VAMP: 28 of 31 Horror Movies I've Never Seen

When I was a young lad, I loved Vampires.  Everything about Vampires was sexy and mysterious.  The fetishism surrounding blood drinking, the concept of having to hide in the darkness among society, the violence; pretty much everything about it spoke to my frustrations with growing up.  As I grew older I watched my idea of Vampires get slowly morphed into this strange pop culture thing where they were suddenly the sullen outcasts that desperately clung to any shred of their lost humanity.  These are not the Vampires I love.  The Vampires I love hide in plain sight and are merciless hunters of a common prey.  So I had a falling out with the depiction of Vampires and 1986's VAMP sure as hell ain't bringing me back into the fold.

Two savvy college kids desperate to get into a college frat make a plan to obtain a stripper for an upcoming party.  Heading into the city, in one of the weirdest and longest spinning vehicle car sequences ever, they come across a Bar called After Dark which just so happens to be inhabited, like much of the surrounding neighborhood, by a pack of Vampires led by an Egyptian Vampire Queen.  Plenty of magenta and green lit mayhem ensues in a movie that carries every single stereotype from an I Love The 80s episode.

This movie is bad.  Not bad in the unwatchable way, it's just so god damned silly that unless you are drunk with friends or completely brain dead you will most likely turn the damn thing off.  Don't get me wrong, it's got it's fair share of witty dialogue and an adorably spunky Dedee Pfeiffer, but that doesn't save it from it's cemented place in 80s nostalgia hell.  I don't even need to get started on the obvious White vs Black, Man vs Woman subtext (if you can call it SUBtext) of this film, but let's just say that the heroes of the story are all White kids.

There are a couple of moments that are just fun enough that they're not pure cheeseball silly, like a skeletal middle finger from an animatronic skeleton, but so much of the film is centered around the basest gags and thrills that it loses it's credible.  Anyone who drinks alcohol knows that brandy does not create enough vapor to catch fire within 2 seconds of being spilled on a bar or on the floor and it most certainly doesn't light a person's clothing on fire like fresh kerosene.  Even with all these faults though, I have to admit I had a good time making fun of the movie with my buddy Patrick, Still, I would never have put the film on had we not already been half-cocked.

2 out of 5 skulls.