Better, but imperfect

Since my last missive to this site, I have devoted some considerable time to searching through recordings of the films about my kind, hoping to find one accurate representation of vampirism. I have yet to locate a single movie that is without flaw, but I am pleased to report that I have had one provided to me by my mortal minions that is not completely off base.

Vamp was produced in 1986, and concerns a trio of college students in search of a stripper for a fraternity party. They find themselves in a nightclub owned and operated by the undead. Having spent some time running my own, similar business, I found that I generally approved of the methods employed by this group of vampires. They located their establishment in an area of the city not willingly frequented by the representatives of local law enforcement, and catered to a degenerate clientele who would not be missed once consumed by the employees. The drained bodies are then disposed of appropriately, for the most part. A sound business plan, in my opinion, and one that takes advantage of the sensual nature of our kind.

The necessary complication arises when one of the students is brought to the owner of the club for her personal feeding. The minion who provided the meal did not realize that the young man had companions who would bring the attention of the authorities to bear on the sanguinary goings-on. This minion was suitably disposed of. Brava to Grace Jones' Katrina for appropriate ruthlessness.

My only complaints about her performance regard her actions while seducing the young man. The sexual act is not fulfilled, a fallacy common to many depictions of vampirism. I have dire plans for whichever of your scribes it was who first imagined that vampires are eunuchs. We are not. Katrina not only fails to consummate the affair, she rips open the boy's throat. As noted in my last review, indiscriminate rending open of the neck is wasteful, in that too much blood winds up on the sheets instead of flowing into the vampire's body. Worse, she missed out on the pleasures of the flesh she was entitled to as the local apex predator.

Then, there is the 'beast face' she presented prior to her attack on the doomed collegian. As far as I have been able to determine, Vamp is the origin of that odious conceit of mortal filmmakers. Although I am capable of assuming a variety of bestial visages, I never do so while feeding upon someone I'm in the process of seducing. When done properly, the victim should be so enraptured by the good and proper rogering she's receiving that such displays are wasted on her. While terrorizing the meal before feeding does increase the flavor by dumping adrenaline into the bloodstream, the midst of a seduction is not the proper time and place. Save your adrenaline-laden meals for less intimate attacks, as when picking off inconvenient stalkers or incompetent minions. One should have some respect for the sexual act and its inherent beauty.

These are minor quibbles compared the one major flaw in the film. When the hero and his lady friend are fleeing the wrath of Katrina and her chief subordinates, they stumble upon the lair containing the coffins of the majority of the club's employees just as those vampires are retiring for the day. His reaction to his peril is to tip over a drum of some flammable liquid located at the entrance to the lair and set the contents afire, thus destroying the club and all its undead denizens. What self-respecting vampire keeps a container of kerosene in its bedchamber? The presence of that barrel is ludicrous, a plot device conjured up by a screenwriter evidently bankrupt of ideas. I was sorely disappointed in his solution to the problem he set his characters. Given the opportunity, I fully intend to express my displeasure in a manner likely to prove exceedingly painful to him.

Other than this one glaring error and Katrina's unwarranted celibacy, I found Vamp enjoyable. Would that the rest of the cinematic exploits of the undead were so.