‘I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle’: a self-explanatory low point for British horror

Posted On November 26, 2024November 26, 2024

British horror is in a very strong place right now. The last few years have yielded big releases like Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho and Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor, as well as smaller movies like Ben Wheatley’s freaky-folky In the Earth and the delightfully bizarre Enys Men from Cornish director Mark Jenkin. However, things weren’t always so peachy.

If you want an example of how bad British horror can be, then check out this film from 1990 with one of the most enticingly awful titles of all time. From director Dirk Campbell comes a story of vehicular evil so awful you’ll wish that a haunted steamroller had run over you: I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle.

Right from the get-go, you can tell that this is going to be a bad time, as the movie stars Neil Morrissey in its lead role. Morrissey is best known for the sitcom Men Behaving Badly and for providing the voice of children’s TV legend Bob the Builder. He’s a very good Bob the Builder, don’t get it twisted, but that’s hardly what you want for a skin-crawling spookfest.

Morrissey’s character is called Noddy (another red flag) and ends up embroiled in an evil scheme when the motorbike he buys for himself turns out to be possessed by a malicious spirit. The vehicle not only gains sentience but starts displaying the same qualities as a vampire: avoiding sunlight, recoiling at the sight of crosses, and thirsting for human blood. You know, classic vampire stuff. After his new purchase kills one of his friends, Buzzer, Noddy must find a way to destroy it with the help of a biker priest, played by Anthony Daniels. Yes, Anthony Daniels, AKA the man inside the C-3PO suit.

The rest of the cast is I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle (which doesn’t get any easier to write), which is a ‘Who’s Who’ of ‘Who’s That?’ Buzzer is played by Daniel Peacock, whose biggest credit is “Mental Mickey” from Only Fools and Horses. Michael Elphick was nominated for a Bafta for the film Gorky Park but is perhaps best known as Harry Slater on Eastenders. Then there’s Amanda Noar, who plays Noddy’s girlfriend Kim. Her only significant feature seems to be that she used to be married to Neil Morrissey. Don’t worry, they didn’t meet on this film.

Interestingly, the other biggest name in the cast, Burt Kwouk (Cato in the Pink Panther films), appears in a very minor role, running a Chinese restaurant called “Fu King”. That’s the level of humour we’re dealing with in this “comedy” horror, as the viewer is bombarded with jokes about funeral homes, garlic prawns, and waiting for the bus. The laughs are few and far between, and so are the scares, as the villain of the piece flops around like it was being pulled along on a string, possibly because it was.

It’s not like movies about haunted vehicles can’t work. John Carpenter’s Christine is a favourite of many and 2010’s Rubber managed to turn a humble tyre into a killing machine. The problem with I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle is that it’s just a title, an unusual sentence designed to reel people in out of curiosity. The end result is a lazy, half-hearted attempt to make people laugh and scream that ends up doing neither. Safe to say British horror has come a long way since these dark days.

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