Despite the complete oversaturation of vampires in the media right now, I still love ‘em. Most of the time, I love the good vampires–good as in well-written, not necessarily the good-good vampires–but every once in a while, I need some bad vampires. Bad as in the worst movie you’ve ever seen, or at least bad enough to inspire hysterical laughter. And sometimes, you just need to watch something that makes you laugh like a fool.
Queen of the Damned, for example, is a movie that really could have been a lot better than it was. IMO, the mistake was to combine the two books (The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned) into one movie. I always liked the parts that came from the first book better than the parts after Akasha showed up. And don’t sue me, but I thought Aaliyah was pretty terrible as the vampire queen. Terrible, but HILARIOUS. For example, the scene where she shows up in the vampire bar. The silly dancing starts around 1:14:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-aB4v5aTT8 (looks like embedding is disabled, d’oh!)
Her accent reminds me strongly of Halle Berry’s pathetic attempts at an African accent in the first movie, and it’s… well, it’s just funny.
I confess, my tolerance of Queen of the Damned is helped a great deal by Stuart Townsend. Most Lestat purists think he was terrible in the role, but I actually liked him. He played the brat prince very well and sneered with the best of them. And it helps that he looked like this:
Yes, I’m shallow. I own it. ;)
The movie isn’t all bad. The soundtrack is actually very good, and like I said, I did like the first half of the movie. It’s not genius, but I enjoyed it. But it’s got some hilariously bad scenes, and honestly, I’m embarrassed to admit that I like it in public.
But I’m more embarrassed to admit that I like this one:
I saw Dracula 2000 when I was going through a Gerard Butler fangirl phase (which has since passed, since he started acting like a douchebag), and as I’m sure you all know, fangirling something can often increase one’s tolerance to bad movies. Well, even though I thought Gerry was hot, I still thought this movie was terrible. But it had some classic cheesy lines and a few scenes that inspired much hysterical laughter.
In this scene, you not only get Gerry Butler’s ridiculous accent–Transylvanian-by-way-of-Scotland–you also get two of the best lines in the movie (“I don’t drink… coffee,” a fun riff on the classic Lugosi line; and “I was named after the Peanuts character…”). Skip to 2:20. Also, this video is Not Safe For Work! If you’re watching someplace that frowns on naked people and vampire sex scenes, stop the vid RIGHT after the Peanuts line. :D
Next up is the scene that inspired rolling-on-the-floor hysterical laughter. Of course, it was about 3 am and we had been drinking… Skip to 4:40 to see Omar Epps attack Johnny Lee Miller with a dumpster. Yes, you read that right.
For a fantastic nerdy surprise, skip to 1:05:
HEE! Why hello there, Nathan Fillion as a priest. :D
The pity about Dracula 2000 is that it has a really interesting, original concept. The acting is just so utterly corny that it hamstrings the story. Alas. It’s still very funny.
I saved the best for last. My friend Christina stumbled across a VHS copy of this movie in a thrift store and promptly inflicted it on me. She gave me a copy of it, and of course, I promptly shared the joy that is Nocturna with all of my friends.
This movie is so bad it’s become legendary in my old department. Nocturna is the granddaughter of Count Dracula, and she runs Hotel Transylvania with the help of a creeper werewolf played by Brother Theodore. When a disco band shows up to play her hotel, she discovers two things: 1. the bass player is hot, and 2. when she disco dances, she becomes human. Intrigued (and in love with the bass player after knowing him for three hours), she goes to New York, hooks up with the BSA (Blood Suckers of America, if memory serves), meets Yvonne de Carlo (Mama Munster), and has to convince her angry grandpa that love trumps being a vampire.
It’s gloriously terrible. Much of the movie is devoted to ridiculously long disco scenes, and the rest of it is devoted to painfully bad acting. Nai Bonet not only plays Nocturna but also wrote this monstrosity and produced it. I suppose that’s why it’s so damn bad. Her accent hovers somewhere between Eastern Europe and New Jersey, and… well, honestly, I think this is the first movie she ever did that requires saying lines. I have no idea what else she did, but I get the feeling it was all soft-core Skinemax stuff.
This is the kind of scene that takes up the bulk of the movie:
And seriously, does that guy not set off your gaydar like whoa? And isn’t his little toreador move AWESOME?
Brother Theodore (who did Gollum’s voice in Frank Bakshi’s LOTR cartoon) plays the werewolf, who is the worst creeper you have ever seen. Case in point:
My favorite bit of this movie is the pimp vampire in New York. He sells powdered blood that you can snort like cocaine, and his vampire hookers drain some poor schmuck who looks like Woody Allen. Alas, YouTube failed me and I couldn’t find any vids of this guy, but he’s hilarious.
TDF Pamela
The Discriminating Fangirl, who is more likely to answer to Pamela if you shout it at her, is the proud owner of an MA in English, focusing on children's/young adult literature and popular culture. Because of her ample free time thanks to being gainfully unemployed, she reads voraciously. She also loves geeky movies and tv shows, reads comic books as often as she can buy them, and when she's procrastinating, she enjoys playing video games. She can be contacted at t.d.fangirl @ gmail.com and followed on Twitter at the link below.
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If you haven’t yet, may I recommend you check out the Riff-Trax of Twilight? We recorded the movie on the DVR so we wouldn’t have to pay for it. The MST3K guys are even better when riffing on a main stream film. Have over a group of friends and play a drinking game with it as well. One shot for every time Edward is glaring. (Double if he’s glaring at a character other than Bella.) I would suggest that you take a shot every time Kristen Stewart appears on screen looking stoned, but you would pass out long before the film is over.