Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

So. I never did get around to post why I rate "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (the TV-show) so highly (a trained eye might have noticed it's one of a few rated at five stars), and I'm not about to do so now either. It just takes a lot of time to even come close covering half the bases I need to get the message across. I think I'll rather save it for my revisit or a special occasion.

As usual, anything Whedon, I came late to the party, but at least I bring home the sexiest girl at the end of the night. It was the same with "Firefly", and in Buffy's case I even threw in the towel after 6-7 episodes the first time I tried getting into the show. Now I can't get enough of Whedon, the Buffyverse and everything even slightly related. I'm even almost looking forward to The Avengers, after watching the first teaser with Scarlett as Black Widow doing a Buffy-esque/Faith-esque/Echo-esque Whedon-scene tied in a chair. Those with good memory might even recall Buffy Summers topping my heroines-list posted earlier this year, so it's safe to say I've become a fan-boy.

They couldn't even get the stake right...

Then it was probably about time I revisited Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie), at least I think it was revisiting as I seem to remember some of the stuff I just watched. I've dreaded it as I knew how Whedon felt about the end product from director Fran Rubel Kazan, but I wanted to get it out of the way before reading -The Origin- in my ongoing Buffyverse comics-reading.

It's not a great movie. It's not even a good or decent movie, but there's quite a few great one-liners whispering promises of the greatness to come from Whedon in later years. At least that's something. And there's some aspects of the Buffy-character they'd managed to get right already back then, even if it's far from the Buffy I know and love. Or to put it in the master's own words:

I finally sat down and had written it and somebody had made it into a movie, and I felt like — well, that's not quite her. It's a start, but it's not quite the girl."

Being a Buffy fan, the '92-movie shines a light on the process of creating the beloved character. As such I'm better of for having watched it. It just wasn't quite worth it on its own merits. Kristy Swanson isn't half the slayer Gellar was, Luke Perry's character is a dumber, and one-note, characteristic of Xander, and there's about thousand other reasons to hate it. It will make you giggle every so often, and witty writing isn't something you get across every day. As such there's something to be said for cult-ifying movies like this. Still I doubt I'll ever watch it again. I scored it at 30/100 at my Criticker-rating, and that's not very impressive no matter how strict I usually come across to others.