The saying "They don't make 'em like they used to" usually refers to really great movies – but it can also be said for those really bad ones that start out intentionally cheesy and keep piling it on
and on and on and on
Well here's an attempt to revive "Cringe Cinema" to younger audiences
We begin with two pretty girls waking up in plush coffins. They're vampires and talk like your average airhead teens. But it turns out one of them dates back to the 1800's...
Alicia Silverstone's Goody is just that. Passive and non-violent, she only bleeds filthy rodents, never humans, and had lived many years but fell in love only once during the 1960's to a hippie radical who, now older, is in the form of (a noticeably aged) Richard Lewis.
And then there's Stacy, played by Krysten Ritter, the more naïve of the two as she falls in love with a fellow college student with the last name Van Helsing, whose father (Wallace Shawn) may finally have a reason to wield that wooden stake again.
Unlike Goody, who recalls historic events like they were only yesterday, Stacy had changed twenty years ago and her memories go back only to the 80's and 90's, the era when writer/director Amy Heckerling reigned.
FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH is one of the best high school sex comedies ever made, and CLUELESS shaped 90's teen cinema. But VAMPS fails on almost every level, trying much too hard to be modern with references to social websites, iphones and ipads; while the constant jabs at the Right is much too forced (and distractingly slanted) even for Hollywood.
The Vamp girls live an idyllic existence roaming from nightclubs to their apartment and are sporadically summoned by their leader Cisserus, who revives their everlasting clock. Iconic actress Sigourney Weaver plays the bloodthirsty siren leaving a trail of corpses at her wake (including The Pizza Guy from RIDGEMONT HIGH) and hams it up to an embarrassing level.
On the lighter side, Malcolm McDowell tones down the passively gentle Vlad the Impaler, part of a group of reformed flesh-eaters who gather at a "Bloodsuckers Anonymous" meeting (harboring another FAST TIMES veteran Scott "Arnold" Thomson). McDowell is collecting a paycheck here, and alas, it's probably not a big one.
There's a joke a minute, and few are funny. Attempting to spoof bad b-movies, VAMPS becomes one in itself. The glossy cinematography resembles a straight-to-video release while the special effects are the kind of Computer Generated fare you'd see on a cheesy You Tube video.
But there are two sides to the coin. One aspect of really bad horror flicks is that once you start, you can't stop watching. This will make you stay tuned in, to see if it can get any worse. It does and often comfortably so.
Alicia Silverstone, who looks great twenty years after CLUELESS, is sweetly likable as the Vamp with a bleeding heart of gold. She may have to sacrifice herself for her best friend, who, having found true love, might have a real (if shortened) future.
If anything else, you'll believe these "young ladies" really care for each other. It's too bad they don't have anything really funny to do, or say, in the ninety minute eternity herein.
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