A vampire alone is a vampire doomed.
For four solid decades -- from his debut, 1972's The Last House on the Left, to his unintended swan song, 2011's Scream 4 -- director Wes Craven worked steadily in the horror field. In that time, he turned out the occasional dud, but he was able to put his personal stamp on the films he wrote, like 1977's The Hills Have Eyes, 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street, and 1991's The People Under the Stairs. One that he didn't was 1995's Vampire in Brooklyn, the film that made it possible for the following year's Scream to be seen as a comeback since he definitely needed to come back from its failure with the critics and at the box office.
A project initiated by star Eddie Murphy, who not only produced but also co-wrote the story, Vampire in Brooklyn is an uneven blend of horror and comedy about an age-old vampire named Maximillian from an uncharted Caribbean island who comes to Brooklyn to find a half-vampire to make his bride after the rest of his kind is wiped out by vampire hunters. (So it's like Coming to America, only instead of being royalty, Murphy is an immortal bloodsucker.) His soulmate: police detective Rita Veder (Angela Bassett, previously a U.S. Attorney in John Landis's Innocent Blood), who's long been plagued by disturbing nightmares and is reeling from the recent loss of her mother, a "pioneer of Caribbean supernatural studies" according to a helpfully worded newspaper headline, which also reveals that she died in an asylum. (I suppose getting knocked up by a vampire will do that to a person.) His helper: street hustler Julius Jones (Kadeem Hardison, better known as Dwayne Wayne from A Different World), whose body rapidly putrefies after Max makes him his ghoul. (Sadly, this is nowhere near as amusing as it is in An American Werewolf in London.) And his romantic rival: Rita's partner, Justice, (Allen Payne), who turns to specialist Dr. Zeko (Zakes Mokae, the main villain in Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow) for help when he gets hip to the fact that the mortal danger she's in is supernatural in origin. Oh, yes. And Joanna Cassidy shows up for a few scenes as their captain, who gets to express her concern over Rita's mental state and then put her on suspension -- all the better for Maximillian to step in and make his move.
Like Coming to America before it (and The Nutty Professor and Norbit after it), Vampire in Brooklyn allows Murphy to show off his ability to play multiple characters if you bury him under enough makeup. In this case, though, it's actually somewhat warranted since Maximillian uses his vampire powers to impersonate two other people -- a tubby preacher and a wiry mafioso. In the home stretch, Murphy also gets to pile on the latex appliances as his character takes on a more monstrous appearance, but we're denied a look at his transformation from wolf to human early on since we only see his shadow change. I'm sure that was much more economical, but it's still disappointing, which also sums up the film in general. It's far from Craven's worst (or Murphy's, for that matter), but coming after the one-two punch of The People Under the Stairs and Wes Craven's New Nightmare -- along with his Life Career Award form the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films -- it was reasonable to expect better from him. Happily, he didn't keep the horror faithful waiting very long.