Love Bites: The Reluctant Vampire

The Review

Love Bites, a quirky romantic comedy, opens with a powerful lightning strike waking Zachary Simms [Adam Ant], a vampire so heartbroken that he has slept away the last 100 years. Exiting the secret crypt behind the fireplace, Zachary enters a world he is unprepared to understand: the yuppie apartment of Kendall Gordan [Kimberly Foster]. Barbie-beautiful, Kendall is a successful New Yorker who refuses to marry despite the Ken-perfect packaging of her boyfriend Dwight Putnam [Roger Rose]. When Kendall discovers Zachary feasting from her neck, she wards off the intruder with martial-arts moves that would make Mr. Miyagi proud, introducing Zachary to the assertive, modern woman. Much to her annoyance, the approaching dawn causes Zachary to fall asleep mummy-style in her bed, immovable despite all of those hours Kendall must have spent on the weight machines at the gym.

Zachary turns out to be a charming bloodsucker, his feeding habits scold-worthy the way one disciplines a puppy peeing on the hardwood floor. As a result, Kendall quickly warms to his unusual presence in her home. At first she wears a neck brace and carries a crucifix, but she soon abandons these safeguards, won over by the tale of Zachary's broken heart and the challenge of remaking him into the perfect man, someone Dwight is not. "Rehumanizing" Zachary is possible with a "reviving" of his digestive system. So while Zachary acclimates to automobiles, electric light bulbs, prevalent divorce, and a job as a night-shift data analyst, Kendall helps him with the more important transition from drinking blood to eating Ragú over spaghetti.

To disrupt the couple's happiness, we have Nerissa [Michelle Forbes], Zachary's maker and ex-lover, the cause of his heartbreak. Nerissa is long and lean like a mantid, her clothing and hair exoskeleton sleek. Nerissa's dark style—appropriate camouflage for a night predator—is a stark contrast to Kendall's butterfly bright. When Nerissa learns that Zachary plans to renounce her gift of vampirism, she snarls, "I gave you immortality, and you want to trade it in for Twinkies?" [The question makes the audience pause as we consider what gifts we are all trading down.] Kendall considers Zachary's ex an instant rival, but 400 years of existence have made Nerissa too evolved or world-weary to sabotage Zachary's happiness. Her energies go into thwarting jilted Dwight as he attempts to discover who/what Zachary is; she wants to protect the vampire species more than reignite a failed romance.

As Zachary becomes the warm mortal male that Kendall desires, he gains not only blood pressure but also independence. When he discovers an ambition for success, he takes over Dwight's company, meaning that Kendall is now in the same relationship she had before Zachary's entrance in her life—the girlfriend of a wealthy businessman. Kendall wonders if she has made a mistake helping Zachary give up vampirism and become something he's not [at least something he hasn't been for the last 300 years]. Or perhaps Kendall finally realizes that no amount of gym time and Estée Lauder eye-repair serum will keep her young forever, that a vampire could have been her fountain of youth. As atonement, she asks Nerissa to solve the problem of the now mortal [hence ordinary] Zachary, and so the movie does not end as we first expect, with the good blond vanquishing the evil brunette.

If a film goes out of print, does that mean it's bad? The lack of popularity for Love Bites: The Reluctant Vampire might be that it does not target a specific audience. On the one hand, sexual puns and double entendres abound; even so, the movie is pretty tame—tame enough, almost, for children. Cursing is minimal. We see puncture wounds but no running blood and few fangs. The only sexually charged skin is Nerissa's lovely long legs, and they're encased in pantyhose.

Love Bites was released in 1993. Should writer/director Malcolm Marmorstein have revved up the profanity, violence, and sex? Should he have made the precursor to the vampire brutality of, say, True Blood [2008] by using as his model the gory, body-ripping horror of Aliens [1986]? Or would a children's movie have been the way to go?

Love Bites is a missed opportunity. The question that it attempts to answer—how much are we willing to change [or be changed] for love?—together with excellent performances by its four principal actors, could have made this film a holiday favorite, something played every October with It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Ant makes Zachary an adorable, likable creature who adapts to modern life with good humor and realizes, as did Reindeer Rudolph, that his difference is special and has its own important use. Being true to oneself is an appropriate lesson for young people—a lesson adults could use a reminder of. In her first film role, Forbes plays Nerissa as the quintessential evildoer, thin and severe like Cruella De Vil, with eyes that can bite like fangs. But we soon learn that looks are deceiving—another valuable lesson—for Nerissa has no intent to harm and a delightful sense of humor. Of all the characters, A-type Kendall is the one who needs to change.

At first, Foster gets us to feel great respect for Kendall, who is independent and successful and does not let Dwight, the man in her life, manipulate how she feels or what she does. Moreover, we sympathize with her having to single handedly manage dangerous supernatural beings. Ant and Foster have great chemistry, and we are rooting for their happiness as a couple. But as Zachary regains his humanity, Kendall starts to lose patience with him, just as she did with Dwight. And we realize that her unrealistic standards of perfection and her desire to bend everyone's behavior to suit her expectations are the real personality flaws, not vampirism, emphasizing again that our initial evaluations—even those of pretty blonds—can be wrong.

Instead of the family favorite Love Bites could have been, we have a movie from a writer/director who wanted the screenplay to be the star. Love Bites began as a play, and in an intimate theater with an adult audience wanting a single night's entertainment, the clever dialogue delivered by competent actors might have been enough. But for a filmed comedy to have longevity and resonate with an audience after its initial cinema run, it must address a timeless question in a new way. Think Groundhog Day, released the same year as Love Bites and still in print. Love Bites poses the question, and its cast brings real life to the characters. Unfortunately, the movie emphasizes bawdy jokes and gags, something done since Aristophanes and thus unremarkable. Maybe Marmorstein didn't expect much from a lipsticked post-punk rocker, one nighttime and one daytime soap actress, and a cartoon voice actor, but the four of them deliver, and it's a shame that their talents weren't put to better use.

To See the Movie

If you don't mind a few commercial interruptions, you can view the whole film at The Internet Movie Database.

To Own the Movie

From time to time, a VHS copy will appear on Ebay or from Amazon Marketplace Sellers in the United States or United Kingdom.

Be careful if you are purchasing a copy to view in the United States. UK copies [significantly easier to find] are encoded for Region 2, which means that they will not play on most US [Region 1] VHS players.

If you don't mind watching the movie on a computer or other handheld device, you can purchase it from iTunes.

Cross Posts

Shorter versions of this review [an interesting editing exercise to make it meet the 5,000-character or 1,000-word limits] exist at The New York Times and Amazon UK.