Before vampires got popular again by being messily coiffed love interests for underwhelming high school girls, Hollywood had them rule a murky netherworld of organized crime, murder and corruption. In Blade II — a rare case of a sequel surpassing the original, thanks to director Guillermo del Toro — Blade (Wesley Snipes), our half-vampire, half-human superhero from the Marvelverse, must lead an elite team of vampire hunters (who are themselves vampires) against an evolved species of ferocious bloodsuckers called the Reapers. This R-rated action-thriller preceded a tamer run of PG-13 Marvel films with its frantic bouts of anime-inspired combat and buckets of gore, made all the more explicit by our vampire slayer’s ultraviolent arsenal of machine guns, explosives and, you know, blades.
