Recent viewings

Once Bitten (1985). An amusing period piece. The plot is pure silliness. A sexually frustrated high school student has an unyieldingly virtuous girlfriend. He and his goofy loser highschool nerd friends go to a swinger's bar in order to rid themselves of their unwanted virginity. A sexy female vampire, who needs to drink the blood of virgins in order to maintain her svelte appearance, is waiting at the bar. Turns out that she has to get that virgin blood by biting her enraptured victims on the "inner thigh". Wackiness ensues.

The pleasures to be found here are in the details. The abode of the vampire (Lauren Hutton) is the epitome of what folks of the 1980s considered to be high style: endless expanses of featureless white modernity, with occasional abstract art and shiny black electronics on display, plus a mincing butler (Cleavon Little) who manages to combine drag queen bitchiness with English-butler officiousness. The costumes worn by the high schoolers at their Halloween dance are a full-color, sequins-and-synthetics catalog of 80s cliches, from Flock-of-Seagulls hair to the Blues Brothers to poufy feminine outfits apparently made entirely of semitranslucent gauze.

Then of course there's the rock 'n' roll dance-off for possession of the beleaguered hero between the sexy vampire queen and the girlfriend, during which the virginal girlfriend decides that the way to win is to start stripping off her Raggedy-Ann costume so that she's suddenly doing Dirty-Dancing style moves around the high school auditorium in white gymnasts tights and a lacy transparent skirtlet. This makes at least as much sense as the rest of the plot. It's never explained, for example, why the Sexy Vampire Queen is uninterested in the blood of Virtuous (and presumably Virginal) Girlfriend, despite the fact that several of her previous victims are shown to have been female.

Best line: "Mark doesn't want you because you're mean and evil. He wants me because I'm nice and sweet and pure. So FUCK OFF!"

Followed, of course, by the rallying cry of the vampires: "After that virgin!"

And, oh yes, the nerdy male virgin in question is played by a young Jim Carrey, whose rubberfaced physical comedy is nicely balanced against geeky earnestness until the movie finally devolves into lamebrained chase-sequence farce.

Before it does so, there are a few nicely understated ironic digs at vampiric cliches such as the monochromatic black wardrobe and the inconvenience of not being able to see oneself in a mirror. (Just how do Sexy Vampire Queens apply their flawless makeup, anyway?)

It's stupid and silly and blatantly pandering, and its gets more so as its lame plot wanders aimlessly toward a painfully dumb conclusion, but it has a few amusing moments.