BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: The title is cute and some of the
Valley Girl gags really are funny. But the horror elements
are poorly handled and seem to have been chosen from other
films for restaging. This one is cable fare. Rating: -1 (-4
to +4).
The one original vampire hunter and the best known was, of course, Van Helsing from Bram Stoker's DRACULA. Universal had the character in two films in the 1930s. Hammer had at least some character named Van Helsing (always played by Peter Cushing) in four different films. It created the idea that the Van Helsing family took it as a congenital mission to destroy vampires. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER modifies this idea to say that there are a chain of women vampire hunters going back to the Middle Ages. It asks what would happen if the mantle fell on the shoulders of a Valley Girl who is less than totally bright (to put it charitably). Well, perhaps the idea has possibilities. We may never know. What we have gotten is a film that bears the earmarks of having been made from the first draft of a script, then edited by someone who was not interested in the material.
Buffy seems to be majoring in sensual cheerleading at Hemery High School in the San Fernando Valley. In the opening sequences we establish that she is very now and awesome and, in her own words, "vacuous." Then a mysterious character named Merrick arrives on the scene and tells Buffy that she is next in line to be a vampire slayer. Why does he think it is she? Why did this honor come to be conveyed on her? Why ask why? The screenwriter didn't. Though Buffy is skeptical at first, when bodies start digging their way out of graves, she starts to reconsider.
So far the plot isn't so bad. We could stand to have a little more explanation for what is going on, but this film could still be decent. Then BUFFY sours very quickly. At least the horror aspects of the plot do. We get a few scenes of vampires reprised from other films as if borrowing their scenes also borrows their logic. There are scenes of the main vampire (played by Rutger Hauer made up to look like Edgar Allan Poe) catered to by his assistant (played by Paul Reubens)--the sort of thing you saw in the later and poorer Hammer films with Mike Raven. But why is this aristocratic vampire showing up in Southern California, so near to where this generation's slayer is being created? Is it coincidence? Is there a reason? We never know. It is convenient for the story that he be there, so he is. And given that vampires have kept their existence almost entirely secret all these years, why do they suddenly start acting as openly and blatantly as Hell's Angels? Well, the film needed a spectacular third act and that logic is more important than story logic. This is a film that never fails to sacrifice its intelligence when that becomes convenient. Prime example: to show how dense the teachers are at Hemery High, their reaction to the vampire attack is to officiously drop detention slips on each of the victims. It makes no sense but, hey, maybe it will get a laugh.
The film does work a little better as a satire of the Valley Girl lifestyle; perhaps the writers understood that a little better than the horror aspects. But even there, there are problems with the basics. The plot has Buffy becoming friends with the local rebel who shaves off his beard for her. That sounds simple to show in film. But the beard disappears before the shaving scene and then returns. This is a lot more than a marginal continuity error since the film does focus on the shaving ritual. Another problem in script muddling is Buffy's satorial realization of what an enigmatic statement really means. The problem is that it is never explained to the audience.
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER has a little humor that really is funny, some that is heavy-handed, and some horror film trappings. Unless publicity works overtime, BUFFY will quickly zap to its appropriate medium, video. I rate this a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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