There is a reason Clueless is still being celebrated 30 years after it was released. The high school classic that is a clever reinvention of Jane Austen’s Emma from Fast Times at Ridgemont High director Amy Heckerling is full of witty lines, great outfits, and a coming-of-age story that still holds up. Its legacy as one of the best films of the 1990s can also be attributed to the incredible performance by its star, Alicia Silverstone. In a role that has since defined her, Silverstone infuses Cher Horowitz not only with impeccable comedic timing, but also with a depth that kept Cher from being a stereotypical and shallow Beverly Hills teenager. With Heckerling’s follow-ups never reaching the heights of Clueless and Alicia Silverstone going on to do, regrettably, Batman & Robin, it’s a shame the two never reconnected to bring something else to the screen. Except they did. Over fifteen years after Clueless, Amy Heckerling reunited with Alicia Silverstone to make Vamps. The vampire comedy that also stars Krysten Ritter and Sigourney Weaver failed to make much of an impact when it was made, but together Heckerling and Silverstone managed to bring some life to the undead comedy—that is, once you get past the special effects.
Alicia Silverstone Reckons With Getting Older in ‘Vamps’
Silverstone stars as a vampire named Goody, who was turned by Ciccerus (Weaver) into a vampire in 1841 (hence the name). After over a century and a half experiencing different eras of history, Goody is tired of keeping up with the times. Thankfully, she has Stacy (Ritter, who is perfectly pale for a vampire), a young woman who only became a vampire 20 years ago and has a zest for the afterlife that reinvigorates Goody. Together the two take classes, live off rats, hang out with other vampires, and do Ciccerus’s bidding whenever she summons them. But keeping up with the trends and the ever-changing world is starting to take a toll on Goodie, lacking the patience to adopt new styles and mourning long-gone New York establishments. To add to those issues, the increasingly modern world is catching up with the vampires, with new technology and surveillance tactics (citing the Patriot Act) making it harder and harder to live incognito. And when Stacy falls for a mortal (Dan Stevens) that just so happens to be a Van Helsing descendant, she and Goody begin to wonder if eternal life is all it’s cracked up to be.
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These vamps will nibble on your funnybone.
Vamps has a lot of fun with the tropes of being a vampire, dismissing some (like garlic) and embracing others (like needing soil from one’s place of origin), but it’s all to serve the purpose of showing how hard it would be to live forever. Vamps explores that eternal life comes with having to leave people behind, having to live with certain restrictions, and having to keep people at a distance. This is emphasized when Danny Horowitz (Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Richard Lewis) recognizes Goody as an old flame from his younger years. Posing as the daughter of her former persona, Goody reconnects with Danny and sees how their paths have diverged and how much Goody has had to give up over the years. It causes Goody to reflect on how she’s had to abandon her family over the decades, how she’s stuck as someone in her thirties, and that time and everyone else has moved forward without her. It’s a trademark across Heckerling’s movies for her to breathe a little more life and interiority into what may seem like a shallow premise, even something as simple as “What if a baby talked like Bruce Willis?” It’s just a shame she didn’t have the proper budget to match her vision.
‘Vamps’ Never Truly Had the Chance to Succeed
It is clear from before Vamps starts that this was a production without much financing. Leading with production logos that almost look like parodies, what follows is a movie with lighting befitting a sitcom, special effects out of the 80s, and scenes longing for a little more polish on the script level. In an interview with Vulture, Heckerling says, “there was stuff I cut out because I couldn’t afford it,” including more fantasy sequences that would have properly incorporated Goody into the past. In addition to a limited budget, Vamps was only released on a few screens (seemingly only one in the US) and barely cracked 90,000 at the box office, despite a loaded cast including an Oscar nominee. Today, it is relegated to being a standard inclusion on most free ad-suppoted TV services, and Heckerling hasn’t been able to make a film since.
Is Vamps as good as Clueless? As if! But it is fun! Sigourney Weaver talked about what a delight the movie was, that she “loved playing delicious, evil parts like [Ciccerus],” and how much joy she brought to the character shows every time she’s on-screen. In a time when the biggest vampire stories were the Twilight films, Vamps explored the lore of being a vampire in a unique and funny way, serving almost as a precursor to the What We Do in the Shadows film and TV show. Krysten Ritter put it perfectly when she said “It’s Amy Heckerling doing vampires. It’s adorable and girly. It’s Clueless with vampires.” If you’re able to get past the limited special effects and clearly low budget, at the heart is a charming story only Amy Heckerling could have told. Plus, what other movie has Wallace Shawn as Van Helsing?! Come on!