Nightlife (1989)

              For a last-minute scramble this was a delightful surprise.  I originally penciled in the 1989 tv movie ‘Nick Knight’ for this slot but then found I’d basically already seen it as the same script was reshot for the pilot episodes of ‘Forever Knight.’  After a quick intarwebs search I came up with this, a 1989 tv movie that originally aired on the USA network and has fallen mostly into obscurity.  It was issued on VHS at one point but never on DVD or streaming, although several semi-sketchy websites will certainly sell you something on DVD that I would be willing to bet any amount of money is just a rip of the VHS.  Not to be confused with the 1989 horror movie ‘Night Life,’ which is a not particularly well-regarded zombie movie.

It's not even a pun, they don't go clubbing or anything.  Unfortunate.

              Horror comedies were obviously not new by this point, one could argue that ‘The Fearless Vampire Killers’ was one (I would not), there was ‘Fright Night,’ ‘Evil Dead 2,’ the 1979 vampire movie I specifically did not watch called ‘Love at First Bite,’ and if I’d known going in how borderline wacky parts of this were I might have skipped it because of the general rule of thumb that it can be enjoyable to watch a failed drama but miserable to watch a failed comedy.  Luckily for me the comedic parts of this movie were pretty charming and despite some tonal whiplash I found the whole thing worked fairly well.  I think this movie should be much better known than it is.

              Does anyone else remember the 1991 version of “Dark Shadows?”  It was a failed reboot of the original 1960’s vampiric soap series that only lasted 12 episodes.  I remember liking it at the time, although that was thirty years ago so who knows if it’s held up.  Aside from starring baby Joseph Gordon-Levitt, fresh off of his appearance as Boy #1 in “Murder, She Wrote,” the most well-known actor from it was Ben Cross, who’s a character actor whose most prominent recent role was as Sarek in the 2009 ‘Star Trek’ reboot but to me will always be Mr. Rabbit from ‘Banshee,’ which everyone should simply watch right now.  In my head he was cast in this movie as the vampire antagonist Vlad as a kind of in-joke due to his casting as Barnabas in “Dark Shadows” but obviously the timing is the other way around. 

              The rest of the cast is solid.  Maryam d'Abo, who played Bond girl Kara Milovy in ‘The Living Daylights,’ stars as Angelique, a vampire who buried herself a hundred years before the start of the movie in an effort to escape Vlad’s obsessive attention.  Keith Szarabajka, who these days is absurdly prolific as a voice actor, mainly for video games, is the romantic lead Dr. David Zuckerman, while Vlad’s comedy relief sidekicks are played by character actors Oliver Clark, who I recognized from ‘M*A*S*H,’ and Glenn Shadix, fresh from playing Otho in ‘Beetlejuice.’ 

The other characters of note are that of David’s colleague Jose, played by Jessi Corti, and Angelique’s maid Rosa Mercedes, played by Camille Saviola.  As well as providing some comic relief they’re useful for justifying info dumps by the two leads as the plot progresses.  They’re also the only two locals which is notable because likely for reasons of budget, or maybe it was a genuine artistic decision, the movie was set and shot in Mexico City.  This provides an interesting dynamic as all of the vampires are from out of town and David is there for research so it allows for some gentle fish-out-of-water comedy and some atypical scenery and scene locations.  The climax of the movie takes place in what seems to have been, at least in part, an actual ancient castle, which would have been more difficult if they’d shot it in Vancouver.

Some of the movie’s portrayal of Mexican culture has not aged great but on the whole it’s basically fine.  None of the non-Mexican characters are portrayed as racist, not even the vampires, and the worst it gets is when one of the vampire henchmen is introduced as complaining about Mexican’s blood being “too sweet” for his taste.  For 1989 that’s pretty forgivable.  There’s never any particular reason given why it’s set in Mexico City other than that’s where Angelique decided to bury herself and so that’s where she woke up, and the general sense of the movie is simply why not?

The premise of the movie is pretty decent.  The vampire Angelique, growing tired of the obsessive attention of her fellow vampire Vlad, decides to bury herself indefinitely to escape him before inadvertently being dug up by some contractors working for a local museum.  The rules governing vampire biology get a little shaky here, because it later becomes a plot point that if vampires go too long without feeding on human victims they start to develop a rash and turn feral, but somehow going to sleep in a coffin for long periods of time bypasses that process.  It’s never made entirely clear how any of this really works, despite David being a blood specialist and the climax of the movie turning on figuring out a way for vampires to feed without killing their victims.  It’s a breezy enough movie that I’m willing to handwave all that away.

We get a fairly standard sequence where Angelique wanders modern Mexico City rather lost and confused but basically aware that it’s been a while and so she does her best to adapt.  She goes to a blood bank under the impression she can make a withdrawal before being freaked out by a bug (an actual important plot point that’s woven into the story pretty well) and collapsing.  She wakes up in a hospital under the care of Dr. David, who is fascinated with her medical condition.  He’s diagnosed her with a kind of blood virus that requires regular transfusions, which is just fine by her.  What’s interesting about this scene is that Angelique plays everything entirely correctly under questioning.  When asked about her medical history she gets all vague, saying she’s needed blood before but that it’s been a medical mystery.  The card the movie is not playing is that of a time-displaced character who acts all confused and upset long after they should have twigged to her situation.  Instead she’s completely aware of what’s going on and adapts fairly well.  After being discharged from the hospital she pawns the jewelry she was buried with and sets herself up in a fancy apartment, which is when she decides to hire a maid and we’re introduced to Rosa.

The movie wants the audience to love Rosa and for the most part I do.  Despite absolutely not playing that role in the story she’s given a low-angle badass introduction shot, the camera on the ground tilted up towards Angelique’s apartment as she strides into the shot, cigarette dangling from her lip.  She is utterly unimpressed by the fancy apartment and instantly clocks Angelique as someone she can wrap around her fingers.  She’s the first human character to understand that vampires are around and weighs herself down with garlic and crosses.  She’s so utterly unimpressed by the vampires that even Vlad, who’s basically an asshole the entire movie, is charmed by her and part of the third-act climax is taken up with the two of them dancing a pretty nice tango as he prepares to turn her.  She even ends up as the beta couple with Jose during the romantic happy ending.

The plot isn’t particularly complicated.  David quickly falls for Angelique who originally returns his interest as a means to access more blood but they do work pretty well as a couple so an actual romance starts developing.  Vlad shows up and his entire character is that of a clingy abusive ex who simply won’t accept that it’s over.  He claims that Angelique is being silly, she can’t possibly live without him, he’s the only one who can understand her, etc.  He points out that she’s starting to show the early signs of not drinking enough of the right kind of blood and decides to wait until she starts turning feral and then feed David to her, at which point her spirit will be broken and she’ll return to him.  As evil vampire plots go this is fairly low-key but coherent and I got where Vlad was coming from.

              David eventually puts the pieces together and figures out that vampires are running around and being a blood doctor eventually figures out that in addition to blood vampires need to feed on their victim’s adrenaline, which is why just blood transfusions won’t cut it.  He and Vlad tangle, he’s eventually bitten by one of Vlad’s henchmen and starts to turn, there’s a final confrontation at Vlad’s castle hideout involving UV lights and a strikingly shot fight in a stone hallway with light streaming in from crude windows. David cures Angelique from her feral condition by shoving a bug in her mouth, causing her to have a surge of adrenaline, which I don’t think works that way but fine.  Angelique is the one who finally stakes Vlad, at which point he withers into a mummy, and the entire thing ends with Angelique and David, now both vampires, happily dancing the night away to a cantina band.

              It’s the little touches that really charmed me.  During a romantic date on a little boat Angelique panics at the sight of a bug and tips David into the water.  It then cuts to the next scene with a soaked David being genuinely annoyed at her as they walk home, which you don’t often see in romantic movies.  The two vampire henchmen are utterly deadpan the entire time, making little asides to each other and being thoroughly unimpressed with their vampiric lives.  Angelique insists on sleeping in an elaborate coffin which David reacts badly to when they start getting romantic at her place, but then it cuts to the next morning and they’re both crammed in there, so clearly it wasn’t a dealbreaker.

              The teleplay was written by Daniel Taplitz, who hasn’t done anything particularly noteworthy, and the story was by Anne Beatts, a writer for “Saturday Night Live” in the late 70’s and the creator of the tv show “Square Pegs.”  That comedy pedigree shows, although luckily it doesn’t take over the entire movie.  This is a charming, low-stakes little vampire movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously and lets Ben Cross chew all of the scenery.  The movie is available at the Internet Archive and is worth a download.  It scrubbed most of the bad taste of ‘A Return to Salem’s Lot’ right out of my mouth.