1h 37m
Director: Joel Schumacher

A small family move to Santa Carla after Lucy gets divorced, only to discover the place is infested with vampires. This film is listed as a horror / comedy and there's no shortage of comedic beats.

Lucy (mum), Michael and Sam move in with Grandpa. Grandpa likes taxidermy. Lucy starts dating Max who she meets whilst trying to return a lost child. Michael falls for Star, a girl he spots whilst out at the fayre. Sam is browsing in the comic shop when he meets Edgar (Corey Feldman) and Alan (Jamison Newlander) who hand him a vampire comic and imply it needs study - Edgar and Alan I'm assuming is a nod to Edgar Allan Poe known for his dark poetry. Corey Feldman puts on a silly voice in this movie.

You'll almost certainly recognise Marko (Alex Winter) as Bill from Bill & Ted and Kiefer Sutherland needs no introduction.

Michael's interest in Star attracts David (and his gang), the seeming leader of the vampires. In a series of ego contests, David goads Michael into drinking his blood which starts turning him into a vampire.

Later, David makes him join his crew on a railway bridge and they hang on underneath as a train goes over. It's worth mentioning that the order that the vampires jump off the bridge is also the order in which the characters are later killed.

So we've got Michael gradually turning whilst he tries to live at home with his family. Several amusing scenes occur which play with these circumstances.

Meanwhile, Sam is planning to raid the vampire nest with Edgar and Alan - Michael ends up joining them in the daytime to save Star and they kill Marko but barely escape.

Sunglasses appear to be sufficient protection from the sun for Michael (who's in an early stage of vampiric transformation) and these vamps don't appear to need asking before they enter your premises either (turns out they do, see the twist).

The stage is set for the final confrontation which will happen when David and compadres are free to move that night. Sam and friends prepare their home with traps and assemble weaponry ready for the fight. Holy water, stakes and garlic are all there in this film.

There's a few slightly Janky shots, when David leaves the cave to get revenge for the earlier incursion for example if you keep your eye on the water, it looks very much like it was shot in reverse (a fairly common trick - especially used in stabbings and places where you want the end of the shot to look good, the actor is pulling the item out but you reverse the shot to make it look like the character plunged the item in) - so they would have moved the camera into the cave and then reversed the footage.

There's also a number of helicopter shots which look handheld to simulate what a vampire might see as it flies over the landscape. These days you'd use a drone but then you'd need to add that human handheld movement in afterwards in post as drones are fairly stable. So this is one of those times when old school technology is more suitable for shooting if you want to capture it in-camera, albeit somewhat more expensive.

The twist is that Max (Lucy's love interest) is the head vampire and has been trying to gain control of the entire family, Lucy gives herself to him to save Sam and as he's about to bite her neck, Grandpa drives a vehicle full of stakes through the home wall, killing Max and saving the day.

Turns out that Grandpa knew about the vampires all along.

The soundtrack is emblematic in this film, with 'Cry Little Sister' by Gerard McMahon as the theme tune and a mixture of recognisable favourites completing the ensemble.

They're planning a remake of this film, I think it will go the same way as The Crow remake and be a total box office flop. This might be a 'you had to be there' watch. So many factors conspire to make it a classic - the actors, the tone and the soundtrack work really well together but I think you might find it a bit bland if you're not from that era. Give it a go!



Trailer: