Vampire vs. RoboCop

 

Also known as The Vampire Lives (1989), Counter Destroyer (ugh – sounds like something I’d come up with while under the leadership of cold hard booze) is about Joyce, a young gal needing peace and quite to finish a movie script. So she and her micro-bikini wearing, she-male voiced secretary move into a secluded, yet haunted Japanese home.

A Taoist priest warned them not to move in as the place was already occupied by an evil vampire who jumps around, wearing Freddy Krueger knife gloves. (You don’t want to second guess Taoist priests – they know things. Spooky things.)

After drinking a possessed soft drink, Joyce unleashes Hell. And by Hell, I mean for anyone watching this stunning piece of vampire droppings, as the plot suddenly shifts to the movie company’s secretary assassinating a rival film studio trying to make the same movie.

When a blow-dried American boy shows up to check on Joyce and finds her arm is possessed by a vampire, he rotates counter-clockwise a few times and turns into a ninja warrior with a rifle. Think Robocop (1987) with a mullet. If you’re anything like me, you’ll get lost right after the opening credits roll.

In closing, Counter Destroyer/The Vampire Lives is insanity bad. And that’s me being nice for a change.

Death Hugs

All it took was driving a bus school with five kids in it through a toxic chemical plant steam cloud to turn them into adorable death zombies. Where you’d think blue or possible purple smoke would get better results, not so in this case. (Note: the danger smog only works on kids.)

The sheriff and the soon-to-be-roasted townsfolk find out the kids – who look like they used to but with black fingernails – inflict fatal microwave burns on anyone they hug, resulting in yellow smoke shooting out of the victims as well.

For the next 73 minutes it’s evenly-staged death hugs and Sheriff Billy running all over the place in search of the children who have taken up smoking. Point blank rifle blasts only knock the brats down as they get right back up and are ready for a big ’ol hug.

Tedious, even by 1980s’ standard, is the first thing that comes to mind while watching The Children (1980) a sorta lurid and slow-paced cheapo, though it’s rare to see kids taking a direct shotgun blast to the chest. Oddly, I found that to be quite entertaining.