Beverly Hills Vamp

Pretty typical of Fred Olen Ray and all the crap that was produced by small studios in the late 80's for the home video market. In fact it looks like it was shot on video. Either that or 8mm film and converted poorly to video.

There is no plot. The writing is absolutely horrible but that doesn't matter because none of the actors can act. In fact most of the girls were Playmates pulled in at low cost to help the movie sell purely on the babe factor. If you had Cinemax in the 90's you've seen tons of these movies. This one is especially bad. It lacks the ridiculous amount of hot girls the other films manage to collect, it lacks the cheesiness factor of a good Joe Bob Briggs presentation, and theres a lot of long drawn out shots scattered about to pad the run time. Even for fans of the genre there really isn't anything here. I recommend avoiding it unless you absolutely have to see another cheap movie with lesser-known nude models.

Director Fred Olen Ray is from the same school of film-making as Jim Wynorski (and Russ Meyer before that), where it doesn't matter how terrible the script is just as long as there are plenty of big-breasted, scantily clad women. Beverly Hills Vamp features the likes of B-movie babes Michelle Bauer and Debra Lamb as sexy vampires, but the ladies aren't the focus of the film, Ray placing the spotlight on über-nerd actor Eddie Deezen instead.

Deezen plays geeky scriptwriter Kyle, who travels to Hollywood with pals Russell (Tom Shell) and Brock (Tim Conway Jr.) to try and make a movie; while in 'Tinseltown', the trio attempt to get laid at a brothel where the hookers are actually vampires. Russell and Brock get bitten, leaving Kyle to try and save his pals before they join the ranks of the undead for good.

The awful script pads out the run-time with pointless exchanges of dialogue and plenty of obvious innuendo, Deezen's ultra-nerdy performance proving extremely irritating throughout. Even appearances from the likes of Robert Quarry and Britt Ekland cannot help save the film from utter awfulness - on the contrary, both are terrible, in keeping with the general standard of the whole production.

First, you have to realize that Fred Olen Ray's "Beverly Hills Vamp" is NOT intended to be taken seriously, so if you watch it and end up complaining that it's "mind-numbing drivel" (to quote the previous reviewer), then you totally missed the point. The whole point is to be silly and show scantily clad babes, as Ray also did with "Evil Toons" and "Teenage Exorcist". With the presence of Eddie Deezen (who played the chatterbox Beatlemaniac in Robert Zemeckis's "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and the obnoxious ventriloquist in Steven Spielberg's "1941"), you know that you're in for something zany.

What I mean by the link to Peter Sellers and the Beatles is a loose connection. Britt Ekland was one of the many blonde sexpots of the '60s. She was married to Sellers for a few years. Peter Sellers co-starred with Ringo Starr in "The Magic Christian", a mockery of the British class system. Christopher Lee appears briefly in the movie as a vampire. Years later, Eddie Deezen appeared in Zemeckis's movie as a man modeling himself on Ringo. That's the connection.

Anyway, this is a movie that you just have to accept as totally silly. That's all that it is: nice, silly fun with a lot of hot babes.

I'd bed Britt Ekland any day.

My review was written in October 1989 after watching the movie on Vidmark video cassette.

A pleasant addition to the overworked vampire comedy genre, "Beverly Hills Vamp" is of special interest to industryites by virtue of its non-stop stream of in-jokes parodying the world of low-budget filmmaking.

Helmer Fred Olen Ray, who has bootstrapped his way to prominence in the field of quickie production, pokes fun at himself as well in a film free of the bitterness usually associated with backstage efforts.

Eddie Deezen toplines in his familiar nerd role as a guy who survives an evening with vampire call girls that, however, takes the lives of his two chums, Tim Conway Juniot and Tom Shell. Viewer is taken on a Cook's tour of Hollywood, notably the milieu of producer Aaron Pendleton, who specializes in exploitation movies. Deezen's girlfriend, Brigitte Burdine, shows up to help him combat Britt Ekland, the vampire who runs a BevHills brothel.

With Michelle Bauer, Debra Lamb and Jillian Kesner providing the pulchritude, easy-to-take pic has some clever moments for the fans, including Robert Quarry making fun of his revered "Count Yorga" character. Vampire lore is handled inconsistently, but there are good special effects by Bret Mixon when the creatures disintegrate.

"Beverly Hills Vamp" is a movie made by Fred Olen Ray after the "success" of his cult flick "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers".

"Vamp" is basically just a retread with vampire hookers instead of chainsaw ones.

The hero is not a private eye in this one. He's a nerd with an irritating high pitched voice. What was the point of having him talk like that? As if we don't get right away that he's supposed to be a nerd.

Ray stalwart Michelle Bauer is in it.

The movie is nowhere near as fun as "Chainsaw Hookers". There is too much dialogue, none of which is entertaining or well written. In one scene, the nerd is in a hotel room and the maid shows up for service. He won't leave so that she can clean the room. She agrees to go away and come back. She does. He's still there. You can clean the room now, the nerd says. I'm on my break, says the maid. End of scene.

I'm not sure if the last part of that was supposed to be funny, or if I just expected some kind of a punchline to justify the inclusion of the maid in the story. That scene adds absolutely nothing to the movie.

Whereas no one is going to nominate him for an Oscar any time soon, Fred Olen Ray is nevertheless overrated in b-movie circles. Fans of cult cinema know his name, despite most of his movies being boring garbage. This one is no exception.