Vampirella (1996)

Vampirella is a legendary comic-book character created around 1969 by science fiction super-fan Forest J. Ackerman. She’s a sexy vampire from outer space. The most surprising thing about Vampirella is that she has never been the subject of a movie franchise. Maybe because she’s too sexy and that scares big studios off. They prefer their superheroes to be bland and safe. We do however have this 1996 movie, directed by Roger Corman protege and ultra low budget movie legend Jim Wynorski (with Corman acting as executive producer). It has an IMDb rating of 3.3, which is promising (with genre movies generally speaking the the lower the IMDb rating the better the movie).

The movie is an origin story of sorts, and while it retains a few elements of the comics it adds a lot of other elements. Gary Gerani wrote the script.

As in the comic Vampirella is from the planet Drakulon. The inhabitants of Drakulon are vampires but they don’t go around biting people. By a happy coincidence Drakulon has rivers of blood. Actual rivers, of actual blood. So these vampires are not killers. They’re not predators.

Well, mostly not predators. There are a few bad vampires who want to go back to the good old days when vampires really were killers. The leader of this faction is Vlad (Roger Daltrey).

Vlad’s followers carry out a bloodbath and the wise ruler of Drakulon is one of the victims. Vlad’s followers set off to find a planet where they can express their true vampire natures, by killing people.

All this happened centuries ago. Now we’re in Los Angeles in the 1990s. There are vampires but nobody knows about them. They are plotting away in secret. There’s also a paramilitary force of vampire hunters. The paramilitary outfit is codenamed Purge and it’s run by Adam Van Helsing, the last descendant of the Van Helsings.

Vlad and his followers have another more deadly threat to deal with. The daughter of the ruler of Drakulon who was killed by Vlad has arrived on Earth. She wants to destroy Vlad and his followers. She is Vampirella (Talisa Soto).

Vlad is now a rock star, a useful cover. People expect rock stars to be weird and decadent.

Vlad has some very big very sinister plans.

Adam Van Helsing trusts Vampirella but his colleague Walsh doesn’t. Van Helsing thinks that Vampirella could be the key to defeating Vlad.

Vampirella is clearly attracted to Van Helsing but he’s too uptight to do anything about.

I’ve only read some of the very early Vampirella comics but to me the movie doesn’t really capture the flavour of the comics. It’s a bit too much of a 90s action movie. But in commercial terms that may have been a sound move. There isn’t quite enough fun and sparkle, and (despite a few bare breasts) there’s not quite enough sexiness.

Vampirella’s costume is disappointingly tame compared to the comic-strip version. Talisa Soto was apparently concerned that the original much sexier costume designed for her would be a problem in the action scenes because certain parts of her anatomy would undoubtedly pop out during such scenes. She was probably right but the final costume is just very unexciting.

Talisa Soto is OK as Vampirella. She’s certainly beautiful. Her problem is that Roger Daltrey is in full-bore scenery-chewing mode and tends to dominate the movie. That’s not Daltrey’s fault - he gives exactly the right performance. The movie probably needed an actress with a bit more zing, and she needed to ramp up the sexiness in order to avoid being overshadowed. She also needed to be more amusing and more fun. Hammer had planned to do a Vampirella movie back in the 70s and they had Caroline Munro in mind. She would certainly have made a much better Vampirella.

The movie does have its strengths. The high-tech anti-vampire weapons are rather fun. The western ghost town near Las Vegas used as Vlad’s hideout is a great location.

This origin story here really has no connection at all with the origin story in the comic, and the version in the comic would have been preferable.

The bat transformations are so crude that it would have been better to dispense with them completely.

The paramilitary anti-vampire organisation was later shamelessly ripped-off by Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Vampirella isn’t as bad as it reputation would suggest. It’s moderately entertaining. The Vampirella in the movie isn’t really Vampirella. The movie is not sexy enough, it’s not enough fun, it doesn’t have enough energy, it doesn’t have the cheerful tongue-in-cheek vibe it needed. If you’re a hardcore Vampirella fan you’ll want to see it out of curiosity but it is a disappointment.

The German DVD which I own not only includes the original English-language version, it also includes Jim Wynorski’s commentary track (in English of course). Wynorski always does great commentary tracks.