Visual Vengeance: Vampire Time Travelers (1998) – Absurdist midnight madness bites you in the blu-ray
 |
| All Images Courtesy: Visual Vengeance |
The strange corners of the 1990s shot-on-video universe hold some wonderfully weird surprises. Visual Vengeance has unearthed one such surprise on this disc: the frenetic, absurdist, gleefully stupid 1998 comedy Vampire Time Travelers, by microbudget auteur Les Sekely. To judge by the VHS box this movie got back in the day, it would not have been unfair to expect underachieving straight-to-video trash, possibly even with softcore porn leanings. What you probably would not have expected is the weird and wacky, Adult Swim-feeling comedy that it is, with definite cult-classic potential. I certainly had no idea what I was in for when I popped in this screener disc, and wound up having a great time. Visual Vengeance has done some awesome work in uncovering this odd hidden gem – and they’ve even paired it with a second Les Sekely film, 2000’s I Know What You Did in English Class.
THE FILMS:
Vampire Time Travelers came into being when Les Sekely was hired to direct a sequel to a previous straight-to-video film, Sorority House Vampires (1998). Fortunately, he decided not to do that. Instead, he ran with the general concept of sorority girls versus vampires, but took it in a totally different direction: a rapid-fire absurdist comedy, into which he poured a bunch of ideas he’d had from a sketch comedy show he’d been developing. The result is a movie which may look initially like the no-budget sorority-vampire flick he was hired to make, but which quickly flies off the deep end into very unexpected territory. Visual Vengeance describes it perfectly on the back cover: “a live-action DIY cartoon funhouse spiraling out of control and aired on Adult Swim in the middle of the night.”
The Adult Swim comparison really is apt: Vampire Time Travelers definitely feels like something they would have aired at 3am, between its proudly DIY production values, its gleefully, self-awarely stupid approach to comedy, and its rapid-fire editing. The vibe is a bit like Adult Swim Yule Log filtered through the sensibility of 90s-MTV’s The State, though even goofier and dumber and possibly even more budget-starved than either. The rapid-fire nature of the whole thing is definitely its most distinctive feature: by Sekely’s own admission in the extras, the film very much mirrors the style of his free-associating, mile-a-minute ADHD brain, bouncing around between sketches and ideas as quickly as possible, and never stopping. It makes for a pretty exhilarating experience – provided you’re on the wavelength of its dumb, goofball humor, ideally with some cheesy-movie-loving friends and maybe some mind-altering substances.
The film follows a group of college girls at a sorority pledge night – one of whom, Sam, happens to be the younger sister of a former sorority member who saved her housemates from a vampire. Now the vampire’s sister Lorelai is out for revenge, looking to kill the sibling of her sister’s slayer as payback, and the rest of the sorority pledges while she’s at it. The only problem… Lorelai is a decidedly novice vampire whose bat transformations only work 25% of the time (“a terrible batting average,” another vampire quips), and who can only bite victims in the butt. That’s the most basic premise, which sounds reasonably sane – but then on top of that, the movie gives us witchcraft, time-travel, a boogeyman in the closet who is actually a really nice guy, a beefcake electrician who calls himself Lightman, a weird creature in a box, an evil record company executive, and more. Basically, whatever sketch concepts popped into Les Sekely’s head.
The humor skews heavily towards stupid puns, silly visual gags, and dad jokes. It’s the kind of movie that leans hard into the cheesiness of it all with full self-awareness, making the groan-inducing nature of some of the jokes part of the deliberate punchline (like that “batting average” quip about Lorelai’s lack of transformation skills). The semi-ironic nature of the humor may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Sekely’s sense of comic timing and rapid-fire style – where if one joke doesn’t work, another is coming in a few seconds – makes most of it land. The cast is all very game, delivering the goofy, absurd dialogue with panache and just enough self-awareness. Jillien Weisz who plays Lorelai the vampire in particular is very funny, giving a performance that reminded me a lot of Nadja from What We Do in the Shadows, almost 20 years early.
It doesn’t all work – there are definitely jokes and aspects of the film that fall flat, and some threads that are more fun than others (Les Sekely’s own performance as the evil record exec is just way too obnoxious, at least for me, and the way he shoehorns his own daughter into the film as an angelic cherub is too cutesy for its own good). But with the film moving as fast as it does, that isn’t really a problem, because we’re on to the next thing before we know it. The microbudget production values likewise contribute to the film being a bit uneven and rough around the edges, but Sekely and company work quite well under the constraints, making this a pretty well-shot and well-make movie, considering what they were working with. One area where the production really shines is its music, which Sekely wrote himself. The music is very good, with elements of Oingo Boingo and early Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark in its sound, and it sets the fun, silly, frenetic tone quite perfectly. It is also definitely an indication of how he really was swinging for the fences with this project, trying to make the best, weirdest thing he could with the resources he had.
Vampire Time Travelers’ gleefully dumb, goofball humor won’t be for everybody, but if you’re someone who loves late-night Adult Swim absurdist comedy and similar things, you will probably find a lot to enjoy here, especially if you watch it in its bleary-eyed past-midnight natural habitat. I found it to be a very likably strange experience, which I will probably return to, and which provided a few moments I was still chuckling about long after. This movie definitely has cult-classic potential, and I hope that Visual Vengeance’s new disc helps it to find that audience.
I Know What You Did in English Class (2000) is Sekely’s follow-up film, and it is a much more uneven experience that isn’t nearly as good (hence why it’s the B-side feature on the disc), but there definitely is still some fun to be had. This time around, the film follows a group of thirtysomething slackers who, when they were in high school, bullied a much-hated English teacher so hard that she went insane and has been in a mental hospital ever since. Now she has developed psychic powers and is getting supernatural revenge on all of them, sometimes pulling them into nightmares, sometimes manipulating their reality. It’s a concept that plays into Sekely’s sketch-comedy background, with the revenge on each bully being a totally different absurdist sketch.
The problem is that this time around, the sketches and comedy beats are a much more mixed bag than in Vampire Time Travelers. The first sketch is by far the best – a wonderfully absurdist sequence about a bureaucratic office nightmare that feels very strongly like something right out of The State or off of Adult Swim. This sketch is worth watching in itself. The track record after that is far more uneven, with one other sequence (the one with the actor who played Lightman) being quite funny and very cleverly done, but the others mostly falling flat. Once again Sekely’s own performance is far too dialed-up-to-11, to the point of becoming obnoxious. And the final sketch starts out funny enough, but goes on way too long, and its premise – a constant barrage of dad jokes and puns being played out literally – wears out its welcome and stops being funny.
It has its bright spots, and it is fun seeing some familiar faces from Vampire Time Travelers pop up throughout. But I Know What You Did in English Class is pretty bad, and the lightning of Vampire Time Travelers’ lovable wackiness does not strike twice, or at least not consistently. That first office-waiting-room-nightmare sketch is absolutely worth a watch, it’s downhill from there.
THE VISUAL VENGEANCE BLU-RAY:
As per usual, Visual Vengeance have assembled quite a strong blu-ray package for Vampire Time Travelers, for the most part. I must begin with a gripe about their limited edition packaging this time around tho: while the inner blu-ray case artwork (the art in the banner image of this review) is fantastic, and excellently represents the film as a wacky and strange throwback comedy, the limited slipcover art is absolutely terrible, and severely misrepresents the film. Painted by sleaze-artist Rick Melton, whose T&A-heavy art blu-ray collectors may remember from many an early Arrow Video cover (and who I was very happy to see Arrow stop using), the slip appears to sell the film as a nudity-packed softcore porn flick that looks lurid and sleazy. That simply isn’t this film. While it has a few tongue-in-cheek lightly horny moments, overall it is a relatively innocent comedy, that isn’t sleazy or lurid (the whole “bite her in the butt” refrain used as the tagline is more of a Bevis and Butthead-esque “hahaha, butts” type of joke in the film itself, and isn’t sexualized). And in its director’s cut which is found on this disc, the film has no nudity. Interestingly, in the extras Les Sekely says that the producers had demanded a couple topless shots be added to the film, so he reluctantly obliged, but he never liked them being there and felt that they didn’t fit in the movie, so he removed them for this director’s cut preparation. Especially in that context, misrepresenting the film on the slipcover as a skin flick feels absolutely baffling, and I fear that the slip might chase off some people who would really have fun with the movie, or attract people who will hate it because it doesn’t deliver the promised titillation. Very odd choice, especially when the inner artwork is so good. Take Arrow’s cue and stop using Rick Melton, Visual Vengeance.
Packaging gripe aside tho, this disc is as strong as theirs usually are, packed to the brim with great extras. Both films come with commentaries by Les Sekely, and interviews with him about the making of the films. Hearing him talk about the movies is pretty fascinating: he has lots of great stories about the productions, is very honest about the sometimes-goofy ways in which things came about, and is just a gregarious and fun behind-the-scenes storyteller. He also is just as hyperactive and fast-talking as you would expect, judging by his films and the characters he plays in them. It sounds like he’s a film professor now, and his classes must be a lot of fun. The extras continue with an impressive assortment of interviews with cast and crew members from both films: six interviews altogether.
The disc also includes another short film by Les Sekely, The Not So Grim Reaper (2001), which is a ton of fun, and rounds out a thorough retrospective of him as a microbudget auteur. Much like his two features, this short is wacky, unpredictable, and piles on several layers of madness to the story. Basically, it follows a journalist’s interview with Death, who turns out to be a pretty cool and funny guy who’s just doing a job. Shorter and to the point, there’s no filler or weak sections here, it’s just a very fun, somewhat high-concept weird comedy. And in a much more restrained role, Sekely is quite good as Death, giving by far his best performance of the three films.
I had a great time with this disc, and even with I Know What You Did in English Class being a very mixed bag, this trio of wacky oddities made me a Les Sekely fan. His absurd sense of humor and enjoyably manic pacing make for genuinely fun and memorable films, with Vampire Time Travelers being especially fun midnight-movie stuff. I hope that people discover these films on blu-ray, and that they achieve the cult-classic potential that they clearly have. If this type of comedy is your cup of tea, I recommend you take a bite out of this disc.
- Christopher S. Jordan