Before 9-1-1, where Angela Bassett plays LAPD Sergeant Athena Grant-Nash, she had already dipped her toes into the world of law enforcement in a very different way. AlongsideEddie Murphy, Bassett appeared in the 1995 comedy horror movieVampire in Brooklyn, directed by thelegendary horror guruWes Craven.Murphy starred as the suave vampire, Maximillian, who starts searching around Brooklyn for his last remaining descendant. For curious fans of Murphy and Bassett, the movie will soon be available to see absolutely free of charge via Pluto TV, beginning at the start of October.
Bassett stars in the movie as Detective Rita Veder, a New York cop who gets unwittingly swept up in Maximillian’s undead Ancestry.com attempt. Being the classy star that she is, though, as Rita, Bassett brings her signature strength and grace to the role, managing to balance her character’s toughness as a cop with the vulnerability of someone discovering her own mysterious past in the course of the film. The film may not have been a box office hit, but since its release, it has gained quite the dedicated following and now rightfully bears the title of a cult classic.About the movie, Murphy said:
“I’ve always wanted to do something where I was the villain in the movie. I love horror pictures and I was a big fan of Wes Craven. This movie started out as something small, this was a movie my company was just going to produce and the screenplay came together so well that I thought it will be a fun role to play. Because I got to do something kind of scary and had a safety net because the vampire can turn into other peoples. I get to be funny when I’m the preacher and I get to be funny when I’m the Italian guy. And the vampire is pretty straight and I got all these funny stuff happening around me. I felt it was a unique piece to do.
Is ‘Vampire in Brooklyn’ Worth Seeing?
On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a rating of 11%. Doesn’t sound great, does it? Well, in recent years, there’s been a shift in the perception of the movie.Since its release, the movie has become a cult classic. For the film’s 25th anniversary,Rotten Tomatoesreleased a podcast titled “Rotten Tomatoes score is wrong aboutVampire in Brooklyn” that attempted to justify why the movie should have received a higher score while calling it a “cult classic” especially for the “under-appreciated sense of the bizarre, a killer score, and some serious chemistry between Murphy and Angela Bassett”. They also said: “Look closely, and there are glimmers of Craven’s keen sense of the horror-comedy mix, and Murphy’s natural-born charisma.”
