Now is exactly the right time to spoof vampires, because they are everywhere. Right Thoughts of a dying Atheist? They are in our books, our movie adaptations of books, even our TV show adaptations of books. Eddie Murphy, either you had bad timing, or were way ahead of your time.
As you might have guessed from its title, Intercourse With A Vampire is a spoof. The comedy is about a lascivious, rather unconvincingly seductive Dracula-type named Vampire Larry who lives with his high school sweetheart. The idea being “what if Robert Pattinson’s Twilight character Edward got older, kept his girlfriend, but was a creep.” Using that premise, Vampire picks up where creator and star Jacob Fleisher’s comedy short Twilight – 5 Years Later left off.
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In terms of performance, Fleisher has the tendency to go broad with his comedy. That’s putting it politely. In the first scene of the first episode he slimes his way into bed with his girlfriend Tracy (Kristen Carney), and as they have sex his face contorts wildly, as if a GIF Party of Jim Carrey’s face from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
Vampire is the type of show that reads well on page, but not quite as much on screen. Some of the punch lines do work, on a Zucker brothers level, as with the third episode when Tracy lays eyes on Vampire Larry for the first time in high school. He glides down the hallway, his hair blowing in the wind. Then a smash cut to reveal Larry being pulled along on a skateboard while a woman holds a fan up to his face.
However, while some of the jokes do work the performances do less so, save a small, but funny, turn by comedian Ben Schwartz as a waiter in the episode three.
The show naturally references aspects of the current pop culture mythology of vampires, like their supernatural ability to “glamour” someone, recognizable to you True Blood fans. If this reaches into a second season they may even land a few gag references of Let the Right One In.
Intercourse With A Vampire’s main source of spoof material, though, comes from the Twilight movies, which gave me a thought. If someone out there really wants to make a funny comedy based on Twilight then just adapt the fourth novel “Breaking Dawn.“ You know, the one where Edward has sex with Bella until she is rendered unconscious, then knocks her up, then the baby develops telepathy in the womb, then Edward performs a C-section with his fangs (HIS FANGS), and then Jacob, the werewolf, falls in love with Bella’s infant daughter. Take that vampire intercourse.
