Before Sinners was picking undead chords and From Dusk Till Dawn strummed along to a scantily clad Salma Hayek, 1986’s Vamp busted out massively bombed in empty theaters. With the statuesque domme Grace Jones bringing New Wave androgyny to the neck-biting role as a vampire demigod, Vamp set up the whole blueprint of the “vampiric whores” mythology. It’s a blood-caked piece of dark erotica with a pulsating electronic beat sequenced with shrill screams, grimy alleys and an artistic flair for the supernatural. 

On the other side of the churched-up coin, Vamp is a long-forgotten piece of semi-demonic trash that implies a much better movie, a conceit of both vampire lore and semi-nude ladies, one I still enjoy in all its low-budget, badly edited, completely rushed grandeur.

Released when horror-comedies were trying to get their foot (and other extremities) through the door, the movie starts with a trio of ’80s movie teens, Keith (Chris Makepeace, Meatballs), A.J. (Robert Rusler, Thrashin’) and Duncan (Gedde Watanabe, countless Asian stereotypes), trying to find strippers for their frat party. Craigslist hadn’t been invented yet, so they drive to the big bad city with a soundalike copy of Robert Palmer’s “Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)” blaring.

They enter the After Dark Club, a rough but serene establishment where white women with jiggly asses in spandex dance onstage. Then Katrina (Jones) performs a very arty, very kabuki, very unerotic striptease; think David Bowie meets Keith Haring at a downtown art show with fusion tapas and no lube, and you’ll get the vibe. Being a hungry vampire, she eats A.J.’s heart, drains him and, sadly, is put on ice for most of the movie.

That’s okay, though, because Keith meets a ditsy waitress (Dedee Pfeiffer, Michelle’s sister), eats some cockroaches and wars with an albino punk (Billy Drago). Eventually, the undead A.J. helps him save the day (night?). In the climax, Katrina flips the bird from beyond the grave.

The best part of Vamp is the casting. Even though she’s barely part of the movie and has no discernible dialogue, fresh off Conan the Destroyer and A View to a Kill, Jones casts an intimating shadow over the comedic proceedings, made all the stranger by the club managers who look like they came out of a Goodfellas casting call. What’s her story, I wonder …

The guys are also well cast. As the hero , once-a-nerd Makepeace holds his own, with ’80s mainstay Rusler doing his preppy-punk thing that, kudos, he does well. The biggest surprise is Watanabe, doing an Asian take on a W.A.S.P. that’s kind of groundbreaking when you think about the time.

What hurts Vamp is that it’s half-baked. It has a real storyline and some great characters, but does nothing with them. I could see someone wanting to remake this in the Sinners/From Dusk Till Dawn vein, but I guess that ship has been burned, most likely with a raised finger. Oh, well, at least Jones’s end-credits song, “Vamp”, is actually pretty darn good. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

If your bucket list line-items “Hear Barney Miller utter the phrase, ‘knee-deep in pussy,'” I come bearing great news: Micro Budget allows you to cross that off. It’s merely one surprise in a movie that qualifies as a surprise itself. After all, “improvised indie mockumentary” doesn’t engender confidence these days, and its generic, Google-challenged title further diminishes hope.

Give yourself over to it anyway, because here’s even greater news: Micro Budget is capital-F funny — enough to threaten triggering a hernia.

Speaking of do-or-die to-dos, Ohio nobody Terry (Patrick Noth) has always longed to make a movie. His ever-patient, exceedingly pregnant spouse, Erica (real-life wife Emilea Wilson), supports her hubs so much, she’s agreed to uproot their lives to L.A. so Terry can achieve his dream before their firstborn arrives to forever postpone such folly.

Naturally, in tackling an ambitious disaster film, Terry has bitten off more than he can chew, much less get his big mouth around. Lucky for us, his cousin (director Morgan Evans, who co-wrote with Noth) is around to document it all the behind-the-scenes chaos. While shooting in a rented Airbnb home in Malibu, the cast members inquire about their motivation, which Terry answers: “A big, scary meteor coming to Earth.” The dialogue he’s given them is equally clueless: “I can’t believe Toronto’s gone. I can’t believe Drake died.” A running gag hinges on Terry’s inability to understand movies don’t have to be shot in order.

If Terry has no idea what he’s doing, wait until you meet the intimacy coordinator, a skeevy guy (Neil Casey, 2016’s Ghostbusters) whose first question arriving to set is, “Now, who’s porkin’?”

Bawdy and boisterous without slipping into hateful, Micro Budget boasts a solid lineup of comedians both known (Chris Parnell, Maria Bamford, Bobby Moynihan, sitcom legend Hal Linden) and deserve-to-be (Nichole Sakura, Brandon Michael Hall, Carla Jimenez, Jon Gabrus), as well as a superstar cameo I won’t spoil. There’s not a weak spot in the bunch.

If you can’t handle cringe comedy, move along, little ones. Not for nothing does the “Lights. Camera. Asshole” tagline adorn its poster. While Micro Budget isn’t quite as successful as Christopher Guest’s Best in Show, it’s the next best thing. This isn’t Pulp Fiction, Scorsese. —Rod Lott

Get it at OVID.tv.