Thursday, January 23, 2020

Buffy the Vampire Slayer


  

Buffy the Vampire Slayer 

1992

Director- Fran Rubel Kuzui
Cast- Kristy Swanson, Luke Perry, Rutger Hauer, Donald Sutherland, Paul Reubens, Hilary Swank, Paris Vaughan, Michele Abrams, Randall Batinkoff, David Arquette, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Sasha Jenson
           
     I’m not sure if this needs explaining but then again, the movie is almost 30 years old and the spin off series is 20 years old (now some of you feel old) so it’s entirely possible that a lot of people have never seen either.
           

     Buffy Summers (Kristy Swanson) is a shallow, vacuous Valley Girl. For younger readers, Valley Girls were an off shoot of homo sapiens that thrived from the early 1980s to the late1990s. They originated in the California San Fernando Valley and could be found in shopping malls across America buying lips glosses and designer jeans. They were eventually replaced by the more sexually predatory Instagram models. Though they can now only be found in the fossil record, their cultural influence lives on in the habit of most Americans using the word “like” in place of a comma when speaking.
           
    Buffy’s days are filled with barely passing various high school classes, cheerleader practice and making judgments about people of lower social classes than herself. Her blissful existence is interrupted when an old man, Merrick, (Donald Sutherland) shows up and tells her that she has a special destiny. Apparently Los Angeles is being overrun by vampires and Buffy, as the latest in a long line of Slayers, must prepare herself for war.
            
     She is naturally hesitant to believe any of this until she sees some of the undead in action. With the help of a training montage she gets in shape and hones her fighting skills. The menace she is preparing for is Lothos (Rutgar Hauer) an ancient vampire aided by Amilyn, his right hand man (Pee Wee Herman himself, Paul Reubens). Aiding Buffy is Pike (Luke Perry), a slacker whose best friend (David Arquette) is now one of the undead masses.
           

     Luke Perry and Kristy Swanson were 26 and 22 respectively so it was a little hard to believe that they were high school students, but I suppose they had nothing on Steve McQueen who was 28 when he played a teenager in The Blob. Luke Perry was at the height of his popularity as a star of the ultimate 90s TV show, Beverly Hills 90210. Swanson looked like the All-American girl next door, attractive but seemingly approachable. This was not her only brush with horror. The year before, she appeared in the lesser known, but superior, Highway to Hell.
           
     Joss Whedon, who wrote the film, apparently didn’t think too highly of it. The studio changed a lot of his script and he wasn’t happy with the casting of Donald Sutherland. He left the film during production. I guess it didn’t matter in the long run.
           

     As a horror-comedy it’s hard to judge with modern eyes. It’s not scary and the humor is hit and miss. It lacks the wit of Fright Night and the action scenes fall far ,far below that of Blade or Underworld. The value of this film is not in the film itself, but in its legacy. It spawned the very popular TV series that lasted for 144 episodes and made Sarah Michelle Geller a highly sought after Scream Queen. More important than all of that is that it made Joss Whedon’s career and was the start of his 20 year reign as King of all nerdom (he dethroned Kevin Smith for the title and was in turn dethroned by John Favreau). Without Buffy, there is no Angel, no Firefly, no Doll House, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe might never have become the juggernaut that it is. So, maybe the movie is lacking in various places, but it’s worth a watch for genre fans if for no other reason than its historical value.

Fun fact #1- The film was made by Dolly Parton’s production company, Sandollar.

Fun fact #2- Look for cameos of future stars Ben Affleck and Ricky Lake.
  

  




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