No, I am not reviewing the TV show. This is the movie, one based off a script by series creator Joss Whedon that was much different from the eventual TV show. This came out before Whedon became a popular creator for nerds and geeks and later lost a lot of that when it came out what kind of person he was behind the scenes. In fact, knowing what I know now about Whedon’s work habits, I am actually inclined to think better of actor Donald Sutherland since he apparently annoyed Whedon enough through ad libbing that Whedon walked off the set and never returned.
Then again, this movie has an incredibly impressive cast where a lot of them went on to bigger and better things…except perhaps for Buffy herself Kristy Swanson. But hey, it was short, on HBO Max, and it is on my Fill-in Filmgraphy poster for some reason. It’ll probably make something nice to have on while I eat my lunch and do some exercise on my stationary bike.
Buffy Summers (Swanson) is a cheerleader for a Los Angeles high school. He’s something of a stereotypical valley girl type with a steady jock boyfriend, some parents who seem to be absent a bit, and, it turns out, is the next in a long line of young women destined to slay vampires. The ancient Merrick (Sutherland) tracks her down just in time: the vampire king Lothos (Rutger Hauer) is due to rise soon in the area, and his sidekick Amilyn (Paul Reubens) is out taking down teenagers to add to Lothos’s vampire army. Someone needs to step up, and Buffy is apparently the only one who can, born as she is with some sort of enhanced strength, agility, and reflexes. Not that that matters much when the movie comes to an end, but it’s still there.
However, Buffy doesn’t want to be the Slayer. She wants to be a cheerleader, graduate high school, visit Europe, and marry Christian Slater before becoming a professional buyer, whatever that is. But it’s getting hard to ignore the vampires popping up everywhere, to the point where even local bad boy Pike (Luke Perry) gets suspicious when his friend Benny (David Arquette) appears floating outside his second floor window…a situation Pike should have recognized from Salem’s Lot, but he seems to take it far more in stride than a person should. But this is still a high school, and even as Buffy starts to show some signs of maturity and responsibility while her friends stay basic airheads, someone will need to stake Lothos before he does something really evil. I wouldn’t know what since he’s been presumably running around loose and killing slayers for centuries and he still hasn’t done much worse yet. Can Buffy stop him before the big senior dance?
OK, cards on the table: while the TV version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was very big when I was about the right age to enjoy it, I wasn’t much of a fan. I saw a few odd episodes, and in more recent years when I tried to get into it, I generally just stop in the middle of season two and never really move on. Whedon’s sense of humor isn’t always to my liking, but I can see why others do, and while I can see why the show was big, I was just never a fan. That said, I would take that show over this movie’s version any day of the week. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s awfully unremarkable, and chances are the only reason it’s remembered at all is because it led to a much more successful, darker TV version. This Buffy comes across as comically dumb at times compared to her TV counterpart, and more than a few characters seem like they might be prototypes for their television counterparts than anything else. Besides, the movie actually seems to suggest that it isn’t that difficult to kill a vampire when the climactic attack on the senior dance happens. From Duck Til Dawn‘s attack in the Titty Twister this is not.
But I wasn’t kidding about the impressive cast. Perry was something of a big deal at the time thanks to Beverly Hills 90210, and while Sutherland and Hauer give the movie more gravitas than it deserves, there’s still Reubens as a vampire that takes a long time to die, Arquette as one of Pike’s friends, two time future Oscar winner Hilary Swank as one of Buffy’s, character actor Steven Root as the principal, Thomas Jane in there somewhere, and uncredited roles went to Ben Affleck, Ricki Lake, and Seth Green. No one gives a really bad performance or anything, but the script, changed from whatever Whedon was doing to a more standard valley girl comedy with the main female characters being shallow shopaholics, and the bad fight choreography doesn’t help much. It just isn’t all that funny.
That said, there is a moment when Buffy’s boyfriend’s best friend slaps her on the ass and she very easily flips him over her shoulder and onto the floor. It’s a moment that is played as either Buffy losing control or the guy maybe getting what he deserves. It could have gone either way, but there’s a part of me that thinks that if this was in the original script, given the things said about Whedon and how he treated a number of the young actresses who worked for him…that moment might not have aged the way the script wanted it to, especially if the idea is Buffy went too far in defending herself against a move like that. But that’s just how I saw one moment in a rather so-so movie.
I have no idea why it’s included on my “must see” poster.
Grade: C
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