Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #22: Vampire Killers (2009)

Bring out the keg boys!

Or as it's known elsewhere, Lesbian Vampire Killers, is a film where two unlikable guys swap homophobic jokes and get even with the shallow women that have done them wrong by killing shallow vampire women who are also man-hating lesbians with a sword that has a cock for a handle.

"Our women are cursed, and we're all spineless cowards for letting it happen!" says the badass Vicar! Better reclaim your lost masculinity and stop them. Women are apparently all cheating floozies, and the only good ones are pure virgins saving their sexuality up for that special guy. I normally assume this kind of thing is ironic in movies, and is secretly being critical, but in this flick the homophobia is so frequent and so normalised that the humour gets lost, and a weird 'us vs. them' dynamic is created.

Vampire Killers is basically a 'teenagers assailed by supernatural forces in a cottage' movie, and follows the traditional pattern: teens go to a cottage and everything is fine. Crazy shit happens. They defend themselves. Crazy shit defeats defenses and either kills or kidnaps friends and/or love interests. Leave cottage and fight last-ditch effort. A pattern I'm fond of. But when it uses distracting visual effects, like speeding up the last few seconds of a shot because they think it looks cool, it really just makes it seem like your movie is so uninterested in its own shots that it's in a hurry to get through them. You might be too.

So: Presumably written by frat boys. Regressive and embarrassing. I never want to hear "clam-lappers" used again.