Saturday, June 21, 2014

"Vampire Cop" (1990) d/ Donald Farmer

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From the guy who gave you Demon Queen (1986) and Cannibal Hookers (1987) comes this no-budget SOV vampire opus that's tit-heavy with the heavy tits of cult face, Melissa Moore, who you might recall from things like Sorority House Massacre II (1990) and The Invisible Maniac (1990), lots of spurting stage blood and prop fangs, and a cameo from none other than Mal Arnold, who apparently hadn't learned a thing about acting in the nearly thirty years since he first graced the screen as H.G. Lewis' homicidal Egyptian caterer, Fuad Ramses, in Blood Feast (1963). Chances are, you won't mistake this movie for Herzog's Nosferatu.

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I haven't seen that much hanging ham since I walked past the slaughterhouse that time.
...So after seeing a sleeping blonde dreaming of an acid-washed denim-wrapped arm (it's 1990 all day) reach down to silence her and some prop fangs,  there's a bikini contest at a club full of mulleted mooks and meatheads shaking their asses and then this vampire cop named Lucas (Ed Cannon) interrupts an abusive guy forcing himself on a skinny redhead, tearing his shooter hand off and giving him a bloodless neckbite for his troubles. The dreaming blonde (I'm not sure if her dreams constitute nightmares, save for the viewers themselves) turns out to be a reporter named Melanie (Melissa Moore) who's in cahoots with Lucas; their hotel room sabbaticals packing less heat than the Larry O'Brien Trophy Ceremony this past week.

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"This was my only role ever!", hisses Lucas (Ed Cannon) of Vampire Vice.
Anyway, lots of dialog is lifelessly delivered by embarrassingly dressed people on depressing-looking sets, some of these people may or may not be drug dealers seeking vindication by kidnapping a prying Lt. Ryan (Mal Arnold), who's getting too close to their operations with his live news commentary, and off-camera chainsawing him up like so much firewood, which his squinty, hesitant line delivery reminds one of at times. There's a featureless finale where Lucas pits his Party City vein-drainers against these polluting palookas, one of which goes vampire himself, and gives a slo-mo plastic-toothed kiss to Melanie before Lucas can overpower him, ending up in a lackluster flaming latex-y sunlight purge and a news report that Joe Dante more effectively showed you nine years earlier. Eject.

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"Garbage compactor-cam, after all these years you've caught up to me..." says Fuad Ramses, errr..Lt. Ryan (Mal Arnold).
I probably picked this one up during my storied rental run at Gateway Movieland Video on morbid curiosity born from the words of Michael Weldon's Psychotronic magazine, long-time staple food for my brain, and the opportunity to revisit a guy like Mal Arnold, whose on-camera ineptness kept every kid in my neighborhood in stitches in the early eighties during my parlor screenings. Whatever the case was, it still wasn't worth it. Flesh-wise, it didn't dent the armor of Cinema 309's selection of sin of which I was well familiar with by then, and my ample blood supply from superior underground lenses of the likes of Buttgereit and Peter Jackson (then) remained monopolized, as one might expect. One might also expect the paltry score of a single Wop on the ratings scale for Vampire Cop, and they wouldn't be wrong in doing so. Skip it.

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"Look at me, I'm Dee Wallace!", exclaims Melanie (Melissa Moore).
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