Blade II

Watched June 8, 2016

2003
Starring: Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Ron Perlman, Leonor Varela

Unlike the vague memories I had of Blade, I had never seen this one before. And I didn't realize that Guillermo Del Toro was the director until the end credits, but that makes sense why it was a better movie than I expected.

Blade (Wesley Snipes) is still killing vampires. Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) was captured, tortured, not killed and put in a blood tank for years by the vampires. In the meantime, Blade hired Scud (Norman Reedus) as his vampire hunting helper. They eventually find Whistler but the two vampires break into Blade's compound. It turns out they want to work with Blade to fight a new breed of super vampires that feeds on both humans and vampires. Then it turns both into super vampires or "suck heads." Blade is always on board for killing vampires of any kind, even though he is wary of working with vampires so he takes a lot of extra weapons as a precaution.

The vampires have targeted the super vampires and assembled their own posse of fighters.
Reinhardt (Ron Perlman) is somewhat of the leader of the vampire fighters and he doesn't like the idea of working with Blade. The vampire posse all have silly nicknames: Chupa, Snowman, Verlaine, the Priest, etc.

First the blood buddies and Blade go to a vampire rave where the super vampires are suspected to be. It turns into a big fight, the super vampires can't be killed by silver but sunlight or UV light works. Blade finds the main super vampire and they fight on a catwalk until the blackout curtains covering the windows start to show some sunlight. Verlaine's boyfriend is bit by a super vampire but hides it. One of the other vampire fighter is killed and they blame the deaths on Blade. The group does find the entrance to the super vampire lair and a vamp is stuck in the door but he is dying. The super vampires have to eat so frequently if they don't their bodies start to eat themselves.

They do an autopsy on the now dead super vampire and find out it has a bone heart, which may be a secret in trying to kill them. The group makes some UV bombs and head to the lair to kill the super vampires. The bitten vampire in the posse tries to eat his girlfriend, Verlaine so she burns them both in the sun. Reinhardt manages to separate himself and the Nyssa (Leonor Varela) from the group, intending for the super vampires to kill Blade. Blade manages to get all the UV bombs to go off killing all the super vampires that were attacking them but almost killing Reinhardt and Nyssa at the same time.

Blade lets Nyssa drink from him so she can survive but then the vampire cops show up and basically arrest them. Scud is a familiar so he betrays Blade, but Blade knew not to trust him all along so he blows up Scud. Reinhardt beats up Whistler. Nyssa learns that her mega old vampire dad is the one who created the super vampires in the first place. They see the experiment lab with a bunch of vampire fetuses.

The first super vampire is his son, Nyssa's brother.  Blade is captured by the vampires and tied to a table, but Whistler manages to free himself then free Blade. Blade is weak but he jumps into a blood pool and comes out fighting. Blade cuts Reinhardt in half. Nyssa's super vampire brother finds his dad, bites him and kills him, then he bites Nyssa. Blade stabs the super vampire and uses an UV light to kill him. Nyssa doesn't want to die, but know she is about to turn into a super vampire. She asks Blade to take her into the sunrise to die. Blade and Whistler live to fight another day.

There are some crazy fun special effects in this one. When the super vampire die they burn up in an insane way. The super vampires also have crazy mouths that open down the the throat.  Pretty solid sequel, but then again Guillermo Del Toro knows how to do horror. With the Nyssa character they try again trying for a slight romantic subplot with Blade, but he is a robot so that's pointless.