A movie that didn’t seem like much when it premiered in 1992, and which I was hoping might have improved in the ensuing decades. Quite simply: it hasn’t. If anything, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER has become even more pointless and insipid than it felt three decades ago (when its conception at least seemed somewhat unprecedented), in part because screenwriter Joss Whedon rebooted the material in the similarly titled 1997-2003 TV series, which outdid the film in every respect.
Sarah Michelle Gellar headlined the TV series, but the movie had to make do with Kristy Swanson (best known for bit parts in PRETTY IN PINK and FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF) as Buffy Summers. She’s a Los Angeles based cheerleader whose life ambition is to “graduate from high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die.” Buffy is approached one day in a mall by the ageing Merrick (Donald Sutherland); she initially rebuffs him, but he tracks Buffy to her school gym and reveals that he’s a “watcher” tasked with training vampire slayers, which Buffy apparently is. This accords with dreams—flashbacks, actually—she’s been having about living in a medieval milieu with vampires, one of whom is a creep named Amilyn (Paul Reubens) who is presently divvying out neck bites (one of which is likened to “A really gross hickey”) to local teenagers.
After allowing Merrick to drag her to a cemetery, where she handily stakes two newly vampirized zombies, Buffy becomes his pupil in an intense vampire killer training regime (female protagonists being mentored by male superiors are a mainstay in Whedon’s “feminist” narratives, such as his notorious unfilmed WONDER WOMAN script). Merrick, however, ends up dead at the hands of Lothos (Rutger Hauer), an elder vampire who controls Amilyn and is looking to reconstruct his evil empire.
Enter Oliver Pike (Luke Perry), a teen rebel whose best friend Benny (David Arquette) has been vampirized. Buffy grows appreciably more affectionate toward Pike, especially after he helps her take down a vampire who disrupts a basketball game. The two cement their union at the senior dance, where Lothos’ brood stage a mass attack that Buffy and Pike are tasked with fending off.
Director Fran Rubel Kuzui (TOKYO POP) offers a tonally lopsided film that prizes lightweight comedy over “horror” that barely registers, and blandly staged fight scenes in which the vampires obligingly line up to take on the heroine. Joss Whedon, who claims his script was bowdlerized, offers some imaginative conceptions, as in a bit involving Buffy spearing a bug by spitting a thumbtack at it, and another set in a parade float enclosure, which provides the one and only instance of striking production design (looking like an outtake from FUN IN BALLOONLAND).
Most unforgivable is the fact that Kuzui wastes an amazing cast that includes Donald Sutherland, Rutger Hauer, Paul Reubens, Luke Perry, David Arquette, Candy Clark and Thomas Jane (as well as uncredited appearances by Ben Affleck, Ricki Lake and Alexis Arquette). That leaves Kristy Swanson, who’s lovely but, with her overtly caricatured acting style, hopelessly miscast (Hilary Swank, who plays one of her snobby friends, would have been a better choice), being only somewhat believable as a snooty cheerleader and not at all convincing as a vampire slayer.
Vital Statistics
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
20th Century Fox
Director: Fran Rubel Kuzui
Producer: Kaz Kazui, Howard Rosenman
Screenplay: Joss Whedon
Cinematography: James Hayman
Editing: Camilla Toniolo, Jill Savitt
Cast: Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, Paul Reubens, Rutger Hauer, Luke Perry, Michele Abrams, Hilary Swank, Paris Vaughan, David Arquette, Randal Batinkoff, Andrew Lowery, Sasha Jenson, Stephen Root, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Candy Clark, “Tom Janes” (Thomas Jane), James Paradise, Ben Affleck, Ricki Lake, Seth Green, Alexis Arquette