Vamp (film)

Vamp is a 1986 American comedy horror film directed by Richard Wenk, co-written by Wenk and Donald P. Borchers, and starring Grace Jones and Chris Makepeace.

Plot
Two college students, Keith and AJ, want to hire a stripper to buy their way into a campus fraternity. They borrow a Cadillac from lonely rich student Duncan, who insists on coming with them to scope out strip clubs in a nearby city. The three boys find themselves at a club in a shady part of town, and after being impressed by a surreally artistic stripper, Katrina, AJ visits her dressing room to try and convince her to come strip for their college party. Katrina seduces AJ, then pins him down—killing him with a bite to the neck.

Keith becomes concerned at the delay and gets help from a waitress named Amaretto, who keeps insisting (to his confusion) that she knows him from their past. They search the neighborhood, and Keith is separated from her while trying to escape from both a psychotic albino street gang, as well as from vampires throughout the area. While hiding in a dumpster, he finds AJ's discarded body, but when he calls the police and returns to the club to accuse the owners, the vampires have preempted him by bringing AJ back as undead and bringing him back to the club. AJ confesses to Keith that he's now a vampire, and after realizing that Keith will not kill him and is willing to die for him, AJ stakes himself with a piece of broken furniture.

Keith, Amaretto, and Duncan flee the club, but their car is rammed by vehicles driven by vampires. After escaping, they realize that Duncan has been turned to a vampire, and they abandon him in a burning car. The couple attempt to escape through the sewers, as Amaretto breaks down and tells Keith that her real name is Allison, and she knows AJ from a game of spin the bottle back in the fifth grade. While they flee through the sewers, they find and burn a nest of vampires, but Allison is grabbed and held hostage by Katrina. After an arrow to the face and pipe staked in the chest fail to stop Katrina, Keith kills her by opening a grating, allowing the sunlight to destroy her. Before they can escape to the surface, they are trapped by Vlad, the dead Katrina's vampire consort, until Vlad is staked from behind by a revived AJ, who sheepishly notes that the stake he tried to kill himself with turned out to be formica.

As Keith and Allison climb to the surface daylight, AJ remains in the sewers calling out to him his ideas to go to night school, or work a job on a graveyard shift.

Cast

 * Chris Makepeace as Keith
 * Robert Rusler as AJ
 * Grace Jones as Katrina
 * Dedee Pfeiffer as Allison/Amaretto
 * Gedde Watanabe as Duncan
 * Billy Drago as Snow
 * Sandy Baron as Vic
 * Lisa Lyon as Cimmaron

Influences
Many viewers argue that Vamp heavily influenced Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk till Dawn (1996); from the setting of a strip club, to the sexy dance/performance put on by the lead female characters in each respective film. Vamp tells the story of two fraternity pledges looking to find a stripper at the "After Dark" club, which so happens to be home to a group of stripper vampires. Whereas From Dusk till Dawn tells the story of two fugitive bank-robbing brothers who are fleeing the FBI as well as the Texas police and end up at the "Titty Twister", a strip club in the middle of a desolate part of Mexico which, in comparison to Vamp, happens to be home to a group of Aztec stripper vampires.

Release
Vamp was released theatrically in the United States on July 18, 1986 and grossed $4,941,117 at the box office.

Arrow Video released Vamp on Blu-ray/DVD in the US on October 4, 2016 and the UK Blu-ray/DVD release on October 3, 2016. This version of the film features a high definition digital transfer along with special features.