Blade

Stephen Norrington’s film spends its best scene at the very start. The blood shower was staged in a derelict meatpacking plant rigged like a working sprinkler system; the liquid was thick corn syrup, the shoot took three days, and extras sat in it between takes for continuity. Some walked off after the first take. Nothing that follows matches it. The middle is handed over to vampire hierarchy, blood disease and serum, so the horror here sits closer to pathology than to gothic romance. The ending is not the one that was designed. In the first cut Deacon Frost became La Magra, a swirling mass of blood; test audiences rejected it, the section was thrown out, Wesley Snipes and Stephen Dorff were called back, and a sword duel was shot in its place. Release slipped by months. Snipes was not faking the fights: a fifth dan black belt in Shotokan karate who has also trained capoeira and hapkido. Released with an R rating in August 1998, it took 131 million dollars worldwide and became Marvel’s first commercial hit, two years before X-Men. A good fit if you accept that the opening is the peak and the middle exists to explain vampire biology. Not for anyone expecting the finale to top it, since that duel was a rescue job added afterwards.