Once Bitten

Mark Kendall has what he considers a serious problem.

He's ready to sleep with his girlfriend Robin. Robin isn't.

A night out eventually puts Mark in the orbit of a mysterious Countess who appears to offer him exactly the kind of attention he's been looking for.

There's just one fairly significant complication.

She's a vampire.

The Countess has survived for centuries by drinking the blood of male virgins, something that is becoming increasingly difficult for her to find. Mark therefore represents considerably more than another handsome teenager.

After their encounter, Mark begins behaving differently, leaving Robin to work out exactly what has happened to her boyfriend before the Countess can finish what she started.

It's a wonderfully daft premise, and the film knows it.

One of the biggest reasons to revisit Once Bitten today is Jim Carrey.

This was years before Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber turned him into a superstar, but many of the ingredients of the performer audiences would later recognise are already visible.

Carrey throws himself into physical comedy.

His expressions stretch further than they probably need to. His body seems incapable of remaining still when a joke can be extracted from it. And even when the material around him is deliberately ridiculous, he commits completely.

Mark is considerably more restrained than some of Carrey's famous 1990s characters, but you can see the machinery beginning to turn.

It's fascinating watching a future comedy giant before the rest of Hollywood had quite realised what it had on its hands.

Jim Carrey might now be the name that immediately jumps from the poster, but Lauren Hutton is essential to why Once Bitten works.

Her Countess is elegant, seductive and completely comfortable with the absurdity surrounding her.

Rather than playing the vampire as a snarling monster, Hutton leans into the character's glamour. The Countess treats her supernatural predicament almost like an inconvenient beauty regime.

She needs virgin blood.

Mark has virgin blood.

Problem solved.

At least, that's the plan.

Hutton's composed performance also provides an effective contrast with Carrey's increasingly frantic Mark. The more his situation spirals out of control, the more entertaining that difference becomes.

Robin could easily have been little more than the girlfriend required by the plot.

Instead, Karen Kopins gets to become an important part of the film's escalating battle between ordinary teenage romance and supernatural seduction.

Mark's encounter with the Countess inevitably puts their relationship under pressure, but Robin isn't simply there to watch everything happen.

As the film becomes increasingly absurd, she gets pulled directly into its vampire madness.

That gives the central relationship more energy than the basic premise might suggest — particularly once the film decides that subtlety is no longer required.

Which, thankfully, happens quite early.

There is absolutely no mistaking when Once Bitten was made.

The clothes.

The hair.

The nightclubs.

The music.

The teenage comedy.

The unapologetic silliness.

Even the movie's version of vampirism feels distinctly 1980s.

This isn't the shadowy gothic world of Dracula. The Countess has been transported into contemporary Los Angeles, where an ancient supernatural problem collides with high-school relationships and sexual frustration.

That collision is exactly what makes the movie fun.

It doesn't simply parody vampires.

It turns them into part of 1980s teenage culture.

There are plenty of reasons Once Bitten has survived as an 80s cult curiosity, but its school dance sequence deserves special mention.

What begins as teenage jealousy escalates into an increasingly theatrical confrontation involving Mark, Robin and the Countess.

It's ridiculous.

It's energetic.

It's gloriously overdone.

And it's exactly the kind of sequence that explains the appeal of the film better than any serious analysis ever could.

The scene also gives Carrey another opportunity to show the physical ability that would become such a huge part of his later comedy career.

Sometimes a movie doesn't need to be sophisticated.

Sometimes you just need Jim Carrey involved in an absurd supernatural dance battle.

One reason Once Bitten belongs in a conversation about 1980s vampire cinema is how dramatically the decade was changing the creature.

The traditional vampire wasn't disappearing, but filmmakers were increasingly willing to play with the mythology.

Fright Night brought vampires into suburbia.

The Lost Boys would turn them into impossibly cool teenage outsiders.

Near Dark would push the genre toward something darker and more violent.

Once Bitten went in another direction entirely.

It made the vampire part of a sex comedy.

There's still blood, fangs and supernatural danger, but fear isn't really the objective.

The joke is.

Nobody needs to pretend Once Bitten is a forgotten masterpiece.

It isn't.

But cult movies don't necessarily survive because they're perfect.

They survive because there's something about them people want to return to.

And Once Bitten has plenty.

There's an early Jim Carrey performance, Lauren Hutton having enormous fun as an ageing vampire Countess, a premise that could only have been embraced this enthusiastically during the 1980s and enough bizarre comedy to keep the whole thing moving.

Even its rough edges have become part of the charm.

Watching it four decades later isn't really about discovering an overlooked horror classic.

It's about discovering a wonderfully strange piece of 1985.

Among the great vampire movies of the 1980s, Once Bitten occupies its own peculiar little corner.

It isn't as stylish as The Hunger.

It isn't as frightening as Near Dark.

It doesn't have the enduring cool of The Lost Boys.

And it isn't trying to.

Once Bitten is a goofy vampire comedy that knows exactly how ridiculous its premise is and runs with it.

More importantly, it captures Jim Carrey at a fascinating moment — before international superstardom, but with flashes of the fearless physical comedian he was about to become.

Add Lauren Hutton's glamorous Countess, Karen Kopins' increasingly determined Robin and an enormous helping of pure 1980s silliness, and you've got a vampire movie that's difficult not to enjoy on its own terms.

Nearly forty years later, this one still has bite — it just comes with a punchline.

Verdict

★★★½☆ — 3.5/5

Still has bite: Yes — in the silliest possible way.

Best for: 80s comedy fans, Jim Carrey completists and anyone who likes their vampires considerably less serious.

80s vampire credentials: Big hair, teenage hormones, nightclubs, physical comedy and a glamorous vampire Countess. You can't ask for much more.