Vamp (1986)

(In French, On Cable TV, November 2022) As far as horror comedies go, Vamp is not great, but good enough to be worth a look—especially if you’re looking for a Dusk till Dawn prototype. As a story of three college boys discovering that a local strip club is a front for a vampire coven, it’s an amiable enough film—but once Grace Jones makes her entrance in a showcase stripping sequence, well, there’s the reason to watch the film right there. The film’s comedy factor flags in its second half—as if, having come up with its best ideas early one, Vamp couldn’t quite figure out what to do next. But it’s also a kind of film where plotting doesn’t really matter once you take a dive deep into its alternate view of reality, where everything it out to bite you… at least until dawn. While it never reaches its potential and even wastes some of its best elements (namely Jones), Vamp stands as a pleasant, fun surprise in a sea of humourless 1980s vampire films. Satirical before it was the hip thing to do, it works just well enough to sustain a watch. Just remember to breathe whenever Jones is on-screen.