Vamp 1986

Two college students, Keith, Chris Makepeace and AJ, hatch a plan to hire a stripper to bribe their way into a campus fraternity so they can trade a noisy, cramped dorm for a place of their own. They borrow a Cadillac from Duncan, Gedde Watanabe a lonely, wealthy student who insists on tagging along to scout strip clubs in a nearby city. The trio lands in a club tucked away in a shady quarter, where they’re captivated by the surreal, artistic performance of a stripper named Katrina, Grace Jones. AJ crosses to her dressing room to press the deal, and Katrina pounces in a flood of dark drama: she pins him to a waterbed slick with blood, seduces him with slow, hypnotic touches, and then, as she begins to change into a vampire, she shatters his arm to keep him from resisting and sinks a deep bite into his neck.

Back on the street, Keith grows anxious when AJ doesn’t return to the bar. He enlists Amaretto, Dedee Pfeiffer a waitress who insists she knows him, and together they hunt through the neighborhood while dodging a brutal albino street gang and a rising vampire presence. In a dumpster, Keith uncovers AJ’s corpse, only to confront a jarring twist when he returns to the club and finds the undead AJ waiting for him. AJ confesses that he is now a vampire, and, moved by Keith’s willingness to risk everything for him, decides to end his own torment by driving a jagged piece of broken furniture through his heart.

Keith, Amaretto, and Duncan flee the club, but their car is rammed by vehicles controlled by vampires. They survive the crash and discover, with growing dread, that Duncan has also become one of the undead. The trio escapes the burning vehicle, though Duncan is left behind as it explodes. In the sewers, Amaretto reveals her real name is Allison and that she knows Keith from a game of spin the bottle in fifth grade. The escape takes them through a macabre underworld where they burn a nest of vampires, but Allison is captured by Katrina, who remains formidable despite the daylight she’s wearing as a mask. An arrow to the face and a pipe driven through the chest fail to stop Katrina, yet Keith kills her by firing arrows through a covered grate, letting in sunlight that wipes out the vampire threat.

They nearly reach the surface, but Vlad, Katrina’s vampire consort, closes in. Vlad is dispatched in a sudden, startling moment when a revived AJ stakes him from behind, revealing how the stakes he once wielded misfired—turned out to be formica. With daylight beckoning, Keith and Allison crawl toward the safety of the morning sun, while AJ lingers in the shadows of the sewers, plotting a strange, stubborn plan to stay close to Keith—whether by night school or a graveyard shift—so they can continue living as roommates in a world that is finally waking up to a new and dangerous reality.