'Blade' is still a blast after all these years

Wesley Snipes as Blade

I watched the original Blade again for perhaps the first time since I first saw it in theaters. It was part of a very cool Afro Futurist film festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music --so the crowd was largely there for ironic reasons.

I still remember the first time I saw this B-movie. It was a late night show with a predominately black audience that was interacting loudly with everything that was taking place on screen.

It was the perfect way to see this movie, which is wildly entertaining at times, tiresome at other moments and ultimately something of a throwback to the blaxploitation era.

Blade arrived at an interesting turning point in Wesley Snipes' career. He'd done a few action films at this point but was still poised to be another Denzel Washington.

For better or worse he would forever be perceived as an action star after this film became a surprise hit -- and it's easy to see why.

Snipes and the film don't get enough credit for bringing about a resurgence of darker themed superhero movies before the Marvel boom and the Christopher Nolan series of Batman films. The effects don't hold up at all and the middle section really drags, but there is quite a lot of kinetic action scenes to enjoy here. And there's also Stephen Dorff as the scenery-chewing villain to boot.

Also sidebar -- what's the deal with Stephen Dorff? Why and how is he a star? He's like a poor man's Christian Slater here, but he still works as a petulant vampire who wants to "rule" the humans.

When the action is humming Blade can be a lot of fun, and it's techno drenched atmospherics are like a trip down the late-'90s memory lane. All the cliches of the era are here -- the early, imperfect CGI, the hyperkinetic editing and nearly incomprehensible plot are all hallmarks of the decade.

Another added bonus is the performance of Kris Kristofferson, one of the most underrated actors of the 1970s, who plays the kind of role here that Jeff Bridges would probably perform in his sleep today.

I never saw Blade II, which was better reviewed, or the third film, which was apparently yet another example of Hollywood trying for the umpteenth time to make Ryan Reynolds relevant.

Nineties nostalgia has always gotten a bit tiresome to me -- but for one night I had a blast watching this violent, bloody and just barely ahead of its times vampire movie.