My Best Friend is a Vampire (1987)

My Best Friend is a Vampire is a criminally underrated 80s teen vampire movie. Wait, is it underrated? I always feel a paranoiac pang when I call something underrated--ever since someone told me she considered A Confederacy of Dunces an "undiscovered gem." It's entirely possible that every other devotee of the cheesy vampire horror oeuvre (d'oeuvre de vampire fromagey, if I remember my French correctly) has long been aware of this film and I'm just so outrageously late to the party that it feels like I'm early.

Whatever.

The film combines vampires, horny teenagers, the Houston skyline, black Wayfarers, creepy vampire hunters, new wave hairstyles, an arctic blue BMW, a killer 80s pop soundtrack (including Blondie and Timbuk 3, how did they afford that?), and delightfully well-intentioned suburban parents who know something is weird about their son lately and so decide he must be gay. Robert Sean Leonard (who went on to play A.E. Housman in Stoppard's brilliant The Invention of Love and is also, I'm told, paying the mortgage by working in some television show about doctors) stars as a dorky high school kid named Jeremy Capello who is seduced by a vampiress. In fact, for an awkward kid with an afterschool job in the supermarket, Jeremy does surprisingly well with women--a super-popular cheerleader is openly lusting for him while the musical prodigy he's been having sex dreams about is slowly warming to his advances.

Once Jeremy is bitten by the vampire, his life complexifies combinatorially. For instance, he begins to crave blood and raw meat. His complexion becomes pallid and he becomes deeply averse to the sun. His rugby shirts become even baggier as his appetite for solid food wanes. Also, Clayton Endicott III shows up to teach him how to adjust to being a vampire while a couple of ruthless vampire hunters, one of whom is named "Professor McCarthy" (dig that subtle salient political commentary) start trying to murder him.

As it turns out, the monster hunters are much worse monsters than the monsters they're hunting (welcome to Reagan's America, kids) while the vampire subculture wants to help Jeremy adjust to his new alternative lifestyle and live as rich and productive a life as possible. Meanwhile, Jeremy still needs to navigate through the high school social scene, deal with his intrusive and bewildered parents, and pass Driver's Ed. Oh, it turns out it's also difficult to shave and style your hair when you don't have a reflection and you can't have garlic on your pizza anymore once you've become one of the aristocrats of the walking dead.

My Best Friend is a Vampire is roughly what would happen if you combined Fright Night with Better Off Dead. It's a rare, perhaps even unique, example of a teen vampire movie that works as both a teen movie and a vampire movie. It's funny, adorable, cheesy, and even, at times, weirdly touching. Ultimately, it's about tolerance, coming of age, and socially responsible ways to satisfy one's bloodlust.