue - but he did a movie apprenticeship of sorts working in the prop departments of Stargate and Independence Day. He also worked on Men in Black. The success of those films must have rubbed off because Underworld virtually made back its budget in its first weekend in the US when it snagged top spot and box office just shy of $US22 million.

Naturally, there is now talk of a sequel, which will probably be more of a prequel. Wiseman and his collaborators conceptualised a story of an battle between the vampires and werewolves that led to their current stand-off.

"We weren't able to get as much of it in the script as possible," says Wiseman.

"Back in the Dark Ages, we suggest, vampires would look out for the werewolves at night-time, when they were a bit feral, and the werewolves would keep an eye on the vampires during the daytime, when they were susceptible to light.

"But they had this falling-out and a big battle, and that's what we want to get into in the next one."

A bit like Middle-Earth, then - minus rings, plus fangs.

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