Teen Vamp

This movie has about as much charisma as a small plastic soapdish from the dollar store. Even Clu Gulager as an over the top Midwestern minister cannot add much life though he gives it the college try. I sought it out for the presence of Angie Brown, an actress who made about five movies during the 1980's & then seems to have vanished off the face of the planet -- her other big film was the backwoods slasher DON'T GO IN THE WOODS. Here she plays the secretly psychotic love interest of a young schmuck or putzanoid nerd who turns into Fonzie after having a hotel room tryst with a hooker vampiress who's three minutes in the film are it's most interesting moments ... Until Ms. Brown starts going the psycho route (she isn't bad!) and a gym coach demands & gets 50 push-ups from his star football player turned vampire. Now THAT was new.

But I honestly don't know what to make of this film. The most expensive asset used in the production was the film stock it was shot on. The sets and costumes are all everyday pre-existing clothes or locations, the cast is made up of non-actors who were probably overjoyed to be in the production but didn't really do anything else afterward. The film purports to mix American Graffiti type 1950's period antics, 80's teen comedy movie formula convention (complete with actors in their mid 20s pretending to be 17 year old high schoolers), and of course the vampire angle. The idea had some potential, and the production was no doubt green-lighted after the unlikely success of the TEEN WOLF franchise. This movie was a product of greed, not artistic vision, and a perfect example of the home rental video age. Empty, disposable, forgettable, and over quickly enough so you can fit in three rentals of equally dismal garbage into one night of brain-dead viewing and not experience anything that might distract you from your life as a consumer.

The reason the film doesn't work is partly the plodding, uninteresting way it was filmd, and that the actor who got the lead role has about as much of a screen presence as the aforementioned soap dish. He starts the film looking and acting like an off-Broadway Potsie and is supposedly "changed" by his experience. Other than giving him an off-the rack leather jacket that doesn't quite fit (it's too big) and a greaser haircut, he doesn't look or act significantly different, coming across as a shrimp trying to act up the Jason Patric LOST BOYS part and unable to keep it up. The other commenter's assessment of the film's characters being unlikeable is also somewhat fitting. Not only do they fail to create enough interest for us to care about what might happen to them, they mostly come across as either fake character roles in a low-budget film, or losers who we actually would prefer to see bad things happen to. The problem with the film is that nothing really does happen to anyone, and in the end it appears to have simply been a Mastercard budget LOST BOYS ripoff with the added 50's period angle to make it appear different & tap into the "I WAS A TEENAGE WHATEVER" nostalgia. On paper it sounds kind of fun, but the execution is too plodding, pedestrian, lacking finesse and happy to be that way. It's not even bad enough to enjoy on a "bad movie" level, and ultimately just sort of sucks. The only reason to even consider seeing it would be due to it's complete obscurity. You won't find this on Netflix, and for some of us that is reason enough to give it a shot.

The film also has a curious agenda to it that strikes me as being somewhat queer-oriented. Nothing wrong with that, but aside from an extended image of "Bucky", the film's villain jock character, leaning stark naked against the wall in the boy's locker room shower (??) there is no nudity or sexual content in this vampire movie, and vampire movies are or should be about sex. Here is a movie that appears to be in the closet and has no sex, other than an extended image of an athletic 20 year old man's bared bottom -- Live it up, girls!! Mind you I have zero problem with Focus Group Horror catering to specific sects of viewers so this may indeed be a Gay Teen Vampire Horror/Comedy movie in disguise. The question is, was that the intent or just happened to have been the result? (DON'T GO IN THE WOODS also has an undeniably gay subtext to it, so I sense a linking theme implied here just by the presence of Ms. Brown). But since I don't care about the movie since it doesn't even care about itself the prospect of a subtextural agenda doesn't even become an intriguing prospect, only an annoying quirk to puzzle over. Without any charisma and generating no real interest the film remains a relic of the 1980s video rental boom years which is where it should probably remain. I don't dislike the film yet I cannot recommend it either, merely note it's existence. And that's kind of a shame: the premise is interesting but the way it was executed isn't.

3/10. "Anemic."

My review was written in May 1989 after watching the movie on New World video cassette.

Only related by title to New World's "Vamp", "Teen Vamp" is an amateurish, Southern-fried horror comedy with little to offer home video fans.

Shot in Shreveport, Louisiana, on an evidently threadbare budget, pic wallows in '50s nostalgia for a nonstory of nerd Beau Bishop transformed (very unconvincingly) into a leather-jacketed hip dude after a prostitute at a road house bites him.

His vampire status is taken very matter-of-factly by all concerned, except his pretty girlfriend Angie Brown, who demands he bite her too!

Cornpone approach to the vampire genre doesn't work, and isn't helped by amateur sound recording, poor makeup effects and a far too talky script. Guest stars Karen Carlson as Bishop's mom and Clu Gulager as a hammy minister have little to do. Bishop's charmless performance is a drag.

There is something so strange about this production. The film stock they used is definitely not the same as is used by mainstream filmmakers. It looks almost like Super 8mm or something primitive and cheap. The performances are all beyond awful, like they cast good-looking non-actors to act in it. As far as Clu Gallager's presence, I suspect somebody got the man drunk and tricked him into signing a contract to appear in this seemingly student-film production.

But as poor of a film as "Teen Vamp" is, I still give it 6 stars here, first, because it is so weird and obscure. And it has some other qualities too. For some reason I found it kind of erotic, despite the fact that there is no graphic sex. The vampire is a strange looking guy who is obsessed with an unattainable female classmate who snubs him for being a loser. But when he is transformed into a blood sucker with creepy white eyes, she suddenly gets all hot for him. Simultanaesly she shows that, even though she is a pretty blond airhead, she actually has a fascination with evil. She even takes him to an abandoned house where a man decapitated his twin babies and switched their heads! Also, you keep expecting it be a comedy, but it never really gets there. Instead it remains quite dark and sinister. Others bitched about the make-up effects but I thought they were fine, and the white vampire eyes were suitably creepy. And I'm surprised nobody mentioned the heavy atmospheric quality it has. The washed out film stock, the 1950's cars and clothes, and this seedy quality somehow comes together nicely. The actor they cast as Murphy the vampire is suitably skinny and creepy-looking, but also kind of sexy. He reminded me of Ryan Gosling, if Ryan Gosling smoked a lot of crack and had some mental issues. Weird, very obscure title, that I'm sure is not easy to find. But worth searching for if you are obsessed with vampires..or just truly strange cinema.

During the days when the video rental store reigned, this obscure horror comedy actually managed to get two releases on VHS (though the second time was on a budget video label.) But watching the movie, one has to ask why ANYONE would think that this movie was releasable in the first place. It's not that much of a step up from what teenagers would make with access to a video camera. The movie looks really cheap for the most part, maybe because some expense was made to set the action in the 1950s, a decision that has absolutely no bearing on the story - it would have been easier to set the story in modern times and use the saved money to punch up the look (and audio) of the movie. Also, the movie tries to be a comedy, but there's nothing funny about the screenplay as written, and things are made worse by the fact that director Samuel Bradford (who also wrote the movie) doesn't seem able to set up any gags with any skill or energy. In fact, the whole movie moves in a sluggish and endless manner. And don't get me started on the fact that the actor playing the title character looks about 30 years old instead of a teenager. This is one movie that was made to gather dust in thrift stores.

'50s high-school loser Murphy (Beau Bishop) plucks up the courage to ask cute blonde Conny (Angie Brown) for a date, but is bluntly turned down. Instead, he pays a visit to a local whorehouse where he hooks up with a leggy brunette who turns out to be a vampire looking for virgin blood. Having been bitten, Murphy transforms into a cocky, leather-jacketed bloodsucking hotshot who is strong enough to deal with jock bully Bucky (Evans Dietz) and cool enough to attract the attention of the once unattainable Conny.

No doubt inspired by the success of Teen Wolf, as well as teen-friendly vampire films Vamp, Fright Night and The Lost Boys, this low-budget horror/comedy fails on every level: it's not scary, it's not funny, the central character is unlikable, the love interest is a psychotic cat killer, and the plot is all over the place, even throwing some ghosts into the mix. There's little gore, and the only nudity on display comes from Bucky: a lingering shot of him from behind in the shower, and an extreme close up of his bare ass (making the film perfect for a double-bill with that queer horror classic A Nightmare On Elm Street 2).

After lots of quite frankly plain embarrassing silliness (Clu Gulager, what were you thinking?), the movie closes on a happy note, with everyone who was turned into a vampire reverting to normality when the hooker vamp is killed (all except for Conny, who is presumably still a nutjob). About the only good thing in the whole movie is the simple but effective look of the vampires: contact lenses and fangs and a bit of slap to make them look pale.