October 21, 2020

A perfect pairing of sound & vision. Grace Jones in Vamp


The 80's were kind of a wasteland for the horror genre. The decade was awash with identikit slasher movies that did the same thing over and over again in a way that eventually drove audiences away in droves. Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees ruled the roost. They were fun at first but the novelty tailed off fast. A few gems shone through like The Thing, Day Of The Dead, Society, The Stuff, Life Force, The Shining and Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator but mostly the 80's are remembered for slasher guff or bad Stephen King adaptions. One horror movie subsection that faded fast in the 80's was the vampire movie but 1985's Fright Night was the start of a resurgence that saw it, The Lost Boys, The Monster Squad, Near Dark and (groan) Elvira all appear one after another. Most are still remembered fondly to this day but one that has more or less vanished in the fog of time is Vamp. 

It's the story of three  college students who find themselves in a strip club one night in search of a dancer they can hire to help them make a name for themselves on campus. The club is in the dodgy part of town and the dancers onstage are even dodgier. They've a taste for blood and the 3 students are on the menu. But first a dancer called Katrina has to lure them in. 

The video is below. No nudity.


A weird and unsettling scene for sure but a kind of mesmeric one too. Yes, she is dancing to the sound of her own voice by the way. Those eyes, that Geisha face paint, the off kilter editing, the dutch tilts all clue you into to the fact that something is not right here. The students came to leer but she's reeled them in and by the time she becomes one with the chair she's dancing on they're sold. And so are we.

Brilliant.

Previous pairings

Beetlejuice


Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)