September 20, 2000

Love Bites (1993)

(AKA The Reluctant Vampire)



"The vampire Zachary Simms wakes up in his coffin after having overslept for 100 years. In the house lives young Kendall Gordon. Simms is amazed over how much has changed the last century. But Kendall's boyfriend doesn't like the guy who always follows Kendall around."

I just looked this up because I watched it when it was released back in 1993 and loved it. Of course this was mainly because I was (and will always be) an Adam Ant fan.

Anyway, the film is quite an oddity in the vampire genre. It isn't a classic by any stretch of the imagination but it's sort of a gentle, "fish out of water" romantic-comedy a bit like "Crocodile Dundee". Adam Ant plays the part of a "nice" vampire really well. There are some great lines and he is very charismatic in the role. Kimberly Foster is quite sweet too, and it's a shame that she pretty much disappeared from showbiz a couple of years after making this film. The onscreen chemistry between the leads is quite apparent.

If you ever see this for sale anywhere, I urge you all to buy it. I'm going to order it myself now because I'd forgotten all about Adam Ant's vampire film when I was originally making my website and only got to thinking about it when I was reading through some old copies of "The Demeter" earlier.

It suppose Jim Carrey's "Once Bitten" (from 1985) sort of eclipsed this in the video shops when it was re-promoted on the shelves next to "Ace Ventura" which is why hardly anybody got to see this. The titles were so similar that I expect a lot of people got confused and ended up with the wrong movie. I hate it when that happens, but at least my local video shop has pretty much stopped doing that kind of thing nowadays.

My rating for "Love Bites"? 10 out of 10 for cheesiness. You'll love it!

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