Inbred Redneck Vampires
directed by Joe Sherlock
starring Bill Bradford, Scott Shanks, Rob Merickel
SRS Cinema
Every crappy movie should be this enjoyable. Out in rural Backwash, Washington, vampire Catherine (Erin Arbogast) and her familiar Lendel (Warren E.B.B.) are on the run. They settle near Ma and Pa Poissier (Carrie Davis and Mike Heggs), who won a contest in “Bull Inseminating and Room Decorating Monthly” magazine and their bathroom will be redecorated by French interior decorator and vampire hunter Jean-Claude Les Eaux (Shanks). He moves in, meets their well-endowed daughter Eva Poissier (Lindsey A. Hope), and joins li’l Junior Poissier (Merickel) in peeping on the neighbor woman in the shower. Li’l Junior can urinate like a fire hose, and his dwarfish buddy Cletus (Bradford) can down beer by simply opening his gullet. They may be uneducated, but they do have skills. Tripe Days loom, and Ma Poissier is determined to win the tripe cooking contest against her archenemy, Eunice Peterson (Dee Alsman). Her baker’s secret? Cinnamon. Yummy! If only the rest of the town hadn’t turned into vampires.
OK, it’s low budget crap, but it’s some of the finest low budget crap ever filmed. Originally released in 2004 as Bloodsucking Redneck Vampires, you can see bits of the original title in some of the special features. Most of the actors are so wooden you could drive them through Catherine’s heart, but there are flashes of 14-karat-gold-filled brilliance. Whenever Bradford’s Cletus is on screen, he can pull your attention away from Eva’s cleavage with his distorted waddle and even more distorted beans and beer-fueled temper. He’s a great contrast to Shanks’s mix of Euro snobbery and latent bisexuality, and JP maintains his fakey accent though the barrage of beans and tripe jokes that fill the air. Li’l Jr. Poissier might well be an actual redneck, but I can tell he’s been to acting school. The real rednecks in the film sound like they’re reading their lines off the back bar – many of the cast were locals working for free beer and what counts for fame in the rural Cascades. My least favorite “pro” here is Ms. Arbogast as the arrogant vampire; she feels forced and rather dry.
I admit I love lurid titles like Inbred Redneck Vampires, and of course most of THAT sort of film is as awful as your mother imagined it. However, this flick is a pleasant exception, and while it’s no Uwe Boll film, it’s packed with believable cartoonish characters, plenty of fart jokes, topless women, and redneck stereotypes that actually draw sincere laughter and not just Dogpatch condescension. Rent this one for the title, but watch it for the comedy.
SRS Cinema: http://www.srscinema.com
