Vamp
“This isn’t a frat; it’s a half-way house for morons.” The initiation ceremony for new pledges grudgingly undertaken by AJ and Keith solely to get them out of the intolerable university dormitory they are housed in, when it is bungled by the brethren AJ loses his unflappable cool, but only a moment after the hustler emerges, making a deal to secure them the coveted place: as an alternative to ritual humiliation, they will provide drinks and entertainment, namely, a stripper.
Securing a ride from the tragically unhip Duncan, wealthy yet friendless but possessed of a set of wheels, the long ride to the city sees a confrontation in a coffee shop with a psychotic albino and his cohort of freaks, after which the After Dark Club seems a safe haven, but appearances can be very deceptive, and the nocturnal staff and performers have a particular fondness for men who are unattached and lonely, the precise audience of a strip club.
Released in the summer of 1986, almost exactly a year before The Lost Boys solidified the cool of eternal vampiric youth and desire, Vamp is a stylish comedy horror directed by Richard Wenk from a script co-written with producer Donald P Borchers, sharing a prosthetic makeup artist in the great Greg Cannom but there the similarities end, though it does boast a killer post-staking punchline to rival the iconic “Death by stereo!”
Starring The Falcon and the Snowman’s Chris Makepeace and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2’s Robert Rusler as AJ, they are the core of the film, their friendship and loyalty to each other unquestioned and enduring through whatever happens, a bromance where each would willingly die for the other, though that would not be the preferred option, AJ handsome and suave, Keith less assured but noticing when things are not as they should be, staying sober and increasingly alert in the After Dark Club when all others are mesmerised by the headline act.
A singular individual entertainment industry even to this day, Grace Jones is Katrina, her stage presence confrontational, provocative and commanding absolute attention, naked but for a wireframe bikini yet the most powerful presence in the room; animalistic and non-verbal yet absolutely clear in her communications and demands, her introduction is the centrepiece of the film, but it is not just her scene, Vamp is her film in its entirety, always in the mind even when not on screen.
Contrasting Katrina is Dedee Pfeiffer’s ditzy waitress “Amaretto,” fresh and genuine and upfront about her concealment of her real identity yet the only person who approaches Keith with honesty in the place where all fantasies are lies to facilitate theft, not to empty wallets but veins, manager Vic (the wonderfully jaded Sandy Baron) making it clear the preferred clientele are “the transients, the loners, the strays – the ones who can’t be traced.”
Playing with expectation from the opening scene, presenting the film as a Gothic horror of grand architecture and robed supplicants before pulling the first of many rugs, Vamp is a rarity in the field of comedy horror in that it genuinely works as both, Keith’s night becoming infinitely worse as AJ goes missing, the staff deny any recollection of him ever being there, Duncan (Gedde Watanabe) gets dead drunk and the sinister Snow (Billy Drago) and his gang hunt the streets.
With hole city blocks illuminated in green and pink as though this derelict neighbourhood in an unnamed city is a strange extension of the club, Vamp exists in a nightmarish netherworld where anything can happen and AJ’s hot fashion sense and Keith’s self-aware quips won’t be enough the save them, but the volatility of high alcohol spirits and handy experience of archery might be, the ancient legends of the vampires reinvented for the eighties with sarcasm but no cynicism.
Vamp will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Friday 14th February
