Psychotronic Cinemavision: Vampirella 1996

Three-thousand years ago, the inhabitants of the planet Drakulon are a civilized vampire society that drink blood that flows on their planet in rivers.  They do not kill for blood, Vlad (Roger Daltrey) believes in feasting on the blood of the living, during his trial for crimes against his people, his devoted followers attack and kill everyone on the Council of Elders who govern their world, including the stepfather to Ella (Talisa Soto).  Vlad escapes with his followers in a spaceship headed for Earth.  Ella pursues, but her craft is disabled, and she is forced to land on Mars where she stays in a deep sleep until the present day, when a manned mission to Mars finds her and brings her back to Earth.  When they originally landed on Earth, some unknown force caused Vlad and his people to mutate which left them unable to go out in sunlight and with an aversion to garlic and religious symbols along with all the other vampire tropes.  Ella, now known as Vampirella, does not have these weaknesses, and once on Earth attempts to track down Vlad and his disciples to take her revenge.  She crosses paths with Adam Van Helsing who works for a secret organization called Purge who fights vampires.  Vampirella convinces Adam that they are on the same team and the two work together to stop Vlad who is planning on destroying the planet.

Vampirella is a 1996 direct-to-video film based on the Vampirella comic book created by Forrest J. Ackerman and Trina Robbins in 1969 as part of Warren Publishing whose sister publications were Creepy and Eerie.  The movie was part of the Roger Corman Presents series and was directed by Jim Wynorski who in his prolific ongoing career said that this was one of two movies he regretted making.  His exact comments were, “I can look back on it today and just say ‘Oh well’, but back when the memories were fresh and the blood on the floor was yet to dry, it was painful to even edit”, he said. “What went wrong??? Wrong choice for the star, massive union problems in Vegas, studio interference, theft, accidents, 112 degree heat, you name it, we had it happen. But at least I got to see Soupy Sales perform.”.

The 1969 comic character’s origins were that of a horror-story hostess who would sometimes star in her own stories, but after November of 1970 she became the leading character of horror-drama storylines.  Warren Publishing filed for bankruptcy in 1983, and Harris Publications acquired the rights to the character. Harris retconned her origin to being the daughter of Lilith, Adam’s first wife who would not submit to Adam and so God cast her from Eden where she gave birth to demons.  After repenting, Lilith returns to Eden and has children where she attempts to bring them up as good to fight the demons she brought forth into the world.  This origin will be updated and changed several times and Lilith’s motives have shifted as well. In 2010, Dynamite Entertainment acquired the rights and once again Vampirella saw her origins change and shift.  The character has had five different relaunches with Dynamite with the most recent still running.  There have also been several spin-offs throughout the years highlighting many characters created within the Vampirella books. In 2021, Mike The Pike Productions a subsidiary of Arowana Media Holdings acquired the worldwide film, television and streaming rights to the character, including stories, characters and the derivative works of the Vampirella Universe, with plans for an additional motion picture and television adaptations.

I remember watching the 1996 Vampirella movie at some point in the late 1990s, but I honestly remembered nothing about the film. Probably blocking it from my memory out of trauma from the original viewing.  All humor aside, the film is what a lot of Roger Corman films are, schlocky, corny, boobfests, aimed at satisfying adolescent boys’ sexual fantasies and not necessarily caring at all about storytelling, acting, continuity or any other positive quality.  But the thing about Corman films is they are usually so bad, that there is a kind of enjoyment in watching them, the elusive “so bad its good” thing.  This film teeters on the wall between unwatchable and cult classic. The storyline isn’t terrible, and although it slightly changes the character’s origin, for the most part it mainly followed the source material.  The script on the other hand was just plain bad, with the dialogue feeling forced and much of the exposition clunkily positioned with a ton of plot holes making the film feel amateurish.  The leading actors were miscast, where Talisa Soto definitely looks the part, she doesn’t have the screen presence and dynamics to really carry the film.  Roger Daltrey may be a god in the music industry, but his acting in this film was way over the top although he did look like he was having more fun than anyone else in the cast, but that enthusiasm doesn’t make it any more enjoyable to watch and is more cringeworthy than cultish.  The rest of the actors like Richard Joseph Paul who played Adam Van Helsing and Brian Bloom as General Demos, Vlad’s right-hand man, all do a decent job, which unfortunately highlights just how bad the leads were.

Visually the film does carry some interest but still feels like a very low budget college student attempt at making a fan film.  With another major transgression being the leading character’s costume.  Vampirella’s outfit is iconic as a blood red singlet that follows the contours of the female form coming up the sides of the torso and barely covering the breasts.  Although they attempt to do something similar, the overall look just doesn’t work.  The red latex bikini does illicit the sensuality of the character, but the color is far too bright as opposed to the crimson color it should be, and the overall shape detracts from the strength, stature and overall presence the character is supposed to have.  There are some publicity photos that do show Talisa in the correctly shaped outfit (the color is still off), but it is never seen in the film making me wonder if it physically wouldn’t work with the action scenes (wardrobe malfunctions) or if there was some other reason the costume was updated, either way, what we get is close, but no cigar!