REVIEW - Vampire Cop (1990)

Vampire Cop

USA - 1990

Directed by - Donald Farmer

Starring - Ed Cannon, Melissa Moore, Mal Arnold, Don Tilley

Color / 89 Min / NR

Ha ha! I've found one the Direct to Video Connoisseur hasn't reviewed yet! Yes! Er... oh, wait. I actually have to watch this shit now?

You know you're in for a good night when a movie has you bursting with belly laughter roughly twenty-five seconds into the thing. Actually, that's not true. I was laughing even before popping Vampire Cop in, simply because of the ricockulous tagline prominently displayed on the box art: "He takes a BITE out of crime!" But I digress. Twenty-five seconds of a shitty Cure ripoff band in the opening credits was all it took to get me started. I've no idea where director Donald Farmer found the guys who did the song that plays over the opening credits, but they're the kind of band that makes the group who did the "Pig Licker" song or whatever the hell its called in Hobgoblins sound really classy by comparison.

Ed Cannon plays Lucas, the 'hero' of the film. He's a cop who just happens to be a vampire too. Cannon looks much like I imagine the test subject from a failed attempt at cloning David Hasselhoff would look like. His acting style is much like Hasselhoff's too (nonexistent). It's never really explained how or why Lucas is a vampire, he just is. Lucas stalks the night like the least threatening Blade wannabe of all-time, thwarting muggers and other lowlife scum, and posing in front of car headlights the moonlight so the director can attempt to get a badass money shot to use approximately 14,763 times during the film.

Get used to this shot.

A typical confrontation between Lucas and a thug attempting to rape a girl in the middle of nowhere goes something like this.

Thug: "Hey pal, whaddya say to this? You want somma this? Is that whatchu want, fucker?"

Lucas: *Tears thug's arm off*

So it's good to know that Vampire Cop's vampiric mythology subscribes to the idea that vamps are super strong. Lucas also has to sleep upside down like a bat during the day, which is hilarious because you can see that he's using those weird crystal thingies for deodorant. I didn't think real people actually used that stuff. Regardless, I'm still not sure why Lucas feels compelled to rip a dude's arm off and then bite him in the neck. One quickly learns that stuff just happens in a flick like this. Waiting around for plausible explanations is counterproductive.

Lucas has a frank discussion with Melanie about his erectile dysfunction.

Ace reporter Melanie Roberts (Melissa Moore) catches wind of the story about the heroic nocturnal vigilante and focuses exclusively on the neck biting thing, because serial rapists suffer gruesome limb dismemberment every day. Melanie just goes ahead and walks into Lucas' house without knocking and starts asking him blunt questions. They do remember that this guy is also a COP, right? I don't know too many members of the police force who are willing to act nonchalant after some stranger tresspasses on their property. Yet the cunning Lucas plays it off because he has vampire charms and he knows Melissa Moore shows her tits in every movie she's in, so all he has to do is bide his time. Later, when these two dolts inevitably fall in love, Melanie invites Lucas back to her place. I love that 'her place' is quite clearly a cheap motel room with the other twin bed in the background.

There's a bad guy involved in this mess of a plot too, the fiendishly named Newhouse (Don Tilley). Mr. Tilley acts like a combination of William Shatner and Laurence Olivier and looks like the doppelganger of David Hyde Pierce. Newhouse is your typical drug dealing crime lord kinda guy who wants to hold the city to ransom for one hundred billion dollars or something. Keeping with traditional cop movie bylaws, Lucas is the only one who can stop the baddie and remains a thorn in Newhouse's side throughout the entire film. Newhouse's underlings consist of a horny henchman in a striped referee's shirt, some trashy street walkers, and this random non sequitur guy who we only ever see sitting in the bathtub. I've no idea what Bathtub Man is there for, his scenes feel like they've been spliced in from another movie. It's hilariously awful.

I'm essential to the plot, I tells ya!

Speaking of awful... wanna watch one of the dumbest death scenes of all-time? You know you wanna! Newhouse and henchman kidnap Lieutenant Dunkindonutson of the police and off him via chainsaw. I have to show rather than tell here because words cannot describe the ridiculosity:

The final epic confrontation between vampire cop and Niles Crane is also filled to the brim with absurdities. First of all, Frasier's brother seemingly breaks the fourth wall by pointing out the idiocy of a vampire cop by saying "You're a vampire! Why do you need a gun?!" Then our intrepid hero shows all the brains of an egg plant by biting Newhouse and turning him into a vampire! Personally, I think I'd rather kill my adversary rather than MAKE HIM AS STRONG AS I AM! But it's all a moot point really, as Newhouse out-stupids Lucas by immediately running outside into broad daylight and melting into goo. Lucas and Melanie go home. Credits roll. Ed Cannon is never seen nor heard from again.

Yes, this movie is drop-dead awful. On a technical level it is the very epitome of failure. The direction is poor, the editing worse, the acting laughable, the script a complete joke, and the film stock looks only a hair's breadth better than a public access television show from the same era. And yet, I can't recommend Vampire Cop enough to lovers of bad film everywhere. It's one of those shitty movies that will make you laugh rather than cry (think Troll 2 or Yor: Hunter from the Future kind of bad instead of Manos bad).

0.5 / 5

Can you believe he went this entire review without a Forever Knight joke, boss?