Lesbian Vampire Killers: More Than Just a Great Title

[Editor's Note: I'd like to welcome The Vault of Horror's newest contributor, Paige MacGregor of Fandomania, who joins us for the first time with a review of that recent UK horror comedy with the hard-to-miss name...]

In true buddy movie fashion, Lesbian Vampire Killers follows a pair of friends as they set out on an adventure into the wilds of the British countryside. After Jimmy’s “serial dumper” girlfriend Judy breaks up with him for the seventh time, Jimmy’s best mate Fletch—recently canned from his job as a clown—convinces Jimmy to go on holiday with him in order to forget about Judy (Lucy Gaskell).

Given their limited resources, Fletch and Jimmy set out on a hiking trip, leaving their destination to chance, and wind up in the small village of Cragwich. When the townspeople send Fletch and Jimmy to a nearby cottage, where they’ve already sent four gorgeous female university students also visiting the village, the two think they’re in for the time of their lives. Unfortunately, their weekend of debauchery is over almost as soon as it begins when the girls--Lotte (MyAnna Buring), Anke (Louise Dylan), Heidi (Tiffany Mulheron), and Trudi (Ashley Mulheron)--start mysteriously disappearing.

Lesbian Vampire Killers follows the traditional horror-comedy formula of movies like Shaun of the Dead, using exaggeration, comedic timing and over-the-top effects to poke fun at the stereotypes used in the horror genre. The film’s premise is a purposely ridiculous one, based on the idea that a powerful lesbian vampire queen named Carmilla (Silvia Colloca) cursed the village of Cragwich hundreds of years earlier, causing each of the girls in the town to turn into a lesbian vampire on her eighteenth birthday.

As is often the case in film, there is only one individual capable of killing the vampire queen once and for all—the last male descendant of the knight who initially killed Carmilla all those years ago—and it is that same individual whose blood can resurrect the vampire queen, making her more powerful than ever before. As those viewers familiar with this formula can imagine, it just so happens that one of our male protagonists is that particular individual, and it just so happens that he ended up in the village of Cragwich.

Each of the characters featured in the film represent an exaggeration of a traditional stereotype, from the exceptionally slutty stoner chick Trudi, to the overzealous village Vicar (Paul McGann) and his daughter, the soon-to-be-eighteen country beauty Rebecca (Emer Kenny). The way that Lesbian Vampire Killers’ plot hinges on these exaggerated character types, and on coincidence, does not take away from the film (as it might in a more serious genre,) but rather adds to its comedic nature.

As previously mentioned, Lesbian Vampire Killers functions very similarly to movies like Shaun of the Dead, but the combination of the dialogue provided by the film’s writers, Stewart Williams and Paul Hupfield, and the antics and repartee of actors Mathew Horne (Jimmy) and James Corden (Fletch) actually elevate Lesbian Vampire Killers beyond Shaun of the Dead and similar films, in my opinion. There are far more laugh-out-loud moments in Lesbian Vampire Killers than in any of the other British horror-comedies I’ve seen, making Lesbian Vampire Killers a must-watch for fans of the genre.

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