Buffy The Vampire Slayer

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER Sometimes it takes more than just good looks to kill.

[PROLOGUE: Well, this is it, the end of the Buffy TV show. The cartoon stalled, a Faith spin-off is on hold until Eliza Dushku finishes TV commitments elsewhere, and nobody’s said peep about a British Giles series in awhile. As of next week, the only Buffy fix fans will have is reruns. And Angel. And several season set DVDs. And the books, comics, toys, and soundtracks. Oh, and the original movie.

Since I first wrote this review (many a year ago), I’ve read Joss say a few things regarding Donald Sutherland and his, uh, impact on this film - suffice to say that asking a method actor to play a semi-immortal slayer trainer wasn’t the best idea. How do you prepare method style to be a Watcher? Can you go on ride-alongs with someone?

The original review was written at the start of season four, I think, so it’s topical tone is a little lost now, but with the series that made superheroes on TV OK again going off the air, I wanted to do something. Whatever the case I still stand by it as a fun watch. Which is good, because I need all the Buffy I can get. - END PROLOGUE]

I’ve been a bad Buffy fan. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the start of the new season all summer long. I even used the power of the Internet to hunt down and watch the censored episodes before they aired on television. At one point, in June as I recall, when no one was looking I pranced around my apartment in my underwear, chanting "Buffy, Buffy, Buffy". Ah, but I’ve said too much.

My point is that I’m as big a fan as the next hep geek. But horror of horrors, I missed the season premiere. Noooooo!

Yeah, I can hear you; "What? Did, like, bears get you or something?"

I dunno, I blinked, I looked away for a moment, I wasn’t paying attention, I was probably working or writing or something, and I missed it. Personally, I don’t think they advertised it enough.

But I’m OK because I watched the movie to take the edge off the withdrawal. The 1992 flick with Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry is like a proto-Buffy. It’s like creator Joss Whedon got to hammer out the idea of a cheerleader who kills vampires on with a $30 million budget. I don’t really know what the fans of the TV show think of the movie (I’m a big fan, but I’m not that big). I can see there being some debate. Screw debate, I liked it! To me, it’s an alternate Earth Buffy that’s a hoot to watch.

You know the concept already, I’m sure. Buffy’s a valley girl (think Square Pegs) who finds out that she was born to kill vampires, which is not nearly as big a shock as discovering that vampires are in fact real. Donald Sutherland is Merrick, her mentor, and Rutger Hauer is Lothos, a bad-ass, master vampire. Sutherland, despite displaying an amazing capacity for leering in most of his movies, doesn’t in this one, which is good. That’d be icky. Lothos, on the other hand, has this weird sex thing going on with Buffy, which could have been bad. Only it never gets too creepy, as Hauer plays the vampire as a mix of menace and foppish flair. Rupert Everett, take note.

Buffy, Merrick, and Lothos are the core of the movie. The garnish actors however are what add relish and mustard to the whole thing. [Present day interjection - wow, I should have been fined for that last line, or I should have at least gotten a rim-shot.] Luke Perry, you’ve got to hand it to him, has this laid-back charm about him that makes him serviceable in anything from this movie to The Fifth Element. Need an average Joe who can hit some funny one-liners? Perry’s your man. He’d be kind of one-note, only Whedon tossed in David Arquette (pre-Scream success) as his slacker buddy Benny. If you tilt your head, you can sort of tell that the whole Seattle scene was about to break as this movie was being made. These two are sort of grunge, but not quite. Anyhow, not to spoil the movie or anything, but Benny turns into a vampire. Even more fun ensues!

Fans of the show should watch the movie just to see Whedon’s first approach to his keen idea. There are some cool differences between the alternate Buffy and the TV show. The Slayer, for example, is not a series of superteens around the globe, but one soul reincarnated over and over. Cooler still is that the Watcher is also one person traveling through the ages, training one Slayer after another, only to watch them die and be replaced. Sadly that’s something Whedon didn’t follow up on too much.

Maybe it’s not what Whedon intended, and maybe it has been surpassed by its TV cousin, but it still has its charms.