My Best Friend Is a Vampire

High school student Jeremy Capello (Robert Sean Leonard) has a part time job at a grocery store; when he is asked to make a delivery to the old, seemingly abandoned Gardner mansion, he thinks it is a prank, but is surprised to find a sexy young woman living there, who invites him to come back at night.

Despite amorous attention from hot cheerleader Candy (LeeAnne Locken), and having a crush on band nerd Darla (Cheryl Pollak), Jeremy is talked into returning to the house by his best friend Ralph (Evan Mirand), who thinks his pal should have some guilt-free sex with a stranger. As Jeremy is getting down to business with the sexy woman (Cecilia Peck), two men burst into the room brandishing weapons; Jeremy escapes and runs to where Ralph is waiting in his car, and the pair drive away. As Ralph pulls up outside Jeremy's home, he notices that his pal has been bitten on the neck...

My Best Friend is a Vampire is an amiable and moderately amusing teen comedy horror that, whilst not exactly laugh out loud funny or in any way scary, is still an entertaining piece of '80s nonsense. Informed that he has become a vampire by mentor Modoc (Rene Auberjonois), Jeremy must come to terms with drinking blood while trying not to take a bite from Darla when on a date; he must also convince Ralph that, even though he's a bloodsucker, he's still his best friend and means him no harm. Meanwhile, the two men who surprised him at the mansion - vampire hunters Professor Leopold McCarthy (David Warner) and his assistant Grimsdyke (Paul Wilson) - are convinced that Ralph is the vampire and plan to stake him through the heart.

With lots of car chases, plenty of '80s pop songs (including The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades by Timbuk 3 - tune!), bad fashion (Darla's hats!), and enjoyable performances (future Oscar Winner Kathy Bates plays Darla's mother!), My Best Friend is a Vampire provides an easy-going hour-and-a-half of harmless throwback fun.

5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

My Best Friend is a Vampire follows a long line of fun films about supernatural occurences disrupting an already awkward period of teenage development just as it did in My Mom's a Werewolf (teenager's mother turns into a werewolf), My Boyfriend's Back (girlfriend's dead boyfriend rises from the grave), and I Was a Teenaged Zombie (teenager's friends turns zombie to fight zombie drug dealer), and the list goes on.

This was surprisingly a very entertaining film about a young boy who, upon almost losing his virginity to a strange older woman is a strange old house, is given the bite that turns him into a vampire. Now a professor and his idiot assistant, vampire hunters, want to kill the vampire that is on the loose. The only problem is, they've mistaken his friend as their undead target.

The funniest parts of the movie involve a lot of great slapstick humor between Ralph, the vampire's best friend, and the vampire hunters who seem to follow him at every turn, although he can't figure out why. Even more amusing is the vampire teenager learning to cope with being a vampire thanks to the help of an older man, an English vampire mentor. With the help of dark glasses and a large stock of pigs blood, maybe life as a teenaged vampire won't be all that bad. It just makes shaving a little hard when you can't get your reflection in the bathroom mirror. And even more amusing than that is the misconception that the vampire's parents have about him. I would've guessed that they would have thought their little Johnny was on dope, but their mistake is actually much funnier.

Plus, you have a pretty good soundtrack to boot with the dominating song being Timbuk 3's "The Future's So Bright."

If this is your forte of films, the 80s horror/comedies, you should likely enjoy this one. It doesn't bite!

For some strange reason, I've always liked a good vampire flick... especially when there's some humor thrown in.

This movie satisfied that need perfectly, although I shave a few points off because there's a better one of these 80's horror-comedies out there. (Once Bitten) At first this movie was hard for me to start. I kept wondering if this would turn out to be any good... especially considering the opening with the whole castration thing.

I learned to just move through the movie and give it a chance.

Granted that the other posters are correct; there are a few similarities between this movie and Once Bitten, (A teen slowly turning into one of the undead, teen's friend taking aforementioned teen out to get laid, etc.) but so what? Simalarities to Once Bitten aside, this movie is an alright watch.

8/10

Granted I only know of one other movie that fits into this genre and that is the Jim Carrey movie "Once Bitten". This one though is better than that one as it is just a bit funnier and has a better and more likable plot to it. This one has a teen going to the house of a girl for what he thinks is going to be a one night stand kind of thing, as it turns out though the person he is seeing is a vampire and he is soon infected and must now feast on blood. Thankfully, it does not have to be human blood as a rather friendly vampire teaches him the ways of living a rather nice existence as a vampire without having to drink the blood of humans. Unfortuanately, a sort of Van Helsing type hunter of vampires who saw him and his friend at the girl's house where he was bitten, however, he thinks it is the guy's friend and not him that has been bitten and turned into a vampire. The guy also is having girl trouble as he even tries to use vampire hypnotism to get the girl he likes. All this makes for an very funny comedy that really is rather lighthearted. So while not perfect, it makes for a fun film to watch.

Jeremy Capello is a teenager who has dreams about the gawky Darla Blake. A girl who doesn't think that highly of him, but there's also a beautiful Barbie-like cheerleader named Candy who's actually keen on him. So his best friend Ralph suggests that he should seek out someone unknown for a one-night stand to get this get his mind thinking straight. While, doing his job he encounters the mysterious Nora, who invites him over for the night. So Jeremy with little help from Ralph meets her, only to be bitten by her and a crazed loon (possibly the husband) break in. The day after Jeremy goes through some minor changes and finds out that Nora's place has been burnt down. Through the course he learns that these are vampire hunters after them, but they seem to think that Ralph is the vampire.

The mid-to-late 80s was a time for vampire films (and even teenage monster themes too). This pleasant little romp is the standard mould of these monster comedies (maybe one of the lesser ones), but surprisingly it makes for a decently breezy time-waster if you're looking for a little 1980s nostalgia in your viewing. It has some generally amusing moments, especially from Rene Auberjonois' sneaky vampire mentor role as Modoc and you can see David Warner is having a ball in his ripe crack-ball role of Prof. Leopold McCarthy, vampire hunter.

Most of the performances are reasonably charming. Robert Sean Leonard ("Dead Poet's Society" and who would probably be best known for the recent TV series "House") is delightfully good as Jeremy and Evan Mirand turns in a joyful performance as the loutish Ralph. A fetching Cheryl Pollack is fair as the geeky Darla. Fannie Flagg and Kenneth Kimmins trump in with marvellously tuneful performances as Jeremy's overly worried parents. Paul Wilson makes solid of Prof. Leonard's bumbling assistant Grimsdyke. Let me not forget the minor role of the seductively alluring Cecilia Peck (Gregory Pecks' daughter) as Nora. Oh and look out for a slender Kathy Bates. The variable cast had a witty script to play along with and most of it was quite satisfying when it came to the punch.

Director Jimmy Huston does a competent job without doing anything overtly special, but he gets a lot spirit and odd developments running through some humorous situations. It can get corny in parts and extremely sappy when it comes to its closing moral. A trailblazing 80s pop soundtrack (notably Blondie and Oingo Boingo) features strongly in the film's make-up with the utterly hip and catchy title tune, "The future's so bright (I've got to wear shades)" by the TIMBUK 3. The stereotypically lucid premise (which shares similarities with the Jim Carrey vampire flick, "Once Bitten") is routine and derivative, but still it has some nice touches and diverting trivia on the vampire mythology. None of this should sideswipe your entertainment of it, unless you're looking for something with more aggression amongst its bite. I guess you'll know if you're going to like it after the first 15 minutes.

It might be far from revolutionary (just look at the title and you should know what to expect), but there's just something endearing about this campy lightweight piece.