I bought a Vampire Motorcycle (1991)
Sometimes a bargain is not a bargain
Back in the early 90s when the internet was purely a twinkle in the eye of a bunch of college professors there was no such thing as eBay or Amazon; and some people may be thankful for that. It did mean however that you had to physically go and buy things and that means having to deal with people.
And not everyone these days are particularly communication savvy; it’s a sad indictment of our society that a whole generation of kids are unlikely to ever get the thrill of bargaining your way to a good deal, especially when it comes to motorbikes.
In olden times, you had to scour through the pages of Auto Trader, looking for a bargain. You’d then take a drive up to where the vehicle was on sale and take everyone at face value when you purchased the second-hand motorbike or car. You didn’t know the history, you took it on faith, and you made a judgement on what you felt was right. I mean who would ever think that a motorbike could be possessed by a blood-thirsty demon that wants to extract revenge on his killers?
A hole in the petrol tank could have come from anywhere couldn’t it? Something that can pierce quarter inch thick steel has to be a stone chip really doesn’t it? Not to mention is looks like a crossbow bolt hole.
Well that’s what you get in 1990’s Birmingham, a nice cheap Classic Norton with a pierced petrol tank for a £1100. Bargain!
Nick Oddie or ‘Noddy’ (Neil Morrisey) as our hapless motorbiking courier is called, buys the bike, takes it back to his garage, repairs it (whilst telling his girlfriend that he only spent £600 on it) and this is where the fun begins. A full on further 90 minutes of rampaging vampire motorcycle fun takes place very akin to some of the better Carry On movies but without the titillation.
And that’s intended as a compliment. For the film is at it’s best when we have a birds-eye view of the motorbike on its rampage, filling its tank from the blood of its victims.
It clearly has a grudge against the gang that murdered its occultist master as when they show up again in act 2, the bike takes control whilst Noddy is on board and his first doubts as to whether there is something odd with the bike come to light and this leads to confrontation later in the film as they all end up in the same pub which surprisingly has a back room full of armour and swords. Honestly just watch it.
The film culminates in Noddy finding a priest and asking him to perform an exorcism on the bike back at his garage. The sight of the priest played by C3-PO (Anthony Daniels), trying to douse the bike in holy water is quite hilarious and caps off the film quite nicely as it tries to defend itself.
The actors don’t quite ham is up here, there’s no sense of them just phoning it in, but let’s face it, they’re not the best actors by any means. I can probably count the number of Bafta’s they’ve got on no fingers.
Neil Morrisey is, well, Neil Morrisey. He seems to play the same sort of hapless characters everywhere. I suspect his girlfriend in this possibly only got the job as she was married to him at the time, and Michael Elphick is dragged in as they are all on hiatus from filming Boon.
And then there’s Anthony Daniels as the biker priest. After Return of the Jedi, he’d probably not known where his next pay check was going to come so he’s taken this opportunity and thrown himself head first into it. The sight of him wielding his razor-sharp ‘shuriken’ crosses in an effort to stop the relentless march of the bike is something to behold and serves to bring the true nature out of the bike out of itself as it transforms into a killing machine.
There’s a delightful charm to them all when put together, that definitely makes this film worth watching. There is a great premise, some great scenes and in-movie jokes, like the name of the Chinese take-away owned by none other than legend Burt Kwok or the scene were Noddy sees his decapitated friends head floating in a toilet. All these serve to prove they’re not taking this film too seriously and they know it.
Overall, if you are looking for a fun 90 minutes it’s worth a watch even if it does seem a bit dated at times.
I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle is available to watch on Amazon Prime
