My Best Friend Is a Vampire (1987) YTS

An amiable, exceptionally cheesy and moderately amusing if low-budget teen horror comedy, My Best Friend Is a Vampire plays a lot like if a John Hughes teen drama got mixed up with an episode of Goosebumps. It's an entertaining piece of '80s nonsense that doesn't even attempt to be classy, but that unfortunately means there's a certain carelessness and sense of haste that permeates the film, all the while hinting at a deep-running vein of satire, but it soon dries up. What's left over is a lot of stock misunderstandings that play out in the same vein as a middling sitcom; however, it's not all bad. It's a silly supernatural comedy with stupid and sanitary humour doing nothing to pretend otherwise, fully embracing its clichés, and it doesn't even try to hide its surprises or tropes; it just invites the audience to have fun with the whole thing. The jokes that do land usually come courtesy of the always wonderful David Warner, as a vampire hunter, and Paul Willson, as his bumbling assistant. Jimmy Huston's direction does the job and moves the film along at a brisk pace with a bopping, if overly loud, soundtrack; the central performance from Robert Sean Leonard is generally great, his chemistry with Cheryl Pollak is utterly adorable and his charm goes a long way in making this film sustainable, even if it does look like his vampire make-up has been smeared on with a butter knife. Culty and offbeat for sure, My Best Friend Is a Vampire may not be the best version of the premise that could have been made, but it's far from the worst, it's agreeable, relaxing and rather adorable, even if it would rather calm down than get loud, even during its frantic action sequences. Although I can't be the only one seeing this coexisting alongside Feral Pleasures as part of Dr James Wilson's exceptional filmography, right? House would have had a field day with this.