In
case you didn't already know this, long before becoming a cult TV show,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer actually started life several years previously
as a feature film. However, for those fans of the TV series who have yet to
see the original film, you may be in for a bit of a disappointment.
Buffy (played here by Kristy Swanson), appears to be your average high school girl. That is until she has a bizarre encounter with a man named Merrick Jameson-Smyth (Donald Sutherland) who informs her that there is more to her life than just cheerleading for the schools basketball team, and going out shopping with her friends.
Yes, it turns out that Buffy is none other than "the chosen one". A vampire slayer of the highest order who's destiny it is to, well...., slay vampires of course. Obviously, Buffy doesn't believe him at first, but after bumping into the chief vampire Lothos (played by none other than Rutger Hauer), and his cohorts, she realises that there's more to Merrick, and indeed herself, than meets the eye as numerous fight scenes ensue!
Luke Perry turns up as a young mechanic who gets embroiled in Buffy's vampire hunting antics and David Arquette puts in an amusing performance as one Buffy's goofy friends (type casting again). On the whole, this isn't a BAD film, but it's not a particularly good one either. The fight scenes are too few and far between, the acting by the films major stars, Sutherland and Hauer, is terrible (indeed this has been referred to as Rutger Hauer's worst film), and the entire film seems far too campy on the whole.
I rather got the impression that the director was trying to play the film for laughs but it didn't quite work, which is probably why so many critics panned it (although a lot of that may be down to the colossal mucking around with the original script). But it's not a total loss, and there are some genuinely amusing scenes, but it's not a patch on the later TV show.
