Review of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) by Mike L — 01 Sep 2009

It is surprising that this is a fairly original premise, what is a bigger surprise that this teen spoof/comedy made the leap to television as the atmospheric cult classic, as nothing from the original is the same except for the name and vampires.

As for the movie, it is terrible in all aspects of film; bad writing, bad direction, bad acting, and bad editing. It almost looks like the studio approved this movie based on the popularity of Luke Perry and then thought his TV show, 90210, would be canceled the next week so they rushed through everything to get it out in time.

There are scenes where you can see the actors lips move a little as they silently go over their line...then they say the line, and they left this in the final cut. The fight scenes look like minor league wrestling as everyone stops, they tell the person the next move, then do the next move, it is hilariously bad to watch.

The film looks like it was edited together from screen tests and rehearsals. Not even fun to watch as a B-movie.

The good parts would be Kristy Swanson looks great and seeing Pee Wee Herman (Paul Ruebens) as a vampire.

As a side note this is one of the early roles for Hillary Swank and as much as Buffy was a huge leap from this film to TV so has Hillary gone from this role, where she is badly over-acting, to the Oscar winner she is now.