Trying to find something to occupy my boredom, I stumbled upon an old movie called Once Bitten (1985), starring a young Jim Carrey and the ever gorgeous Lauren Hutton. I wanted to determine if this movie may have been one of those bizarre 80s vampire movies I had seen back in the day because I vaguely recall a gorgeous female vampire and a teenager being bitten. While those qualities do exist in this movie, I can’t say for certain if this is the exact movie from memory but perhaps that’s only caused as a result of this movie being unmemorable in the first place.
As a mid 80s movie, Once Bitten seems to embrace the style and feeling of a teenage romper from that period. While being called a teenage horror comedy, this movie is more horrifically unfunny and not really having any semblance of being for teenagers outside of the stereotypical peer pressure in that period “to get laid.” If Hollywood started to produce more boardroom style pieces around that period, Once Bitten certainly would fit as a prototype for the future as this movie hits all the right notes at the precise times along with having jokes and a reasonably tight plot except there’s one major problem: this movie is god awful.
There seems to be a sophomore attempt at weak social commentary where the main joke is that you have an ancient vampire countess who finds it impossible in an urban sprawl like Los Angeles to find a virgin to literally feed her needs. As though to emphasize this point of teenage promiscuity around this period, one scene has Jim Carrey exiting his ice cream truck (where he fails to copulate with his girlfriend) to stumble in a field of other cars where assumed other teenagers clearly are having a romp in their own vehicles.
That is just a simple sample of the base humor beset in this movie. Most of the characters are downright unremarkable or annoying except for the Countess played by Lauren Hutton and her butler/gay servant (who is played by Cleavon Little of Blazing Saddles sheriff fame). Cleavon is probably the best actor in this entire mess as he’s not over the top yet has an intriguing quality without disturbing the film, unlike the bulk of the supporting characters. Lauren Hutton remains a class act but it’s hard to hate her because she’s so beautiful, elegant, charming and sultry in this. Quite honestly, there’s not enough of either but perhaps that’s probably a good thing because that might’ve oversaturated the film and made me hate them as much as everyone else.
Besides, Jim Carrey as Mark Kendall, we have his girlfriend played by Karen Kopins and his two dopey friends who aren’t anyone I recognize nor care about and practically ruined a good chunk of the film for me because they were annoying and incompetent both in an intentional and unintentional manner. The girlfriend, Robin Pierce, starts off as what appears to be a goody two-shoes type who really isn’t that good to begin with and more bitchy. Her primary quality is that she doesn’t want sex and is very obsessive over Mark, which may project a certain type of teenage female persona around that period. However, the film even tells the viewer this issue with Mark talking about how teenagers ought to act. It’s quite offensive in all honesty and as someone who grew up in this period, I still could not find anything here noteworthy nor funny.
The two dopey friends are your candidates for your acne Clearasil commercials in Jamie and Robin. Working at some odd burger stand (for which I would NEVER eat at given their unhygienic dispositions and handling of the place), these two bozos’ other qualities are simply that they are ultra horny and fear leaving high school as virgins. They don’t seem to have any real reason to be friends with Mark outside of the three having a sort of toxic relationship with one another in giving each other unnecessary peer pressure to conform to supposed social norms at that time.
Then you have Mark who is a very confused character. Like his friends, there’s nothing that really stands out personality-wise outside of the fact that he’s slightly shy. But we never get any insight whatsoever about his hobbies, his academic standing (outside of never appearing in science lab despite appearing in a science lab to dissect a frog) and having your basic suburban parents that seem meddlesome in his affairs for no good reason outside of being 80s parents. Also, for whatever reason Mark runs an ice cream truck as a business. There’s no actual owner to this truck and we can only assume that Mark had purchased it and sells ice cream for a living while in high school. If anything Mark, I’m guessing, is projecting the awkward teenager type which makes him become this unlikely candidate for the Countess in her machinations.
Regardless, at some point Mark with his two dufus buddies decide that they need to break their virgin streak by traveling to Hollywood for a night on the town. If anything, these scenes are nothing more than to provide the camera crew an excuse to show off more 80s images around that area, which in all honesty are both enjoyable and frustrating to watch. Since my family never went to Hollywood in that period, I can’t say for certain what that area is like nor the accuracy. But it did remind me a bit of the scenes where Sarah Conner from The Terminator went to a club to hide.
Anyway, the trio find a bizarre singles bar where they have these phones at tables to dial up other tables of interest. One of the idiot friends meets a tranvestite so that Hollywood can have a laugh at LGBQT+ culture of the period (and there’s a bunch of these btw in this movie). But Mark ends up getting invited to the bar by the Countess herself. Now, considering these are high school kids, I’m surprised that they managed to get in at all. Mark ends up lying to the Countess about his age in trying to pass himself off as a college electrical engineering student who is studying nuclear chemistry and trying to solve the acid rain problems. Again, you can see just how painful the jokes are here. However, the only thing that matters to the Countess, of course, is Mark’s virginity.
After a silly barroom brawl, Mark is taken by the Countess and her chauffeur to her mansion in the hills. She manages to bite his thigh to start the process of retaining her youth. Inexplicably as part of this process, the Countess is required as a vampire to drink the blood of a virgin three times before the end of Halloween. How any of these rules came into play doesn’t matter because this movie clearly doesn’t care about details outside of scraping a few rules here and there to try to mangle together some story.
From there, Mark goes through various bad dreams as he evolves into this vampire where people begin to mistake him for a vampire (or rather correctly guess his transformation). He does things such as sleep in his trunk, grows disdain for sunlight and even mistakes drinking blood from hamburger meat instead of orange juice. After scaring some kids ordering some ice cream at his truck, Mark realizes something drastic has gone wrong and goes to a church across the way to seek redemption for his supposed sins. Unfortunately, the father (or rather a drunk who might’ve decided to fuck with the guy) ends up telling Mark that he should just grab a shovel because he’s buried in shit.
There’s a high school Halloween party which Mark goes to with Robin that seems more like a standard prom night type of deal. The Countess and the chauffeur show up to try and get the Countess’ last bite in before Halloween can finish but Robin and her have a duel through a dance with Mark in between. It’s a typical back and forth type of battle with Mark being torn between the sultry Countess and his more innocent girlfriend (who dresses up as Raggedy Ann I think?). However, to combat the Countess, Robin tears off her childish gimmick and sluts it up to win back Mark’s heart (or penis) while the Countess sulks off with her chauffeur. Then Mark wins the costume competition as a vampire, for which he denies being in saying it’s not a costume (he’s more of a pre-Goth kid. He’s just missing some Siouxsie and the Banshees background tunes for the complete look)
Anyway, Mark is upset and Robin tries to console him about the incident. He then sees that he lacks a reflection and realizes that he, indeed, is becoming a vampire, which makes Robin more forgiving for the way she acted and highly concerned over Mark’s transformation. Actually, before this all happens, she does have Mark’s two friends attempt to learn if Mark has a pair of bite marks on his legs which leads to another unfunny gay joke involving them looking at his pecker in the shower.
Somehow Robin gets kidnapped which forces Mark’s hand to locate her at the Countess’ mansion. He brings his buddies along because what are friends for and they slip into the house to find Robin tied up to a chair. They free her but at the same time are ambushed by the Countess’ minions and are all taken hostage. The vampires reveal a special chamber where a device for restraining Mark is unveiled that would expedite the Countess’ final bite. Of course, the good guys free themselves, grabbing some torches (with Robin trying to use a cross, which apparently only works in the movies) and there’s a stupid chase scene. The two groups split up with the two friends somewhat sacrificing themselves to help Mark and Robin escape. Eventually, the two friends meet up with two of the vampire girls and seemingly want to engage in intercourse despite their ineptness while Mark and Robin flee.
Down the line, Mark and Robin run around the mansion to end back up in the coffin room where they hide in the Countess’ own coffin. When the Countess and her minions uncover Mark and Robin, they learn that they are too late, Mark has apparently copulated with Robin, which leads to another horrible 80s joke of the nerd/awkward type taking less than a minute to achieve orgasm, but it’s still sufficient to deter the Countess from using Mark as her solution for eternal life. The Countess ages before their eyes and wanders away with the chauffeur as he attempts to offer some solutions like Kansas, for which she grieves that she’ll never find another virgin again. Of course, while they depart, Mark and Robin figure that they should continue their intercourse while Robin has the epiphany in agreeing with the Countess that they should enjoy sex that causes Mark to admit, “I’ve created a monster.”
So this mess of a plot, while tidy, just is bad. It’s just a bunch of bad jokes that probably weren’t funny when they were originally conceived and demonstrates more of the puerile mind set of writers for cheap comedies made at that time. Outside of the two aforementioned villain characters, everyone else here is flat out boring and annoying as hell. With Mark it’s hard to get behind him as he’s given almost no character development nor background besides being a sub-average teenage almost nerdy kid joke without any brains whatsoever.
Even though I am bashing the character of Mark, the main reason anyone might even conceive of seeking this piece of trash out is to see Jim Carrey perform before he became a real super star (most notably after his Ace Ventura: Pet Detective movie that propelled Jim sky high). This is Jim when he was roughly 22 or 23 and he’s quite handsome and innocent here. But you can tell that there is talent in there somewhere because of how he’s constantly trying to steal his scenes with his usual shtick. His dance with the Countess and Robin for instance is actually quite good and anytime he’s given a chance to make his trademark Jim Carrey rubber faces, it’s fascinating to witness.
Yet I want to say that Jim Carrey for all the charisma and natural talent he possesses with his expressiveness, he’s simply not very funny to me. With Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, as an example, the only thing I found remotely amusing was Cannibal Corpse and Jim Carrey bopping around to death metal inside an underground metal club. The rest of his antics and the movie were about on par with Once Bitten’s level of humor, except Ace Ventura became the Jim Carrey show (since he was weighed down by horribly worthless side kicks). The thing with Jim Carrey is that you watch to see his facial expressions and what he’s going to do next. He’s got a unique, natural talent for acting goofy but sometimes I think he’s so over-the-top that this talent ends up sacrificing any potential for humor.
Besides Jim Carrey, the other minor novelty for fans of a certain actress is none other than Will & Grace’s Megan Mullally. She has a very minor role, popping up roughly twice. But her highly identifiable voice makes her almost recognizable for those who enjoy Megan’s work. For me seeing her was more of a curiosity since this was well before her Will & Grace days where she made her mark as the memorable socialite Karen Walker.
I have to admit that I did like Lauren Hutton here (if you couldn’t tell). The few roles I get to see of her I’ve generally liked but I simply think she’s beautiful and she doesn’t kill scenes trying to over extend herself. She didn’t do anything wrong in this movie necessarily but the script really was bad and did her no favors.
Beyond the over simplified lens of the attempt of teenage promiscuity discourse here, the only other remotely noteworthy piece of commentary that something like this can make is the idea of the cougar before the term became more mainstream. If anything the Countess represents a cougar, one seeking some unwitting youth through the notion of having a lady acting being a vampire while living in some secluded mansion presumably in the Hollywood Hills. Because this person is a vampire in the film, it’s harder to make that type of connection beyond the limited capacity in which it’s presented here.
Regardless, this movie should be viewed simply as a novelty for its period and to catch a few key actors/actresses in their earlier roles. There’s nothing really profound here and I’m sure there’s other movies which have better portrayals of the 80s than this one off.
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