The Film: More lightweight work that still has the feel of Carpenter revisiting his greatest hits to diminishing returns.

That said, it has an enjoyably OTT turn from James Woods and a fun tale of the fang club trying to find a Catholic relic that would let them hunt in the sun.

Carpenter Chats: "I was actually toying around with getting out of the business for a while and I couldn’t decide if I should. It stopped being fun," he says.

"Then along came Largo Entertainment. Vampires was basically an action, mercenary novel with vampires being the evil threat. Two screenplays were written – one by Don Jakoby, the other by Dan Mazur.

"So I took all the stuff home with me to read, and both screenplays were pretty good. The novel had something about it.

"I found all of this interesting so I took the two screenplays and the book and said, ‘I could do something with this.’

"I went in my office and thought, ‘It’s going to be set in the American Southwest and it’s a Western – and I wrote it. I combined the two screenplays together utilizing elements from this one and that one, a little bit of the book and a bunch of me, and out it came from there. It worked out pretty well."

Remade? A couple of direct-to-DVD sequels (one starring Jon Bon Jovi) are all that have come of it so far.