Deyo of the Dead
May 27, 2006 admin 0 Comments
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It’s vampire-hunting season for Carey-Hiroyuki [their spelling, not mine] Tagawa. Previously known as Shang Tsung, the evil sorceror of Mortal Kombat, in Vampires the actor plays Deyo – a man who receives a sharp thrill from battering bloodsuckers. Tagawa recalls how he seized the opportunity to work alongside director John Carpenter. “John Carpenter is a very street savvy guy because he grew up in Chicago,” laughs Tagawa, “and we all know that Chicagoans tend to be a little bit more realistic than the people who live in fantasy-oriented LA because they’re very grounded and immersed in the intensity of daily life. He clearly brings that reality to this film. I mean, look at the film’s star, James Woods, an actor who is well known for his realistic performances in such films as The Onion Field. Whenever John makes a movie, the actors are merely a part of ‘John Carpenter’s movie’, but this time James Woods brings an additional intensity to an already high-powered story.”
Tagawa believes that such intensity reverberates throughout the film – especially during a scene where the team captures and kills a female vampire (Danielle Burgio) in an abandoned farmhouse. “Danielle is really amazing because she really brings an electric energy to the scene. And unless you capture that energy, which is especially important since the sequence takes place early in the film, the whole project could potentially fall apart. However, this scene, which involves the team’s attempts to drag the girl out into the sunlight, really helps to set the tone of the film because it highlights their unbreakable determination to stamp out the evil.”
When it comes to combating the undead, the team don special protective gear, which includes guns, crossbows, miniature wooden stakes and special protective glasses which prevent blood from getting into the eyes. Does the apparent realism make Tagawa more prone to believe in the existence of the undead and other strange phenomena? “Obviously, I’ve never encountered any vampires in the Hollywood sense, but when you hear about these strange cults and other mysterious things, the whole idea doesn’t necessarily seem so fantastic. We appear to be at a point in history when the average person is subjected to so much chaos that more and more cults are springing up all over the place. People stop believing in reality and those things that they thought were real. Back in the ’60s the Charles Manson cult shocked a lot of people, but today that type of thing is taking place more often than we realize.”