"What you people want?” “Just a couple more minutes of your time, about the same duration as the rest of your life.” The bar scene in Kathryn Bigelow’s cult 1987 neo-Western vampire classic, Near Dark, is one of horror’s most iconic sequences. It marks a point where brooding atmosphere explodes into brutal violence, and it does so with consummate style. Bill Paxton’s psychotic Severen exudes an air of deranged menace, but when he slices the bartender’s throat with a razor-edged spur, he looks cool doing it.
“Near Dark and The Lost Boys both came out in the same year, which is crazy,” says Creeper frontman Will Gould, whose band sank their teeth into a rich vein of vampire mythology on Sanguivore, Metal Hammer’s 2023 album of the year and a fully fledged concept album that sucked in all the right ways.
