My Best Friend Is a Vampire

My Best Friend is a Vampire (1987) is a movie I recently watched for the first time in a long time on HBOMAX. The storyline follows a Virgin young man who is a delivery driver and unfortunately has a delivery to the house of a hot vampire woman who wants to change his life forever. The young man wakes up the next day as both a man and a vampire. He tries to return to a normal life and will find that task more daunting than he anticipated.

This movie is directed by Jimmy Huston (Final Exam) and stars Robert Sean Leonard (Dead Poet Society), LeeAnne Locken (Miss Congeniality), Cheryl Pollak (Alien Nation), Cecilia Peck (Havoc) and Kenneth Kimmins (Arrested Development).

This movie has the classic 80s feel to it in every way. The soundtrack to this movie is an easy 10/10 and absolute gold. The hairstyles, sets and attire are all fantastic. The characters are very fun, relatable and easy to root for. The circumstances and hijinks are crazy and a bit unrealistic but that's what makes them entertaining. The comedic content is a bit cheesy but there are some funny scenes, the drivers test scenario comes to mind. I did thoroughly enjoy the ending and liked the ultimate conclusion.

Overall this film is more fun than good but is definitely worth a viewing. I would score this a 6/10 and recommend seeing it once.

I couldn't believe the rating this movie got here so I had to write, this was a movie that opitimised every aspect of the eighties (including really bad dress sense)from the troubled/angst teenager, to the mad thinks he's doing-good scientist and put it all togother in a fun relaxing and romantic teenage movie(no shlock horror typical of the era). I honestly think that anyone sits down and watches this movie for what it was and is "a rom/com" they will enjoy, even now when it looks a bit dated.......Honestly go rent buy scrape this movie up or out of the cupboard and put your feet up grab some popcorn or beer or possibly pigs bloods (sorry couldn't help a reference to the movie) and enjoy.................

My Best Friend is a Vampire follows a long line of fun films about supernatural occurences disrupting an already awkward period of teenage development just as it did in My Mom's a Werewolf (teenager's mother turns into a werewolf), My Boyfriend's Back (girlfriend's dead boyfriend rises from the grave), and I Was a Teenaged Zombie (teenager's friends turns zombie to fight zombie drug dealer), and the list goes on.

This was surprisingly a very entertaining film about a young boy who, upon almost losing his virginity to a strange older woman is a strange old house, is given the bite that turns him into a vampire. Now a professor and his idiot assistant, vampire hunters, want to kill the vampire that is on the loose. The only problem is, they've mistaken his friend as their undead target.

The funniest parts of the movie involve a lot of great slapstick humor between Ralph, the vampire's best friend, and the vampire hunters who seem to follow him at every turn, although he can't figure out why. Even more amusing is the vampire teenager learning to cope with being a vampire thanks to the help of an older man, an English vampire mentor. With the help of dark glasses and a large stock of pigs blood, maybe life as a teenaged vampire won't be all that bad. It just makes shaving a little hard when you can't get your reflection in the bathroom mirror. And even more amusing than that is the misconception that the vampire's parents have about him. I would've guessed that they would have thought their little Johnny was on dope, but their mistake is actually much funnier.

Plus, you have a pretty good soundtrack to boot with the dominating song being Timbuk 3's "The Future's So Bright."

If this is your forte of films, the 80s horror/comedies, you should likely enjoy this one. It doesn't bite!

Jeremy Capello is a teenager who has dreams about the gawky Darla Blake. A girl who doesn't think that highly of him, but there's also a beautiful Barbie-like cheerleader named Candy who's actually keen on him. So his best friend Ralph suggests that he should seek out someone unknown for a one-night stand to get this get his mind thinking straight. While, doing his job he encounters the mysterious Nora, who invites him over for the night. So Jeremy with little help from Ralph meets her, only to be bitten by her and a crazed loon (possibly the husband) break in. The day after Jeremy goes through some minor changes and finds out that Nora's place has been burnt down. Through the course he learns that these are vampire hunters after them, but they seem to think that Ralph is the vampire.

The mid-to-late 80s was a time for vampire films (and even teenage monster themes too). This pleasant little romp is the standard mould of these monster comedies (maybe one of the lesser ones), but surprisingly it makes for a decently breezy time-waster if you're looking for a little 1980s nostalgia in your viewing. It has some generally amusing moments, especially from Rene Auberjonois' sneaky vampire mentor role as Modoc and you can see David Warner is having a ball in his ripe crack-ball role of Prof. Leopold McCarthy, vampire hunter.

Most of the performances are reasonably charming. Robert Sean Leonard ("Dead Poet's Society" and who would probably be best known for the recent TV series "House") is delightfully good as Jeremy and Evan Mirand turns in a joyful performance as the loutish Ralph. A fetching Cheryl Pollack is fair as the geeky Darla. Fannie Flagg and Kenneth Kimmins trump in with marvellously tuneful performances as Jeremy's overly worried parents. Paul Wilson makes solid of Prof. Leonard's bumbling assistant Grimsdyke. Let me not forget the minor role of the seductively alluring Cecilia Peck (Gregory Pecks' daughter) as Nora. Oh and look out for a slender Kathy Bates. The variable cast had a witty script to play along with and most of it was quite satisfying when it came to the punch.

Director Jimmy Huston does a competent job without doing anything overtly special, but he gets a lot spirit and odd developments running through some humorous situations. It can get corny in parts and extremely sappy when it comes to its closing moral. A trailblazing 80s pop soundtrack (notably Blondie and Oingo Boingo) features strongly in the film's make-up with the utterly hip and catchy title tune, "The future's so bright (I've got to wear shades)" by the TIMBUK 3. The stereotypically lucid premise (which shares similarities with the Jim Carrey vampire flick, "Once Bitten") is routine and derivative, but still it has some nice touches and diverting trivia on the vampire mythology. None of this should sideswipe your entertainment of it, unless you're looking for something with more aggression amongst its bite. I guess you'll know if you're going to like it after the first 15 minutes.

It might be far from revolutionary (just look at the title and you should know what to expect), but there's just something endearing about this campy lightweight piece.

Granted I only know of one other movie that fits into this genre and that is the Jim Carrey movie "Once Bitten". This one though is better than that one as it is just a bit funnier and has a better and more likable plot to it. This one has a teen going to the house of a girl for what he thinks is going to be a one night stand kind of thing, as it turns out though the person he is seeing is a vampire and he is soon infected and must now feast on blood. Thankfully, it does not have to be human blood as a rather friendly vampire teaches him the ways of living a rather nice existence as a vampire without having to drink the blood of humans. Unfortuanately, a sort of Van Helsing type hunter of vampires who saw him and his friend at the girl's house where he was bitten, however, he thinks it is the guy's friend and not him that has been bitten and turned into a vampire. The guy also is having girl trouble as he even tries to use vampire hypnotism to get the girl he likes. All this makes for an very funny comedy that really is rather lighthearted. So while not perfect, it makes for a fun film to watch.