Vampire on Bikini Beach

I saw this movie twice. The first time was on "USA Up All Night" when I left my friends at some bar where the girls weren't biting and went home to watch TV, still more than a little drunk. The second time was more recently, middle-aged like I am now and stone-cold sober.

The movie itself is nothing to write home about. Like a lot of "USA Up All Night" movies, it is very, very low-budget. It is a complete failure as a vampire movie and only a little better as a bikini movie (there is some nudity, but precious little, and it would have been edited out on "USA Up All Night" anyway). The best part of the movie though was when "USA Up All Night" host Gilbert Gottfried did a fake commercial for an album of the "Greatest Hits of Bob's Band". "Bob" is the completely untalented boyfriend of the lead bikini-clad bimbo in this movie. His band has all of two songs (both awful) and the commercial just scrolled these two songs over and over while "Bob's Band" plays them "live" in scenes from this dumbass movie. I fell out of the chair laughing. It was the best time a young guy could possibly have in the early 90's all by himself on a Saturday night with all his clothes on.

Seeing this movie later, eh. It's not really worth it. It REALLY needs Gilbert Gottfried.

Well, there were vampires and there were plenty of bikinis, so I suppose the film did deliver what the title promised. If you are not into 80s nostalgia, you'll find this tale of teenagers finding a "Book of the Dead" and uncovering a vampire cult ridiculous and unwatchable. The film did capture the vibe of the 1980s pretty well, with tons of 80s hair, music, fashion, and, as you'd expect, bikinis, so I did enjoy the film for nostalgia value and that's really the only reason to watch. Overall, as a proud member of gen-x, the retro nostalgia was enough to hold my interest in this amateurishly made low budget horror/comedy, but certainly do not go into this film expecting "The Lost Boys."

Vampire on Bikini Beach (1988) was available on Tubi last month. The storyline follows a group of teenage friends in Southern California who accidentally discover the book of the dead. Unfortunately for them, a cult of vampires are after the book to open a gate and take over the world. Can the teenagers stop them?

This movie is written and directed by Mark Headley, in his only directorial project, and stars Jennifer Badham (Men at Work), Stephen Mathews (The Lost Boys) and Jennifer Jostyn (House of 1000 Corpses).

This has a classic 80s feel to it with the hairstyles, attire, slang, soundtrack and cinematography. The best part of the entire movie is the book and the special effects they use to show it's power. Everything else is awful - the dialogue, storyline, kill scenes and villain are all disappointing. There isn't even any nudity in this, maybe a butt shot or two, but no nudity and the female on the poster definitely isn't in this. 😂 Even the love story in this is annoying.

Overall, there's nothing to see here. I would score this a 2/10 and recommend skipping it.

I totally agree with another reviewer that said this a fun, yet sad watch, for the nostalgia alone. Why sad? Because I was a teenager in the '80's, and we had lives, like the kids in this movie. Kids worked to get cars, or worked on cars, had friends who were in bands (I'm remembering you, 'Obscene Jester') and had a fun and satisfying existence, WITH NO PARENTS ANYWHERE. We were out every night, having fun, solving our own problems, and living lives, instead of fake posting the lives we wished we had. We also had music, decent TV, hanging out, and even falling in love (like the two new lovers in this movie), instead of PornHub. Kids also had enough internal fortitude to solve their own problems, like ya know, vampires. That's why this movie doesn't suck (pun intended). And for those of you that think '80's fashion is stupid, I'll say, at least we took time to care about our appearance, and had a STYLE. That ended with the '90's. Now everyone's a fat slob, who thinks it's ok to be George Costanza, and go out in sweat pants. We had a lot of art in our lives back then, look at all the art in this movie, the outfits, the music, the car, the bar decorations, even the graffiti is cool. So I don't hate on the haters of this movie, instead I feel horribly sad for them. They don't even realize, they missed the party...

This is a terrible movie without nearly enough vampires, bikinis, or beaches. Even in an era of terrible direct-to-video movies I can't help but wonder why or how this was made. Who gave the green light to a movie called "Vampires on Bikini Beach" and then told the director "But make it without so many vampires and bikinis. How about we just have endless scenes of a mediocre 80s synth band instead? And don't worry about the plot. We'll fix it with a voiceover narration that will make as little sense as the rest of it."

This fine high-concept title deserved a better terrible movie. I'm not even sure how it amassed an average 2.1 out of ten score here, except people are being unduly kind.

I gave it one star because that's the lowest score, but I like to think every terrible movie has some redeeming features, so here they are:

1. An all-too brief scene in a bikini shop. The scene itself is terrible, but at least there are attractive women in bikinis briefly on screen. There are also women in bikinis on a beach at a couple of brief early scenes. They are also attractive women.

2. The line, "This is a job for Weird Harold." I won't try to explain its context, but it was so random and nonsensical that it made me laugh.

3. The line "Why am I here?" I have no doubt that everybody involved with this production asked that question at some point.

4. There is lots of 1980s big hair. I'm pretty sure that at least half of whatever tiny budget this movie had was spent on hair spray.

I marked this review "no" for spoilers because I was unable to derive a plot to tell you about and because it would be impossible to spoil this movie. It arrived in the video store fully spoiled.

Look, this movie is harmless enough, despite the obvious lack of budget, production values, or movie-making skill. It's not mean or soul-deadening in the way of a lot of modern slasher flicks or serial-killer movies are. But I say this as somebody with a great fondness for low-budget productions, bad monster flicks, dubious acting, and bad 80s movies: if you're going to spend an hour-and-a-half of your life watching something, please find something at least marginally better. I assure you it will be easy to do so.