Vampire Killers (2009)

Their women having been enslaved by the local pack of lesbian vampires thanks to an ancient curse, the remaining menfolk of a rural town send two hapless young lads out onto the moors as a sacrifice.

Director:

Phil Claydon

Writers:

Stewart Williams (screenplay), Paul Hupfield (screenplay)

Stars:

Paul McGann, James Corden, MyAnna Buring

1 win & 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Silvia Colloca	...	Carmilla
Margarita Hall	...	Daughter of Darkness 1
Sianad Gregory	...	Daughter of Darkness 2
Mathew Horne	...	Jimmy
Lucy Gaskell	...	Judy
Emma Clifford	...	Ms Rossi
James Corden	...	Fletch
Travis Oliver	...	Steve
Susie Amy	...	Blonde
MyAnna Buring	...	Lotte
Louise Dylan	...	Anke
Ashley Mulheron	...	Trudi
Tiffany Mulheron	...	Heidi
John Pierce Jones	...	Landlord (as John Pierce-Jones)
Steve Clark-Hall	...	Sidney Goatherder No.7 / The Storyteller

Storyline

Centuries ago, Baron Wolfgang MacLaren vanquished the Vampire Queen Carmilla in the remote Cragwich; however, before decapitating the evil vampire, she curses the locals and descendants of the baron, swearing that every woman would turn into a lesbian vampire on the eighteenth birthday. On the present days, the clumsy and naive cuckold Jimmy is dumped again by his girlfriend Judy and misses her. His best friend Fletch is fired in his job of clown after hitting an annoying boy. The two friends are broken and decide to camp in the countryside to forget their problems, and Jimmy throws a dart in a map in a pub to decide where they should go. They head to Cragwich and when they arrive in the bar Baron's Rest, they see four hot girls leaving the place in a Kombi. The innkeeper offers the old Mircalla cottage in the woods for them, the same place the girls will lodge. Meanwhile, Lotte, Heide, Anke and Trudi have trouble with their van and Jimmy and Fletch reach them in the forest and they ...

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Plot Keywords:

lesbian vampire | female nudity | vampire | lesbian | vampire comedy | 

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Taglines:

THEY WON;T GO DOWN WITHOUT A BITE... (all-caps U.S. one sheet)

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Genres:

Action | Comedy | Fantasy | Horror

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language, sexual content and horror violence

Did You Know?

Trivia

Bernard Hill (as Vicar), Andrew Lee Potts (as Jimmy), Ty Glaser (as Eva) and Tallulah Sheffield (as Rebecca) were originally set to star.

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Quotes

Fletch: Hahahahahahahaha! It's got a big metal cock for a handle!

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Connections

Spoofs Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

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Soundtracks

Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer
Music by John Hughes
Lyrics by William Williams
Licensed courtesy of The Extreme Music Library Ltd

User Reviews

Very Funny Spoof-of-a-Spoof

The film is a continuous quote: Dracula, American Werewolf in London, Withnail and I, Ed Wood's films, Roger Corman's horror movies with Vincent Price (Paul McGann's excellent vicar's tone is very reminiscent of Price's in Corman's interpretations of Poe) and all the Hammer horrors with lesbian undertones.

More than just a spoof the film is in a genre of its own being a "spoof-of-a-spoof" like few others before. This can make it difficult to understand just what the film sets out to do if one is expecting a horror, it certainly is not a horror or an action movie. The comparisons to Shaun of the Dead are also a big red herring and not very helpful, as this is a much more Post-Modern citation exercise with references far wider and in many more genres; it's not simply a case of an attempt in emulating for vampires what the Romero zombie movies did for Shaun of the Dead, but altogether a much more varied and inclusive exercise. L.V.K also takes itself less seriously to a degree than one would not believe in a feature length film, but it manages to do so in a way that is very entertaining if one is prepared to fore-go most of the expectations of what a film should be about.

The writing could have been polished up further, it could have done with a final re-write to tie it all together, and this is the film's main weakness, but there is enough comedy in it to laugh every few minutes if one is prepared to embark on this journey of quotation spotting. Some of the lines are so outrageously camp that with different actors it certainly would not have worked, but the film has been brilliantly cast and even the most improbable lines are recited and acted with just the right level of irony.

The sound effects are one of the strongest elements, together with the lesbian vampires' epic hair-dos which are highly imaginative and an exercise in quotations in itself, a strong effort by the art directors in what is a low-budget movie that makes no apologies for it. Phil Claydon's directing is full of enjoyment, he is constantly joking with the cameras and choices of shots that are commentaries on a commentary, further spoofing Hitchcock in the shower sequence for example.

This is a film might require a specific understanding of the Post-Modern culture we are living in to be appreciated, or it can simply be enjoyed for what it is. It is neither violent nor scary, but this is not necessarily a bad thing and it might be here that lies its charm, those who will let go of politically correct preoccupations of what a film or a title of a film should be about will inevitably enjoy this light hearted comedy as it has plenty of opportunities to laugh out loud, if you are not too worried what the person next to you or the eminent critics will think of you and you just join in the fun!

Details

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

20 March 2009 (UK)

Also Known As:

Vampire Killers

Filming Locations:

Luton Hoo Estate, Luton, Bedfordshire, England, UK

Box Office

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$3,276,702

Company Credits

Production Co:

Alliance Films, Momentum Pictures, Velvet Bite

Technical Specs

Runtime:

86 min 88 min (European Film Market)

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1