"Today, I was nearly hung. I got into a fight with a psychotic albino. I ate a cockroach, my best friend disappeared, and then I'm nearly assassinated by a runaway elevator. I've had a bad day."
— Keith
Vamp is a 1986 horror/comedy film starring Grace Jones.
The film follows college students and best friends Keith and AJ, who, while trying to pledge for a fraternity, head out to find a stripper to dance for them. Their search leads them to the wrong side of town and a seedy stripper bar. There they find a stunningly beautiful stripper, Katrina (Jones), and settle on her as their main choice. However unbeknownst to them, the bar as well as the whole section of town is run by vampires. AJ finds this out first hand when he tries to convince Katrina to come dance for them and ends up as a meal for her instead. Keith meanwhile searches for his missing friend and slowly starts to realize that something isn't right with the town's patrons. Along the way he runs into a waitress working at the club, Amaretto, who joins in on his search as the two try to survive the night.
Vamp provides examples of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Keith makes his way around one in the middle of the movie and the climax takes place in one as well since it is the vampire's resting grounds.
- Bad Boss: Katrina isn't fond of failure as one unfortunate waitress finds out.
- Big Damn Heroes: AJ returns to save Keith and Amaretto from Katherine's lover at the climax
- Bittersweet Ending: For AJ at least, sure he saves his friends from being killed and fed on. But killing Katrina doesn't change him back and he's stuck as a vampire for the rest of his lif...er existence. He can't even join his friends on the surface when all's said and done, having to stay stuck in the sewers to avoid the sunlight.
- Cerebus Syndrome: The first act is whacky, and the second act combines comedy and horror. The third act is mostly a straight horror-survival, with a few jokes at the end.
- Chekhov's Gun: The bow and arrow.
- Danger Takes a Backseat: When Keith, Amaretto and Duncan try to flee the town in Duncan's car. Duncan claims he feels weird as they're driving off. Keith then looks in a mirror, notices he doesn't have a reflect and realizes he's been turned.
- Decoy Protagonist: AJ is the lead in the first act, until he's bitten by Katrina. Keith then takes over as the hero.
- Double-Meaning Title: "Vamp" can refer to a seductive woman (Katrina) or to an actual vampire.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The vampires don't attack indiscriminately, they mostly go for people with no family that would come looking for them so as to keep their secret safe. Which is the reason why Keith is a concern for them because the waitress at the time didn't know he was with AJ.
- Evil Laugh: Katrina sports a crackling one after drains AJ.
- Every Car Is a Pinto: When Kevin runs AJ's car into the alley and hits another car, AJ's car doesn't just burn, but it bursts into flame and then exploded ten seconds later.
- Face-Revealing Turn: Played straight with Duncan after they try to escape the club in his car only to find out he was bitten and turned. Averted with Amaretto when it turns out to be a fake out.
- Flipping the Bird: Katrina's final act as her sun-disintegrated skeleton still has some movement left in it.
- Funny Foreigner: Duncan is portrayed this way through the first act.
- Game Face: Katrina vamps out while having sex with AJ. We see her fangs form, her toenails growing longer and her eyes change color. AJ doesn't notice this until she starts screeching.
- Kill It with Fire: Done twice in the film to kill a horde of vampires
- Missing Reflection:
- AJ reveals to Keith this trope is in effect after becoming a vampire. Later, as Keith is trying to leave town, he discovers Duncan has become a vampire when he doesn't see him in the rear view.
- The fact that the strippers are all vampires is Foreshadowed when two of them are shown facing one another through the empty mirror-frame of a double-sided makeup table, each applying cosmetics to the other.
- It's subtle, but Katrina's reflection doesn't appear in the aquarium glass when she comes up behind AJ, who checking his clothes in the same glass.
- Red Herring: Amaretto is teased as a vampire in the third act. After she denies being a vampire, the camera pans to a fish-eye mirror that shows Keith but not her, leaving it ambiguous as to whether she was simply out of the mirror's range or has no reflection. She's ultimately proven human when she steps into sunlight.
- Red Right Hand: Our heroes are menaced by a gang of evil albinos.
- The Renfield: The club is run by two ex-mobsters who now serve as minions for Katrina. Vic even eats cockroaches in a nod to the original Renfield.
- The Speechless: Katrina has no lines. She only laughs and hisses.
- Staking the Loved One: Keith to AJ he gets better.
- Too Dumb to Live: Vampires whose one of their few weaknesses is fire sleep next to fuel barrels.
- Town with a Dark Secret
- Transhuman Treachery: Subverted, AJ manages to fight back his hunger to help Keith escape and even requests to be staked so as not to kill him.
- Undead Child: Keith spots an undead girl attacking a hobo while prowling around town. She is also part of the undead group that try corner Amaretto and him.
- Vampire Dance: One of the highlights of the film when Katrina performs for the club.
- Vampire Monarch: Katrina
- You Have Failed Me: The waitress that directed AJ to Katrina as she thought he was alone. Once it's found out Keith was with him. Katrina promptly kills her for failing to notice this and has her body thrown away in a dumpster with AJ's body which Keith later finds.
- Vampires Own Night Clubs: Well, a bar in this case.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: Seriously of all the places to go looking for entertainment.
- You Can't Go Home Again: AJ tells this to Keith upon find his finding out he's a vampire.
