Vamps

Plot synopsis:
BFF gets a new meaning with Goody (a well-preserved CLUELESS alumni Alicia Silverstone) and Stacey (Bettie Page reborn pale-skinned beauty Krysten Ritter) living up the night. Goody's been around, like forever, like even before the electric light bulb was invented. She got sired by a stem vampire, Cisserus, and is the soft-hearted type, opting rather to feed on rats rather than humans. She was thrilled by new developments on the social scene during the Roaring Twenties, what with the Flappers being the first party girls and all that. Hey, if you were born during 1841 you'd have lived during some pretty repressed times! Anyway, things turned wild after the big wars, much excitement through the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, but then came 1992, when Cisserus sired Stacy, a drug addict, turning her 'life' around as a sister for Goody, who taught her all the basic vampire stuff she needed to know. In turn, hip, with it social butterfly (bat?) Stacey taught techno-illiterate Goody about the Internet, e-mail and Napster, not forgetting Greenday. Goody is kind of socially inept, she needs help putting on her lipstick (vampires can't see themselves in mirrors) and her fashion sense is stuck in the 1970s (jeans). Goody thinks Stacy is real cute as they wake up in their matching coffins facing each others', but Stacey kind of has a lame sense of humor, like blocking Goody's lid with a desk. But they make a fun duo racing off to Goth night at a local night club, Goody streaking at inhuman lightning speed down the fire escape, while the more avant garde Stacy crawls creepily down the side of the building, reverse quadruped-style, like a giant cockroach.Goody abhors the v-word. She is an ELF, extended life-form. Their support group is Sanguines Anonymous.. Here they meet up with other ghouls of the community. Like Vlad Tepesh, who has now refrained from impaling victims for 362 years.Eating habits. Atrocious. They feast on rats, drinking their blood with straws, exactly like children slurp down soda pop. Goody also gets carried away seeing a coke-abusing drummer's bleeding nose, and has to jump on top of him and lick it off. Apparently she has a tongue that can put a giraffe to shame...In the club, Goody uses her vampire persuasion powers, a snake-eyed mind-altering stare, to convince Juicy Girl (well, her panties simply introduce the loose little thing as 'Juicy') (blonde Emily Goldwyn) to steer away in future from bad boys like Ivan, an older vampire who hangs out at Cisserus's place, and Vadim, an insidious snake-fanged demonic vampire.Goody is kind of deceiving Stacy on one count. She is just about 151 years older than her, but has always played this down, letting the younger girl believe she is her age.. Stacy is very age-conscious, and Goody is ashamed of being so damned ancient. She has practical knowledge of the city's past history, and is very wise about past events, which she accredits to having seen on the History Channel when Stacy looks at her askew.Quick note here: Remember, the girls are vampires. It's all a race against time. What's a girl to do if the sun is her biggest (instantly 'lethal') enemy? Living the good night-life at the risk of being burnt into nothingness they are drawn to the city life like moths to an open flame...Now, Cisserus (Sigourney Weaver), Mom to her two offspring, and with a passion for Gaultier and Prada (she summons the two girls as colthes models - her offspring has no other purpose for her), is not the gentile I-brake-for-bunnies type. Fast food delivery? She has the Pizza Guy. Who turns up dismembered some time later, with Van Helsing (CLUELESS alumni Wallance Shawn) formerly MI6, now from Homeland Security, investigating the case, but out of his jurisdiction, as it's not terrorist-related, just another New York psycho on the loose.As luck would have it, Stacy, a student at university, watches a film with Joey, who has an obvious interest in her elegant delicate frame. And she is delighted by him. Then she learns his surname. Van Helsing. Shades of Romeo and Juliet. And when he takes her home, and she meets the parents, they are instantly alerted by her freezing-cold hands. The walking dead are among us! No campus vampire will get past Van Helsing! Goody is alarmed to discover just exactly where Little Sister is spending her time. She herself has linked up with her old flame, Danny Horowitz, but of course had to introduce herself as Susan, daughter of deceased Goody, to explain the mystery of not having aged a day. Danny's wife is dying of terminal cancer in the Intensive Care Unit, and the two 'sisters' work the night shift at the hospital, naturally, so that's how they met. She heard him ranting at the reception desk re treatment of his wife, and recognized his voice from protesting days. Goody's been a career protestor, dating back to the days of Abolition.Goody is troubled lately by the revelation she learned from Vadim. If Cisserus, her stem, got eliminated, she would revert to her true age. There is trouble brewing in the community. Ol' Van Helsing, pretending to be a Time Warner cable guy, has eliminated Ivan, and he has an agent posing as a psy-vampire infiltrating the Sanguines group. Stacy gets mysteriously called up for jury duty; all kinds of imposed daylight activities face the troubled night creatures.The dinner date with Joey at the Van Helsing residence. Stacy prepared by disguising her white pallor with every known fake bronzer and spray-on tan known in the living, or undead, universe. She tried using her mind controlling abilities, but Van Helsing has a very strong will. His son provides her with the greatest time she's had since the Eighties, but when birds alert her to nearing sunrise, she has to scamper away, in that unorthodox way, down the side of the building, and he freaks out seeing her. But she manages wooing him back quite easily because, after all, she is exactly the opposite of evil. The encounter did impregnate her though.Also outed is Goody when she foils a robbery at a video store, and sinks her fangs into a guy who suffered a heart attack to thin his blood. Her ACLU torch-bearing old flame does get to understand the plight of these misfits, mostly losers, now. The gang makes use of a solar eclipse to get rid of the obstacles in their way, and get their names deleted off public records. Vadim rewards Danny by turning his wife, she becomes healthy and virile again (hot matured older lady looking just great Marilu Henner) even if surely a vampire now, but the 'plot' does not go into this.Evil Cisserus takes out a Chinese takeout. And has her fill. Her two offspring enlists Van Helsing and confront her in her hideout, Grant's Tomb. Looming over diminutive Van Helsing in her primal state, she is beheaded by Joey wielding a chainsaw, but reanimated the skeleton of Ulysses Grant, she bears down upon her foes. Slaying her means reverting to their actual ages, which is fatal for future-shocked Goody, but Stacy can be a 40 year old Mom. And Goody gets reunited with her own children. Van Helsing gets to accept his granddaughter with the fangs.

Tags: murder

Review:
Perfect for me :) I would recommend to anyone who likes vampire movies, comedies or cheeky dramas with some slightly twisted humor..
Alicia Silverstone is hilarious and adorable, and Krysten Ritter is even better than she was on Breaking Bad (which is practically impossible in my opinion.) This could be my favorite Silverstone movie of the decade, just sayin'.
In 1995, writer-director Amy Heckerling hit the nail on the head with what would be the definitive chick flick of that decade with Clueless, and propelling its lead Alicia Silverstone into super-stardom, launching words and phrases into collective acceptance.
Fast forward to today, both didn't quite have projects under the belt that rivaled their early success, so I guess coming together again was probably an opportunity to find their collective magic, and what's none better than to tackle a popular subject matter for film - Vampires.Granted that Alicia Silverstone is no longer the teen that she was, Amy Heckerling has created quite a smart plot device, which provides Silverstone with playing an older character, but able to retain her relatively youthful looking features for the story of the undead and immortal.
So Goody and Stacy become "blood sisters" after the latter gets converted, staying in their coffins in an upmarket swanky New York apartment, leading the good life but only at night, but are at the beck and call of Cisserus when she goes out hunting for human blood.It is probably in the mantra of human-friendly vampires to be sucking on blood of vermin, following the Twilight model.
This of course raises the suspicion of Joey's father Dr. Van Helsing (Wallace Shawn), himself a vampire hunter given their heritage, and with Cisserus going around killing folks for sustenance, you'd know everything would converge and come to that necessary climatic finale to have all narrative loose ends resolved.But underneath this candy and sugar coated sweetness, lies a rather dark tale about love, and the cruelness imposed by immortality.
In Manhattan, the vampires Goody (Alicia Silverstone) and Stacy (Krysten Ritter) share an apartment and work and study in the night-shift.
Goody was turned in vampire in 1840 by the evil Cisserus (Sigourney Weaver), who turned Stacy in the 90's, and they became best friends but Goody never told her real age to her friend.
Stacy falls in love with her classmate Joey (Dan Stevens), and soon she learns that he is the son of the vampire slayer Dr. Van Helsing (Wallace Shawn).
I was afraid to see "Vamps", based on the background of director Amy Heckerling, with movies like "Clueless" and the franchise "Look Who's Talking" and the poster that recalls "Sex & the City"; so I was expecting a shallow sex and the city with vampires.But I was wrong and I have just decided to see this movie and I found it surprisingly funny and cute.
Great laughs when I wasn't expecting it.Almost extraterrestrial in some surprising ways, with a sustaining image reminiscent of a few sci-fi flicks.Pokes fun at groups that could stand a few pokes.Might be a harder sell for some in the "under 20" crowd.Certainly under-rated at the time I wrote this when the IMDb was only 4.7.
Things get more complicated when their maker Sigourney Weaver becomes mass homicidal and one of the vampires falls in love with a Van Helsing and becomes pregnant.There is much to be said about references on older films and characters and history.
And for a chick flick vampire romantic comedy it actually had some adequate special effects as well.The story is about two ladies, Goody (played by Alicia Silverstone) and Stacy (played by Krysten Ritter) who are roommates and vampires!
But what really made the movie work was the list of people credited to the cast; Alicia Silverstone, Krysten Ritter, Sigourney Weaver, Marilu Henner, Richard Lewis, Wallace Shawn and Malcolm McDowell.Something did strike me kind of odd though.
Alicia Silverston and Krysten Ritter were a good vampire couple, and I can't say anything bad about the supporting cast.
I mean how could a Amy Heckerling/Alicia Silverstone comedy about chick vampires be bad, right?
Whilst the premise had potential (2 girly vamps, surviving in modern NY and abstaining from human blood, while trying to live 'normal' lives), the execution was dire - the acting was amateurish and I'm afraid that Alicia Silverstone is past the age of this kind of role - she acted more mature in "Clueless"!
Sincerely, don't waste your time - if you want a comedy vamp film, dig out "Love at First Bite" - if you want Sigourney being nasty, watch "Working Girl" - well, just watch ANYTHING other than this woeful mess!.
As it had bypassed cinemas I assumed it would it would be bad, but it was a lovely, funny and entertaining little film that I really feel deserved a better release and truly deserves to find an audience.Amy Heckerling has conjured an original and quirky take on the vampire myth and created two engaging central characters here, brilliantly played by Alicia Silverstone in her best performance for years and Krysten Ritter.The film is consistently funny with lots of references (and clips) to silent and early cinema - including The Cabinet of Caligari and Un Chien Andalou.
But Goody and Stacy are not like her; for one thing, they have never attacked a human but have survived entirely on vermin - in fact, they support themselves with night jobs as rat exterminators, which provides them with sufficient sustenance, and then the twittering of birds warns them of the coming dawn in time for them to rush back to their apartments and their coffins.Goody and Stacy belong to a support group of vampires who have sworn off human blood.
Good supporting cast from Sigourney Weaver (why doesn't she do more comedy - she's so funny) to Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens.This should have been a box office hit - don't understand why it more or less went to DVD.Watch it!.
Movie's Idea -- "Two female vampires in modern-day New York City are faced with daunting romantic possibilities." Not exactly how the movie put it, but it was close.I liked how they mixed a little bit of "Ancient Times" in it.
Vamps see's Heckling reunite with Clueless star Alicia Silverstone who plays Goody a Vampire who has grown tired of her modern life and modern day men, longing for a more simplest time of her former glory days in the 1920s.
I watched it for Sigourney Weaver and Malcolm McDowell, old favorites from the genre.Luckily it didn't laugh with vampirism or isn't ridiculous like Twilight.
Play along with the jokes, this movie has heart - the nostalgia for the past is authentic and real, and the ending, amazingly has a much deeper meaning, with statements made by both main characters intended for the living, and for life - and love - you give your best to someone , and time moves on, youth is fleeting, and lacks meaning, the only real meaning is way beyond skin deep.
One can only justify it as an actual homage to the old films, with in-camera effects (the sofa thing at the club) and stop motion, I don't know, but it was out of place and looked horrible.What a waste of Sigourney Weaver, Malcolm McDowell and especially Kristen Johnston which was given a few dialog lines of an extra trying to make her way into the film industry..
Written and directed by Amy Heckerling and starring Alicia Silverstone, Krysten Ritter, Sigourney Weaver, Dan Stevens, Richard Lewis and Wallace Shawn.
This independent film has known stars and a named director but it could not get a cinema release and went straight to pay TV.Alicia Silverstone who was in her mid 30s when she made this film.She plays a vampire (Goody) who turned in the mid 19th century and has found a reason for her continued existence with her much younger friend (Stacy) who only turned into a vampire in the early 1990s.The two socialite vampires live the good life in New York CityThey are good vampires as they do not drink human blood but rat's blood instead.
One of their members played by Malcolm McDowell is Vlad the Impaler who has now taken up knitting.Complications arrive as the vampires are being pursued and bought out to the open, not helped by Weaver's antics.Stacey falls in love with Van Helsing's son and becomes pregnant, Goody becomes reacquainted with an ex-boyfriend from 30 years ago who has gone older but she has not.
As I said twenty years ago it would had been a big hit but Silverstone is not a big star anymore.Wallace Shawn, Malcolm McDowell and even Sigourney Weaver would only be appreciated by an older audience.
Goody Rutherford (Alicia Silverstone) got turned into a vampire in 1841 by the stem vampire Cisserus (Sigourney Weaver).
Goody runs into her former love from the 60s, Danny (Richard Lewis) who is visiting his terminally ill wife.It's funny that Amy Heckerling is trying to make fun of the modern world but she can't get rid of the feeling of a 90's movie here.
The scene where she is killed by Goody (Alicia Silverstone), Stacy (Krysten Ryder) her b/f and dad Van Helsiing is beyond bad.
Passive and non-violent, she only bleeds filthy rodents, never humans, and had lived many years but fell in love only once during the 1960's to a hippie radical who, now older, is in the form of (a noticeably aged) Richard Lewis.And then there's Stacy, played by Krysten Ritter, the more naïve of the two as she falls in love with a fellow college student with the last name Van Helsing, whose father (Wallace Shawn) may finally have a reason to wield that wooden stake again.Unlike Goody, who recalls historic events like they were only yesterday, Stacy had changed twenty years ago and her memories go back only to the 80's and 90's, the era when writer/director Amy Heckerling reigned.FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH is one of the best high school sex comedies ever made, and CLUELESS shaped 90's teen cinema.
The two leading ladies were obviously having a lot of fun during filming, but the overall result was, if not exactly wooden, definitely very in-your-face with the jokes, which, having been forced on the viewer in such a "laugh, dammit - this is a joke" way, had a tendency to go down like pork chops in a synagogue.Sigourney Weaver and Malcolm McDowell were a horrible disappointment.
The ever-lovely Sigourney played the vampire "stem" who had created the two young vamps, but instead of playing it seriously and letting the jokes flow, she over-acted from beginning to end.Malcolm McDowell as the knitting-fetishist Vlad Tepes aka Vlad the Impaler, now attending something akin to Bloodsuckers Anonymous, was evidently trying to get into his role, but the lines weren't up to it.The rest of the plot really isn't worth relating.
She has an undeniable talent for presenting life lessons through her work while capturing a snapshot of a certain cultural time period, whether it be the 1980s through "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," the 1990s with "Clueless," or the 2000's with "Loser" and the CW's successful "Gossip Girl." "Vamps" is Heckerling's latest movie and continues the trend.Goody (Alicia Silverstone) and Stacy (Krysten Ritter) are modern day vampires living life to its fullest.
We don't drinkMojitos.Clever vampire comedy, using the tropes of vampirism, intermingled with pop culture and modern technology, for the ipod age, set in NYC, has centuries-old vampire, Alicia Silverstone, and younger "bestie" Krystan Ritter (of Modern Family fame) trying to exist and maintain a level of secrecy within society, among humans, with a "stem" (Sigourney Weaver, an absolute blast) overcome by her overwhelming voracious appetite for human blood, her feasting becoming too out of control, certain to ruin any sort of anonymity successfully held over time.
This is more about Silverstone and Ritter's episodic adventures in NYC, with a wealth of talent in the cast, such as Wallace Shawn (My Dinner with Andre & The Princess Bride, reuniting with director Heckerling from Clueless (1995) as a Van Helsing, no less!), Dan Stevens (as Shawn's son, falling head over heels for Ritter, and vice versa), Malcolm McDowell (as Vlad the Impaler!), Richard Lewis (as an old love of Silverstone's from the 70s), Kristen Johnson (Shawn's wife and Stevens' mother), Kak Orth (as Renfield, quite buddy-buddy with our leading ladies, always hoping they will turn him vampire) and Justin Kirk (as Vadim, a Ukrainian vampire always mistaken as Russian, much to his chagrin).Weaver just gets lost in her part as a self-absorbed diva, totally irresponsible when it comes to not calling attention to "her kind", and her inability (she just doesn't care, to tell you the truth) to cease from drinking human blood (Silverstone and Ritter, along with many others attending a "Sanguinary Anonymous" meetings, feed from rats!) is becoming a nuisance to all vampires who want to co-exist with their mortal counterparts in the big city.
Silverstone's adorable and recalls her old part as that cute (but pampered and oblivious to the hardships of the common man due to her affluence) princess in Clueless, except this time here she's an older woman in a lovely thirty-year old's body, from before "progress" and technology revolutionized America, living through it all and seeing such drastic change while generations lived and died, but unable, it seems, to keep up with the speed of the technological advancements such as computers and iphones.There's a sense of Sex & the City fashion, with clubbing, importance in looking your best, and that search for romance here in the film, but Vamps has vampires occupying the city and follows how they inhabit the night-to-night (they can't very well inhabit "day-to-day", now can they?) social scene.
While I love Silverstone in the film, Ritter is the real surprise as a zesty, fun, spirited, energetic, very sexy gal-pal totally involved in the happening night activities and social networking, her relationship with Stevens disrupting the usual animosity between vampire hunter Van Helsing and bloodsucking Nosferatu.
The vampire tropes (garlic, crucifix, stake through the heart, thirst for human blood, etc.) are all gleefully usurped by Heckerling, especially when Silverstone and Ritter must inform the Van Helsings that they have it all wrong when it comes to successfully harming the undead.
Krysten Ritter is alright as well, and Sigourney Weaver looks like she had fun filming her scenes, though I'm not sure how that is possible and how the filmmakers got her to sign on this..
It's hard to really consider a vampire film or any kind of film for that matter.Vamps centers around two female vampires Goody played by Alicia Silverstone and Stacy played by Krysten Ritter as they go through lives as vampires living in New York.
Goody and Stacy do have vampires but they only drink rat blood.But seriously it's hard for me to take this film seriously.I mean the characters hardly are interesting or even worth the screen time they have.The plot of the film is pretty much the same thing we seen in any love comedy but they thought putting vampires which are pretty much ugh by the way they are hardly vampires in this film.
The film is obviously not a masterpiece, but is far to be bad and unwatchable: taking into account the other films of writer-director Amy Heckerling (Look Who is Talking etc.) it is not expected something worthy of any nomination.The movie is a light romantic comedy, and unpretentious movie, about two vampires, one older (1840) and other "younger" (1990) who live together and their adventures and romantic conflicts in nowdays New York.It features an interesting cast with Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter in the lead roles, besides other known actors such as Sigourney Weaver and Malcolm McDowell (Clockwork Orange The - any movie with him to me is worth watching).
The performances are of a light-hearted comedy, with a mocking tone.The film's visual effects are at least basic and do not know whether they were deliberately forced to refer the B horror movies, with hours that they are hilarious...The story unfolds gradually with a meeting between Krysten and another person who I will not name (spoiler) and this event turns to be the main line of the story until a cute end, typical of those light romantic comedies.
The jokes are good and funny, but not hilarious.Ends up being a good fun to watch with your wife / fiancée / girlfriend, off course, if she likes this genre of movie..
Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter play two vampires in the modern dating era.
Alicia meets an old boyfriend (Richard Lewis) from the 1960's while Krysten falls for a man named Van Helsing (Dan Stevens) who has a father who hunts vampires.The Vamps are part of a support group who only drink animal blood.
Also, there's no real story here, it's mostly a bunch of sketches.Krysten Ritter is playing a role that is great fit for her acting skills, Alicia Silverstone, not so much, but, is well cast as a middle- aged woman (turned-vampire) who used to be hot.
Sigourney Weaver is a misfire, her playing the "crazy, horny, vampire boss" should have worked, but it didn't: by the end, when she's being beheaded, you're neither happy nor sad it has come to that.It is worth to watch the whole thing (except maybe the very end) to get those few great jokes that only work in this context, but, don't expect anything more..
I like this flick, but perhaps it is because I like the idea of it, the DVD is nicely presented with that glossy box cover design, and the movie reunited Amy Heckerling with Alicia Silverstone and I say MORE POWER TO THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT US C L U E L E S S !