Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

Ask a group of geeks to name a writer whose work they appreciate, and a good number of them will probably say Joss Whedon. His unique style has earned him a lot of respect over the years, but his greatest claim to fame has to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show debuted in 1997 on the WB Network, and over the course of seven seasons, it turned Whedon and Sarah Michelle Gellar into stars while becoming a pop culture powerhouse by inspiring novels, comic books, action figures, video games, and its own spinoff TV show.

But once upon a time, Buffy was not the pop culture juggernaut that it was at the end of the '90s. In the summer of 1992, 20th Century Fox introduced the world to the title character via her own motion picture, the existence of which I'm sure Whedon would love the world to forget. Instead of the dark yet ultra-witty Buffy that was popularized through the show, the movie is instead a goofy comedy that really bears no resemblance at all to the now-classic TV show that followed it.

Buffy Summers (Kristy Swanson) is your stereotypical early-90s Valley Girl. She's a dimwitted, self-centered cheerleader whose primary concerns are shopping, boys, and hanging out with her dimwitted, self-centered cheerleader friends. Her only goals in life are to "graduate from high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die." All that is brought to a screeching halt when she's confronted by Merrick (Donald Sutherland), who informs her that she is the next in a long line of young women chosen by destiny to kill vampires.

Naturally, she's skeptical. If some weird British guy came up to you and told you that you were destined to kill bloodsucking hell-spawn from beyond the grave, you'd probably think he was crazy too. Anyway, Merrick convinces Buffy that he's not some loony old man, and at his request, she accompanies him to the graveyard so he can explain this whole vampire slaying thing to her. Some vampires appear and get killed, and after some initial reluctance, Buffy begins to accept her role as a vampire slayer while Merrick assumes the role of her mentor.

Buffy eventually crosses paths with Pike (Luke Perry), a mechanic who looks like he's the reincarnation of James Dean circa Rebel Without A Cause. The two form a partnership after she rescues him from a gang of vampires, and when they chase a vampire into a stockyard full of parade floats, they encounter the vampire king Lothos (Rutger Hauer) and his one-armed sidekick Amilyn (Paul Reubens). Merrick shows up and tries to prevent a Buffy/Lothos showdown, claiming that Buffy isn't ready to fight him yet. Lothos doesn't want to leave without fighting somebody, so he snatches Merrick's stake and stabs him in the heart with it. A vampire killing a guy with a tool intended to kill vampires, that's so poetic.

Buffy starts to back out of the slaying business after Merrick's death, but just when she thinks she's out, they pull her back in. Buffy and Pike share a moment at a high school dance when a posse of vampires crash the party. While Pike deals with the vamps wreaking havoc on the dance, Buffy heads for the school boiler room to duel with Lothos and Amilyn, a duel that leads to a final showdown between Buffy and Lothos on the dance floor.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an 86-minute joke that just isn't funny. The humor isn't funny, the horror isn't scary, and the acting is awful. Joss Whedon's original script was heavily rewritten, and if I were him, I'd have asked for an "Alan Smithee" credit. The jokes are mediocre at best (though I got a good laugh out of Amilyn's never-ending death throes at the end of the movie), and its attempts at horror fall flat. I figure I might as well just break my complaint down into more specific categories.

First up, the acting. The only real performances I actually enjoyed were Paul Reubens (who you may recognize as Pee Wee Herman) and David Arquette as Pike's vampire friend Benny. I wanted to get into Luke Perry's character, but he just kept giving off this weird "hey, remember me? I'm on 90210 and I'm so darn cool" vibe. If the movie was made now, it'd be a "hey, remember me? I was on 90210 and I'm a washed-up nobody now" vibe, but that's beside the point. Meanwhile, Kristy Swanson's ditzy Valley Girl routine was absolutely annoying, to the point where it was rough to watch the movie. The only good thing I can say about her is that after a while, Movie Buffy didn't seem as distant and self-important as Television Buffy.

And I think that Rutger Hauer and Donald Sutherland realized the potential the movie had to be awful, but had different stances on what to do. Sutherland downplays everything to the point where it seems like he's saying "this sucks, just give me my paycheck so I can leave." On the other hand, Hauer hams it up like crazy, hitting almost every possible villain cliché he can, right down to having a conversation with the hero when he has the chance for victory. I almost expected Reubens to pull a "Seth Green in Austin Powers" and say, "Look, let me get a gun and shoot her, and save us some time."

Usually, I comment on film scores, but Carter Burwell's score was nearly nonexistent. Not once do I remember hearing anything but dumb early-90s dance and pop/rock numbers. Outside of songs by Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest singer Rob Halford, there really isn't any good music in the movie. Besides, who puts a Divinyls song in a movie and expects to be taken seriously? The Divinyls suck!

If you're looking to get into the "Buffyverse," you'd be well-advised to just avoid the movie and start with the first season of the TV show because it follows different rules than the movie (in the movie, vampires can fly and don't turn to dust when killed). However, the movie does have the novelty of featuring a Buffy that isn't Sarah Michelle Gellar. Overall, I'll give Buffy the Vampire Slayer two stars. Some cool moments, but other than that, it's just empty.

Final Rating: **

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (2000)

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: almost every movie gets a sequel. Even movies you wouldn't expect to get a sequel probably get one. Possibly the most sequel-driven genre of all is the horror film. Just about every horror movie ever made has a sequel (or group of sequels), prequel, or knock-off. Even the most obscure foreign horror movie can get a sequel or two. Such was the case with the Canadian import Ginger Snaps. The tale of a pair of sisters whose tightly-knit familial bonds are tested when one becomes a werewolf, it became a cult classic upon its release in 2000. It was only a matter of time until the sequel was made, and that sequel came in the form of Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed.

Picking up sometime after the events of the first Ginger Snaps, Brigitte Fitzgerald (Emily Perkins) is on the run from a werewolf looking to mate with her. Infected with the lycanthropy virus and haunted by recurring visions of her dead sister Ginger (Katherine Isabelle), she has managed to slow down her transformation with a daily series of monkshood injections. After a particularly strong dose of monkshood and an extremely close escape from the werewolf, Brigitte passes out in the street and awakens in an all-girls drug rehabilitation facility. Facility supervisor Alice (Janet Kidder) confiscates her monkshood, and without steady injections, Brigitte's transformation into a werewolf begins to speed up.

Among the encounters with Alice and a shady male nurse named Tyler (Eric Johnson), Brigitte is befriended by an eccentric girl nicknamed "Ghost" (Tatiana Maslany). Unlike the other girls, Ghost gets to roam the grounds freely because she's keeping her grandmother company while she recovers from severe third-degree burns in another section of the facility. While Ghost is antagonized by the various rehab patients because of her odd behavior (her obsession with comics often leads her to speak like a comic-style prose), she and Brigitte become a close-knit pair, much to Brigitte's initial reluctance.

When Brigitte discovers the horny werewolf from earlier has found the clinic, Ghost helps Brigitte escape, and together they head to Ghost's grandmother's house for refuge. Ghost discovers that Brigitte is turning into a werewolf herself, and tries to help her new friend delay the transformation. Of course, things don't always go as they're planned. The male werewolf finds them once again, and Brigitte's tenuous grip on both her sanity and her humanity begins to slip away as the lycanthropy overtakes her.

It's very hard to have a sequel that's up to the same par as its predecessor. The list of "better than or equal to" sequels isn't exactly long. Ginger Snaps 2 isn't an equal to the original Ginger Snaps, but it's close. A lot of its quality is helped by the acting ability of its star. Emily Perkins is great as the would-be werewolf Brigitte, and she carries the whole movie on her shoulders. While she had Katherine Isabelle sharing the spotlight in the original Ginger Snaps, she does all the grunt work here. The Brigitte character pulls a transformation akin to Linda Hamilton in the Terminator movies, and Perkins pulls it off believably with her impressive performance.

Tatiana Maslani also puts in a decent performance, giving off a creepy vibe which is really fitting for the character by the end of the movie. Maslani does what she can with what she's given, but the character gets really annoying at times. I can only handle hearing her talk in prose so many times before I just want to reach through the TV screen and strangle her. I did, however, enjoy Katherine Isabelle's appearances as Ginger. I loved her in the original Ginger Snaps, and though she didn't have much screen time, I loved her here as Brigitte's ghostly anti-conscience.

Also good were the special effects by KNB EFX Group. I've been a fan of KNB's work for a long time, and I appreciated their work here. Unfortunately, a lot of their best stuff is hidden by insanely quick flashes. A hummingbird couldn't see most of their work. However, the visible effects were great, especially Brigitte's facial makeup near the end of the movie. Kurt Swinghammer's score was also good. I preferred Michael Shields's score from the original Ginger Snaps, but Ginger Snaps 2 has a different tone that requires a different score. The industrial/techno-esque stuff really worked, and I absolutely loved Swinghammer's reprisal of the original's theme. My only real complaint with the movie (other than Ghost being so annoying) was Megan Martin's script. It wasn't bad as a whole, but a boring stretch in the second act and some cheesy dialogue are big knocks against it.

Ginger Snaps 2 tries hard, and can call itself a success. A lot of sequels are just retreads or remakes of its predecessor, but this one takes a different step and I commend it for that. I give it three and a half stars; no more, no less. I'll recommend to fans of the first one and fans of werewolf movies, but viewers would serve well to watch both movies back-to-back.

Final Rating: ***½