Another one from the Lions Gate series The Lost Collection for you today, folks, and when it hits shelves tomorrow it’ll remind us about the kinds of things we used to do with horror concepts, especially vampire movies. Back in the eighties, see, a lot of horror flicks would add humor to their proceedings to give them an unusual sort of edge. Stuff like The Monster Squad, Little Monsters, Ghoulies, and Saturday the 14th Strikes Back blurred the lines between horror, comedy and family filmmaking in a fashion that’s not done so often these days.
And this time it’s all about My Best Friend is a Vampire, a movie that shows us bloodsucking CAN actually be called an “alternative lifestyle”. Featuring Robert Sean Leonard, whom you’ll remember from massive Fox hit “House”, (and sci-fi buffs, take note—Rene Auberjonois, Odo from Star Trek Deep Space Nine is ALSO here) as Jeremy, who ends up meeting the girl of his dreams…who has a penchant for biting. After one particularly steamy session with said dream girl, Jeremy discovers his reflection in the bathroom mirror has vanished. He also can’t stand the smell of garlic…and he’s got an unfathomable craving for really, REALLY rare steak.
All this would be bad enough, except now he’s got a lunatic vampire hunter on his tail (who you’ll remember as David Sean Warner from Titanic), and now, Jeremy’s got to deal with his new…lifestyle.
Some of the standard components of vampire lore have been specifically subverted this time around. Vampires here are not immortal—they live a lot longer than normal, but not forever. Also, they don’t need a whole lot of blood, nor necessarily human blood. Pig’s blood is actually suggested, specifically type B negative. And they are SPREADING, too—at the current rate of vampire infection, it’s projected, that the entire North American continent will be land of the vampires by 1995. Considering this sucker was released in 1988, that’s saying something. I especially love how speed traps become used as a plot device in this movie—that’s a rare treat that I don’t see often, and frankly, I can’t remember the last time I DID see it.
I’m impressed with this little chunk of history from the eighties, I really am. It’s amazing that a movie could take horror movie tropes and blend them so smoothly into a greater whole fully years before the Wayanses could take a crack at it, and in a much more focused narrative than they could have ever conceived of.doing. This isn’t just a long string of scary movie jokes packaged into a weak narrative—this is an actual comedy / horror hybrid that puts just a tiny soupcon of scares into a romantic comedy-drama package. It works a whole lot of sides of the fence at once, and can’t help but be a surprisingly engaging package.
By the time you get to the ending, which is downright heartwarming in a geek-love sort of fashion, you’ll be pretty well surprised at the ride you took. It’s a fun little movie, excellent for the comparatively short (for eighties films) runtime of ninety minutes. It’s definitely worth your time to rent for any of a panoply of circumstances.
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