Working through the ’31 horror films in 31 days’ Halloween challenge this year, we arrive at another selection from the Missus, and a film that I previously hadnt seen. ‘The Little Vampire’ was particularly prominant in the UK, with heavy advertisement on the terrestrial channels and a LOT of kids VHS releases from around this time running teasers and full trailers for it ahead of the main feature. It passed me by, but at the time It did pique my curiosity. Mainly for being able to see Richard E. Grant simultaineously playing a lead vampire, the ‘Shalka’ Doctor AND Withnail, all in the space of one movie!

The plot follows a young boy named Tony who’s family have moved from the US to Scotland as Tonys Dad has got a gig refurbishing a Scottish Lords land into a commerical golf course. But since landing at their new home, Tony has become obsessed with Vampires. At night he dreams of a hoard of vampires weilding a mysterious amulet drawing power from a comet thats been granted mysterious powers by the moonlight.

Tony isnt entirely sure what any of this means, but he has bigger fish to fry, his parents are constantly busy with his Lordship, and the Lords kids bully Tony at school mercilessly. But one night, while playing dress up as a vampire…an ACTUAL vampire who’s being hunted by a modern day ‘Slayer’ crashes into Tonys room, thinking he’s found a fellow kin member…only to realise he’s revealed himself to a human.

But Tony is thrilled! he’s wanted to meet a vampire ever since the visions started, and after the pair introduce themselves, our Vampire reveals his name is ‘Rudolph’ and that he’s in desperate need of some cows blood to recover from the incident.

Tony obliges, and explains that he is one of the final members of a regional hoard of Vampires. He says that Vampirism has changed a lot in the 300+ years since his coven was in its prime. They largely hide from humans now, and only consume Animal blood to sustain themselves as it helps to fight the stereotype that vampires are human killers. Despite most of them not having drunk human blood in over 3 centuries…the myth still persists to this day.

Tony and Rudolph form a strong friendship, eventually leading Rudolph to take Tony to his families crypt, where an unexpected meeting happens. Rudolphs family are terrified of Tony and quite firmly ask him to leave. But when Rudolphs father touches Tony, the pair share a flashback, bringing about a preivously unseen vision of one of their ancestors holding the mysterious amulet, which has been missing now for 300 years. This vision strongly implies that the amulet is still out there and fairly local. And so Tony, Rudolph and the rest of the family must work together to try and figure out just what exactly happened to the family amulet, While also avoiding the ‘Slayer’ who’s been given full clearence by the Lordship to take the vampires out by any means necessary, and who is ALSO looking for the amulet, as he has a device which, when the amulet is placed into it, will allow him to permanently eradicate all vampires from existence!

And im going to be honest here, I had a fine enough time with this movie, is it a lifechanging work that warrents an annual revisit? No. I think, unless you have a bedded in nostalgia for this film, it’ll probably be one sparsly revisited. But I would watch this one again happily and found it a pretty passively entertaining time.

The scripts a little slow to get going, with it being a film aimed at younger children they spend a MASSIVE amount of time explaining and re-explaining basic plot points to try and make sure everyones on board with the story, the plot itself is very simplified. It isnt trying to overcomplicate things. but the film really doesnt hit its stride or start using the momentum its building up until just after the half way point…and thats kind of a fundamental problem if you happen to be a kids film. Because, I dont know a kid that would willing sit through 45 minutes of passive plot and world building, peppered with some (at the time) kind of alright visual effects pieces. to be rewarded with an actually kind of solid 45 minute second half. Most would have waddled off to go and play with an electrical socket or to play under the cupboard mixing ammonia and bleach before the 20 minute mark…and im being generous there.

Luckily, I am not a child and I do have patience, and I found the back half of this film to be a gentle but fun little romp, the pacing really picks up, it finally finds its feet as a horror adventure film with some light comedy elements. and it ends about as strongly as these films can. It struggles for a bit to find its feet tonally, but when it does it locks in and really delivers on that.

I think structurally the film does sag a bit in the middle, a common problem with kids movies like this, the first and third acts run a little shorter to accomodate additional lore and info dumping in the middle, but its pretty clear they padded the runtime in multiple places to hit that 90 minute sweet spot for TV and home video releases. The padding here isnt bad, its just kind of unremarkable. Not something I can rib, but not anything to praise really.

The characters are all VERY oversimplified. which, for the most part works in the films favour, by not giving the supporting characters more of a backstory, it enables the film to bring more backstory to the vampires, which is really why any kid is actually watching this, it means characters like the Slayer and the Lord are SUPER one dimensional. But again, that works in the films favour, because they can milk that for humour.

I do wish Tony had maybe had a bit more of a complex character if im honest. It starts off somewhat strong making Tony a victim of bullying, but they push that a little far with a scene in his school where he’s being mocked by his teacher for wanting to talk about vampires…to the point he gets sent out of class, which I felt was quite unbelievable…and then as soon as Tony meets his vampire friends, he largely seems to exist to just…do the bits the vampires cant do for plot reasons, while also bullying the kids who bullied him initially…which isnt the best message to be teaching kids…but hey, whatever. Oh! and the dialogues also a but ropey in places…some lines are a bit awkward and some feel like they were trying to push the overexplanation a bit too far.

Other than that though, we have a pretty solid film technically. The direction and cine are both incredibly fresh feeling, they relish the opportunity to film on location with green lush rolling hills and gorgeous colour and framing work, the lighting is open to experimentation and looks complex and engaging. the cine is well composed, with some nice experimentaiton and what made me laugh was some shots were ‘half inched’ from some of the 80s horror classics. I spotted at least a couple of shots ‘liberated’ from ‘The People under the stairs’ which I thought was a fun touch.

The sequences are very well composed, if I had to gripe, some of the set work, particularly the graveyard scenes that were set built, look cheap…VERY cheap…like, late night horror host on a shoestring budget cheap. and that pulled me out of the action because, while again, they were at least kind of well lit, they overdid it with the smoke machine and some of the graves are visually vaccume form and styrafoam.

I would usually discuss performances, but as a courtesty to an largely all kid cast. I’ll skip my usual analytics, other than to say some of the kid actors are really pretty solid, and give great turns…others?…VERY much not the case. prepare for a long ride with some cast members who just CANNOT get a line out convincingly…I’ll say no more.

It makes it all the more unfortunate given how good the visusals are for this film, that it appears they skimped on the soundtrack as well…we have a cheap and cheerful farty midi synth score for the most part, its actually quite distracting because it sounds so cheap and unpleasent when compared to how rich the camera work and direction is…the only way I could compare it really is; imagine if ‘Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back’ had been scored by Richard Band. Its THAT disorienting…

All in all, do I think ‘The Little Vampire’ would still win over kids of today? No. I think this could be modernised into something kids would love. But this adaptation? is very much a product of its time. As someone who lived through that time however, I can appreciate what it was trying to do, and i’d say I enjoyed more than I disliked. It wont be in regular rotation, but I could see myself revisiting this one again sometime when I want a quick and easy watch. Not one I could recommend, but if your big on 00’s nostalgia, you may wanna hit this one up.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-little-vampire/