BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1992)

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1992)

Tagline: Homework. Cheerleading practice. Killing vampires. No one said high school would be easy. 

(Action, Comedy, Bloodsucking Fiends From Beyond The Grave) [PG-13]

All I want to do is graduate from high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die. 

So there are several movies I have watched in the theater multiple times. NONE of them even come close to the number of times I saw BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER in the theater. At one point in time, you could go to the midnight showing at some theaters each night, and it was like $1.50 or $3.00, or something like that. So for around 30 straight nights my friend and I went and saw this movie at midnight. This theater was at the old Thomas Mall in Phoenix, AZ. Then we dragged our butts into work at the grocery store we worked at the next day if we worked that day. Anyway, the reason for seeing this thing so many times, is that I was absolutely in love with it, and to this day still am. 

In this one, Buffy Summers (played by Kristy Swanson) has the lifestyle of a dense cantaloupe. It involves shopping, dating the most loser jock at school, and being with the in-crowd, but essentially treating everyone they think is beneath them like crap. Basically, she’s like Cher from Clueless. A dude named Merrick (played by Donald Sutherland) tells her she is not only a Slayer, but she is also, “The Slayer”, and it’s up to her to defend the world from vampires. She concedes to some training from Merrick who also can’t seem to stop running into Pike (played by Luke Perry). Pike and Buffy become friends and work together to combat the forces of a powerful vampire named Lothos (played by Rutger Hauer). Lothos has some weird crush on Buffy and seems to both want to kill her and marry her, or something, I don’t know. Pike's friend Benny is played by David Arquette who is one of the more fantastic characters in this movie. Paul Ruebens also had a funny role in this as Amilyn. 

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER is everything I wished the show it birthed had been. Instead of being serious and dark 90% of the time, this was light-hearted, genuinely fun, and just an absolute blast to watch. It’s one of about 20 movies I never get tired of. 

So what’s wrong with it? This is where we have to get into it a bit. Unfortunately, no one bothered to tell Joss Whedon that this damn script didn’t make any freakin sense. There are illusions of Buffy suddenly snapping out of it when the music at her Senior Dance is stopped. We get some weird dialog from Lothos throughout, a scene where Lothos, just wanders off because Buffy isn’t “ready” to die, and the back story is almost treated as an afterthought. Again, I have watched this thing now maybe 100 times overall and this plot still makes no damn sense at all. There are also a few odd lines from Merrick that are just like…” What is this dude saying?”

What went right? Pretty much everything else.  The cast was absolutely magic, it seems like a lot of the terms and slang were almost made up by Joss on the spot. A lot of the slang was even mirrored by Kim Possible in the Disney animated series. There is just enough levity with the vampires to take them seriously but also keep them fun and even comical at times. The freakin soundtrack for this thing, holy cow, mind-blowing!! Everything from The Cult to Ozzy, to Rob Halford (of Judas Priest), to Susanna Hoffs (of the Bangles), I mean this thing is epic. I also love that Donald Sutherland takes the role of Merrick so seriously because it adds to the balance between dark and night perfectly even with the odd lines as mentioned earlier.

For me, this movie is right up there with the awesome of BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, so I give it a 7 out of 7, however, due to the odd plot and bizarre dialog at times, I think most who would enjoy this movie would probably give it a 5 out of 7. 

Note - If you buy the BLU-RAY or have the DIGITAL version that came with it, it's actually missing the song "ZAP City" by The Cult. For some reason, some other lame song is playing during the "Pike's Predicament" segment. As far as I know, only the VHS and DVD have the song used in the theatrical release. That also means for collectors the DVD or VHS might have some value. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.