Vamp (1986)

Vamp is something I imagine works like a secret password for Horror Twitter. You let them know you’re aware of the time Grace Jones played a vampire and those bores say you’re ok. You might be asking how could Grace Jones playing a vampire be forgotten. Someone fucking this up proves anything is possible.

Vamp begins as a stale college movie. The guy from Nightmare On Elm Street 2 and a sentient slice of Wonder Bread find themselves playing Lesiure Suit Larry IRL while looking to hire a stripper for a party in order to get into a frat. They stumble across a seedy strip club where Grace Jones does an art show striptease and is eventually revealed to be a vampire who feasts on out of town loners. If you’re a From Dusk From Dawn fan looking for more “o shit there’s vampires in this dive” movies, I’m sorry that Vamp is an option.

Vamp is a mundane genre movie that offers two lively set pieces, Grace Jones doing a striptease in honkyface and Grace Jones killing a guy in a sexually gratifying fashion. While imagining what Vamp possibly was, I never pictured a Groundhog Day repetition of Sandy Baron rushing backstage to inform Grace Jones they haven’t killed the guys who accompanied the victim they mistakenly thought was alone. So much of this movie is Grace Jones saying nothing while being informed about how little is transpiring. If it’s not that, it’s the Asian from Sixteen Candles being a goddamn nuisance.

Earlier today I struggled trying to remember watching Vamp last night. I immediately remembered rewatching The Philadelphia Story afterwards, but it took awhile to remember what movie let me down prior to that. I don’t know how you could possibly make Grace Jones playing a vampire forgettable. What’s the fucking point of movies if we can’t get vampire Grace Jones right?