Retro Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The other night, meine Frau decided she wanted to watch something on DVD with me. This happens approximately once every 4 or 5 months, so I told her to pick whatever she wanted. What she wanted was the DVD we got for free from sending in coupons from cereal boxes: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Just so we're clear, this is the 1992 movie starring Kristy Swanson as Buffy, not the TV series starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. The TV series is awesome--Annette and I bonded over the TV show, and we've watched every episode. The movie...not so much.

I'd seen the movie shortly after it first came out many years ago, but I really didn't remember much of it. I was in for some surprises. First, the movie was actually written by Joss Whedon. For some reason I always assumed JW just liked the idea of the Buffy movie and decided he could write a TV show about it, but no. It was all him from the beginning. And the movie definitely has some great Whedonesque lines in it. Second, though the movie's stars, Swanson and Luke Perry, pretty much dropped off the face of the earth in the mid-90s, the supporting cast was surprisingly strong. There's a phoning-it-in Donald Sutherland as Buffy's watcher, Paul Reubens in arguably his best non-Pee Wee role, and Rutger Hauer, who looks like he'd aged 30 years since his role in Blade Runner (which had been filmed 10 years earlier). Hauer, who could be hypnotizing in some of his films, was almost undoubtedly drunk during every scene in this movie. The biggest surprise was two-time best actress winner Hillary Swank in her first feature film role, as a ditsy valley girl with killer lines like "Get out of my facial!" Then there's Ben Affleck's uncredited role as "basketball player #10". Don't blink or you'll miss him.Though technically released in the 90s, this movie has "80s" stamped all over it. From the fashion to the big hair to the often eye-roll inducing dialogue (wow am I glad Joss Whedon improved), this movie had to have been dated before it was even released. Now it's amusing on a whole different level. And the special effects are "special" the way some Olympics are "special". It looks like one episode of the Buffy TV series had a bigger effects budget than this movie. Rough stuff.

So is it worth watching? Or watching again, for those people who haven't seen it for 15 years? Unless you're a huge Joss Whedon fan are have a high tolerance for 80s camp, probably not. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, but I won't be watching it again for at least another 15 years. Or at least I'll watch the whole TV series again first, to remind myself how awesome this character is, and that Joss Whedon is one of the best writers working today. The dude had to start somewhere.