Warped R-Rated Comedy Is The Perfect 1980s Vampire Sleaze-Fest 

By Robert Scucci
| Published 30 seconds ago

It’s the 1980s, and you desperately need to join a frat because it’s the 1980s and that’s all anybody does in raunchy comedy films of this era. 1986’s Vamp, however, isn’t your traditional raunchy college comedy because it barely takes place on campus, but rather inside a strip club full of voluptuous vampire vixens who are ready to sink their teeth into whoever dares enter the front door.

As somebody who went to college in the early aughts, and who hadn’t seen Vamp yet, I had no idea that making friends would be so easy. There I was trying to force small talk and crack the occasional joke, when all I really had to do was what our heroes do in this movie. My way was boring and involved a disappointing lack of sexy vampires, so if you’re wondering what my “what would you do with a time machine” fantasy is, it’s now something similar to what you’d see in this movie.

Not Exactly An All-Ages Club 

In Vamp, Keith (Chris Makepeace) and AJ (Robert Rusler) are college students trying to get into a fraternity, and the best way to accomplish this, in their minds, is by hiring a stripper for a party. Wealthy classmate Duncan (Gedde Watanabe) reluctantly provides the Cadillac for transport, and the three head into the city looking for entertainment. They eventually land at the After Dark Club, where Katrina (Grace Jones) puts on the kind of performance that convinces AJ he absolutely needs to meet her backstage.

This proves to be a poor decision because Katrina is a vampire, and AJ quickly becomes much more involved with the club than he intended. When he doesn’t come back, Keith goes looking for him and runs into waitress Amaretto (Dedee Pfeiffer), who insists she knows him from somewhere. Keith soon figures out that the After Dark is crawling with vampires, while the neighborhood outside is being terrorized by a street gang led by Snow (Billy Drago), so basically every available exit comes with its own problem.

Once Keith discovers what happened to AJ, his fraternity errand becomes a fight to make it until sunrise without joining the club’s undead clientele. With Amaretto helping him navigate the increasingly hostile night, Keith has to survive vampires, his newly transformed buddy, and one extremely questionable trip into the city that could have been avoided by simply throwing a worse fraternity party.

Knows Exactly What It Is

Vamp gets by on its self-awareness because it absolutely has to. Keith trying to impale AJ’s heart with a wooden stake, only to find out that the shattered countertop he sourced it from was actually made out of Formica, is just one of several instances where it’s made abundantly clear that Vamp has no right to be taken seriously, but that’s where all the fun comes from. The other hint is all of the vampire strippers teasing their clientele into submission so they can have their next meal lined up.

That’s all you really need to know about Vamp. It’s a silly endeavor from start to finish and actually has some pretty great practical effects for a movie that was shot for just a little over $3 million. Rubber masks, prosthetics, and fog machines do most of the heavy lifting, while the streets are colored with tinges of neon and magenta, and what I imagine might be dry ice gives the air some movement. That’s all you need when you’re watching movies like Vamp.

You’re not supposed to treat movies like Vamp seriously by any stretch of the imagination. You’re supposed to throw this on when you’re drowsy and just let its ridiculousness wash over you like a spectral blanket that reminds you that you’re not always supposed to take life so seriously. Add some cheesy dialogue and undead maniacs to the mix, and you’ll have a good time if you’re familiar with the kind of schlock you’re about to get into.

As of this writing, you can stream Vamp for free on Tubi.