"VAMPIRE BURT'S SERENADE" (2020)

A Vampire Movie with No Stakes

Vampire Burt's Serenade 
Written and directed by Ken Roht
Starring Kevin Scott Richardson, Sharon Ferguson, Brandon Heitkamp, Diva Zappa
Running time: 1 hour 16 minutes
Unrated, but contains graphic language, toothless sexual content, obnoxious drug use, cartoonish violence and instances of mild monsterism.

by: Hunter Bush

When a vampire kills the MC of a popular strip club, the strippers set out to get revenge by surprising the vampire where he'd least expect it: picking up drugs from his dealer. That pretty-well sums up Vampire Burt's Serenade in a nutshell, though there is more than that going on. Much more. Some would say too much more. I am one of them.




VBS as I will hereafter abbreviate it feels like you jumped into the second season of some serialized show having not seen the first. You get the feeling that some of the characters know each other but aren't sure how well and there seem to be jokes and references that go right over your head. Turns out VBS is a recut version of the 2014 film The Bloody Indulgent. From what I could find out, this updated version was made to settle a rights dispute. The run times of both movies only differ by ~4 minutes, but reportedly some of the subplots were juggled around to make events seem more concurrent and digital effects were added to the vampires including burning embers when they feed and darkening around the eyes when they feel the pull of their monstrous bloodlust.

I'll put this right on Front Street: I didn't like VBS, but that doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't watch it. I just can't imagine this film was made to please anyone but those involved in making it and therefore cannot imagine a scenario where anyone else would really enjoy watching it. It's a directionlessly horny monster movie that's lite on the monsters and heavy on the horny. It's also wildly in love with a scuzzy, druggy West Coast, glamorously fucked-up lifestyle aesthetic without having anything really to say about any of it. Granted, a film doesn't always have to Say Something - and in truth sometimes it would be better if a few didn't even try - but this feels like it's attempting to.

We're introduced to the employees of the Bootleg, an actual theater in L.A. here subbing as a burlesque venue, though I'm pretty sure everyone uses the term "strippers" throughout. I have limited strip-club experience (not really my thing), but I feel qualified to say that this is definitely more of a burlesque (much more my thing) type of performance. The performers are just doing their things, singing and discreetly showcasing the goods. Then we're introduced to Vampire Burt (Kevin Scott Richardson, yes of the Backstreet Boys) turning Todd (later renamed Rocket, played by Brandon Heitkamp) into a vampire and they go on to the club where Todd's girlfriend Connie (Diva Zappa) is performing.

Everyone knows Burt and knows he's a vampire and no one seems to like him, but it feels more like they dislike him for being an asshole than a vile immortal creature of darkness. When Connie sees that he's turned Todd / Rocket into a vamp, she acts more like he got her boyfriend wasted. She instigates a "Kill the vampire!" chant (and everyone just produces stakes and crosses and shit from nowhere), but then the DJ plays Burt's song, which he performs about how he's a predator. To be clear, Burt wasn't singing while the scene was happening, he was singing in the scene - this is an important distinction to make I feel, and one that I'll come back to. Anyway, Burt ends up killing the club's MC, Sid (Brian Gaskill) and then everybody ...decides to really kill him. Like I guess before they were just kidding? But now it's serious?

With the way no one reacted to Burt being a vampire, and how quickly they went to mob justice and how prepared they were for it, everything felt like the culmination of something we hadn't seen, which is what I meant when I was talking about this feeling like the second season of something. In a proper movie, your characters would be clearly and distinctly introduced to the audience, their relationships made clear, their goals laid out and etc. Or alternately, this could have jumped back to fill in the backstory. Nope. After this scene, which Burt handily survives I might add, Burt takes Todd / Rocket to a place called Candyland to score drugs. WHERE HE WILL REMAIN FOR THE REST OF THE MOVIE. That's so unbalanced. Sid is killed inside the first 10 minutes and then I guess act 2 is the whole middle hour of the movie where everyone with their myriad of reasons to hate Burt all get together like a shitbird version of Tolkein's Battle of Five Armies, then the third act is one messy fight scene where despite spending time giving people motivations for teaming up to kill Burt, everyone just kind of fights each other.

Candyland, btw, is home to my favorite character by a country mile: Clare (Sharon Ferguson) (that's her in the hat), Burt's world-travelling death-artist friend and de facto drug supplier. I say "death-artist" because I'm not sure exactly what Clare's art is. Models are dressed up, styled and posed as though for a photo shoot before being executed. I don't recall any photos being taken, so perhaps Clare's art is their execution itself or maybe the blood and viscera spattered drop cloth behind them is a canvas of sorts? Doesn't matter. I loved it. So the character herself is great, but Ferguson's performance elevates it beyond just memorable (which would be feat in VBS on its own) to genuinely interesting. Once Burt gets to Candyland (Clare's warehouse studio) and makes it clear he wants them to hook him up with drugs for free, I thought maybe the rest of the movie would be some battle between the two of them. But no. Clare bounces down to the C-plot only to show back up for the confusing battle finale.

As a narrative film, VBS is lacking. There are just too many subplots kicking around. I haven't even mentioned Connie's whole storyline where she gets turned into a vampire, gets killed by Burt, then resurrected by two zombies and is also seeking revenge or how the strippers throw a First Annual Sid Memorial Strip-Off to raise $10K to hire an S&M cowboy vampire hunter (who goes nowhere) or that Todd / Rocket (which I keep hearing in my head to the tune of the Hot Pockets jingle) thinks he must be bisexual now because he's a vampire (which also goes nowhere; actually they both go nowhere together because the vampire killer (Kenneth Hughes) tells Todd / Rocket that he's not just instantly bisexual because he's a vampire, that's not a thing and then he gets KO'ed until the final fight). Speaking of, did I mention that Burt survives? The whole movie is introducing us to characters who have valid (enough) reasons to want him dead, and showing him to be, if not purest evil at least a huge pain in the ass, and in the end he lives. What the fuck was this for then? He has no arc, no redemption, no positive traits, but the movie is - for some reason - so enamored with his character that he survives. Jason Voorhees always comes back I guess, but imagine that Jason killed people sporadically while trying to score blow and acting like that one friend-of-a-friend that you always dread showing up to your parties who inevitably always does. Narratively, I'd call that a failure.

It sort of works as a musical, or rather it's at least interesting. Instead of your usual movie musical formula of dialogue scenes interwoven between big musical numbers that move the plot forward or elaborate on a character's inner life, VBS is a kind of nonstop singing-what-you're-doing musical with most of the songs only being long enough for one verse and maybe a chorus (and very few were reprised at any time). I love musicals but don't go to The Theatre super often and am not especially well-versed in their history or mechanics, so maybe this is a well-known and valid take. For me, with few exceptions, the near-constant melodic accompaniment made the flick fly by. I mean, it starts with a ripping pace but even the sluggish and bloated middle didn't feel especially long because the constant switching between narrative threads, when paired with the brief songs, made it feel like things were moving right along. But I can't recall much of it. No songs really stand out. It's kind of the same phenomenon as when Fat Wreck Chords released the concept / theme album Short Music For Short People with 101 tracks (by as many bands) averaging 30 seconds apiece. That album was on heavy rotation in my best friend's car and yet I couldn't tell you a single song on it.

To give you an example of the songwriting found in VBS, I'll share the only lyric I wrote down. For context: Todd / Rocket ends up banging Clare's assistant June (Lucy Griffin) in the bathroom of Candyland. In a line that I think was meant to evoke the feeling of being made calm by the presence of someone with whom you share a deep connection, Todd / Rocket repeatedly says "in this crazy insanity, with its lack of any sanity". As a songwriter (once and future), this line makes me want to slap someone.

I'd like to end with a positive note: the filmmaking on display was quite good for what it was. There was a rough, nervous, who-gives-a-shit-if-the-boom-mic-is-in-the-shot quality that seems to come from a truly punk, outsider place and I admire that. There were some touches that I thought were fun stylistic nods, like Connie and the two other zombies briefly homaging Thriller or the musical number where the strippers call everyone they know and invite them to the Strip Off, which I can only assume is a reference to the song The Telephone Hour from Bye Bye Birdie (except with Zoom backgrounds). It was genuinely fun and briefly brought our focus back to our seeming protagonists before ultimately going back to see what Burt was up to (the same thing we do every night Pinky: tons of coke). Speaking of, another bright spot. For a fan of world-building - which this movie is sorely lacking otherwise - I really enjoyed the list of drugs in Clare's vault (which I attempted to transcribe as best I could): "Sprouts, Puppy Coma, Silvia Tron from Mexico, Katie Canoe from Ecuador, 3DL a.k.a. Pegasassy, Dirty Cheesecake, I Have No Idea, DOA, Pretty Bitch and Laura Bush".

I initially thought writer/director Ken Roht was building to some kind of comparison between drugs and vampirism. Not that it hasn't been done, but the parallels are there: the predator / prey dynamic, draining folks of their life force, general physical appearance and having to live a kind of twilit half life; but no dice, because that would have meant Burt was the bad guy or moreover that being "the bad guy" wasn't "cool" and we can't have that, can we kids? I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a movie so in love with its vampire antagonist wouldn't have any stakes.




Vampire Burt's Serenade is currently streaming on Amazon Prime or available to rent or buy from Amazon, the Google Play Store, or YouTube.
The Bloody Indulgent is not currently streaming.
Bye Bye Birdie is currently streaming on Pluto TV or available to rent or buy from multiple services.




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