When did the trend of Emo-Wussy vampire films really begin? I blame Coppola’s weak Dracula, Rice’s adaption of Interview with the Vampire and White Wolf’s RPG. These bad precedents made crap such as Twilight and all its current knockoffs acceptable. Thanks to them, vampires are now supposedly sympathetic creatures, victims or some other nonsense. What’s next? Don’t answer. I’m sure there is something worse planned to prolong my vampire and zombie fatigue.
However, it was great to see a couple Eighties’ movies which stayed faithful to the original vampire genre. In these two stories, the bloodsuckers are menacing, cunning and dangerous. They will kill you at the first opportunity they get, not bore you to death with awful poetry or their feelings.
First up was a revisit of Fright Night, now rumored to be on the re-make docket with David Tennant in Roddy McDowell’s role. As much as I liked the former Doctor, I’d prefer it if he passed on this old B-movie gem. Chris Sarandon makes this Horror flick great as the vampire next door, especially when he mocks Roddy’s goofy TV show. Fright also sticks to the cliches we’re accustomed to from the Universal movies: the vampire’s vulnerabilities to crosses, holy water, sunlight, wooden stakes, mirrors and they cannot enter a house without being invited. This flick has the Eighties throughout its DNA too: the cheesy synthesizer mood music, the fashion and the obligatory bare-breast shots! It’s also hard to tell if the producers/director intended it to be serious or camp. (When Reagan was president, the nation’s sense of irony was suspended.) Lastly, seeing Amanda Bearse portraying a teenager a year before she played the annoying neighbor Darcy on Married with Children for 11 seasons gives it a delayed creepiness.
The other, Vamp, I never saw before. My wife did, hence why she had it lined up in her NetFlix DVD queue. It was better than I anticipated because I thought it was centered around Grace Jones killing people. Instead it’s focused on the misadventures of three friends wandering into a seedy little city where Jones is the star attraction of a strip club run by her minions. There’s a good chance Tarantino used Vamp‘s premise to write Dusk ‘Til Dawn. Thankfully, Jones doesn’t speak since acting wasn’t exactly her strong suit if you’ve sat through Conan the Destroyer or A View to a Kill. I was more surprised by the casting of the buddies: Chris Makepeace (Meatballs, My Bodyguard), Robert Rusler (Weird Science, Babylon 5) and the Dongster, Gedde Watanabe. Here I think the people responsible for making Vamp were intentionally trying to create a goofy flick sprinkled with gore.
Either way, both of these movies were better time-wasters than sitting through Brad Pitt blather on about how rough he has it or Gary Oldman pining for Wynona Ryder.
My other recommendations of vampires doing their thing: Near Dark, Dracula 2000 (starring a lesser-known Gerard Butler!) and Vampire$.