Film review: Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009), directed by Phil Claydon
Your psychotic girlfriend Judy (Lucy Gaskell) has just dumped you again, and your best friend Fletch (James Corden) thinks you deserve a holiday to recuperate. Neither Fletch or you, or rather Jimmy (Mathew Horne), have any money to go to Ibiza, so they make do with the next best thing: camping in ol’ Blighty.
The two friends end up in the middle of nowhere, and come across a VW camper van full of female tourists/university students who have come to the area to learn more about sex a local legend: the vampire queen Carmilla (Silvia Colloca), who was vanquished by a knight back in the day. Legend says that the curse Carmilla puts on the village means that all female virgins turn into lesbian vampires when they turn 18. Err, like you do.
What no one knew was that there are hungry vampires afoot in the woods eager to resurrect their queen, and Jimmy happens to be a direct descendant of the knight who vanquished her in the first place. All the boys want is to score with the girls …
Also starring MyAnna Buring as Lotte (she’s in Witchville, and the slightly more upmarket The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, in which she plays Tanya), Paul McGann as the Vicar and Emer Kenny as the Vicar’s daughter Rebecca, who is about to turn 18.
If you’re expecting anything other than teenage boy humour – c’mon, the vampires are lesbians and when they’re staked, they explode into a viscous white substance and there’s a sword with a hilt that looks like a man’s knob – you’re going to hate this film with a passion. If you watch it realising that it’s going to be a silly film full of teenage boy humour, it’s amusing. Not hilarious, perhaps, but on the other hand, it never takes itself seriously. If it did, it would inspire groans. As it stands, because the film never makes itself out to be anything but a puerile romp, it’s actually, surprisingly, okay.
Horne and Corden, made famous from Gavin and Stacey, even made their own sketch show for a bit, and they work well together. Horne is perhaps the one who gets to play the more realistic and sensible characters, while Corden is the big kid. Not crazy about either of them, let’s be honest, but they play their roles well.
Buring had such a heavy accent (deliberately) that I wasn’t surprised to find out she’s Swedish. (No, not every Swede is a blonde, even if she is.) The other girls from the camper van were perhaps chosen more for their looks than their acting talents – but they don’t get to say a lot anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
Lesbian Vampire Killers is silly but sort of amusing if you put the sex jokes aside, and it’s pretty forgettable. It could have been better, but it doesn’t suck either, if you know what you’re letting yourself in for.
2.65 out of 5 gay werewolves.