Now, movies like this they definitely don't make anymore. A movie that goes for and gets an R rating, but has childish elements and contains themes about growing up, maturing, and all that shit. After all, this movie marked the start of the Corey Haim/Corey Feldman union, they look to be young teenagers, and I was shocked to find out just now that Feldman was 15 in it?! Wow, he looks a lot younger or maybe I'm just never around teenagers anymore. I thought he was like, 11 or so in this. Okay, maybe like 13. But it's creepy thinking that the young looking kid there could be allowed to drive! WTF!
Corey Haim plays an average kid, he and his big brother Michael live in Santa Carla CA, which is actually Santa Cruz CA, and one day Michael is hanging out making eyes at the young woman that is involved with some local troublemakers led by Keifer Sutherland. Keifer is awesome in the movie, he looks freakin insane with bleached blond hair and leather jacket, and is a badass character. He and his little gang challenge Michael to a motorcycle race, which of course Michael would've won if the race hadn't come dangerously close to a cliff edge.
Michael gets invited back to hang out with the motorcycle gang, and he eventually drinks from a bottle that they tell him is wine. Well, the next day he is growing intolerant of light, and craving something a little more alive than a frozen pound of flank steak. Could it be that somehow he has become a vampire? In the meantime, Michael's younger brother Sam has become friends with local brothers Edgar and Alan Frog, who proclaim themselves as vampire hunters, and have all the knowledge about how to deal with their kind.
I have a love for movies that don't dwell on the how, the why, the what, the where. It's enough to know that they're vampires, we don't need to explore mythology and how the Frog brothers know about vampires, and whether that means werewolves exist....we just need to see the fucking action, and the 80's fun. The movie is seriously 80's. The silliness of the clothes, the hair, it's all there in spades. Corey Haim has some seriously awful t-shirts, and there is a scene at a concert where the main singer is in the most ridiculous outfit ever, playing a saxophone during his 80's pop/rock song.
The effects are also good. We don't see them a whole lot, which builds up the anticipation, and then when we do see them, they're cool looking, dark, and sinister. There is the vampire faces that all the guys have, and there are some awesome blood/goop/whatever gunk that looks purely gross. I guess it's just rated R for the blood and violence. There is no real nudity, only medium bad language. I wonder if now they would get PG-13. But I liked the fact it was R. Not a "hard" R, but R, kinda like saying, "fuck it, we could be PG-13 if we toned back the blood, but we're not going to!"
I liked this, and my thought as I watched it was that I kinda wished more movies were like this. A fun adventure movie made for adults. You don't see rated R adventure horror comedies very much. In fact, the adventure movie has almost disappeared, now there's just action. The plot, the character, has taken a backseat to the CGI, the "coolness" of the characters, etc. I like movies like this because people were human, they weren't these giant flawless muscle-heads. In a movie like The Avengers and the sequel, they rely far too much on canned one liners, hollow development, and the perceived "coolness" of it's characters.
This is a definitive 80's movie, one that I'm frankly surprised hasn't gotten a gritty reboot or a whole franchise based on it. It does have it's direct to DVD sequels, but no one really cared or watched them. The characters are likable, realistic, and defined.
Oh, this is my hundredth blog, I should say something. Uh, yay me.
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