Horror pop musical extravaganza and 80s vampire comedy throwback!

I accidentally treated myself to an awesome vampire double feature of camp, comedy, and musical numbers! First comes the rockin’ teen pop musical I Kissed a Vampire, then the retro awesome comedy Vamps.

I KISSED A VAMPIRE (2010)

I’m a sucker for cheesy teen musicals…and so are the characters in this movie. It’s been called Twilight: The Musical, but I Kissed a Vampire doesn’t take itself seriously at all and there are no werewolves. It’s filled with campy comic vampire humor and is totally self-aware that the characters keep breaking out into song. It’s cute, has serious blood-sucking vamps, is full of charming characters, and features totally awesome pop tunes. Hey! It’s From Justin to Kelly with vampires!

The story is simple. This cute kid starts sensing that he’s becoming a vampire and soon confronts his maker—a goth vampire named Trey Sylvania (awesome) who has plenty of his own female vamps but has his eyes set on the cute kid’s pretty blonde girlfriend

Cute kid and his girlfriend go to the wacky Dr. Dan Helsing (awesome) for help in stopping the vampirism from taking over. Turns out they need to get themselves some vampire DNA in order to prevent the change. Which means they have to infiltrate Trey Sylvania’s castle!

The three lead characters and the rest of the cast sing and dance their way through the plot with plenty of infectious pop tunes (I seriously want the soundtrack on CD but it’s only available on itunes), and even Dan Helsing wiggles his butt. The man playing Dan Helsing makes for great slapstick comedy. The cutie playing Trey Sylvania is also great as the darkly devilish yet charming rock star vampire.

There’s no denying it; I Kissed a Vampire is fun and funny. It actually started as a 3-episode webseries featuring the same three leads. The webseries is included on the DVD, and while the movie is simply an expanded version of it, there are a couple of musical performances in the webseries that were really good and should have made it to the movie!

Seriously, if you are a fan of both Ryan Murphy’s Glee and American Horror Story, you’ll probably adore I Kissed a Vampire.

VAMPS (2012) 

It feels like Amy Heckerling, who brought us Fast Times at Ridgemont High in the 80s and Clueless in the 90s, decided to make a throwback vampire comedy specifically for me. It’s got the horror angle with plenty of vampire gags and jokes. It is loaded with 80s references. It has Alicia Silverstone reuniting with Amy Heckerling. And it has an amazing cast of both horror and comedy faces.

There’a Alicia as a centuries old vampire. Playing her best friend since the 1990s is Krysten Ritter from the ill-fated Don’t Trust the B…in Apartment 23. It has Sigourney Weaver as their vampire master, Malcolm McDowell in their vampire support group, Richard Lewis as Alicia Silverstone’s ex-boyfriend, and Kristen Johnson as Mrs. Van Helsing. It also has fricking dudes from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, including the pizza man reprising his role. AMAZING.

So Alicia and Krysten are just living their happy vampire lives at night, never sucking off humans, only sticking straws in rats at meal time while lamenting that it’s no longer the 80s and hanging out at goth clubs with the gay boys.

But then Alicia runs into her old boyfriend, who has aged a bunch of decades while she hasn’t. Meanwhile, Krysten falls for the son of a Van Helsing. And that’s just the beginning of their problems.

Vamps is “Sucks in the City.” It’s funny, cute, charming, totally 80s right down to the cheesy effects, and has plenty of horror and vampire in-jokes. And the real footage used of Times Square through the ages to showcase Alicia’s reminiscence of being immortal in New York City is incredible. I don’t know why this film hasn’t gotten more notice.