Category: Vampire Movies

Day 10 in my 31 Days of Vampire Movies is the embodiment of “Shoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” This quote from Norman Vincent Peale describes the utter madness that is Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce.

Lifeforce was based off a book by Colin Wilson, titled The Space Vampires. I mean, with a title like that, you know exactly what you’re getting. Add in the fact that this was produced by Cannon Films (if you are familiar with the 80s, you know who Cannon is. If not, oh boy. You have such an amazing adventure ahead of you) and you have all the ingredients for a movie that should have blown the ass off the entire decade. Instead, this is the movie that tanked Tobe Hooper’s career and dealt Cannon a financial blow they never really recovered from. To torture the metaphor, the Stars, in this case, happened to be the cold, harsh vacuum of space.

Lifeforce was Cannon’s bid to jump from action B movies into the mainstream. It was ambitious sci-fi, and you can tell from the very first shot of the astronauts in space that they weren’t messing around. Every dime of the budget is on screen. Everyone takes this amazingly silly concept – aliens who happen to also be vampires, discovered by astronauts, who are brought to earth where shenanigans ensue – completely seriously, and the actors all do a better job than you would expect from such a wild concept.

The biggest flaw of the movie is that the first act is so much more put together than the back end. It reeks of studio interference, as plot lines that were meticulously set up were either forgotten or wrapped up almost as an after thought, and important characters are pushed off to the side and never given closure. The ending is rushed and even a bit nonsensical even for a movie made from a book called The Space Vampires.

Also, we have to talk about the elephant in the room. Or, rather, the naked vampire in the room. French actress Mathilda May is The Space Girl, and she spends 98% of the movie completely nude. There are a few scenes where she body-hops into another woman who stays clothed, and into another character I’ll leave you discover for yourself. (Also this movie has the first on-screen kiss for Patrick Stewart, Jean-Luc Picard for those of you who are nasty.) But she spends the majority of the movie stark naked, and it could be uncomfortable for viewers considering May was only 20 at the time the movie was filmed.

That being said, this is an amazing movie and I do recommend it. You get to see what real ambition looks like, even if it ended up stifled by studio and censor demands. For all of today’s slick and polished made-by-committee movies, Lifeforce shows the potential movies have to be truly unique pieces of art, even if the execution fumbles.

Day 7 of 31 Days of Vampire Movies brings you the one that started it all. No, not vampires.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Sure, some people might try to convince you it all started with Tony Stark, but this movie is where comic book movies became main stream box office successes, and showed studios that comic books weren’t just for nerds.

Yes, I know. It’s a Zorro Pop. I’m doing the best I can here, people.

It’s hard to overstate just how cool Blade was when it first came out. Released a full year before The Matrix made the black trench coat cyberpunk look mainstream, Blade exploded onto the screen in a rave of blood, pounding techno, and exploding vampires. That opening scene showed just what a comic book movie could really do, at a time when they were considered box office trash, and most were just artless IP cash grabs with little to no plot and an inherent silliness that was usually more cringe-worthy than charming. Blade played its concept 100% straight and made vampires a credible threat, and that made Blade the baddest motherfucker in the business.

Also, it had this guy. The only guy who could out-awesome Blade in his own movie.

You could never catch this fucker at a bad time.

Blade is a great time for people who like action movies before they became jumbled CGI monstrosities of pixels smashing into each other. There is CGI, and it is incredibly dated, but the wirework stunts and the commitment of everyone involved to the premise more than makes up for it. Definitely give this one a shot if you haven’t, if only to see where it all began. And to see Kris Kristofferson blasting the shit out of vampires. That is always a good time.

Day 6 of 31 Days of Vampire Movies brings us back to the 80’s camp and sleaze first exemplified by Day 2’s movie, Vampire Cop. This movie has it all: vampires, strippers, neon lights, existential crises, and mullets. Oh my God, the mullets in this movie. And it’s a Roger Corman flick, so buckle up, kids. This is Dance of the Damned.

Yes I know that’s a Crimson Peak Funko Pop and not a vampire. I’m running out of vampire Pops just go with it.

Dance of the Damned from 1989 has resurfaced on DVD/Bluray with a recently rediscovered master print. It was thought to be lost media, and the world was all the poorer for it. Anyone who has heard of this movie might be more familiar with its remake To Sleep with a Vampire. (Good Lord, what a title. What an awful, awful title) starring Skippy from Family Ties: Scott Valentine. That one was also a contender to be on this list, but ultimately I decided to go with Dance of the Damned, since it was the first and, on the whole, steers into it’s conceit with more conviction. And yeah, the mullet. You just have to see that godawful amazing mullet.

Look at it. LOOK at it.

The plot in a nutshell is this: a cruising vampire (with mullet) wanders into a sleazy strip club where he overhears one of the dancers contemplating suicide after her ex-husband refuses to let her visit with her son on his birthday. Her life is in shambles and she is breaking under the strain, so he decides to give her her death wish on the condition that she spend her last night with him showing him what it is to be human.

Dance of Damned has all the excesses of the 80’s and Roger Corman movies, but if you like that sort of thing, you won’t go astray here. It’s surprisingly poignant in places, and sympathetic to its main character when, at the time and even now, sex workers struggle to be seen as people worthy of love, compassion, and understanding. That being said, its also an 80’s movie about an exotic dancer, so expect all the usual exploitation that comes along with it.

But, once again, you need to see this movie, if only to see the glory of the God-King of Mullets on display. Like a car crash or a murderer jumping out of the bushes at you with a knife: you won’t soon forget it.

Day 3 in 31 Days of Vampire Movies takes us in yet another direction, away from the Classic and the Classic Trash of Dracula and Vampire Cop. With no further ado, I give you Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive.

This movie explores the more esoteric sides of being a vampire. Namely, how to deal with immortality itself, and what that means for relationships both familial and between lovers. It shows what happens between two people over the course eons by focusing on a scant few days in the vastness of their existences. It’s about passions in all their manifestations, and just what it means to be human. Only Lovers Left Alive is a thoughtful movie with engaging vampires who tread alongside familiar tropes without falling into them. It’s not a vampire movie of scares or gore or grand sweeping romantic declarations, but its smallness is what makes it so powerful. Definitely give this one a shot if you want your moody vampires to come with a side of introspection and hopefulness in the face of the vast universe of time.

For Day 2 of my 31 Days of Vampire Movies, we’re making a 180 from Christopher Lee’s classic turn as Count Dracula, into a complete shitshow of a vampire movie that’s mostly softcore porn, but is so hilariously bad that you’ll want to throw it on for a Bad Movie Night with friends. Friends you don’t mind watching porn around, but still, this one is worth getting drunk and mocking relentlessly.

With all that said, I would like to present to you: Vampire Cop.

Where to start? Where do I even start with this awful, awful movie? It’s low budget trash from the early 90s that didn’t even start out as a vampire movie, but somewhere along the line, some coked-up producer said “What the hell, throw some vampires in there.” And with that, Vampire Cop was born.

The plot is so bare bones it barely needs mentioning. A vampire disguised as a police detective spends his nights hunting and killing prostitutes and drug dealers to clean up the mean streets. And in doing so, he turns them into vampires. Which, in retrospect, only makes his job that much harder, as now instead of hunting criminals, he’s hunting criminals who also happen to be vampires. There’s an investigative journalist trying to solve the rash of killings in there somewhere, and a drug dealer/pimp who discovers what Vampire Cop is doing and decides he wants in on this vampire thing himself.

It’s a stupid movie that’s basically a showcase for boobs and sex scenes and the occasional vampire scare. But like I said, its so hilariously bad that its worth a watch if you can find it. I managed to snag one of a one hundred limited edition blu ray rerelease from SRS Cinema off ebay. Like I said, its an underground classic, and depending on your taste in awful, it may just be the vampire movie for you.

I’ve decided to do something special for Halloween this year, and since vampires are my favorite monsters, and Halloween is my favorite holiday, I’m smashing them together into a monster mash of blood, guts, romance, and movies. Can’t ask for more than that, right?

Each day I’m going to feature a different vampire movie, in no particular order, culminating in my most favorite vampire movie being revealed on Halloween itself! I’m pulling from my collection, so its going to be all over the place, from the mainstream to stuff you could only find on Cinemax in the early 90s in the wee hours of the morning. But hopefully you’ll find something new or rediscover an old classic!

And on that note, we’ll start Day 1 with The Horror of Dracula.

This is one of the greats, y’all. It’s Sir Christopher Lee’s first foray as the Count, and its every bit as good a gothic as you’re ever going to find. From the moment Lee’s Count first appears at the top of the stairs, looming over poor Jonathan Harker (and by extension us, the humble viewer), he takes command of the movie and holds it by the throat until Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing burns him to ash by ripping a curtain from the wall in true swashbuckler fashion and forcing him to face the brilliant light of dawn. Lush set design, a ominous musical score, fabulous costumes (I still want Peter Cushing’s coat), likable characters, and a script that takes certain liberties but keeps the feel of the original book a lot better than most Dracula movies that followed, this is one of my all-time favorite vampire movies.