One of the better
vampire pics to emerge from the 80s, single mother Lucy Emmerson (Dianne West) has just moved
to the small coastal resort of Santa Carla with her two sons, Michael and Sam (played by a
teenage Jason Patrick and a young Corey Haim).
The two are not overly thrilled with moving to what is known as "The murder captial of the world", but it isn't too long before they're are making new friends. Michael, the older brother, falls in with a crowd teenage punks, led by a chap named David (played by non-other than Keifer Sutherland) after being attracted to one of the female members named Star (Jami Gertz).
Meanwhile, the younger brother Sam befriends a couple of lads, Edgar and Alan Frog (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander), whose hippy degenerate parents run the local comic book shop. However, Sam quickly realises there's something amiss with the gang his older brother is hanging round with. Particularly after he finds his brother has no reflection in the mirror and can fly. Yep it turns out that David's gang are a bunch of trendy young vampires, and now Michael is one of them.
Fortunately the frog brothers claim to be vampire experts, and so set out to try and find who the head vampire is, and eliminate them before Michael can make his first kill. This has disastrous, but highly amusing, results at one of his mothers dinner parties when they believe the head vampire is the chap Sam's mother is dating.
Michael however has decided that a vampire's life is not for him, after watching David's gang chow down on a bunch of surf Nazi's, and so decides to help his younger brother and friends wipe out the vampire nest and try and rescue Star. Leading to a hilarious action packed final confrontation, as the vampires attack and Sam and the Frog brothers attempt to fend them off using stakes, bows & arrows and water pistols loaded with holy water.
Produced by Richard Donner, who gave us the Lethal Weapon films, and directed by Joel Schumacher, who directed some of the later Batman sequels, the film is a thoroughly enjoyable tongue-in-cheek, action packed romp, that successfully combines horror, humour and action in just the right proportions, with an excellent rock and roll soundtrack to boot! Definitely one of the movies I more fondly remember from my teenage years.
