Blade

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Darkness, BLOOD-CURDLING SCREAMS. Presentation credits roll as we

FADE UP ON:

INT. HOSPITAL, INNER-CITY TRAUMA WARD - NIGHT

It's 1967, the Summer of Love and --

BOOM! Entry doors swing open as PARAMEDICS wheel in a FEMALE BLEEDER,

VANESSA (20s, black, nine months pregnant). She's deathly pale,

spewing founts of blood from a savagely slashed throat --

A SHOCK-TRAUMA TEAM swarms over her, inserting a vacutainer into an

artery to draw blood, wrapping a blood pressure cuff around her

arm --

NURSE #1

(with stethoscope)

She's not breathing!

SENIOR RESIDENT:

Intubate her!

The RESPIRATORY THERAPIST feeds an endotracheal tube down the woman's

ruined throat, attaches that to an Amblu bag --

RESIDENT:

Blood-pressure's forty and falling --

The woman starts spasming violently. It takes three staff members

just to hold her down.

SENIOR RESIDENT:

Jesus, her water's broken --

(calling for help)

She's going into uterine contractions --

CAMERA PUSHES IN on the woman as she bolts upright, SCREAMING to wake

the dead. We PLUNGE INTO the darkness of her mouth and find

ourselves --

INSIDE HER BLOODSTREAM

The sound of a HEART BEATING, pounding as we whip-snake through --

CORPUSCLES:

floating in amber plasma. Erythrocytes, leukocytes, neutrophils and

eosinophils.

The rhythmic expansion of the artery walls, pulsing with each

successive surge of blood as the HEART BEATS FASTER AND FASTER,

taking us --

IN UTERO,

A CHILD, alive but unborn, shifting in a sea of amniotic fluid,

surrounded by the white, protective substance known as vernix

caseosa. The HEARTBEAT races like a locomotive now. The unborn child

shifts, turns its head towards us --

-- and opens its eyes.

CUT TO:

A SWORDBLADE:

cleaving the darkness, radiant light slicing across gleaming Damascus

steel. Words acid-etched in the weapon's fine-tempered surface:

BLADE:

Main credits end.

EXT. INNER CITY, INDUSTRIAL GHETTO - NIGHT

A decaying no man's land populated by condemned buildings and HUNGRY

HOMELESS. Steam rises from manhole covers, drifting across the

litter- lined streets. Suddenly --

A black Mercedes 850 appears over the crest of a hill, ROARING past

us, stereo system belting out FILTER.

INT. MERCEDES - NIGHT

Raquel, a wasp-wasted woman, sits behind the wheel. 20s, rich,

sickeningly attractive. Hungry eyes.

Squirming around in the passenger seat is DENNIS, a model/actor boy-

toy with a sub-zero IQ and a "f*** me sideways" grin.

DENNIS:

So where we going?

RAQUEL:

It's a surprise.

DENNIS:

I likes surprises.

Raquel eyeballs Dennis -- "if looks could devour".

RAQUEL:

What do you have down there, little

man?

DENNIS:

Heat-seeker.

RAQUEL:

I'll bet.

Raquel slides a manicured hand up his thigh, squeezes his groin.

Dennis MOANS. She pulls her hand away, downshifts.

EXT. VACANT LOT - NIGHT

The 850 threads a narrow alley into a vacant lot, BRAKES hard. Raquel

and Dennis climb out. She leads him into --

EXT. MEAT PACKING PLANT - NIGHT

Industry never sleeps, and certainly not this grisly facility. Raquel

leads Dennis around the back of the plant, where a host of WORKERS

are loading refrigerated trucks with product.

DENNIS:

What the f*** are we doing here?

Raquel just smiles, heads on into the plant via a loading door. The

workers ignore her.

INT. MEAT PACKING PLANT - NIGHT

Dennis follows Raquel through the bowels of the plant, catching

glimpses here and there of carcasses being rendered or hacked apart.

Through one partially open door we see what might be a line of

BODYBAGS being trundled into the back of a truck via a hook and chain

pulley-system. But Dennis doesn't have enough time to be disturbed by

the vision, because he's being pulled away by Raquel, led down --

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