A reconsideration of Kathryn Bigelow's 1987 revisionist vampire film, Near Dark , in terms of its small-town ambience, visual openness, melancholic mood of nostalgia, outsider characters, and genre mix of horror and belated Western.

ABSTRACT This comparative review of Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima sees the two films as a diptych exploring issues of military masculinity, heroism, and myths of American and Japanese national character as they are focused by the battle for Iwo Jima in World War II.

The genre game as played by these self-styled "out-siders" lends their films the transcendent spirituality of ritual power.