Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009) begins with a quick summary of the tale of the Vampire Queen Carmilla who had killed the men of a remote English village and seduced the women to her nasty lesbo ways. The lord of the manor, returning from the Crusades, discovers Carmilla having a go on his missus, so he forges a sacred sword and kills Carmilla, but not before she promises to return.
Skipping forward to the present day we find a regular bloke, Jimmy (Matthew Horne), getting dumped (again) by his bitchy girlfriend. Meanwhile, Jimmy’s mate Fletch (James Corden) is in the process of getting fired from his job as a clown for punching a child at a party he was working.
Fletch is utterly broke but plans on having a holiday at Jimmy’s expense, however Jimmy spent all his cash buying a car for his ex right before she chucked him. Jimmy and Fletch decide to go on a hiking holiday somewhere in the U.K., and select their destination by throwing a dart into a map, which lands right on the village of Cragwich, where Carmilla had once ruled.
Arriving in the village, the lads find it’s every bit of the backwards rural dump Fletch thought it would be, but their opinion is quickly changed when they spot a group of attractive young women emerging from the village pub. Heading in to see if there’s more where that came from, the lads are bitterly disappointed, but do manage to secure free lodgings for the night at a nearby cottage, where the group of girls are also staying.
That night, as the boys are partying pretty hard with the girls, the cottage is attacked by vampires, all of whom are women, and lesbians to boot! As they fight to survive the night, Jimmy discovers that it was an ancestor of his that managed to defeat the Vampire Queen once before, and that it may be his turn now.
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I never saw Gavin & Stacey, which made stars of the two lads who take the lead in Lesbian Vampire Killers, so I went into this film not knowing what to expect, though I realised there would be similarities with all the other British horror comedies that have been doing the rounds lately. After watching Lesbian Vampire Killers it occurred to me that, after finishing with Gavin & Stacey and then featuring in one episode of Dr. Who, James Corden went off to make game shows for Sky 1, so that really should have been a hint as to the quality of the film.
I’m not going to beat around the bush here (if you’ll pardon the pun) Lesbian Vampire Killers is utterly utterly really really fucking shit!
And it could have been brilliant!
The basic story for Lesbian Vampire Killers is actually alright, for a comedy. The Vampire Queen idea gets the movie off to a good start and the first joke plays very well. The notion of the lesbian vampire could actually have been worth a film as it twists the notion of the sensual vampire nicely and is pretty funny. Then, when Jimmy is introduced and you discover he has “girl trouble”(and the scene is loaded with silly sound effects every time his ex moves) the wheels get a little loose on the wagon, but manage to stay on thanks to James Corden in a clown suit explaining why he punched a little girl. Then you put two and two together and the wheels fucking fly off the wagon and you’re left flat on your arse.
The problem with Lesbian Vampire Killers is not that it’s a lad’s movie; it’s that it’s deliberately not a girl’s movie.
Jimmy’s girlfriend dumps him, and she’s a cheating, using, bitch who took his money. Fletch’s boss is a stuck up bitch who’s cut from the same cloth as Jimmy’s ex, who fires Fletch. Fletch, as a clown at a kids party, was so enraged by something that he punched a little girl. Even Carmilla, the Vampire Queen, murdered a village of men, but not before she stole their women from them. All this before the opening credits.
Now, I may have missed the point with Lesbian Vampire Killers, maybe it was just meant to be harmless entertainment, and maybe it just came out wrong, but the film seemed to be saying a lot of things half in jest but whole in earnest. It’s like a bunch of lads just got dumped so they made a revenge movie to get back at all the women who scorned them, which might actually have been OK if only they could have made it funny enough that you didn’t notice.
You'd expect this kind of thing to be more entertaining...
The best joke in the whole flick is at the very start and you don’t laugh again during the whole thing. Even Corden’s constant swearing wore thin after a while as he’s just not that good at it, especially as the phrases he uses are just so bland (except one – “Clam Lappers” – I’ve never heard that one before but, by God, by the end of the week everyone around me will be sick hearing it!).
Lesbian Vampire Killers seemed to desperately want to be a Carry On film but was about forty years too late and nowhere near as funny, which goes some way to telling you how bad it is!
Two Thumbs Firmly Down for Lesbian Vampire Killers – what a waste of a great film title!
Carry On Lesbians? (and before you ask, yes, I do like writing the word "Lesbian"!)
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020885/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian_Vampire_Killers
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