Vampirella (1996)

The actress is pretty and wears shiny red vinyl... that's about it

This movie is terrible. I'll tell it like it is. I never read the original 1970's comic magazine, but I have the comics that come after 1992, so I don't know how well this follows the original story line. From reading other reviews, it apparently doesn't.

Some people may remember in the 80's when they started trying to get comic books into the movies. This is probably the worst attempt during the first stint at trying to transfer comics to movies (though this came out in like '96). Even "The Punisher" with Dolf Lundgren is ten times better than this film. Granted I'm pretty sure "Vampirella" had a much lower budget... which is kind of shocking, I know. The basics in the Vampirella story are that vampires are really from another planet, Drakulon, that flows with blood for rivers and they feed off of this regularly. Vampirella's arch nemesis is Vlad and he was a criminal on her planet. He gets away and comes to Earth, only after killing her father. Naturally Vampirella wants vengeance, so she follows Vlad and his cronies.

As you can see the movie starts off pretty cheesy on some "futuristic" world that looks like any other 1970's sci-fi set. After she gets off planet it goes from stupid to dumber, because all of a sudden she has this vinyl costume, but in Drakulon she had nothing of the kind. Apparently she left the planet with this though? At least that's what the movie implies. I don't know, in the beginning she was relatively modestly dressed, so maybe after her father died she felt less inhibitive and decided to go with something sexier? Sure, that works for me. The only problem I had with this was that it wasn't her costume from the comic... it was some amalgamation of it. I know her costume was supposed to be satin in the comics, not vinyl though. I guess they were trying to play up some sort of dominatrix type of look. Either way, the costume change wasn't all that great, and yes they are big deals in comics for those who don't know.

Anyway, so her first appearance on Earth is probably one of the more absurd scenarios. There's this ridiculously nerdy kid walking in a back alley with a computer system (old computer... like the size of a microwave, yes this is filmed in 1996, unless this is some lost film) and he's being mugged. For some reason Vampirella appears out of nowhere and rescues him by beating up the thugs. Of course computer nerd kid thinks she's really hot. So they go back to his place, no idea why, and he tells her some answers to these totally random questions she has, because of course he knows the answer and can look them up on the internet. The internet is a veritable smorgasbord of information, because you can clearly look up the names of ultra hidden vampires because they are using their original names from Drakulon... makes sense to me. Then he gives her a coat because she can't go out wearing a vinyl bikini, and then she kisses him? The highlight of this scene was the poster for "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" in the background, which is hilarious.

So she seeks vengeance then proceeds to hunt down Vlad's friends and kill them so she can finally find Vlad. All the while there is this top secret government organization searching for vampires too and their lead agent is Adam Van Helsing... of course. Anyway, they cross paths, Vampirella has to convince Adam they're on the same side, and then a whole bunch of other cliché and predictable things happen. They capture one of Vlad's henchmen and they find out that Vlad has turned into a rock star... played by some musician named Daltry. Of course this gives them the excuse to actually perform some sort of rock song? It's about being a vampire... who could've guessed.

Just to finish this up, Adam and Vampirella work together to bring Vlad and team down in a very random and silly way that was predictable from the beginning. Trust me; the comic books are far better than this. If you're a fan of the comic book you may want to go ahead and NOT see this. Otherwise, if you want to sit around with your friends and make sarcastic comments about a movie, this is definitely what you're after. At least the girl in the movie is actually pretty good looking, so it's not like it hurts your eyes to watch... though Vlad's monster make-up was pretty goofy looking and that did kind of hurt to look at. So I guess it ends up netting to zero for viewability since it doesn't technically have a positive constant, mathematically speaking. February 25, 2008

A Contender For The Zero-Stars Rating Award

Hey, I'm a big fan of bad movies, but this one was too bad to enjoy at all. The story was dull, the casting was misguided, and the "special" effects were dismal (although the spacecraft models actually looked ok, other aspects such as "morphing into a bat" were anything but special). This movie is listed at an unbelievably low 1 million dollar budget, and I suspect that 99% of this budget went to buy the 80 minutes worth of film stock and pay Roger Daltrey's retainer fees (by the way, Mr. Daltrey seems to be quite fond of singing about being "freed" in many of his movies...maybe this is directed at his agent!)

At first I thought this film would make great fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000, but as the movie progressed, I realized that it probably would have led to mass suicide on the ol' Satellite of Love.

I can't guess who would actually enjoy this movie. Fans of the Vampirella comic series are sure to be disappointed by the changes (the costume alteration is the tip of the iceberg here). There's not much to appease fans of cheap horror flicks either. I'm dunno if even the hardcore collectors of all things vampire-related would be too pleased with this mess, except to fill a bit of space on their shelves.

Oh, I did like the fact that it has a very short running time. June 15, 2006

YOU'LL LOVE IT OR HATE IT

vampirella is a shlocky b grade movie.
she's played by a hot actress. she's very good...at times.
roger daltrey is dracula(!)... who comes from space(!)... and is a rock star too(!)!
i'm not making any of this up!
vampirella is an alien vampire too and they all come from draculon! the tall man from phantasm is vampirella's dad and he says draculon's got blood fountains or some such thing. it's all natural blood that just comes out of the bleeding planet!
daltrey/dracula escapes the planet and vampirella chases but gets stuck on mars where john landis (!) finds her and brings her to earth. she then has to stop daltrey/dracula from using a device in space to block out the sun so the vampires can make all humans vampires...and then they can all starve to death i guess! July 8, 2004

very funny

Vampirella is far funnier than they wanted it to be and that makes it very entertaining.
This kooky campy comic-strip concoction might be up your alley if you love movies like Plan 9.
... March 23, 2004

THIS SUCKER IS CHEESY!

Vampirella the flick does not live up to the comic and this was a troubled production with very little money and it shows. Ms Soto's costume in the flick aint what she's wearin on the box since she thought she'd fall out of it and Roger Daltrey plays an alien vampire rock star who is also Dracula. Angus Scrimm is Vampirella's daddy, Soto is hot, Daltrey is OVER THE TOP and very very entertaining, there is a character called Forry Ackerman who is named after the creator of Vampirella, and the real Forry has a cameo where he's gettin down to Daltrey singin a silly song about blood in some lounge in Vegas. The special effects aint special at all and John Landis shows up as an astronaut who discovers Vampirella on Mars near the EXACT same cave that appears in another scene on Earth! An anti-vampire government agency is also hunting for Daltrey so that's why he thought attracting attention as a vampiric rock star would be a good disguise. Brilliant! Yes this is BAD, but watch it with B movie lovin friends and have fun! December 11, 2003

More reviews at Amazon.com ...