Eddie Murphy Blames A Terrible Wig For One Of His Biggest Box Office Bombs

Wes Craven's 1995 movie "Vampire in Brooklyn" is an odd duck indeed. The film stars Eddie Murphy as the titular vampire, a very ancient creature who may be the last of his kind. To perpetuate the vampire species, he has to locate a half-vampire-half-human woman and transform her before the next full moon. In this mythology, vampires can create ghoulish servants, but they can't transform just anyone with a bite. Luckily for Maximilian, there is a half-vampire-half-human detective in town in the form of Detective Rita Veder (Angela Bassett). 

Eddie Murphy does his usual comedic shtick in "Vampire in Brooklyn," playing several different roles throughout the film, often by shape-shifting into them. Murphy is disguised under tons of makeup to play a low-level Italian goon named Guido, as well as a fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal preacher named Preacher Pauly. One of the funnier scenes in the film is when Maximilian, as Preacher Pauly, tries to convince his congregation to admit that evil is good, actually. 

The main issue with "Vampire in Brooklyn" is that it's actually not a comedy film. With Craven at the helm, the horror elements take precedence, and Craven lights and shoots the film in his familiar horror-inflected manner. The score by J. Peter Robinson indicates the fright the audiences is supposed to be feeling. perhaps because of this tonal confusion, "Vampire in Brooklyn" was a flop, making only $35 million on its $14 million budget. 

Back in 2011, Murphy talked to Rolling Stone about "Vampire in Brooklyn," and its disappointing box office numbers. Murphy admitted that he only did "Vampire" for contractual reasons, and argued that the real reason it failed was because of the silly, long-haired wig he had to wear. 

In the Rolling Stone interview, Murphy openly confessed that he didn't want to make "Vampire in Brooklyn." It seems he had signed a multi-picture deal with Paramount, and needed to finish that contract before he could move to another studio and make another picture. He was on the cusp of his remake of "The Nutty Professor" (a film that ended up being massively successful), but had to bang out "Vampire in Brooklyn" first. And, golly, Murphy hated that vampire wig. In his words: 

"The only way I was able to do 'Nutty Professor' and to get out of my Paramount deal, I had to do 'Vampire in Brooklyn.' But you know what ruined that movie? The wig. I walked out in that longhaired wig and people said, 'Oh, get the f*** out of here! What the hell is this?' It's those little things. Like one of my youngest daughters, Bella, she was eight and she'd never seen 'The Golden Child,' but as soon as it came on, she was like, 'Wait, are you going to have that hat on the whole movie?' I said, 'Yeah...' She said, 'I can't watch the movie. That hat is horrible!'"

Murphy's hat in his 1985 fantasy film "The Golden Child" was a leather chapeau that was only in fashion for a few months that year. Murphy rocked it, but one can see why his daughter might have been less than impressed. 

The "Vampire" wig, however, was hated by just about everyone. Two of the film's screenwriters, Chris Parker and Michael Lucker, and its cinematographer Mark Irwin, once spoke to the Hopes and Fears website, and they, too, expressed trepidation about Murphy's hair. 

Irwin clearly read the Rolling Stone interview, as he said: 

"I'd done a lot of what I call rubber movies, where the special effects are latex and rubber. Like 'The Fly,' which was very difficult to light, but we figured it out. 'Vampire In Brooklyn,' the new challenge was with Eddie's hair, that wig he wore ... which he now blames for the movie failing." 

Lucker noted that the hair wasn't his idea; he didn't write anything into the screenplay that described Maximilian's hair. Irwin was miffed by the wig because of how fake it looked. He said that he is married to a woman who specialized in styling the hair of Black actors, and that Murphy's wig didn't look the least bit natural. Parker noted that audiences had trouble taking the film seriously because of the hair; it's hard to accept Eddie Murphy as a vampire if he's dressed in, as Parker said, a Rick James wig. 

Irwin continued: 

"First time we saw Eddie in the wig we said to ourselves, 'He kinda looks like Nick Ashford.' Then, the first thing Eddie said when he showed up on set in it is, 'I kinda look like Nick Ashford!' The wig was all Toy Van Lierop. That's Toy's creation." 

Toy Van Lierop was the chief makeup artist on "Vampire in Brooklyn." Nick Ashford was half of the 1970s soul duo Ashford & Simpson, known for singing the original version of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." Look up a picture of Nick Ashford, and you'll see that everyone is correct.