Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

Vamp Blu-ray Movie Review

Grace Jones makes a fine vampire, but she's one lousy stripper

Reviewed by Brian Orndorf October 2, 2011

“Vamp” is a difficult movie to explain, falling under the jurisdiction of various genres and cult fandom. It’s a horndog teen comedy laced with horror and suspense, yet spends a large portion of its running time working out dramatic encounters between characters undeserving of the attention. What the effort does have is a few successful scenes of oddity, one charming supporting performance, and the sheer spectacle of performance artist/singer/actress Grace Jones, who provides the film with infinite weirdness, stirring up the feature without a single line of dialogue. Despite a premise loaded with potential for some delightfully unsavory business, “Vamp” has no bite, too encumbered by its limited budget and woefully misguided when it comes to imagining utter sexual supremacy. I’m all for Grace Jones pawing at herself in a metal bikini and kabuki make-up, but “Vamp” lacks stimulating screen energy, looking to get by with the bare minimum in terms of horror, comedy, and pole-twirling sin.

Keith (Chris Makepeace, “Meatballs”) and A.J. (Robert Rustler, “Weird Science”) are a pair of college students hoping to break out of their suffocating dorm room living situation, looking to join a local frat to improve their surroundings. Trying to impress the men in charge, the duo decide to plan a party, hoping to secure all the basics to properly woo impressionable young men, including hiring a formidable stripper. Spying an ad for an exotic club on the wrong side of town, Keith and A.J., along with pal Duncan (Gedde Wantanabe, “Sixteen Candles”), head into the unknown, entering the secluded establishment, run by manager and Las Vegas dreamer, Vic (Sandy Baron, “Straight Time”). Inside, the boys spy the dancer of a lifetime in Katrina (Grace Jones), a spooky character who hypnotizes all those who witness her routine. While A.J. runs off to secure Katrina’s services, Keith encounters waitress Amaretto (Dedee Pfeiffer, “Moving Violations”), a former fling who can’t believe the bewildered young man doesn’t remember her. Unfortunately, the reunion is cut short when Keith learns the club is merely a front for a crew of vampires looking to leader Katrina to secure their feast of human blood.

While watching “Vamp,” I kept wondering why the feature wasn’t more engaging, or at least more assertive with its slippery exploitation elements. Writer/director Richard Wenk (“Just the Ticket”) submits some mild ambition, merging multiple tonalities to create a frivolous horror comedy. While his ideas are intriguing, his execution is positively sluggish. “Vamp” is a film of delay: waiting for the vampires to reveal themselves; waiting for Keith to grasp the danger that’s right in front of his eyes; waiting for the strip club community to assume a greater purpose besides a vital need to feed. Despite a colorful visual effort, Wenk can’t slap the feature out of first gear, laboring through flaccid confrontations and unnecessarily extended expositional encounters, padding the movie with verbose dialogue that doesn’t go anywhere. The filmmaker is more invested in the picture’s surface details, forgetting to ornament interesting characters the viewer might actually want to see make it to the end credits. Instead, the roles are a talkative drag, shackled by tepid performances, especially Makepeace, who doesn’t pull off the action hero routine, regardless of some Ramboesque posture in the third act.

The cast is generally forgettable, but there’s a feel for levity from Sandy Baron, here playing the frustrated owner of the club, spending his evenings announcing dancers and snacking on cockroaches. Vic doesn’t have much screentime, but Baron makes his moments count, in possession of the lone character who seems to have a life beyond the screen, dreaming of moving Katrina’s operations to Las Vegas to fulfill his Rat Pack fantasies. It’s an amusing, authoritative performance. I wish the movie permitted Baron more room to play.

The actual star of “Vamp” is Grace Jones, cast for her addiction to the surreal and dedication to the abstract. She’s the exact image of seduction and doom Wenk requires to conjure the intended sense of unease, parading the silent star around in outlandish outfits and demonic make-up. A pop culture legend, Jones is up for the role, dutifully writhing around, taking to the challenge of embodying a centuries-old Egyptian vampire stuck feeding off sexually frustrated single men in a dank building. Though it’s a supporting role with limited screentime, Jones is the only person keeping “Vamp” intriguingly strange, turning Katrina into a puzzle Wenk isn’t interested in solving. My only hesitation with Jones is her plausibility as an ace stripper. While striking, the singer isn’t exactly the living embodiment of sinful delights, and Katrina’s stage routine is more suited for display in Andy Warhol’s living room than on a basement stage surround by perverts. Her casting is odd but understandable (the film could use any peculiarity it can find); however, “Vamp” lacks an essential element of lusty control emerging from an incredibly attractive star. I realize Jones has her fans, but her position of power here is baffling. I wish I could comprehend the full extent of Katrina’s allegedly profound sexual authority. “Vamp” is more of a job for the likes of Sybil Danning.

Vamp Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The AVC encoded image (1.77:1 aspect ratio) presentation is fairly solid for low-impact cult effort from the 1980s. The image gives off a nice, full sense of the palette, presenting a range of stable hues that communicate the seedy/graphic novel look of the picture. Greens and pinks are especially pronounced, stable and effective, while lighting is provided a pleasing glow, with neon sources looking impressive. Clarity is somewhat soft, though close-ups look satisfactory, permitting a study of make-up work (including fangs and wounds) and panicked reactions, with reasonable textures to explore, including the stretch marks and scars on Jones's body. Skintones are natural and appealing. There is an intermittent issue with crush, which solidifies blacks during evening sequences, also having difficulty with dense hairstyles. Print damage is detected, including a brief issue at the 11:49 mark, where a smattering of blotches is visible for a few frames. Blink and you'll miss it.

Vamp Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 2.0 Linear PCM mix contains the low-budget audio effort well, providing a blunted but capable sonic experience that fits the feature's original presentation. Dialogue exchanges offer a suitable sense of clarity without much heft, keeping exposition in place with a frontal hold. Voices retain their natural characteristics, separated satisfactorily from the elements, which never intrude. Scoring cues are on the shrill side, maintaining a piercing synth sting -- aggressive but passable. Soundtrack cuts bring a little more muscle to the mix, but there's not much dimensionality to grasp, while low-end is rarely engaged. Subterranean encounters carry some evocative atmospherics with steam and water, while club encounters spread around some crowd energy to fill out the scene. Violence is jarring and amplified, but never distorted, offering pronounced vampire sound effects.

Vamp Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• A Theatrical Trailer (1:54, SD) is included.

Vamp Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Despite a salacious opening act, "Vamp" is ultimately a chase picture, following Keith as he sprints around backrooms and sewers, pursuing any possible escape. Wenk does his best to open up the scope of the film with comic book lighting, Dutch angles, and smoke machines, but there's only so many times one can watch Keith work his way around the dark before boredom begins to set in. "Vamp" tries extraordinarily hard to cover the fact that it's a rather empty genre exercise, lacking the proper amount of money and scripted imagination to thrill and chill. The ingredients are there to do something interesting, but Wenk doesn't have the vision to make it come to life. Not even Grace Jones in a metal bikini and kabuki make-up can liven up a project that's barely breathing.