VAMPIRE BOYS (2011) - if you're incredilby desperate for a gay version of Twilight, this is the movie for you!

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my works. I want to achieve it by not dying.”
-Woody Allen

Many people would happily sign up for immortality if all they had to do was bite a wayward hooker on the neck every once in awhile. Even then, you’re giving Porsche or Licorice the gift of immortality. However, there’s all the other shit you gotta deal with as a vampire, like having to avoid garlic at all costs (pizza is probably a no-go) and being unable to wander around in the daylight. Then there’s also the holy water, and the wooden stakes, and the crucifixes, all of which can quickly put the kibosh on the whole immortality thing. However, lead vampire boy Jason (who has 3 vampire boy underlings) doesn’t have to put up with any of that stuff, chalking it up to “false myth” in a long exposition passage (thank god he took the time out of his busy schedule to explain all of these vampire plot discrepancies). The only other rule is that the vampire boys are not allowed to wear shirts under ANY circumstances. Maybe they have extra hot vampire blood, and they need to be shirtless in order to keep their body temperatures at a normal level. That must be it.

Oh yeah, there is one major caveat (sorry...it’s hard to keep all of these rules straight): Jason has to find a vampire life partner by his 100th birthday or he turns into dust. He has two potential partners: a blonde chick that goes to college with the vampire boys (yes, they are working towards degrees) and a boy named Caleb, who used to be a swimming champion but has since “hung up his Speedos” (although he’s traded them for borderline-Speedo boy shorts). This is a tough call for Jason, and he has to choose by…TOMMORROW! Yes, he waited until the last day or two to look for an eternal partner, when hitting the deadline without one means certain death. I’ve started school papers the night before, rushing through in a No Doz-induced haze in order to finish it on time, but my mortality wasn’t at stake (sorry).

Anyway, he prefers Caleb over the blonde (probably because he’s gay, but maybe I’m prejudging ), but his vampire bros want him to hook up with the blonde chick. This confused me, since I thought the whole clan was gay, and therefore would’ve wanted Jason to pick a dude to join them. Maybe the other three are actually straight and don’t approve of his gay ways, but they never come out and give that as a reason (one of them says “Caleb is a phase”). You know, to be perfectly honest, I have terrible gaydar. Usually I don’t start questioning another man’s sexuality until his hand is on my ass. I think that’s normally a good thing (it’s a form of being nonjudgmental), but functioning gaydar would probably be helpful when reviewing gay themed movies, and is a definite must in prison. It’s weird; I have excellent douchedar (that’s where you can tell if someone is a douchebag or not), and my gorilladar is second-to-none (that’s when you can tell if someone is a real gorilla or just a guy wearing a monkey suit). I guess we all have our blind spots.

Of course, there are a couple of vampire attacks mixed in, starting off with a woman being stalked through the L.A. River. If you’re wondering how somebody could be stalked “through a river”, keep in mind that the L.A. River is essentially a concrete basin with few small puddles of mud and the occasional “objet de trash” (like a rusty shopping cart filled with used condoms). Later, a girl drags two “straight” guys into the middle of nowhere (probably Griffith Park) and tells them that they have to make out if they want to have a threesome with her. They happily oblige, even showing off their mini-dudes to the camera. I guess guys like banging chicks more than they hate flirting with homosexuality. Either that, or guys are dumb and will do anything a hot chick tells them to do. Or maybe all douchebags are secretly gay. Regardless, they are just vampire fodder and are quickly dispatched, putting an end to a plethora of subtextual ruminations. By the way, if you need a title for a film class thesis, you can go ahead and use “plethora of subtextual ruminations”. I don’t expect payment; just please credit me in your works cited page. Thank you.

Anyway, these “horror” scenes seem perfunctory, as the relationship between Caleb and Jason is really the focal point. Like Twilight it seems (although I’ve only seen half of the first movie), the vampirism seems like a pointless side issue to the relationship. Vampire Boys could’ve just been a movie about a semi-gothy gay romance, where forced conflicts keeps the two apart. There’s Jason bros, who want him to go hetero, and Caleb’s roommate, who wants to hook up with him but Caleb isn’t biting (again…I apologize). The roommate becomes suspicious of Jason, pointing out that “he doesn’t even have a Facebook page!”. Little does he realize that vampires don’t need Facebook, as they can telepathically send messages to each other (however, Mark Zuckerberg is working on a “Facebook telepathy” app as we speak). Caleb is drawn to Jason’s mysterious abdominals, and not because Jason has vampire hypnotizing powers (there is some indication of this, but it doesn’t enter the equation once they actually get together). Meanwhile, he is flattered that his roommate his attracted to him, but that’s as far as he wants their relationship to go. All the vampire shit feels like padding, and all of the vampire discussion to justify the vampire shit feels like extra padding.

The relationship material between the three is undermined by a bad script and awkward line readings, but Christian Ferrer (Caleb) holds it together with a believable (believable for a non-vampire movie) performance as a young gay man stuck in a limp love triangle. You know what…maybe he’s actually straight in real life. Holy shit. If that’s the case, it’s an AMAZING performance. You know, Dustin Hoffman rightfully won an Oscar for playing an autistic savant in Rain man, yet I never truly believed his character was autistic (a savant, yes; he memorized the phone book after all). So, if Ferrer is actually straight, give the man a Golden Globe…make that two Golden Globes. They hand those out like they’re candy anyways. You know what…he’s probably gay. I really should get my gaydar checked out. Maybe I can buy gaydar pills on the internet. Oh wait, I’m broke. Never mind.

P.S. This was written as part of Project Terrible, hosted by our good friends at Mondo Bizarro. It is also post #6 in the Lazy Baker Halloween Horror Countdown, and the review is also featured over at Planet Fury! That's called getting bang for your writing buck, folks (assuming you're not being paid).