Vamp (1986)

This movie was awful. What a waste of time. It's not funny nor scary. Actors were to generic, lines even more. I gave it a shot, because I thought it would fulfill at least some of my expectations but it did the opposite. After this movie I gained more respect for some others movies from this era. I hope you will not repeat my mistake. Do yourself a favor and skip it.

Scary, violent, and playful, Vamp is the quintessential 1980s mashup of Brat Pack comedy and trash horror. It's one a handful of films directed by Richard Wenk, these days better known for writing blockbusters like The Equalizer and The Magnificent Seven. Keith and AJ (Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler) are two kids looking to sleaze their way into the college fraternity. They intend to do so by hiring the ultimate stripper. With the help of the infinitely wealthy Duncan (Gedde Watanabe) they go to the city and find themselves at the After Dark strip club. It's owned by Katrina (Grace Jones), who also turns out to be their dream girl. What they haven't banked on is that the club is populated by vampire strippers, queen among whom is Katrina herself. A raunchy road trip turns into a desperate lunge for survival, as the bloodsucking bad guys close in on their prey.Vamp is pure energy and efficiency: 90 minutes of gaudy, gory fun. There's always a wink in its eye: upon entering the city, the boys find themselves in the back alleys via a car accident, the vehicle spinning like the house of Dorothy Gale. One character quips, "We're not in Kansas anymore". After that it's a neon-lit nightmare all the way, impaled with Dario Argento-style pinks and greens. The chemistry between the characters is a breeze. There's the easy banter between Keith and AJ, and the less-than-easy chemistry between Keith and Allison (Dedee Pfeiffer). Allison, an old flame of Keith's, may be oddly ignorant to the true nature of her murderous colleagues, but she's not naive; she may be bouncy and adorable, but she's no pixie dream girl. Duncan, meanwhile, embodies the swagger and impotence of 80s excess – his money buys them into trouble but cannot get them out again. Then there's Grace Jones, whose unique persona is put to great use here. Her striptease is frightening and sensual. She's the original Lady Gaga and she's off the leash. She doesn't say a word throughout the whole film but she doesn't need to – her eyes and hair and clothes do all the talking. The makeup effects are seriously special. Queen Katrina is a grotesque creation: the deliberate antithesis of Jones's pristine elegance. As for the excellent sound design, well, the noise of gorging on carotid blood has never been so fantastically disgusting and guttural. As the film wears on it does begin to lose some of its initial spark. The final onslaught has more in common with a zombie horde than a pack of lethal vampires. The eerie atmosphere and the visual gags slip away – an early moment when the owner of a greasy spoon cafe dons a priest's robe and cross at the end of his shift is never topped – in favour of more ordinary action dynamics. From frat house to strip club to sewer, Vamp is a far cry from the opulent castles of Stoker's myth. Its heightened grottiness is all its own, and its simple storytelling and memorable characters have stood the test of time. I watched it once on grainy VHS, and it's a pleasure to rediscover it as one of the better comedy horrors of the decade.

Dumb teen sex comedies centered around high school or college students were big in the 80s and vampire films were starting to see a big resurgence thanks to several surprise hits in the subgenre, so VAMP was a no-brainer green light for its time. It has since fallen through the cracks and it's pretty easy to see why. It failed to come close to matching the commercial and critical success of FRIGHT NIGHT (1985) or THE LOST BOYS (1987), wasn't stylish enough to rope in the artsy-fartsy crowd like THE HUNGER (1983), wasn't inventive and atmospheric enough to gain a cult following similar to that of NEAR DARK (1987) and couldn't even retrospectively be viewed through the rose-colored nostalgia glasses like THE MONSTER SQUAD (1987) because it's not quite charming enough. Not that this is a bad film per se; it just happens to be "just OK" in most areas while never really excelling at anything.Dipsa Phi fraternity pledges Keith (Chris Makepeace, from MEATBALLS) and AJ (Robert Rusler, from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2) talk themselves out of a silly hazing ceremony by agreeing to get anything the frat needs for an upcoming party. That turns out to be a stripper and, since they're living in a small town, strippers require a two hour drive into Los Angeles to acquire. The problem? Neither of them has a car. They're then forced to enlist the aid of the friendless, extremely annoying and pathetic try-hard Duncan Spriggs (Gedde Watanabe) to get them there. Duncan agrees in exchange for a week's worth of their friendship (?!), which may make this 'comic' depiction of an Asian- American even more offensive than Watanabe's turn as "Long Duk Dong" in SIXTEEN CANDLES. The three guys finally arrive in L.A., have a run in with albino gang leader Snow (Billy Drago) at a diner and finally make it to the "After Hours Club" in once piece. After viewing a truly strange performance art strip act by exotic club owner / star attraction Katrina (Grace Jones), AJ gets permission to go to her dressing room to discuss employing her for the frat party. He doesn't return. Keith eventually realizes that nearly the entire strip club, including the emcee (Sandy Baron), the bouncer (Brad Logan) and most of the dancers are actually vampires. They usually prey on vagrants, bums and other people no one will miss, but this time they've made a mistake with AJ and now must cover their tracks by eliminating all evidence he was there. Since Keith himself is part of that evidence, he teams up with an excessively perky non-vampire waitress / dancer (Dedee Pfeiffer) and basically just tries to survive the "wacky" night.I've seen numerous people question Grace Jones' sex appeal as the sultry queen bee vampire who runs things. Sure, she's not for everyone, but in my opinion she is the only truly memorable aspect of this entire movie. The former model turned singer and actress doesn't utter a single word in the film but manages to be both intimidating and creepy thanks to her offbeat demeanor, ultra-bizarre Egyptian-themed wardrobe choice and androgynous facial structure, which is made even more striking thanks to blue contact lenses, white face paint and a bright red wig. There's a good reason it was her image and her image alone that has been used to market the film over the years and if anything this film suffers most because she's underutilized and not on screen nearly as much as she should have been. Aside from the presence of Jones, the makeup effects from Greg Cannom are good and the production values in general are adequate down the board. It's also VERY 80s and the whole film is shot through with a hideous neon pink and green lighting scheme. What is most surprising of all is just how restrained, unexciting and glib the whole thing is considering the premise involves vampires working out of a strip club. In other words, this would have been much better had it been a little more freewheeling and uninhibited than it is. This same idea would be done much better later on in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (1996).

This is one of those weird little films that has the power to grow on you. Ostensibly, it should not be all that much as it details the story of three college boys in search of a great stripper as appeasement for joining a fraternity. How quickly we derail from that story(in fact it just about disappears and never resurfaces again) and go to the dark, twisted, removed world of the After Dark Club. This is where the guys are to find their stripper - in this case a very bizarre, strangely erotic, wholly creepy Grace Jones! There we find a sub-culture, apparently unbeknown-st to the police - who either look the other way or fear this bad part of town, of vampirism hidden behind the facade of a decaying strip show. Now, we do get some girls showing us their wares, though this really is not the major point of this film. We do get some genuinely eerie and scary moments as well. We do get those God-awful special effects that are so common in the 80s. We do get Grace Jones and all that that entails. But the primary purpose of this film is to interlace humor with all of that. It succeeds. I laughed quite a bit actually. The guys running the club are hilarious, particularly Sandy Baron who is the emcee and wearing some pink/red lounge blazer like a comedian might from yesteryear in the Catskills. He keeps ranting about he wants to take the act/show/everything to Vegas...his great dream. He of course works for Katrina, Grace Jones, the Egyptian vampire who owns the place. Anyway, we soon get one boy meeting Katrina and the other boy trying to find him and the story runs pretty strongly just from that. Comedy abounds from moments with a strange albino non-vampire group after the boys being assaulted from vampires in the community(the little girl flying and biting the neck of Billy Drago had me in stitches!) to the bizarre ending where we get this great rendition of Domenico Modugno singing "Volare!." Of course that means "to fly" in Italian, and it is that tongue planted firmly in cheek that made this film enjoyable for me. As I said before, there are some truly scary moments as well. The atmosphere is very well-done by director Richard Wenk sans those atrocious special effects. One can definitely see how this was an inspiration possibly for From Dusk till Dawn.