Vamp (1986)

From https://www.movieposter.com/posters/
archive/main/173/MPW-86856

Director: Richard Wenk

Screenplay: Richard Wenk and Donald P. Borchers

Cast: Chris Makepeace as Keith; Robert Rusler as AJ; Grace Jones as Queen Katrina; Dedee Pfeiffer as Allison; Gedde Watanabe as Duncan; Billy Drago as Snow; Sandy Baron as Vic

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #136

Richard Wenk, before he directed Vamp, had already tackled vampires in a humorous way with Dracula Bites the Big Apple (1979), a short length farce in which Dracula (Peter Loewy) gets sick of Transylvania and decides to go to New York City. I really liked the short, an obvious but playful comedy which never took itself serious, imagining Dracula and a Renfield figure (Barry Gomolka) stuck in the midst of  New York nightlife, the casket full of his homeland's soil left in a taxi cab and the attempts to feed on potential victims much more difficult to accomplish in the lit up, urban environment which never sleeps. I was not expecting the short to suddenly burst into a musical number for one thing, which emphasised that Dancing in the Moonlight wasn't a bland song from a band named Toploader I heard way too much in my childhood in the early 2000s¹, but actually a good song done with an actual, accomplished music number here with choreographed hobo car washers. One which even breaks the fourth wall as the short takes nothing for granted for the sake of a joke. (It even manages one legitimately great gag I wished another vampire film did, where Dracula gets caught out finally getting a victim in his clutches in her apartment only to be at their surprise birthday party). Adding to the tone of the short was that it was shot on-location in New York City. Before the cleanup of the city in the nineties, this grungy porn theatre filled environment is utterly cinematic, as interesting here as it was in more serious horror films like The Driller Killer (1979), ending at the beach under a pier where Dracula decides to float back to his homeland using a coffin as an improvised boat.

From https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aLSwv9clc00/V-rOj3rLGOI/AAAAAAAAFDg/rQpiq2gecQQ
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In comparison Vamp, his film for New World Pictures, does feel a little more cleaned up compared to the short. Vamp has a lot of the same virtues but it's not the same type of film, not as strange and inventive, removed from the real New York City locations but in its own cinematic world. Instead it's a solid if frankly conventional horror-comedy from the mid eighties. The advantage it has, taken from Dracula Bites the Big Apple, is a similar charm with the material, already playing with the viewer in the first scene when one presumes a conventional flashback to a medieval castle. Then its revealed to be an only for it to be the over elaborate introduction ritual for a college fraternity, the soundtrack of ominous music in the background starting to skip and our protagonists for the film Keith (Chris Makepeace) and AJ (Robert Rusler) to get immediately bored and stop acting the ritual out. Instead they offer the frat brothers another way to get into their fraternity, promising to bring a stripper to the house that night. Having to borrow a car from Duncan (Gedde Watanabe), a rich college student who has to pay for friendship and only wants to hang out with people, they go to a strip club in the middle of the city that's bad for any of them to have entered.  

From https://professormortis.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/snow.jpg

Even if their bargain to get into the fraternity and the kick-starter for the plot could be seen as sleazy, the two main male protagonists are played never less than likable, which is a huge advantage to Vamp particularly as there's later emotion drama brought in to the hijinks surrounding its main premise, a nightclub used by a vampire (Grace Jones) to supply her food. Less chauvinistic arseholes, more cocky but ultimately lovable scamps. Even Duncan, whose car they commandeer, never comes off as an annoying joke character, actor Watanabe playing a geek whose lack of friends, and the excitement he finds in this journey to the club, is sympathetic. Watanabe actually steals his scenes on camera throughout the film making how his trajectory plays out even more sympathetic, wishing more sympathy was there for him. How even AJ's trajectory plays out, wrong footing viewers, is as interesting, bringing more emotional weight because the actors can bring out more to these characters than caricatures.

From http://manisthewarmestplacetohide.com/sites/manisthewarmestplacetohide.com/
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Grace Jones was a huge "get" for Vamp and, compared to the divisive views of A View to a Kill (1985), the James Bond film she stars in, this feels more rewarding. Here even if it's a mainly silent role with her in various states of prosthetics for a large part of the film, Jones' real life charisma is shown. A View to a Kill is a "guilty" pleasure for me, able to find entertainment in it despite the glaring issues, one of which is that Jones really doesn't stand out in spite of the heavy handed attempt to make her both a menacing henchwoman for Christopher Walkens' and a Bond girl for the aging Roger Moore, her charisma lost in a film that's as kitsch as you could get in has a lot within it that pushes her prescience to the side. Here in Vamp, I'd argue she is an utterly beautiful woman but you also see the figure who is a living embodiment of an Amazon. Blue eyes that could cut through a person, who memorably for me in an interview for The Guardian said all men "should be penetrated at least once to know how it feels"². It's not a role to fully show her as the powerful person she's seen for many, as a famous musician and a public figure, but especially in the elaborate makeup and costumes, you still get a sliver of it, more than enough to have an impact.

From https://forgottenfilmcast.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/vamp-4.png

This cast sustains a predictable plot as does the aesthetic. Visually, not only do you have the gritty urban squalor of its urban location, but someone in the lighting crew clearly obsessed with Mario Bava and his gift for coloured gels. The colour, even for a film from the neon soaked era of eighties cinema, is bright even when its dark, managing even to make a frequently used sewer location vibrant. Colour is such a hugely neglected aspect of horror in the modern day, where digitally shot realism usually means dull browns and greys without a palette, even the deliberate lack of colour a conscious choice that can add so much to a film. The moment the transition to colour from monochrome was adapted to begot the advantage of the colour spectrum tempering an audience's mood especially for horror cinema. A lot of the eighties horror that is beloved, even when flawed, had the advantage of cinematographers, technicians for the visuals and lights, and production and costume designers who were willing to use colour to their advantage, a lot of these films now in High Definition becoming a macabre, ecstatic fest for the eyes. Even one like Vamp which contrasts it to the garbage filled urban squalor and desolate back streets has its use of colour to its advantage.

From https://pic.yts.gs/yt/20160626/31739/screenshot3.png

It's this which helps Vamp greatly. The plot eventually becomes more conventional, where Kevin finds himself with Allison (Dedee Pfeiffer), a girl working as a waitress at the club who knows him from the past, really the major issue with Vamp in how it follows an expected plot trajectory and that their chemistry is far less interesting than if following Kevin and AJ or if Duncan's on screen. Far more interesting is everyone else surrounding this eventual narrative. Where Billy Drago, with a significantly better performance than in Takashi Miike's Imprint (2006), inexplicably exists in this weird urban environment as the leader of an all albino male gang who have no real connection to the plot, merely a part of the wonderland environment the protagonists cannot escape. Where bus drivers, even small girls, are vampires who live in this nocturnal reality they've stumbled into. And of course Sandy Baron as Vic, Grace Jones' lackey and the manager/host of the strip club that supplies her nourishment. Baron alongside Gedde Watanabe are the real sparks of entertainment in the film just in terms of their performances, Baron helped by Vic being a fascinating and amusing creation in himself. His untold back story, obsessed with trying to set up shop in Las Vegas, no matter how much Grace Jones ignores this idea, and playing a lounge lizard persona gives the character such a compelling dynamic, back story that doesn't need to be explained but adds richness to Baron's scenes. This type of personality is what you get the most out of Vamp. The main plot is pretty predictable, concluding as one would presume it to. Far more interesting is these quirks that appear from Dracula Bites the Big Apple, Richard Wenk's sense of humour and oddness the reason to view the film.

From https://professormortis.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/deepduran.jpg

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1) Nineties and early Millennial Top 40s music in the United Kingdom just from my memories is a weird, frightening thing. Cotton Eyed Joe by Rednex, Swedish euro dance line dance music, was a Number 1 hit in 1994 for example.

2) Link HERE to the whole interview.