Hollywood Vampyr (2002)

Posted on Dec 03, 2003 under Horror |

Directed by Steven K. Akahoshi
Written by Joel Eisenberg
Starring
- Trevor Goddard
- Nora Zimmett
- Jeff Marchelletta
- Mark Irvingsen
- Muse Watson

Several years ago, when I worked at a group home for teen offenders, there was a big kid named Orlando who got a huge Cat-in-the-Hat hat for Christmas. (This was right when they were hitting the market; they weren’t yet a common sight, and no one ever dreamed we’d see one sitting atop Mike Myers.) He wore it proudly as we went on a field trip, and kept wearing it when we went into a gas station for some snacks.

By the time we came out, he was fuming, because there were some other teenagers in there, and he could hear them whispering and laughing at his hat. (Well, at the whole spectacle. Like I said, he was a big kid.) Naturally, it fell to even-tempered little me to try to defuse him.

“Look,” I told him. “Your hat’s unusual, right? I mean, that’s why you like it.”

“Yeah.”

“And it’s kind of silly, right? In a good way. It’s big and colorful and stripy.”

“Yeah.”

“So you wore a silly, unusual hat in public, and now you’re getting pissed off that people noticed it’s silly and unusual? If you don’t want people staring, Orlando, don’t go out of your way to do things that people will stare at.”

Wearing vampire teeth? Dumb. Wearing vampire teeth in daylight? Dumb and stupid.

That’s pretty much how I feel about the whole goth thing, only more so. Here are kids who feel like they don’t fit in, so they adopt this whole visual demeanor that emphasizes how isolated and antisocial they feel. Then they prattle on about how alone and shunned they feel, and complain that people want to judge them on the very appearance that they are so meticulous about keeping up.

Whiny dorks with ‘tudes, basically.

So. The movie under discussion is Hollywood Vampyr, which proudly touts itself as “based on a series of true events.” In other words, a bunch of whiny goths mope around feeling so alone, and get into fights with each other. And just like actual events, the movie’s got a lot less point than it thinks it has.

There’s this goth club called the Black Rose, see, owned by “Anubis,” aka David to his parents (Mark Irvingsen). Working for him is Blood (Trevor Goddard), a Brit goth with husky good looks and a compelling personality. Blood’s job is pretty much to lead the “coven” — to be the charismatic centerpiece for the goth family that collects at the club.

**“Come with me, and we can shop for curtains like these together.”**

There’s also this girl who calls herself “Fatal” (Nora Zimmett), who’s apparently in college, although she doesn’t ever seem to attend any classes. She’s being privately tutored in no subject in particular by Tom (Jeff Marchelletta), cleancut upperclassman who seems to be majoring, appropriately enough, in no particular subject. Once a couple of goth teens commit suicide, Tom’s no-particular-subject instructor, Professor Fulton (Muse Watson), comes down bombastically on the goth “anti-religionists and occultists” in class; and when Tom tries to stand up to him for the poor, misunderstood wanna-be vampires after class, he’s greeted with authoritarian dismissiveness. (Make no mistake, I think the goth “lifestyle” is one ceaseless whine. However, I’ve never seen instructors in higher education treat student dissent with such top-heavy bullying; the professors at “Vista del Mar College” make the faculty of The Dead Poets Society look like the lady on Romper Room.)

So. A couple of police lieutenants (Joe Toppe, who looks like Michael Madsen minus thirty pounds, and director Steve Akahoshi) start following Anubis around for no good reason. (By the way, could somebody — anybody — have told the director that having everyone in the movie pronounce it “Anubis” instead of “Anubis” just makes the entire goth community seem even more clueless?) And Fatal finds out she’s pregnant by Anubis, and starts to think about leaving the whole goth “family.”

Aha, you think. She’s going to try to get out, but the other goths are going to abusively keep her in, and Tom is going to rescue her. Right?

“The best film I’ve ever been in!” — Michael Madsen

Yeah, except not really. Fatal gives herself a home abortion and ends up in the hospital; Blood, who loves Fatal in a really domineering master/servant way, blames Tom, and calls him down to the club to meet him — then kisses Tom and makes him suck blood from Blood’s thumb. Then Tom decides to come out of the closet and let the world know he’s gay. And Professor Fulton kicks Tom out of whatever program he’s in for being tardy three times in a row (and for getting drunk and kissing Fulton full on the mouth), so Tom decides to become a goth and gets a job at Blood’s new club.

And while all this is going on, Fatal decides that the goth family really isn’t what she needs, goes back to her birth name — “Sylvia” — and strips off all of the black bedspreads and crying skull paintings from her apartment. So now she’s trying to bring Tom back out of the goth lifestyle.

Meanwhile, there are internecine wars between Anubis’ club and Blood’s new start-up. See, Anubis fired Blood for not adhering to the house-endorsed variety of goth ideology and for building up a cult of personality or something. (Just for eye-rolling irony, Anubis does this right after he goes on a holy rant in his Business Administration class that his lifestyle is the one that exemplifies tolerance for free expression and liberty. Worst part is, I don’t think the writer and director meant it to be a show of hypocrisy.)

**Well, that’s one way to keep someone under your thumb.**

If you’re wondering where all of this is going, you’re not alone. Apparently, as part of that “based on true events” vibe, Akahoshi and Eisenberg decided to eschew such fictional artificialities like dramatic structure. For the first half, I kept waiting for it to get good; after that, I just wanted it to get over.

I will say, giving credit where credit is due, that the acting was surprisingly good, especially from Goddard and Marchelletta. Double-especially when you realize what godawful chunky preachiness they had been given in the guise of dialogue.

I hope your appetite for petulant pretentiousness is up to snuff, because there are tons of meant-to-be-deep asides to show how, um, fulfilling the goth ideology is. Stuff like “Damnation is the price we pay for being misunderstood.” And “Because I am alone, and you can never understand.” And “Is there really a personal freedom, or is the very concept an oxymoron?”

“(Giggle.)”

With something this plotless, you know the only way it’ll be over is when main characters die. Which is what happens: Blood ends up killing Anubis and himself over their club rivalry, as well as their disagreements about the finer points of goth dogma. Tom snaps out of it and goes back to being White-bread Student Boy (no indication as to whether his newfound sexual preference went back into the closet — or really, what the point of bringing up his sexuality was in the first place). And Fatal decides to go back to being all-out gothic, even though she got absolutely no support from the “family” when she was in the hospital after her abortion, and the only time she was really happy was when she brightened up her apartment. As Tom tells us in a final voiceover, the only important thing are those “personal truths” inside each of us.

And as Anubis’ Business Management instructor replies when Anubis delivered his proselytizing rant about the glories and freedom of gothness, “That is unmitigated bullshit.”