Rating: 2.5/5
The bell tolls as figures in white drag Keith and AJ along the quad, up the stairs to nooses. One pledge, already hanged, is next to them.
Then, the tape in the tape deck unspools. A frat member fumbles with the deck as Keith and AJ remove the nooses from their necks. Instead of the theatrics, they offer to get entertainment for the party the frat is throwing.
By “entertainment,” they mean a stripper. They borrow a car from rich kid Duncan and find a classy joint called The After Hours Club in the newspaper. When they get there, it isn’t quite what they expect. The place is alright, but the strippers are vampires.
Before From Dusk til Dawn, there was Vamp. Sure, this doesn’t have Salma Hayek. But it does have Grace Jones in Keith Haring body paint, dancing to an original song of hers called “Surrender Seduction” on a sculpture modeled after Dolph Lundgren, Grace Jones’s boyfriend at the time. Whenever Grace Jones performed at The Paradise Garage, Keith Haring would always do her body paint.
Richard Wenk wrote the script for this movie in a weekend to a spec of “college students, strippers, and vampires” for Donald Borchers. Borchers made the poster first and wanted a movie that matched it.
The color is so my deal. Lilac and turquoise mood lights cover the city. Grace Jones wears aquamarine contact lenses.
Gedde Watanabe was in an ’80s movie where he didn’t have to put on an offensive accent. He still has to be a friendless nerd, and his jokes aren’t good, unfortunately.
Dedee Pfeiffer’s hair looks like it takes approximately one trillion hours. Her character is fun, but she shows up and disappears at random. The actress still claims this is her favorite movie that she made.
The movie loses me as it falls into generic chases. They also kill a vampire with a flat heel – how? There’s some “one wacky night” a la After Hours zaniness — they even say, “one wacky night” — but it’s nowhere near as entertaining or motivated. The movie ends over and over again. One or two of them are great. The last one fucking sucks.
The vampire effects are pretty solid — they feel Buffy-adjacent. They also do a pretty sick face-melting effect.
Grace Jones is worth the price of admission. The rest is uneven and only gets terrible in the last few minutes.