We dig deep into the Wicked Horror TV archives and give My Grandpa Is A Vampire its long overdue regards!
My Grandpa Is A Vampire is the kind of movie that exemplifies how awesome Wicked Horror TV is.
Unfamiliar with Wicked Horror TV? Well, you should definitely give it a look. There’s a million, billion streaming options out there, but the absolute variety on Wicked Horror TV puts it in a class by its own. We’ve got everything from silent era classics to obscure TV series to brand new indie horror movies that you won’t find anywhere else. And to say the Wicked Horror TV vault is glutted with hidden genre gems is a major understatement.
It would be so easy to highlight the Wicked Horror TV service by showcasing a beloved classic, or an evergreen comfort movie, or something that’s super esoteric. But I think My Grandpa Is A Vampire is the best possible place to begin with the streaming goodness.
Why? Because odds are, you’ve never even heard of My Grandpa Is A Vampire before and if you have seen it, it’s probably been a few decades and you can’t remember a single detail about it. So it’s a movie that captures the magical nostalgia ephemera on two fronts: as both a foggy memory of yesteryear AND some undiscovered piece of kitsch that ran parallel with all of your childhood and teenage years classics.
And oh yeah, I almost forgot the big drawing point of the whole movie — it has the dude who played Grandpa Munster from The Munsters basically playing the same character from the classic TV show, only the filmmakers were forbidden from explicitly saying it because of international copyright laws. But we all know what they were getting at here.
My Grandpa Is A Vampire is a very unusual movie for a lot of different reasons. It definitely made the video store rounds in the U.S. in the early ‘90s and I am fairly certain it was shown on premium cable a few times, but it obviously never had the same cultural permeation that other gateway horror favorites like Hocus Pocus and Ernest Scared Stupid had. That probably has something to do with the movie being a New Zealand production that tries really, really hard to look and sound like an American movie. Which is kinda hard when everybody in the cast except like two or three people sound like they just walked off the set of Meet the Feebles or Dead Alive or something.
Of course, this movie is all Al Lewis. He’s dressed identically to his more famous Munsters character and I’m pretty sure the title having the word “Grandpa” in it isn’t coincidental. Weirdly enough, though, the movie was based on a radio play called Moonrise, which is also the working title for the film (which even appears as the onscreen title of the movie on early VHS prints of the film!) Even weirder, My Grandpa Is A Vampire isn’t even the official Wikipedia-recognized title of the movie; pretty much everywhere outside of the North America, this movie is called — for whatever reason — Grampire.
It feels like a bit of a pointless mission to outline the full plot of My Grandpa Is A Vampire. I mean, the title itself pretty much tells you half of the movie, and from there it’s pretty much deep spoiler territory. But I can give you a few spoiler-free thoughts on the movie before you head into it and watch it over on Wicked Horror TV.
For starters, even though it’s a patently New Zealand production the filmmakers still tried to Americanize it as much as they could. The two child actor leads have pretty solid American accents and they even dress like middle schoolers circa 1992 (although having that one kid sport a Chicago Bulls cap and a Los Angeles Lakers jacket is an obvious fashion faux pas.) It kinda feels like an early ‘90s movies, but if you told me it was filmed in 1985 I could believe that, too.
OK, so we get it: Al Lewis’ character is a grandpa. And he’s also a vampire. So what does a grandpa vampire do, especially in an Oceanic country not exactly known for its rich vampire mythology? Well, that’s where My Grandpa Is A Vampire comes into its own. It’s a movie with some spooky and creepy themes, but the whole thing is largely played for inoffensive laughs. That being said, it’s still a creation of the early 1990s so there’s some weird values dissonance stuff going on. Case in point? A major plot point in which Grandpa has to hide out in a cave to keep from being impaled by vampire hunters, so he tasks his grandchildren with procuring him plenty of alcohol to quell his boredom. Ah man, watching ten-year-olds steal liquor … what a knee-slapper!
I don’t think I’m spoiling too much when I say that the best scene in the entire movie — and pretty much the reason to watch this movie — is the scene where Grandpa Munster … I mean, Grandpa Cooger … celebrates a near-death escape by taking a late night trip to McDonald’s. Boy, if you thought the McScene from Mac and Me was egregious product placement, wait until you see what goes down here. There’s even a scene where the kids literally squeeze all of the blood from a Big Mac into a plastic cup so Grandpa has something to drink in front of a Ronald McDonald statue. And as gross as it sounds reading it, trust me, it’s way grosser watching it unfold in real time.
My Grandpa Is A Vampire is what you might call a “guilty pleasure.” All I know is that it slowly grew on me over time and its bizarre charm is unmistakable, even when its toeing the line between some really macabre and grim material. Really, it’s the perfect “not quite summer, not quite fall” movie — the kind of impromptu viewing that gets you in a mood to ixnay the Tiki Torches and watermelon cocktails and break out the Dollar Tree Halloween props and pumpkin spice everything pronto.
And whenever you’re ready to watch it, Wicked Horror TV is waiting for you.
