Unspeakable Horror!

Modoc instructs his vampire protegeMy Best Friend is a Vampire--I love this campy, super-cheezy vampire flick.  I love the relationships in the film: the relationship between Jeremy and his best friend Ralph (the "best friends" of the title), Jeremy and his kooky parents, and most importantly Jeremy and his vampire mentor Modoc (played with wonderful charm by Rene Auberjonois, whom I once had the great please of seeing speak at a Star Trek convention).  Interestingly enough, the love interest subplot between Jeremy and the androgynous Darla Blake is the flattest relationship in the whole movie.  For me, the relationship between Modoc and Jeremy is the real heart of the movie.

The movie is also notable for its gay subtext and its quasi-progressive message about vampire otherness. 

Once adorable young Jeremy gets bitten by the vampire seductress Nora (a "getting laid" moment very typical of 80's teen flicks), a shadowy stranger begins following Jeremy and lurking outside his bedroom window.  The stranger turns out to be Modoc, a charming and nurturing vampire mentor who dresses in wonderful 1987 style and drives a cool car.  Here I must admit that I have a huge crush on Rene Auberjonois in the movie.  I remember this actor from Benson, which I always watched as a child, and I never dreamed I would find him attractive, but there is something sexually enticing about the scene when Modoc shows up in Jeremy's bedroom to explain to Jeremy that the teen is now a vampire.  It makes me fantasize about Modoc showing up in my bedroom when I was a teenager.  Just like Jeremy, at first I would be alarmed, but I don't think I would have put up quite so much resistance. 

The cover for the DVD releaseThe primary gay subplot of the movie stems from this mentor relationship between Modoc and Jeremy.  First, his mother hears Modoc's voice in Jeremy's bedroom, so she knows Jeremy is secretly keeping a man in his bedroom, and then Modoc picks up Jeremy for school.  When Jeremy's parents see stylish, handsome Modoc drive away with Jeremy in his fancy car, and they see how Jeremy begins to behave strangely as he transitions into the "alternative lifestyle" of being a creature of the night, they assume that Modoc is Jeremy's new boyfriend and that their son is gay.  This part of the film is quite clever and funny--especially the scene when the parents are both reading pop-psychology books about what to do if your son is gay. 

Also, Modoc gives Jeremy a guide to being a vampire, a book which refers to being a vampire specifically as an "alternative lifestyle."  It is very easy to understand why Jeremy's parents mistake vampireness for homosexuality because the relationship between Modoc and Jeremy is full of gay cues. 

Here I must go on a fantasy digression.  After Modoc reveals himself and offers himself as a vampire mentor to Jeremy, of course Jeremy puts up all kinds of resistance, and then he pursues his dream date with Darla Blake.  I like to fantasize that instead, Jeremy leaves the window open for Modoc to join him again in the bedroom to instruct him in the "ways of the vampire."  There's also a wonderful scene between Modoc and Jeremy on the roof, and I imagine them embracing one another under the moonlight instead of saying goodbye.  Even at the end of the film, Modoc appears again and extends an invitation to Jeremy to accompany him into the world of the vampire night, but stupid Jeremy chooses to stay with his girlfriend in high school--what a dummy!  Modoc is quite simply a dreamboat!

Also, the scene when Jeremy "comes out" to Ralph as a vampire, Ralph's response is very similar to a homophobic response.  Instead of finding out his best friend is gay, Ralph finds out his best friend is a vampire, and the response on Ralph's part seems almost interchangeable.

Cute Young Vampire JeremyIn the final chapter of the film, Jeremy's parents reveal to Jeremy that they know the truth, and they accept their son as a homosexual.  Very disappointingly to me, they are quite happy and excited to find out that their son Jeremy is not gay, but a vampire instead, which sort-of undermines other progressive messages of the film. 

Most prominently, there is a quasi-political message about the vampire hunter, very fittingly named McCarthy.  Clearly, McCarthy's Van Helsing zeal for killing vampires is portrayed as paranoid witch-hunting, and he get his comeuppance when he is turned into a vampire--so now he must accept the otherness in himself that he demonizes in the vampires, and of course this realization happens instantly in a nice tidy conclusion, but it does have a happy little moral that I appreciate, despite the fact that Jeremy chooses banal, straight high school normality when he could have run off with charming, mysterious Modoc for a sweeping gay romance.  Maybe Jeremy will come to his senses.  In the meantime, I am leaving my window open for you, Modoc!