My Best Friend is a Vampire

Director - Jimmy Huston (Final Exam, Death Driver)

Starring - Robert Sean Leonard (House, The Manhattan Project), Evan Mirand (Se7en, Fight Club), and LeeAnn Locken (Carter High, Broken Vessels)

Release Date - 1987

Genre - Comedy/Horror

Tagline - "Vampires and teenagers are a lot alike.  They're just misunderstood"

Format - Bluray (Personal Collection) 

Rating (out of 5):

     I started my horror journey as a fan of zombie films when I was introduced to Tom Savini’s remake of Night of the Living Dead. I was hooked from that moment on. I was snagging any and every zombie movie I could find but a late night viewing of Fright Night II sent me down the path of vampires. From then on I was hunting for any 80s and early 90s vampire films I could find. This was my favorite time for vampire flicks and there was several worth mentioning like Fright Night, The Lost Boys, Vamp, Children of the Night, Once Bitten, and 1987’s My Best Friend is a Vampire. My Best Friend is a Vampire, or I Was a Teenage Vampire, is one of several films I snagged on VHS when my local video store was going out of business. It’s a fantastic film that I never saw get the DVD aside from those multi-film releases where each movie is compressed to hell to put more titles on each disc. That changed recently when Vestron Video released the film on blu. I love this campy late 80s vampire flick so it was a no-brainer when I saw it on store shelves. I couldn’t wait to revisit this one and even though I wasn’t sent this one for review I still wanted to check it as part of my October horror binge. 

      The film follows high schooler Jeremy who finds himself on the run from a vampire slayer and his minion after a late night date with a mysterious woman. She bit him before they were interrupted and in the mean time he has noticed his body is changing. To make matters worse, the vampire slayer and his goon is hunting his best friend because they believe he is the vampire. While adjusting to his new life, he befriends another vampire who takes him under his wing and uses his new powers to get the girl of his dreams. Things start to look up for him but the vampire hunter and his persistence has to be stopped before his best friend and girl friend is killed by them. 

      My Best Friend is a Vampire is not something that I would call traditional horror. It’s more of a coming of age comedy that just happens to be centered around a vampire. I know many fans of this film are going to attack me when I say this but The Twilight Saga is more horror than this movie. With that being said, I fucking love it. It’s one of my favorite 80s films and I’m so fucking stoked to have it on blu. The acting in this one is great for the film but the cliched characters and the paint by numbers story doesn’t leave a lot of room for memorable performances. I like the cast but if you’ve seen any comedy centered around high schoolers or a vampire film of the time then you have seen characters exactly like this. I liked the cast and their performances but the characters are not as memorable as other films. The story for this one is a heavy mix of so many films from the early to mid-80s. We have the awkward high school kid who has a crush on someone with the rather loud and outspoken friend that is the source of humor for the film. Can be easily compared to Teen Wolf in that regard. We then throw in the vampire aspect with the mentor and vampire slaying which is a bit of a reversal from Fright Night. I love the story but I’m also not blind to how it was tossed together for a quick buck. Finally, the film isn’t really that bloody or violent. We do have “blood” products in the film but you don’t really see the red stuff. The film is more focused on the comedy aspect over the blood and violence. Overall, My Best Friend is a Vampire may piss off some horror purists but I fucking love it. It’s a fantastically 80s film that I’ve paired several times with films like Vamp and Fright Night. I highly recommend snagging this blu from Vestron Video