Review: My Best Friend is a Vampire (1987)

Teen monster movies have a troubled history. From Twilight, to Blood & Chocolate, to Teen Wolf, to I was a Teenage Werewolf, making teenagers the main audience for a supernatural film is usually a recipe for awfulness. Is that same true of the 1980's comedy My Best Friend is a Vampire? Let's find out!

The first thing to know about this film is that it is 1980's cheese at its cheesiest and doesn't even make an attempt to be classy. Two years after Teen Wolf, this film knows that it is a silly supernatural comedy and does nothing to pretend otherwise. The movie is filled with a pop filled soundtrack, goofy gags, and just a general disinterest in realism.

The movie stars a young Robert Sean Leonard, who would go on to star in Dead Poets Society and (much later) in the TV show House. Like Michael J. Fox, Leonard is insanely likable and his charm goes a long way in making this movie bearable.

Leonard plays a nice guy named Jeremy who has reoccurring dreams about one of his classmates. In the dream, the class "geek" transforms into a mysterious woman who demands Jeremy make love to her. Jeremy tells his best friend this dream, and his friend immediately takes it as a sign that the "straight laced" Jeremy needs to get laid.

"I swear, I will throw you on the first girl I see!"

It doesn't take long for Jeremy to come across his mysterious "dream" woman in real life. At his friend's insistence, Jeremy sleeps with her, but during the act she bites him, causing Jeremy to start losing his appetite, become stronger, etc etc etc. (See any number of vampire and werewolf movies for the standard progression of human-to-vampire transformation).

We also learn that there are also two vampire hunters in town, one played by David Warner (aka the voice of every animated villain from 1990's television and the professor in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II). They are humorously incompetent, but they seem to manage to kill the vampire who bit Jeremy. This leaves Jeremy without a mentor for his transformation, a role which becomes filled when a mysterious old man shows up and begins talking about vampirism. He literally gives Jeremy the handbook on his new life:

Okay, that subtitle is pretty clever

Jeremy, however, is disbelieving. Densely so. After overwhelming evidence, Jeremy still insists that the older man is crazy. The most ridiculous moment of disbelief is when Jeremy stands in front of the mirror as he's getting ready for school and comments, "The mirror's not working." He then goes to another mirror, where he still doesn't see his reflection, and sighs frustratedly: "Doesn't anything in this house work?"

Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?

Ugh. I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe that ANY high schooler of any intelligence would think that a mirror could be "broken" and just "not work." I know they were going for humor, but I definitely rolled my eyes more than I laughed.

Jeremy finally admits that he must be a vampire and so agrees to learn from the elder vampire. Through a montage, we see that being a vampire involves stocking your fridge with pre-bottled pig's blood, wearing cool sunglasses, and getting ready for the day without a mirror. That seems like about it.

It's high in protein!

There's a bit more of a side-plot of Jeremy trying to date his "geeky" (yet looks like a 1980's model) classmate who thinks he's weird, as well as the side-plot where Jeremy and his best friend try to outsmart the vampire hunters who seem to be following them. The latter plot is full of slapstick humor and ridiculous chases, while the first is just sort of dull.

The end conflict for the movie involves the vampire hunters confusing Jeremy for his best friend and thus trying to kidnap and slay the wrong person. Jeremy and his date go through yet another wacky chase and team up with a bunch of vampires to save the day and conveniently defeat the vampire hunters.

So, ultimately, how is this 80's cheese-ball of a movie? It's okay. Just okay. In many ways, it is better than earlier teen monster films, as it has a clear plot progression that (mostly) makes sense along with a likable star. However, there are a lot of "miss" jokes in this movie, along with the hits, and the final punchline of the film is especially annoying, with Jeremy's parents thinking he was hiding being gay rather than being a vampire, which leads to a strange sigh of relief from the parents that is troubling in 2014. (I found myself thinking of my friend's comment at the Howling III viewing: "A homophobic werewolf marsupial movie. Jesus." Only in this case, I guess it's "A homophobic teen vampire movie. Jesus." Exactly what is it with 1987 and using gay jokes in supernatural semi-comedies?)

The movie is uneven and rushed at parts, and really only sometimes funny. However, I can still honestly say that it is the best teen supernatural movie I've seen yet... which just says how low the bar is. If you miss the 1980s, want stupid but sanitary humor, and want to see Robert Sean Leonard being charming, this movie is okay and basically watchable. And it's still better than Teen Wolf.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 bites