Joss Whedon is brilliant. There’s no denying that. And when we think “vampire”, we tend to think about the ones he created for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But most people tend to skip over the movie from 1992 completely. And I personally feel like that’s just tragic.Okay, so even Joss himself isn’t okay with how the movie turned out. And that’s okay. Every writer/director I love has a movie they created that they absolutely hate. For Quentin Tarantino, it was Natural Born Killers, for Joss, it’s Buffy. The studio essentially rewrote Joss’ original story and made it into this campy comedy. Joss actually walked out on production and never came back because he hated it so much. I personally love it, but I know it’s not the Buffy everyone knows.
Buffy’s gettin’ real tired of your shit, Merrick.
Buffy (Kristy Swanson) (she doesn’t have a last name in the film, oops) is a typical California girl: blonde, peppy…an airhead…yeah, you get the idea. All she wants is to get through senior year and live the life. Y’know, move to Europe, marry Christian Slater. The American Dream. I guess. Whatever. She’s followed around by a creepy old guy, Merrick (Donald Sutherland). He convinces her that she’s the Cosen One, the Slayer. Vampires are attacking LA. And they’re not going to stop.
So Buffy finally accepts her fate as the Slayer and trains to take on Lothos, the main vampire. Lothos is every stereotype of Dracula ever thrown into one character. But his right hand man, Lefty (Paul Reubens), is seriously the best thing about the movie, let’s be real. Even Pike (Luke Perry) wasn’t that great.
Joss finally managed to get his original story out to the public in comic book form, and it’s seriously way better than the movie. But for a campy great time, give the film a go. Then read the comic. It’s at least worth it to see what happens when the studio takes control. At least watch it for Lefty and David Arquette’s super minor role.
–Ley
The Nerdicon 