photos copyright Warner Bros
I was recently made aware of just how many movies and television shows the younger generation have never heard of, never mind seen. So to that end, we look back at some characters you really need to see before you kick the bucket.
As his new Walking Dead mini series Daryl Dixon hits our screens , let’s look back to when Norman Reedus fought mutant vampires alongside the greatest vampire slayer of them all, Blade.
In Blade 2 which to many is the best of the three movies, Blade is plunged into a very reluctant alliance with vampires at the behest of vampire lord, Eli Damaskinos. A new and lethal breed of bloodsuckers called the Reapers is destroying the vampire numbers led by a mysterious figure called Jared Nomak, played by Luke Goss. These Reapers inject their victims with a tongue like protrusion as their face opens up to attack their victims, however their victims return as Reapers and their numbers are growing exponentially. Now Blade, Whistler and new boy Scud must join an elite vampire commando team to eradicate this threat before they consume the world.
Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) had been thought killed at the end of the first Blade movie but Blade has spent the last couple of years tracking down his friend and father figure. It turns out that Whistler has been tortured by vampires and kept just on the edge of death because of his connection with Blade. In that time, Blade has found a new ally with similar skill sets to Whistler. This is Scud.
Played by future Walking Dead legend Norman Reedus, Scud is a cocky, cigarette smoking, tech genius who has taken over Whistler’s workshop. He and Whistler clash initially as the latter takes exception that this kid has wrecked his workshop and interfered with his weapon building. But with the threat of the Reapers, two weapons experts is a distinct advantage. When they are led to a Reaper trap, Scud is trapped in the RV when they attack. He discovers the Reapers can be killed instantly with UV lights which saves the others. Grudgingly impressed by him, Whistler takes time to get to know Scud and how he met Blade.
Scud’s initial encounter with Blade came when he took two girls back to his tent for a threesome. However they turned out to be a pair of vampires who began ripping him apart. His stomach is scarred where they attacked him. Blade intervened, saved him and nursed him back to health. Deciding being closer to Blade with vamps on the loose was preferable to being alone, Scud took over from where Whistler left off designing weapons to give Blade the advantage in the big fight. He and Whistler create UV grenades to take out the Reapers as they take the battle to the sewers where the Reaper are gathering. Like Scud, the grenades go to the extreme and go off like a mini nuclear detonation reducing the Reapers and any regular vamps in the vicinity to ash. Scud also creates small bombs that can be attached to the back of the head and remotely detonated. It is this device that reveals that Scud has been a double agent for the vampires.
He is a familiar with a barcode tattooed inside his lower lip. He has been working with Damaskinos all along. He tells Blade that the vampires are going to win and when that happens he would rather be a pet than cattle. Maybe Scud was traumatised by the attack in the tent or maybe he witnessed something on his adventures with Blade that made him sway to the vampire side but whatever made him change allegiance, Blade has been aware of it all along. By playing along with Scud’s whispered doubts about Whistler’s loyalty having been in the vampire’s clutches for so long, it made Scud sloppy in a way that Blade figured out. The bond between Whistler and Blade can never be broken and Scud simply didn’t understand that. He boasts that one of the skull bombs was a dud designed to give Blade the illusion that he had power over vampire bloodpack leader and hater of Blade, Dieter Reinhardt (Ron Perlman), but such is Blade’s confidence he never needed the bomb to take down Reinhardt. He tells Scud the bomb was no dud before detonating it. Scud is blown to pieces there and then, his last moments spent realising his scheming was for nothing and just how powerful Blade really is. When Scud dies, Whistler mutters he was just beginning to like the kid. Bonding over their tech, the two found a respect that in the end was one sided only.
One little piece of trivia is that Scud wears a t-shirt saying B.P.R.D. This stands for Paranormal Research and Defence which is featured in Hellboy. Two years later Perlman would play Hellboy, cast by Blade 2 director Guillermo Del Toro. Small world.
If only Scud had put his faith in Blade, he together with Whistler and the vampire killer would have been a formidable team. It was only Scud’s turning off their defence systems that let the vampires in initially. They couldn’t bypass it otherwise, indicating how good Scud was at this job. With Whistler’s guidance, he could have been a hero. Instead Scud fell to the lure of false promises of the vampires which, as always, leads to death for familiars.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 