If the genre of vampire movies had a rebellious teenager phase, then it 100% took place during the ‘80s and ‘90s. During this era, our favorite bloodsuckers did the time warp and moved over to the modern day, ditching the old Victorian manors in favor of dark, gothic nightclubs. This shift took place thanks in large part to films such as 1986’s The Lost Boys and 2003’s Underworld, as well as books such as Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. This new era of vampires also had these super cool and edgy looks to them. Instead of wearing super antiquated looking garments, vampires were now clad in leather jackets and platform boots, and the soundtracks to their movies were composed almost entirely of classic goth rock and ‘90s Nu Metal. All you have to do is read the first sentence of the Wikipedia summary of Michael Rymer’s Queen of the Damned to see what I mean.
These aforementioned decades also saw a huge shift in how movies were produced, giving the average person the tools they needed to put whatever ideas they had to life. With the rise of consumer grade video equipment such as VHS Camcorders, there was a huge surge of DIY movies that were filmed with super low budgets and shot in dingy locations. The film genre which benefited from this the most was horror, with shot-on-video splatter and thriller films becoming super popular — filled with gallons of fake blood and unnerving latex masks!
Combine these two things together and you get the niche genre of mall-goth infused vampire movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s! Three particular ones that I feel are among the most important in this little microgenre are Red Lips and its sequel as well as Razor Blade Smile, all of which shall be the subject of this article!
Red Lips I and II
The first two movies I wanna talk about are Red Lips, which came out in 1995, and its sequel, Red Lips Bloodlust, which was released a year later! The way I discovered these was (very unenthusiastically) through the movie section of a website called Rate Your Music, while I was aimlessly scouring through all the vampire movies catalogued on the site. Think of it like the chronically-online-and-goth version of looking through the $2 DVD section at your local Walmart, trying to find anything that doesn’t look like a crappy Hallmark movie. I saw the poster for this one, which featured a vampiric woman with super sharp fangs, clad in fishnets and bondage gear, and I knew I had to watch it!
The first film centers around a girl called Caroline who, after being given a serum by a sketchy doctor, turns into a bloodthirsty vampire that ravages the streets of New York for her next victim. Eventually, she ends up meeting a girl called Lisa, who she (in very lesbian fashion) immediately moves in with after she falls in love. Lisa ultimately becomes a sort of assistant for Caroline, helping her seduce her future victims. And with that, campy and sapphic vampiric action ensues!
The entire film has this very grungy and erotic feel to it, like you got it from the dampest corner of an adult movie store that’s going out of business. It tells you all you need to know in the opening scene: passionate lesbian sex that turns into Caroline feeding on her lover-turned-victim to satiate her bloodlust, accompanied by mysterious electric guitar music. I ended up watching this on a dingy Russian website with really sh*tty quality and I feel like it definitely added to the experience. It gave the film a dreamlike feel, especially when you combine it with the VHS fuzz and the bright, striking colors in a few of the scenes. Among all of these, my favorite takes place in a dingy nightclub around halfway through the movie, where Caroline and Lisa share a sensual dance and makeout session accompanied by droning noise rock. There’s a blur of bright pinks and reds in this scene that, combined with the intimate embrace from the two vampiric lovers, could literally be in a museum exhibit about queer art.
There was also a sequel released a year later called Red Lips: Bloodlust! Except it’s less of a sequel and more of an anthology of three different vampire short films. And these short films get… experimental, to say the least. One of them literally involves two women having a super long conversation in a bar that leads to them (almost) having a vampiric sapphic escapade; there’s also a sex scene that drags on for way too long. Said sex scene also has upbeat electro playing in the background for some reason? Either way, it’s an interesting watch for sure and like, it’s there if you want more lo-fi sapphic vampires in your life!
Razor Blade Smile
After our little fling in New York, we now take a trip across the Atlantic to the UK for 1998’s Razor Blade Smile! If there was an Academy Award for the most mall-goth film to come out in 1998, Razor Blade Smile would win that award ten times over, to the point where its name would be changed to the Lilith Silver award. This film has everything a ‘90s gothic vampire movie should have: super pretty vampire women in spandex and trench coats, a guy who looks like Al Jorgensen from the band Ministry, and editing that makes everything look like a commercial for the original XBox (especially those scenes where Lilith’s at the computer). Hell, the scene which introduces the Transylvania Goth Bar that becomes a recurring setting has “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus playing in the background! It genuinely felt like the director took what I wanted out of a vampire movie and wrapped it up in a box with a Hot Topic gift-card inside.
Speaking of the aforementioned Lilith Silver, this film revolves around her life (or I guess, un-life) as a vampire. It begins when she was turned into one in the 19th century and follows her to the present day, where she’s tasked with taking down an Illuminati-esque secret society led by the vampire who killed her lover all those years ago. While all of this is happening, Lilith constantly has to escape the police and use her seduction skills to get what she wants. It’s action-packed, erotic, and overall a really fun time!
Speaking of the director, one of the reasons why this movie is so iconic is because of the background of its creation. The film’s budget was small — like, one-of-the-main-shooting-locations-was-the-director’s-parents’-house levels of small. The entirety of the film was made with a budget of 12,000 British Pounds, which translates to around 16,000 dollars today. Because of this, it holds the record for the British film with the lowest budget to be shown in theaters, which makes me think about how surreal it would’ve been to watch this on the big screen. And despite the amount of love I have for this movie, you can really tell it’s being held together by two Hot Topic cross necklaces and a thread. There was this one scene near the end where Lilith was fighting against two other vampiric women and, when she goes to decapitate one of them, you can clearly see a mannequin head with a really cheap wig gracefully flying across the sky. There’s also these dream sequences Lilith goes through in various parts of the film that are the definition of the word camp.
However, despite all of its constraints, the main reason why I love this movie is because it feels like a love letter to goth subculture in the late ‘90s. Jake West, the director, was directly inspired by the aforementioned Lost Boys movie and received help from the London Vampire Society to shoot a few scenes in the Transylvania Club — which is like the coolest thing ever! That’s not even mentioning how the costume design is so accurate to what actual goths were wearing at the time. Even the actors look like they’re eating up their roles in spite of everything surrounding the film’s production; overall, it’s one of those movies where it’s so campy you can’t help but crack a Razor Blade Smile near the end!
To conclude my commentary on these films, I guess what I really love about movies like these (aside from how they add fuel to my vampire special interest) is that you can tell a lot of love and passion went into them. The people who made these were in the know about the goth subcultures in the places where they lived, and it’s such a treat seeing those niche scenes transferred over to film. They also show that you don’t really need to have a huge budget to create a movie that other people can enjoy watching as much as you and your crew did creating it. So, grab your friends and that old camcorder your parents stashed away in your closet, buy some fake blood and fangs from your local Halloween store, and tell a vampire story!