Saturday, August 27, 2011

VAMPEGEDDON (2010) - being human is suckee, so why not become a vampire and do the sucking, thereby paving the way for pun-egeddon



Some people want freedom. Others seek world peace. Still others have no legs, so they pray that they’ll get two robotic legs for Christmas so they can finally walk along the beach once again. Mel wants to be a vampire. I know what you’re thinking…just head down the local magic shop and pick up some plastic teeth and a cape and…viola! No, Mel wants to be a REAL vampire, as this is a “Greyhound to immortality”, as she puts it. Speaking as someone who has ridden a Greyhound across country, if immortality requires you to ride a Greyhound to get there, it just isn’t worth it. Anyway, she’s a sad bastard goth girl, and becoming a vampire will apparently solve all of her problems. Good luck with that sweetheart.

The prologue explains that, in the late 19th century, a European vampire fled to the Arizona desert (since we all know that vampires love the desert), and a vampire hunter followed him. He is almost tricked by a sexy Native American chick (really a stripper dressed as an Indian) who is also a vampire, but ends up successfully staking vamp boy’s buddies. He is then apparently grabbed by the head vampire and held up in the sky (well, some iMac generated star background, to be precise) long enough for the hunter to stake the vampire. Unfortunately, the laws of physics dictate that if you are being held up by a flying vampire over a rock quarry and kill him, shit is going to break bad for you. Sure enough, the vampire hunter crashes headfirst onto some rocks and bites it. Sorry.


Well, Mel’s goth friends want to help her out, so they all get together to perform some vampire summoning ceremony where they cut themselves and spill blood into a wine glass and read from an Anne Rice book. They perform the ceremony in the desert, possibly near where this vampire battle took place. Coincidence? Maybe. It doesn’t matter, since the ceremony does nothing. This scene is probably an homage to a similar a scene in Dracula A.D. 1972, only unbelievably lame. The failure of the ceremony inspires Mel to go on one of those sad bastard walk montages.



She wants to be bitten by a vampire that looks like the dude from Twilight so she too can be a creature of the night and play vampire baseball and sparkle. If this movie is any evidence of current trends in the psychology of young females (folks, that might be a stretch), I reckon that the Twilight books and movies are causing some young women to think that this vampire shit is real. I understand that people want to live forever. After all, the great philosopher Woody Allen once said “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my works…I want to achieve it through not dying.” However, putting on a cape and trying to bite someone on the neck isn’t going to do anything except freak out the other person (or arouse them if they’re into that sort of thing). If you REALLY want to live forever, maybe you should donate to the effort of scientists to counter the aging gene. Or, maybe, create a “work” that isn’t going to be a pop culture joke ten years after the fact.



ANYWAY, Mel luckily finds an evil vampire book, and her and her friends trek out to the desert again to perform a vampire summoning ceremony, and hopefully get it right this time, now that they have a handbook and all. Well, it works, and the three vampire dudes show up (wearing dimestore capes, their bald heads smothered in white makeup that sorta kinda covers most of their head and neck), and Mel’s friend turns into Buffy all of a sudden and kills them. There’s a stupid “shock” post-script and the movie ends. The initial vampire victory may seem like a happy ending, but the whole point of the movie was that Mel was TRYING to get a vampire to come alive and bite her neck, and her dumbass friend put a stop to it. I guess even no-budget horror movies need to have a Hollywood superhero victory ending, even if this ending negates the entire point of the film. I guess I’m thinking too much. I should just go along with it and furiously masturbate when I see tits covered in blood.



So, that’s not much plot, even for a 75 minute movie. The rest of the time is spent hanging out with Mel and her lame friends. They tell unfunny jokes (when the vampires don’t show up in the desert, Mel says “this place sucks”) and speak in dubbed speech that sounds like they took turns reciting dialogue into a computer mic, reading it off the page whilst half asleep. There’s also the horrible soundtrack, whether some nu-metal whatever or songs that sound like Lit or Len. Remember those bands? I hope not. Most inexplicable of all, Mel’s big titted friend has some crazy hair extensions that sorta defy description, but I will try anyway. Remember that scene in Brazil when the repairman (played by Robert DeNiro) comes to Jonathan Pryce’s apartment to fix the plumbing, and keeps pulling out some tube and wire guts from behind the wall? It sorta looks like those mass of tubes, but they are spray painted silver and black and they're coming out of her head. Either way, whoever runs Hot Topic needs to lay off the coke. Also, whoever directed this movie needs to lay off the Hot Topic and snort way more coke. Maybe he'll come up with something more interesting next time. That is all the wisdom I have to provide at this time.



P.S. This was written as part of "Project Terrible" over at Mondo Bizarro. Check it out. More reviews to come.

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