Five-Legged Iguana

LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS
(Review)

“It’s spelled A-D-V-N-T-U-R-E, my friend.”
“Christ, you’re a tit.”


It’s all right there in the title, innit?
The glorified send-ups of the B-movie romp—as exemplified by such films as James Gunn’s Slither and Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror—find a new recruit in Phil Claydon’s Lesbian Vampire Killers.
Here, there’s a little English village called Cragwich, with a curse laid down upon it by the dykey vampire queen, Carmilla (Van Helsing’s Silvia Colloca, who is now, by the way, Mrs. Richard Roxburgh; sign up for a movie single, and get a gorgeous wife out of it… brilliant!). As the curse goes, every village lass turns into a lesbian vampire on her 18th birthday.
But hope lies in Jimmy McLaren (Mathew Horne), the descendant of Baron Wolfgang McLaren III, who vanquished Carmilla once before. But in Jimmy’s blood also lies Carmilla’s one shot at resurrection.
And all we need for that, is a virgin.


Yup. It’s that kind of British horror-comedy.
And while it may not fulfill its promise as successfully as a Shaun of the Dead or a Severance, it’s nonetheless a sight funnier than efforts like The Cottage.
At the very least, there’s loads of hot women in this, so that’s got to count for something, yeah?

“Yup. Lesbian vampires.”
“How ridiculous.”
“No. Just another one of God’s cruel tricks to get on my tits. Even dead women would sooner sleep with each other than get with me, it would appear. But eatin’ me alive? Oh, no, that’s fine!”


Much of the film’s humour can be found in the funny, overweight sidekick figure, as essayed by Nick Frost in Shaun of the Dead, or to use an American example, Tyler Labine in Reaper.
In Lesbian Vampire Killers, that role is taken quite ably by James Corden (The History Boys’ Timms, who’s been previously paired with Horne on TV’s Gavin & Stacey and Horne & Corden). As Fletch, Corden gets away with most of the script’s winningest lines.
That said, the script (by Stewart Williams and Paul Hupfield) just isn’t as hilarious as I imagine it could have been, given the patently preposterous premise.


Still and all, it’s a bit of harmless, goofy fun (the sort of fun where lesbian vampire blood isn’t red at all, but rather, a milky white substance, looking much like gallons of… umm… err… never mind).
There’s also what could very well be a fleeting verbal nod to hentai classic, Chôjin densetsu Urotsukidôji. (I was hoping for a subsequent visual, but sadly, that never came to pass.)
So if that sounds to your liking, well then, check Lesbian Vampire Killers out by all means.
It may not be a classic by modern horror-comedy standards, but it does give it a good go.

“Lesbian vampires?!”
“Next time, he’ll have me bummed by a big, gay werewolf, I swear!”


Parting shot: Reviews of Severance, The Cottage, Slither, Planet Terror, and The History Boys can be found in the Archive.

(Lesbian Vampire Killers UK quad and images courtesy of empireonline.com.)