Director: Mike Mort
Release date: 2018
Contains spoilers
What the world needed, but didn’t know it, was a faux-80s action stop-motion animation. A piece that knowingly riffs that decade’s action flicks, in all their puerile glory. One created by a UK team so that they can really get beneath the skin of the US machismo such films represented. Yes, the gags will be underpinned by unapologetic juvenilia but there will be clever little observations that only stepping away from the source material will allow. Even the title has to be clarified (not only in what a trampire actually is, and we’ll come to that) with a character explaining that tramps, in UK English, are bums in US English… but bumpire wouldn’t work…
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| Trampire in the alley |
We are in the world of Chuck Steel (Mike Mort), one of LAPD’s finest… he is a “maverick, renegade, loose cannon, lone wolf, cop on the edge, who doesn't play by the rules”. An action hero, not for the ages but for the 80s (or 1985 to be precise, but its no longer 1985, it's 1986). But, before we meet him we see a drunken posh couple staggering down the road. He is too cheap to get a cab and takes a cut down an alleyway. They are attacked by a pair of trampires. Both are bitten but she gets away and runs out of the alley to be knocked down by a police car. Cue the 80s hair rock soundtrack over opening credits…
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| waking from a nightmare |
We are then on a roof top as Steel confronts a whole gang of ninjas whilst riding a motorbike (that fires lasers) – as the crime lord steals Steel’s wife, Lucy (Samantha Coughlan). After some (downright gory) mayhem, the crime lord is flying away and Steel pursues. He launches from an explosion off the roof and catches a rope ladder hanging from the escaping helicopter as Lucy is pushed out of the chopper. He grabs her as she falls, holding the chain of her crucifix but gravity is no friend and the chain snaps, Lucy falling to her death… Steel wakes from this recurring nightmare.
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| Captain Jack Schitt |
Steel’s boss, Captain Jack Schitt (also Mike Mort), is looking over the crime scene but the drunk rich man’s body is gone – his wife in hospital. He wonders how Steel is coping with his new partner Koloswski (Sam Roe). We cut and see that the overly nice uniform cop has found himself in a deadly high-speed pursuit, whilst Steel tells him that he doesn’t like him but it’s nothing personal. The chase ends in victory for Steel, though the criminals are rather… dead… Back in Schitt’s office we discover that Koloswski has shot himself. He gets a new partner, on exchange from the Swedish police.
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| boo-yah |
Steel is avoiding the new police shrink, Dr. Alex Cular (Jennifer Saunders) – the name, of course, a dead giveaway for us. By doing so he is, of course, neither confronting the truth about Lucy nor his irrational hatred of clowns. Her ministrations are 'helping' his colleagues though – each time we see the Captain he is an article of clothing further into cross-dressing, one colleague has so found his inner child that he now wears a diaper and carries a teddy, another has discovered his inner gimp. Steel, however, heads for the hospital where he finds a man attacking their unconscious surviving witness; he is arrested by Steel.
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| in sunlight |
He is Dr Van Rental (also Mike Mort) and, oh yes, they did… so Van Rental explains the lore – vampires were proud aristocrats in Transylvania but the peasants revolted and they became down on their luck. They indulged in binge drinking and their metabolism changed so that they require blood with high alcohol content and now only attack drunks. No longer vampires they are trampires and can be killed by stake through the liver. They can also be killed with holy (sobering) coffee, are killed by sunlight (mostly), and are burnt by crosses (still). There is a prophecy of their leader feeding on a being called the puritan, which will cause everlasting night and all water to turn into cheap cider (that’s the UK version). The prophecy also suggests a chosen one who can stop them… the trouble is Steel is bitten on the nose by a trampire in the form of a bat and hasn’t long before he too will become a trampire.
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| getting to the heart of the matter |
This was so much fun – I mentioned that it was juvenile, and it was – but sometimes you need that. This is the only flick I can think of where escape from the clutches of a vampire pig that has sprouted bat wings is achieved by pressing a cross to the testicles. It isn’t PC, it captures the machismo of the genre it primarily apes but it knows how far to push the gags without becoming a bore. The use of homeless characters as the othered vampire is non-exploitative as there is also a group of homeless who becomes the force of good. The stop motion and backgrounds are glorious and the voice acting works well. Great fun 7.5 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Amazon UK
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