This post originally appeared in a slightly altered form at my old blog. I’m sharing a revised version today to celebrate Sheryl Lee’s birthday yesterday, April 22nd.
After turning in a towering performance as the tragic Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks, and the film that immediately followed the series, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Sheryl Lee returned to the theater. Over the years she’s worked steadily in films and television. In 2017 she reprised the role of Laura Palmer to great effect, in the wonderfully weird Twin Peaks: The Return. While Fire Walk with Me is Lee’s crowing achievement, I’m also extremely fond of her work in another 1990s film. Once again, she was working for an iconoclastic director and was charged with playing a woman victimized by supernatural forces beyond her control. A woman whose objectified body was also her currency. This time though, instead of facing the maniacal, possessing spirit BOB, Lee fell under a vampire’s sway in John Carpenter’s underrated, gonzo fangs-in-the-desert schlock-fest, Vampires (1998).
Few would rank Vampires among Carpenter’s best, but that’s because the man’s best work is the unassailable stuff of legend. If you don’t expect Vampires to compete with The Thing, or Halloween, or They Live, and just enjoy it on its own pulpy merits, then it’s a bloody good time. I absolutely love it. In the grand tradition of independent, exploitation cinema, Carpenter has a blast mixing up a potent stew of vampires, sex, and Catholicism.
In accordance with the material, the acting is often gloriously over the top, as well. James Woods turns in a memorably hammy turn as the no-nonsense Vatican-sponsored vampire hunter Jack Crow. His partner Tony Montoya is played with taciturn smarminess by Daniel Baldwin. But this post is all about celebrating another fearless performance by Lee, this time as the prostitute-turned-vampire Katrina.
Lee’s trademark scorching-hot intensity is on full display in Vampires, as Katrina undergoes an agonizingly slow transformation over the course of the film, from a hard-partying hooker to an undead siren with an insatiable appetite for blood. Her bloodlust escalates and Lee fully commits to Carpenter’s classic exploitation film vibe. Not only does she commit, but she tears into it with a ferocity to match her character’s voracious appetites. The film has some fun with the old vampirism-as-sex metaphor, and Lee especially makes solid gold out of it. Katrina is an unapologetically sexual being from the start, and then Lee only dials up the heat as she transforms into a vampire.
Katrina maintains a psychic link to the bloodsucker that bit her, Valek, making her a valuable asset to Crow and Montoya in their mission to bring down this grandmaster of the vampires. At first, Katrina can barely function, because she just got fang-banged (I told you, it’s full-tilt boogie with the vampire-sex metaphor). The vampire transformation begins, and she stumbles through the desert in an intoxicated haze while Crow berates her, smacks her around, and ties her to a bed, naked and gagged, in a dingy motel. Few actresses can play a stoned somnambulant as believably as Lee. There’s a natural melancholia to her sultry bedroom eyes that draws viewers in, almost hypnotically. We’re entranced by the eyes to stick around, and then we’re fully engaged by the artistry of her performances.
Over time, Katrina’s vampire transformation only intensifies, and Lee delights in being ferocious, as the taste for blood escalates. Sex and danger are the two key ingredients to any memorable vampire performance, and Lee brings both with maximum impact in Vampires. With a devilish smile and blood dripping down her chin, Lee is scary and sexy. She’d completely devour those sullen, sparkling vampire Cullens of Twilight in a damn heartbeat, and I’d pay good money to see her do it.
Lee had an utterly unique quality to her in the nineties—an intense and ethereal combination of sadness and madness, pleasure and pain. She turned in truly electrifying performances in films like Fire Walk With Me and Vampires. I only wish we could’ve seen more of her during her prime. Her resume might not show it, but Sheryl Lee was a major talent, and this post is just my small way of making sure we don’t forget that.
The Starfire Lounge wishes a belated happy birthday to the exquisite, and exceptionally talented, Sheryl Lee. She’s a Lounge VIP, full stop.
The Starfire Lounge 
Fantastic tribute to a the immensely beautiful and talented Sheryl Lee Michael 🙂 I too love John Carpenter’s Vampires and think that it is truly underrated. Sheryl Lee is phenomenal and sexy as always 🙂 As you so eloquently state, there is always “an intense and ethereal combination of sadness and madness, pleasure and pain” to the type of characters Sheryl Lee plays. When it comes to playing possessed characters, we (the audience) want to see her rescued from those evil entities and when her characters do not survive, our hearts break into two. As you know, I agree with you totally on everything you write about Sheryl Lee’s performances not only in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: The Return, but also in other films like this one, which is John Carpenter’s Vampires. As a vampire, “Lee is (as you eloquently state again) scary and sexy.” I too would pay good money to see how her Katrina deals with the vampires in Twilight 🙂 I love all of the screen caps you placed of Sheryl Lee on here Michael 🙂 I also love the picture where Sheryl Lee looks like she is at a premiere. “Exquisite and exceptionally talented” are the perfect words to describe Sheryl Lee as you just did Michael 🙂 I also love her fashion sense 🙂 What about you? 🙂
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