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Vamp
USA 1986
produced by Donald P. Borchers for Balcor Film Investors, New World
directed by Richard Wenk
starring Chris Makepeace, Sandy Baron, Robert Rusler, Dedee Pfeiffer, Gedde Watanabe, Grace Jones, Billy Drago, Brad Logan, Lisa Lyon, Jim Boyle, Larry Spinak, Eric Welch, Stuart Rogers, Gary Swailes, Ray Ballard, Paunita Nichols, Trudel Williams, Marlon McGann, Thomas Bellin, Bryan Michael McGuire, Leila Lee Olsen, Hillary Carlip, Francie Swift, Tricia Brown, Naomi Shohan, Janeen Davis, Ytossie Patterson, Tanya Papanicolas, Robin Kaufman, Hy Pyke, Bob Schott, Adam Barth, Bill Morphew, Simmy Bow, Roger Hampton, Andy Rivas, Julius LeFlore, Greg Lewis, Dar Robinson
story by Donald P. Borchers, Richard Wenk, screenplay by Richard Wenk, music by Jonathan Elias
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
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Cool dude AJ (Robert Rusler) and his wingman Keith (Chris Makepeace)
need to find a stripper for a fraternity party, so they, together with
rich jerk Duncan (Gedde Watanabe), the only one who's got a ride, head for
the seedy part of town to sample some girls in the After Dark Night Club.
Now Keith is soon more interested in cute waitress Allison (Dedee
Pfeiffer), a girl who claims to know him from waaay back even if he can't
remember - but AJ definitely has the expertise to pull the right girl for
the job, and soon has set his sight on exotic stripper Katrina (Grace
Jones) - and manages to persuade one of the employees of the place to take
him backstage ... and before you know it, he has sex with Katrina in her
changing room - until she turns into a vampire, slashes his throat open,
drinks his blood, then has him disposed. After a while, Keith worries
about where AJ might have gone, but the personnel of the club, first and
foremost sleazy MC Vic (Sandy Baron) try to hush up the situation and
eventually kill Keith, and it's only thanks to Allison, who's got even
less idea than Keith what's going on, that he manages to leave the club in
one piece ... but he soon ends up being chased through the streets, and
when hiding in a dumpster, he discovers AJ's dead body. Keith manages to
call the police, who make a superficial investigation, when AJ shows up
again, very much alive. Now everybody's convinced it was just a hoax, even
Keith ... but then AJ turns out to be a vampire as well, and one mighty
hungry - but even as a bloodsucker, will he have the nerve to kill his
best friend? Now one has to admit, Vamp is by no means a
masterpiece, it's clichéed and slightly silly and not utterly original.
But that said, it's pretty much the perfect timewarp back into the 1980s,
it has everything genre comedies from back then had in spades, from the
cast of characters to their outfits and hairdos, from the colour chart
with an inexplicable predilection for pastel greens and pinks to almost
too clean surfaces that serve design rather than purpose (just look at the
perfectly sanitary sewers), and then there's of course an evil rocker gang
led by Billy Drago, car chases where they might not belong, the a bit too
naive blonde (Pfeiffer - who has some of the best lines because of this
though), tons of 80s rock tunes, and so on and so forth. Plus there's
Grace Jones at her most sensual in fittingly bizarre lingerie (it has to
be seen to be believed), and some practical special effects that are
actually really well executed and look gruesome to boot. Definitely the
right film to take you down nostalgia road and will leave you a happier
man ...
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