After watching cutie Jeff Rector in the low-budget horror flick Nightfall, I just had to see Revamped, a movie he wrote, directed, and stars in. Plus, it has loads of familiar faces: Martin Kove (Karate Kid movies), Fred Williamson (From Dusk Till Dawn), Reggie Bannister (Phantasm), Sam J. Jones (Flash Gordon), Billy Drago (Supernatural, Charmed), Carel Struycken (Lurch in the Addams Family remake), Deron McBee (Mortal Kombat), Kato Kaelin (OJ Simpson’s houseboy)….
Okay. So there are a lot of cameos. But Jeff Rector could easily have kept himself as the focus and pulled off a great little horror comedy. He’s very charismatic and the initial setup of him getting revenge on his cheating woman by becoming a vampire is very funny. There’s even a fantasy homage to classic black & white Dracula!
Jeff’s big plan to teach his cheating whore a lesson is ruined when his body is cremated! But then some blood mixes with his ashes in the funeral home and he’s back in business. And we almost see his business because he’s naked. But Jeff is a tease and runs off with his hands over his junk (doesn’t even give us a rear view!). Before long, he’s dressed to kill and having a pseudo-gay flirtation with glammed up Reggie Bannister in a leather bar. Reggie takes him to see a nearly naked young piece of man meat tied to a bed and about to be the star in a vampire snuff film!
The overabundance of characters and side stories sort of take away from the comic side of the film. There are numerous detectives. There’s a group of “half-breed” human/vamp hybrids. There’s a gang of evil vampires in leather—and man are they sexy. There’s an evil vampire leader. And then there’s Jeff in the middle of it all, trying to stay dead alive as a vampire when everyone seems to want him fully dead…again.
Chaos ensues when all the forces come together. There’s a vampire clown. A vampire mistress with whips. A female wrestling cat fight. Vamp sex. A shirtless Mormon rookie detective cutie. And a plot to destroy the world.
So the second part of Revamped feels like a cheesy sci-fi network vampire show. But I had fun watching all the silliness anyway and the vampires flashed some sexy fangs! And while I love all the horror icons in cameos and all the shirtless muscle men getting physical in the action scenes (thanks, Jeff!), Jeff could have focused on his own character’s storyline and injected even more of the very funny dry humor he delivers in this simple little vampire comedy that has that charming, entertaining, low-budget feel. And did I already mention? It’s sexy!
