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PREMISE: |
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 A
group of U.S. soldiers are attacked by vampires in the South
American jungle. The deforestation of the rainforest has
destroyed the habitat of the vampires' only natural
predators. With nothing to stand in their way, the vampires
are spreading out to the surrounding villages and
beyond...and their hunger is unstoppable. Now, Captain
"Hawk" Hawkins (Van Dien) has to hunt down and stop his best
friend, a highly trained special forces soldier who has
become a deadly vampire. Colonel Weaver is the God-Mother of
Hawk's ex-wife Laurie and Hawk's Commanding Officer. She's
also a mentor and friend. |
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Deep
in the rainforest of a South American country, an elite team
of US Army Rangers is on patrol. The team is led by Cap. Tom
“Hawk” Hawkins, who is joking with his Sergeant and best
friend, Grieves, reminding him how he saved his life in
recent combat in Afghanistan. Suddenly, the team is halted
by the lead scout, Sergeant Juarez. They have come upon the
ruins of an old building deep in the Forest, and there are
bodies of |
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local villagers
scattered around. As the team enters the ruins, they examine the bodies,
which all have gaping wounds on their throats, and Sgt. Juarez tells
Hawk, “Sir, these are bite marks!” Suddenly a team member is attacked
from behind by a man who has jumped down from the ruined walls of the
building, who rips and tears at his throat. As blood sprays from the
dying man’s body, Hawk, Juarez and Grieves are also attacked and blast
away with their assault rifles at each and every one of the human
creatures that keep dropping from the walls. The creatures fall, and
Hawk and Grieves force their way out into the open courtyard, where the
rest of the team are being attacked and valiantly defend themselves. But
as each creature is shot, amazingly they slowly arise and start to
attack again. Hawk sees that one was successfully felled by a tree
branch through the heart, and he shouts’ to his team, “Use tree branches
to stab them in their hearts!” Gomez and Grieves can’t believe the
order, but they reach for the broken branches that litter the ground and
begin to stab away at the attacking men. They kill them, then stand
panting, out of breath as they ask each other, “Are these really
Vampires? How can they attack during the day? What the hell is going
on?” |
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Six months
later at Fort in San Diego, Captain Hawk meets with his superior
officer, Colonel Jessica Weaver. “Those men who attacked your squad
outside Rio Gallegos….” She says. “The vampires…” asks Hawk. “I though
our psych staff did a better job of convincing you that they weren’t
…vampires” Colonel Weaver finishes, slightly exasperated. “Well, call
them what you want,” retorts Hawk, “they drank blood, wouldn’t die when
you shot ‘em, and it took shoving a wooden stake through their hearts to
kill them.” “Could’ve been lawyers,” says Colonel Weaver, half-amused,
who seems to doubt Hawks’ word. “There’ve been other reports, farther
out the Mojado,” She continues. She tells him that the provisional
government that runs the country, which tried to throw them out after
they had seemingly solved their problems, has changed their minds.
“They’ve been a lot more friendly the last six months. After your squad
was attacked, they realized that they could use all the help they could
get”, says Weaver. “So we’re going back in,” replies Hawk. “Already
have”, says Weaver, “we sent Grieves down there to get a feel for what
was going on. Farmers have been making noises about villages being
raided, but radio contact’s spotty.” “Where’s his squad located? “asks
Hawk. “About 30 klicks outside Agua Caliente, near the river,” says
Weaver, showing him the location on the map. Hawk is surprised that they
can make radio contact at all, since the jungle canopy is very dense
triple canopy. “We got a report of a village north of there being
attacked; they’re like a roving pack of dogs,” says Weaver. “Anyway, if
Grieves and his men stay on course, they’ll bypass the village
entirely.” “You don’t think they will,” says Hawk. “I don’t
know….there’s more,” Weaver hesitates. “Laurie’s about 10 klicks south
of there,” she says with a tone of worry in her voice. “My…Laurie”, says
Hawk, shocked to hear that his ex-wife may in danger. “Your ex-Laurie,
and She’s been my Goddaughter longer than she was your wife”, says the
Colonel. “She’s down there on a grant from the university researching
beetle larva or something," says Weaver. “I didn’t even know she was in
South America until I got a damn postcard in the mail. And if the two of
you were a little more civil to each other, she probably would have told
you where she was going”, she says in disgust. “I called the college to
get what little information I have now.” Hawk is appalled and says that
she’s got to let him go down there. Jessica is both mentor and a close
friend of both Laurie and Hawk, and despite her tough exterior, she will
do all she can to help them. “You and your men fly out at 1800 hours,”
she tells him, to his vast relief. “I’d put you in closer, but some
bureaucrat conceded to a larger no-fly zone that includes Agua Caliente.
Officially, you’re to rendezvous with Grieves as backup……unofficially,
if you happen to take a little detour on the way, there’s not much I can
do about it” she says, ending the meeting to both their satisfaction. |
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But meeting
with Grieves team is not going to as easy as it seems. They have been
checking a local town, and witness an attack in broad daylight by more
vampires, who seem to fly in and out of the buildings, easily grabbing
townspeople and killing them, then feasting on their bodies in the open
streets. When the Ranger team tries to stop them, they just escape. In a
local bar, Grieves sees a circus poster that features some performers
who look like the vampires he saw. He is told by a local bartender they
were playing there some years ago, then disappeared, only to return as
vampires. He tells Grieves that despite the legends are untrue of them
not coming out in the daylight and being turned away by crosses, and
that these vampires, called “vampiros”, have been around for centuries,
but they were not been a threat until recently, says the bartender,
having only attacked the villages livestock. Now they approach the town
in gangs, boldly and without fear, and take what they want. The
townspeople have been going out after them, but are not always
successful. One of Grieves’ men walks over to three locals who just came
in the bar, and is suddenly attacked by the men, who were just ambushed
and turned into vampires by the first lot they were hunting. The
bartender and all the soldiers but Grieves and another ranger,
Starkings, are killed, and they are carried off into a large cave, where
other vampires, both male and female, lurk. Grieves is tied up and told
by Guillermo, who seems to be the leader, that he was captured to be
turned not only into a vampire, but to also become a military advisor so
that the vampires can become better organized in their attacks on the
outlying area. Grieves challenges him and kills him with an old Spanish
pike tossed to him by Estrella, a beautiful female vampire, but she then
bites him, making him a vampire. Grieves then does the same to
Starkings. |
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Laurie is
deep in the jungle with a guide, Luis DeMora, and his men, who persuade
her to keep moving towards the town of Mendoza rather than stay to hunt
for beetle larva, telling her that there are more dangers than she can
imagine nearby. They come upon a clearing where they see a strange
sight. A teenager from the area is attacking an older man, threatening
him with a wooden stake. Laurie watches DeMora try to reason with the
young man, who insists that his captive is a vampire. Laurie pretends
not to understand the youth, distracting him until she gets close enough
to knock him out with a well-placed punch. The older man, Don Javier
Vasquez, is very grateful, and DeMora asks Laurie where she learned to
fight like that. “One thing I learned from being married to a
professional solder was fighting….and I got lots of practice,” she adds,
sadly. |
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Hawk and his
team, including Sgt. Juarez, have landed and are marching through the
forest. They now carry wooden stakes in shoulder holsters besides their
assault rifles. Juarez asks Hawk if he thinks Grieves and his men are
OK. From the vampires, Hawk replies? Juarez tells him that’s not what
the psych doctors said they were, but that they were a tribal anomaly
that believed that consumption of human body parts and blood made them
stronger. When Hawk asks what was the doctors response to the fact they
his team shot them and they didn’t die. Juarez tells him that the
doctors said that Hawk had made that part up, and that “his overbearing
personality coupled with a god complex” convinced his men that what they
saw was his idea. Furious and embarrassed, Hawk tells the men to get
moving. |
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Laurie and
her team are camping with Don Javier, and he tells Laurie that he wants
her to be his guest at his hotel in his village in Agua Caliente, which
she accepts, happy at the prospect of getting a hot shower. From her
questions, he tells her that the boy was from the village, and his
grandmother was recently killed. The boy blames the vampires for her
murder, and was confused and thought that Don Javier was one of them,
and Laurie laughs, but Luis and Javier tell her that the story of
vampires in the jungle is true, that the vampires were there long before
the Inca and influenced the Mayans, who have relief on their temples
that show the ritualistic drinking of blood. But Laurie still does not
believe in the “vampiros” and the men cannot persuade her otherwise. |
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Hawk’s
team sets up camp for the night, but are attacked by the vampires as
they sleep. Although three rangers are killed, the rest kill many
vampires, but some escape, including Estrella, the woman who killed
Grieves. Burying their dead, Hawks’ team heads for the river to cut some
time off their pursuit of Laurie and Grieves. They hire a boat, whose
captain Montegna tells them that he knows that they are hunting the
“vampiros”, and that the threat of the creatures are becoming more and
more dangerous to all along the river. Landing at a small trading
village, Hawks’ team finds evidence that Grieves team have not been
successful in their vampire hunting when an old woman tries to sell them
Starkings’ dog tags. |
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Grieves and
Starkings have been teaching the vampires military tactics and they
maneuver and ambush some farmers in their fields during the day, then
attack another trading town at night, shooting some in the legs so they
can be easily caught and killed. Going up the river, Hawks hear of the
slaughter at the town, and as they get closer, they see villagers
casting their dead relatives in the river to float then away, and the
normally hardened rangers are sickened by what they see. Coming close
to shore, they ask some grief-stricken people if what happened was
different from before. They are told that the vampires behaved like
soldiers this time, attacking by ambush, and Hawk sees that some bodies
bear gunshot wounds. He realized that something different is happening,
that the vampires he had fought six months ago didn’t fight like
soldiers or have firearms. Another floating body in a net fouls the
boats’ propeller, but when Merritt, one of the soldiers, frees it, it is
a vampire, which attacks him and kills him. It attacks the rest of the
men, but they overpower it and are about to kill it when Hawk sees that
it is Reyes, one of the men from Grieves team. |
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Laurie’s
group arrives at Don Javier’s hotel, and over coffee, he tells her that
she should not be alone in the jungle with her insect hunt. She asks him
why he believes in the vampires, and he tells her that the first ones
drank from the fountain of eternity long ago, but at their cost of never
dying, just living forever, with a sickness in their blood that spreads
from person to person, place to place, always pervading, never ending.
She begins to believes that something is very wrong in this jungle. |
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At the last
trading post before Agua Caliente, Hawk’s team finds the town deserted,
with just a young boy who points a pistol at them, blaming them for the
death of his father. He says that other soldiers like them attacked the
town, and that a big black soldier ripped his father’s throat out. One
of the remaining townspeople, Henri Pettier, who owned a local
plantation, assures the boy that these are not the same men who killed
his father, and then tells Hawk that the vampires were organized and
lured the men of the village into an ambush ,commanded by a black
American soldier. |
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Hawk is
finally able to contact Laurie, and when he tells her to stay put and
not leave the hotel, she tells him that she has heard of the vampires,
and she will wait for him. She goes to bed, and when she turns off the
lights, she feels something touch her, and looks up to see Estrella
leering over her. Laurie strikes out at her, and the two wrestle until
Estrella gets the upper hand and prepares to bite Laurie, but is stopped
by Don Javier, who commands her in Latin to leave Laurie alone. Estrella
leaves, but Laurie is horrified to hear Don Javier tell her that his
vampire daughter always had trouble with other women. Taken to the
vampires cave, Laurie is relieved to see Grieves, but realizes he is now
a vampire. He tells her that he is one of them now, and that the old
man, Don Javier, needs him to lead his people out of caves into a better
life, but to do that they have to kill anyone who lives in the outside
world. He leaves her in the cave, then the vampires go to attack Hawk’s
team. But at the old ruined factory where the vampires killed the boy’s
father and the rest of the men, the vampires find a booby-trapped Reyes,
who explodes in their midst, killing some, and the rest of Hawk’s men
ambushes them. Grieves confronts Hawk, who asks him how he could let
himself become a vampire, but Grieves tells him he had no choice, just
as Hawk will have none when he kills him. They fight and Grieves
superior power overcomes Hawk, but he manages to grab his knife and
slash at Grieves throat, and the sudden wound makes Grieve release him
and flee with the rest of the vampires who have survived the attack by
Hawk’s team, whose numbers have been sadly reduced to just himself and
Juarez. When Juarez sees Hawk is wounded, he tells his captain that he
think he can follow the vampires to their lair. Hawk orders him to do
so, then the captain collapses into unconsciousness. |
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Awakening in
a clean bed in a hotel, his wounds dressed and bound, Hawk is surprised
to find Colonel Weaver, in fatigue pants and a dark green army t-shirt,
sitting in a chair, watching him. “Do you have nocturnal tourets ?” she
asks him. “You swear in your sleep. Almost made me blush, and I can hold
my own”, she says. Hawk says that he was fighting Grieves in his dreams.
“He do that to you ?” she says, pointing at his many wounds. “Yes ma’am,
he replies, “it’s a worse case scenario, his entire squad….” Weaver nods
and says “I’ve been getting reports, he’s militarizing the vampires”.
“I thought you didn’t believe me about the vampires”, Hawk sneers. “No,
I just rather you stop shooting your mouth off about vampires in front
of your men”, she replies. “What, with my overbearing personality
coupled with a god complex?” Hawk defiantly exclaims. “I still stand by
that assessment, but I don’t think you’re crazy”, Weaver tries to
reassure him; “they follow your lead, Hawk.” “Point taken”, he replies.
She tells him that they are in Laurie’s room in Agua Caliente. He asks
how she got there so fast in the middle of the no-fly zone, and she says
“a friend on Capitol Hill managed to push through an amendment to our
treaty….I didn’t know how long it would last so I called in
reinforcements and got here as fast as I could.” When Hawk asks where
Laurie is, Weaver replies “Hawk…” her voice slightly breaking for the
first time he has known her…..”We don’t know. I talked to her guide down
here, a fellow by the name of Luis DeMora. He said that he saw her in
the last couple of days here at the inn with the owner. He’s missing
too.” Stunned, Hawk says that he talked to her last night, and told her
to stay put. “No, you spoke to her night before last, Hawk. You’ve been
out it, laid up for 24 hours”, Weaver says, pushing him back onto the
bed as he tries to get up. “Right now we don’t even know where the hell
to look”, she says with a note of despair in her normally strong voice.
Suddenly the hotel room door is opened by Juarez, who tells them “I
do……I know where the vampires sleep.” |
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In the
vampires cave, the creatures have been waiting for two days, but Grieves
knows that the rangers will be coming. And later that night, they rappel
from a helicopter and enter the mouth of the cave, rifles and wooden
stakes at the ready. With Juarez leading, they explore the cave until
they are attacked by the vampires. Each man battles a creature, and most
of the vampires are killed. Juarez fights one of the ex-circus acrobat
twins, and after a long struggle, kills the creature, but Hawk cries out
to a hidden Grieves, “I thought that you were teaching these things
military tactics”. Suddenly he is attacked from behind by his
ex-friend. “I was, these are just cannon fodder”, and they struggle
until Hawk strikes Grieves in the throat, opening the old wound that he
gave him back at the ruined factory. The fight is watched by Estrella,
who tosses Hawk the Spanish pike that Grieves killed Guillermo with, for
Hawk now to finish Grieves, and Hawk hesitates to kill his friend, then
turns his back. As Grieves makes a final lunge, Hawk shoves the pike
backwards and impales Grieves, who collapses on it and dies. |
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With the
bloody pike in his hand, Hawk walks deeper into the cave, and is halted
by the sight of Don Javier, who is slowly clapping his hands, applauding
his impressive victory. When Hawk asks who he is, he replies that “I am
Don Javier Joaquin Montoya Vasquez, onetime servant to Queen Isabella of
Spain.” “The same queen who sent Columbus here?” Hawk replies in
surprise. “The same; I was a conquistador, sent to convert the savages,
who converted me, instead” Javier says. He tells Hawk that he is the
leader and wants Hawk to take Grieves place as a teacher of military
tactics to his vampires. He brings out Laurie, who is dressed in a white
gown perhaps as a sacrifice, who tells Hawk that the vampires have
become more exposed to civilization since the cutting back of the
rainforests, which was their natural habitat and their food source, the
wild animals there. If they can’t live in peace there, they will have to
spreads outwards and take the place of the people on the outside. Javier
also tells him that since it was Laurie who saved him from being killed
by the youth in the jungle, he has become fond of her, so Hawk can take
Estrella as his mate, and Javier will take Laurie. When Hawk tells him
that he’d rather cut off his head, Javier says that it is inevitable
that he will lose and become one of them, and to illustrate his power,
begins to change into a huge, bat-like creature before Hawk and Laurie’s
astonished eyes. Hawk lunges at Javier with the pike, but is knocked
backwards, dropping the pike on the ground. But Juarez helps Hawk attack
the creature, while Laurie, who is attacked by Estrella, picks up the
pike and throws it at her, piercing her heart and killing her. As Javier
screams in anger as his daughter is killed, Hawk fires his pistol at the
roof of the cave, and huge loosened stalactites drop and strike Javier
in the heart, while Hawk cuts of his head. |
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Hawk, Laurie
and Juarez all walk towards the entrance of the cave and are met by
Colonel Weaver in an black stealth assault suit, carrying a
stake-shooting pistol, who is coming in with more troops. “Looks like
our backup has arrived,” says a satisfied Hawk. Jessica and Laurie
embrace with deep relief, and Jessica says to Hawk, “Good job, soldier.”
When Laurie asks her what she is doing there, Hawk says “Colonel Weaver
brought the entire US Army down here to find you.” “Actually, I just
brought a couple of platoons. Your guy here convinced me to give him a
chance to get you out of this place before we brought in everyone”, says
Weaver. “But how did you know I was going to be ok?” says Laurie. “We
didn’t. We were positioned outside. When we saw those ugly s.o.b.’s
taking off like rats on a sinking ship, we had a pretty good idea they
were losing. So Hawks’ smaller surgical team made sense”… says Colonel
Weaver, who breaks off in mid sentence as suddenly the other vampire
acrobat jumps down behind her to attack. Before the surprised Laurie,
Hawk and Juarez can react, Jessica coolly half-turns, points her pistol
and shoots the vampire in the heart with a stake, then turns back to
finish her sentence “anyway, he wasn’t about to let somebody else come
in and save you.” Amazed at what just happened, Laurie turns to Hawk.
“Is that true?” she says. “Embarrassed, Hawk stammers, “well…if you
think about it from an..ah..a military tactician’s point of view….”
“Just say Yes”, says Jessica, amused but exasperated by his obvious love
for his ex-wife, even though he doesn’t realize it. Laurie then sees
that Hawk has kept her wedding ring on his dogtag chain, and also
realizes that they should be back together. |
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Hoping that
all of the vampires have been eliminated, Laurie, Hawk and Juarez follow
the rest of the soldiers out of the cave. “Do you think that these
things will continue to spread?” Laurie asks Hawk. “Well, I don’t know,
you’re the scientist, but we took out their leader”, he says, “there’s
got to be something badder out there than them.” Juarez, still very
impressed with Jessica’s parting shot, excitedly says “yeah, like the
Colonel! Did you see that, she just took that guy out! Bam!” |
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![USA [United States]](../../fijos/flag_usa.gif){kind=small}
