Rhapsodies

For this week’s double feature I went with humorous vampire movies. I was trying for movies that were not outright parodies like Love at First Bite or Dracula: Dead and Loving It. What I was really going for was actual horror films with a sense of humor. Whether I succeeded or not is anyone’s guess.

The first on my list, Vamp, was one I’d been curious about for years… mainly because I had a slight thing for Grace Jones in high school. Regretibly it did dissapoint. I quickly discovered that most of what I thought it was about was actually from a Jim Carrey film called Once Bitten. (and if I’d remembered it I  might have included it in this weeks material)

Vamp turned out to be a by the numbers 80s college film with cringe worthy stereotypes about a pair of students who go to the city to in search of a cheap stripper as the price of joining a fraternity. What they find is a seedy strip club full of vampire’s led by Grace Jones. The only good thing about this film was one exotic number from Jones that felt as if it was part of a completely different movie. Otherwise she and her charisma were completely wasted. She barely had fifteen minutes of screen time. The rest of the film was pretty much by the numbers and very forgettable. (Though the Albino street gang, who much to my surprise, turned out to be human were good for a laugh)

The next film on my list was  Roman Polanski‘s The Fearless Vampire Killers (featuring the lovely  Sharon Tate  just before her brief encounter with the Manson Family.)  I always enjoy Polanski’s work and he’s always on the top of my list on the endless question of how to love the art but not the artist. Fearless Vampire Hunters is no exception, it simultaneously tells us what our ideal Hammer Vampire movie should be, while shamelessly mocking them.. It tells the story of two bungling vampire hunters who travel to Transylvania and to their horror actually find that Vampires actually do exist. This film is a wonderful balance of slapstick and genuine horror. My favorite scene being our heroes being revealed in the middle of the Vampire ball they infiltrated by being the only ones visible in a very large mirror.