Club Vampire Reviews

This Roger Corman production can't decide whether it's a serious bloodsucker drama or a burlesque send-up of the genre. Zero (John Savage), a member of a small vampire "family," has his eye on a stripper named Corri (Starr Andreeff), but Laura (Diana Frank), another of the bloodsuckers, bites Corri and mingles their blood. This causes Corri to begin a vampiric transformation, to the consternation of her son Max (Ross Malinger). Aiko (Marriam Parris), the leader of the ghoulish group who doesn't want any new converts, sends Zero out to kill Corri. Instead, he spirits her away from her house, having fallen for her and desiring to break away from his evil brethren. Zero procures a punk girl (Sarah Shackleton) for Corri to feed on and explains the vampire lifestyle to her. They go to the strip club, and after they make love, Zero sets out to fetch Max. He interrupts the other vampires as they're attacking the boy, and they decapitate Zero and bring Max back to the club. Corri is tied up to await the rising sun, but Zero's head grows back on and he returns just as Max has helped Corri escape her bonds. Zero kills the bad vampires, and he, Corri and Max then set off to relocate in Nepal. CLUB VAMPIRE was written and directed by Andy Ruben, who previously collaborated on the vampire/stripper romance DANCE OF THE DAMNED (1988) and the murder mystery STRIPPED TO KILL (1987) with his then-wife, director Katt Shea Ruben. Unlike his former spouse, however, Ruben has no real feeling for the strip-club milieu, which seems to be included here simply as an excuse to show topless women. For the rest, he ham-handedly alternates the attempted drama of Corri's vampiric conversion with wild overacting by Savage (who occasionally seems to be doing a Jimmy Durante or Danny DeVito impression) and the rest of the bloodsucker crew. ("We mustn't draw attention to ourselves," says Aiko, as her group camps it up like a road company of The Rocky Horror Show.) So unconcerned with character that it barely bothers to introduce any of these people by name, CLUB VAMPIRE descends into a melange of distortion and double-exposure shots, cheap gimmickry (the vampires appear and disappear through the magic of stop-the-camera tricks), and a truly awful music and song score. Only a few legitimately amusing moments shine through, as when the formerly vegetarian Corri looks through her fridge and complains, "I don't want to graze, I want to eat!" (Graphic violence, extensive nudity, sexual situations, profanity.)