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#snarkathon – Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Kirsti: I first suggested that we cover the original Buffy movie way back in August 2012, not long after we started covering Buffy. Somehow, it ended up as a “this would be a good way to finish things” idea, and then with the birth of #snarkathon in December it became a “watch it alone-together with the Traumateers” thing. Aww.

Anyway, let’s get to the movie, shall we?

We open in Dark Ages Europe, where we’re given approximately two seconds of Slayer backstory – one girl in all the world, yada yada yada, she has a creepy birthmark on her chest known as “The Mark of the Coven”. Segue magic to early 1990s LA, where Movie!Buffy is leading a cheer squad through the longest routine of all time. Their outfits are hugely distracting, as they appear to be wearing shiny purple unitards under long sleeved yellow crop tops and culottes. CULOTTES.

This scene serves very little purpose, except to inform us that Buffy is a) in high school, b) blonde, and c) a cheerleader. We cut from there to a mall. Buffy and her friends – including Oscar winner Hilary Swank – generally channel Clueless, several years early. They get in the elevator to head to a movie, and a man in a long trench coat, hat, and gloves tries to get in with them. They “ew gross” at him and shut the doors, leaving Donald Sutherland(!) staring creepily after them.

In the movie theatre, the girls talk NON-FUCKING-STOP, causing Luke Perry(!!) and David Arquette(!) to yell at them to STFU. The point of these scene is purely to introduce us to the aforementioned dudes, who are named Pike and Benny respectively, and who are high school dropout types. Outside the movie theatre, Buffy meets up with her varsity jock boyfriend. Back at Buffy’s, they make out while the news discusses a murder victim: “a neck wound that resembled, in the words of one bystander, a really gross hickey“. That night, Buffy has a Terrible Wig Flashback Dream in which she plays the role of a past Slayer, taking on a vampire played by Pee Wee Herman Paul Reubens. Meanwhile, Vamp!Reubens is somewhere in LA, mooning over the glowy red coffin of the vampire king, Lothos.

After school the next day, Buffy and her friends head to Café Blasé to discuss the theme for the winter dance. Pike and Benny turn up, drunk, and introduce themselves, which leads to this response:

Benny orders a hot dog, then grabs the sausage and holds it in front of his groin, waving it at Buffy. Without realising, she picks up a knife and slices the sausage almost end to end. Her friends scream about what a freak she is, while Benny and Pike fear for their dicks. They leave and wander around sharing some calming booze. Pike passes out, leaving Benny to be grabbed and eaten by Vamp!Reubens. Donald Sutherland – aka Merrick, the Watcher of the piece – was apparently just sitting there watching all this happen, and decides to save Pike from being eaten.

The next day, Buffy runs through some quality cheers – “Dribble dribble, shoot shoot, get that ball through the hoop hoop!“. The other girls leave and she randomly launches into some gymnastics, a la Faith Missy in Bring It On. She turns to see Merrick – still wearing his hat, coat and gloves – watching her from the other end of the gym. She confronts him about being a creepy pedo and he says that she has to follow him to the graveyard to get her birthright. She LOL NOPEs and he seems shocked that she doesn’t have the Mark of the Coven on her chest.

She turns to leave, and he says that he knows about her Terrible Wig Flashback Dreams. She agrees to go to the graveyard with him.

At the cemetery, Merrick points out the grave of a guy who was murdered three days earlier (and is already buried?!?!). He hands Buffy a stake and they settle in to wait. The vampire wakes, and Buffy reluctantly fights him. Except another vampire rises too. After some input from Merrick and a hilarious fight scene, she manages to stake them both. Cut to Pike’s, where he wakes to find Benny outside his window. He notices nothing wrong with his friend at first, despite the pasty complexion, fangs and elf ears(?!?!?!), but when he notices that his friend is hovering five metres off the ground, he twigs that maybe Benny is now a vampire.

Buffy struggle buses home to find a very Jersey-looking Joyce demanding to know what time it is. When Buffy answers, it turns out that Joyce just wanted to confirm that her watch was wrong and that she’s now late. Oh, come on, guys. Like you weren’t expecting a negligent parent! Buffy takes herself off to bed and has creepy dreams about the vampire king.

The next day, she’s meant to skip cheer practice to meet Merrick after school. But she doesn’t. She heads to the locker room to get changed as the other girls head into practice and is about to get undressed when Merrick pops up. DUDE. NO. YOU ARE NOT HELPING THE EPIC PEDO VIBE THAT YOU’RE GIVING OFF BY LURKING IN THE LOCKER ROOM. I don’t even want to know how long he’d been lurking in there waiting for her… Buffy agrees, saying “What are you doing here?! This is a naked place!!“. He throws a knife at her head to prove she needs training, and she punches him in the face. I laugh and laugh because DUDE. You were fucking asking for it. She gets a little smug about the fact that she didn’t break a nail.

That throws us into an inspirational training montage, which includes several insane outfits, an awesome flying sidekick, and a dummy wearing a beret. Because reasons??? IDEK. As a result of her late night training sessions, she gets called to the principal’s office for being tired and tardy all the time. She uses her newfound skills to spit a thumbtack at a fly, pinning it to the wall. It’s kind of awesome.

That night, Buffy walks the streets alone. In the movie, the Slayer gets cramps when there are vampires nearby, which Merrick calls an inbuilt defence system. I call it fucking stupid because how would you tell the difference between vampires and period pain? For the most part, I’m glad that this was left out of the series, although it WOULD have had an interesting impact on Buffy’s love life. I mean, it’s hard to have a Tragic Magic Vagina when your honey literally gives you cramps… BACK TO THE PLOT. A vampire appears, she stakes it, end scene.

Meanwhile, Pike’s van has broken down. He manages to get it started again, but is attacked by Vamp!Reubens, who’s flailing all over the windscreen. Pike drives erratically through the woods, trying to shake Vamp!Reubens off. He steers under a low hanging branch, which rips V!R’s arm off. Pike crashes into a tree, and V!R tells his minions to attack.

Luckily, Buffy and Merrick arrive and stake V!R’s minions. V!R, however, escapes.

Basketball game. For some reason, one of the star players is now a vampire and NO ONE NOTICES. Buffy leads her cheerleaders through the most ridiculous cheer routine yet:



Vamp!B’baller gets on the court and uses his special vamp skills to score. This includes taking the ball from BEN AFFLECK, who is one of the opposition. Buffy jumps onto the court to take him down. He realises that she’s the Slayer and runs off. She runs after him, gets sexually harassed by a biker, and pays him back by stealing his bike to chase down Vamp!B’baller. Awesome.

She catches up with Vamp!B’baller at a parade float storage yard. I’m not even joking. Except in addition to Vamp!B’baller, Vamp!Reubens and Lothos, the vampire king, are also waiting. There’s a brief fight before Lothos puts Buffy under his thrall. Merrick jumps in, and gets himself staked. Pike turns up to stake Vamp!B’baller. The other vamps leave as Merrick takes a hundred years to die. No one but Buffy gives a shit.

We get a short interlude in which Buffy fights with her friends because she has bigger shit to deal with, then ignores all the bigger shit to go shopping for a dress for the dance. Pike’s all “Dude, WTF?”, because apparently Luke Perry is the voice of reason in this film. Then there’s some dance preparation, like Buffy holding up ugly dresses to see how they look and Pike shaving off his fugly 90s soul patch.

The dance. Buffy walks in wearing a Pretty White Virginal Dress that’s almost bridal in its poofiness, and what appear to be white combat boots. It’s kind of phenomenal. There, she discovers that her boyfriend has broken up with her via answering machine and is at the dance with one of her friends. Ouch. She heads over to lean mopily against the wall, but – much like in The Prom – a tall, dark and handsome man appears to save her.

She and Pike slow dance and kiss, and her friends judgey stare.

The vampires attack, but can’t come into the building because they’re not invited(???) Buffy’s unprepared, but luckily Pike stayed home whittling stakes for her (awwww). She grabs the bag of stakes and runs off to fight the vamps. In the process, the uber-bridal part of her skirt gets ripped off. Pike tosses her his leather jacket on the way out the door for extra badass factor.

She leads the vampires away from the gym, then spots Vamp!Reubens. She follows him into the Basement of Don’t Go In There, where Lothos is waiting.

Back in the gym, Benny – who for some reason CAN get into the gym – is attacking Pike. They fight, which culminates in Pike flinging holy water in Benny’s face and Benny running away. Basement. Buffy stakes Vamp!Reubens with a ruler and he take 5eva to die. It’s hilarious.

Lothos gets his thrall on and it’s looking like he’ll kill Buffy when suddenly the music stops from upstairs. That snaps her out of it and she pulls out a cross. Lothos scoffs and grabs at it. It catches on fire. Buffy uses a little can of hairspray to create a flamethrower and set fire to Lothos’ head. LOL. She runs back to the gym.

The fight up there is over, and the principal issues detention slips to the dead vampire students. Lothos walks in waving a katana for literally no reason. Buffy – very reminiscent of Dawn in Potential – grabs a flag and uses it to fight him off. He sasses a lot during the fight and she manages to stake him, then kick the stake home to kill him. She and Pike slow dance in the middle of the corpses, then ride off into the sunrise on his motorbike.

The credits roll, accompanied by footage of news crews interviewing the survivors, who are all “IT WAS A GANG ON PCP”. Down in the basement, Vamp!Reubens dies some more. The end.

Sweeney: AS ALWAYS, here’s some of the fun/funny stuff everyone said on Twitter. Quick note of apology: because it took me so long to get to this, some really great tweets are missing. This is basically, “The best of the tweets that were reasonably easy to find.” AKA, “Stuff I favorited.” ENJOY!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

K (all posts)

I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.





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K

I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.