Some movies are bad in the way that’s almost charming—you laugh, you groan, you quote a line or two to your friends at 3 a.m. after too many beers. I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle is not that movie. This thing is cinematic roadkill, smeared across the asphalt of British comedy-horror with all the subtlety of a splattered hedgehog. It’s the kind of film that makes you want to apologize to your television for forcing it to display such nonsense.
The Premise: Satan Meets Yamaha
Let’s start with the concept: a possessed motorcycle that kills people. Yes, that’s it. Somebody took one look at Christineand thought, “You know what this movie is missing? Two wheels and Pauly Shore’s stunt double.” So here we are, watching a satanically possessed bike vroom its way into infamy, turning a once-proud piece of British engineering into a chainsaw on wheels with less dignity than a Vespa at a Harley rally.
The origin story? Some occultist gets shot in the middle of a Satanic ritual, and the evil spirit, apparently unable to find a respectable host like a goat or a toaster, decides to move into a motorcycle. This is what happens when demons have poor real estate agents.
Meet the Meat: Our Heroes
Enter Noddy (Neil Morrissey), a man who makes you question Darwin’s theory of evolution. He buys the cursed bike from a sketchy dealer, lies about the cost to his girlfriend Kim, and then proceeds to be the least competent horror protagonist since the guy who thought skinny-dipping in Camp Crystal Lake was a good idea. Morrissey plays Noddy with all the charisma of a wet dishcloth, managing to look confused in every scene, whether he’s discovering a decapitated friend or ordering Chinese takeaway.
Kim (Amanda Noar) deserves hazard pay just for existing in this script. She’s dragged from one ridiculous situation to another, surviving vampire bike assaults, biker gang brawls, and inexplicably still finding the time to argue about relationship finances. Nothing says romance like being nearly assaulted by a motorcycle while your boyfriend shrugs and lights a cigarette.
Supporting Cast of Idiots
Then there’s the garlic-scented Inspector Cleaver (Michael Elphick), whose main contribution is sweating a lot and exuding eau de pizza topping. He’s basically Columbo, if Columbo’s main clue-solving technique was eating too much garlic bread.
Anthony Daniels—yes, C-3PO himself—shows up as a motorcycle-riding priest, because apparently his agent lost a bet. Watching Daniels try to exorcise a Kawasaki is like seeing Shakespeare recited in a Taco Bell bathroom: noble effort, wrong place. He even delivers the line, “Let’s go kick some bottom!” with such misplaced enthusiasm you half-expect him to start singing Disney tunes.
And let’s not forget the biker gang, whose combined IQ barely matches their engine size. They exist solely to get skewered, decapitated, or otherwise turned into shish kebabs by the vampire bike. It’s less “motorcycle gang menace” and more “job fair for stuntmen who couldn’t make it into Mad Max.”
The Kill Scenes: Looney Tunes with Gore
Now, horror-comedies live or die by their kills. I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle tries to deliver in the gore department, but everything looks like it was sponsored by the local butcher and a half-empty bottle of ketchup. Victims get decapitated, spiked, or otherwise mowed down, and yet it’s never scary. It’s like watching a rejected Monty Python sketch where the punchline is always “surprise, you’re dead!”
Highlights include the bike launching a biker gang leader like a medieval catapult into some graffiti artists, and later stabbing another guy through the leg like it’s auditioning for Final Destination: Scooter Edition. At one point, the bike even gropes Kim under a bridge, proving that we’ve reached the low point in cinema where sexual assault can be attempted by a piece of motorized machinery. Somewhere, Sigmund Freud is rolling over in his grave, muttering, “I told you about phallic symbols.”
The Exorcism: Holy Oil Change
The pièce de résistance is the climactic exorcism, where Daniels the Priest tries to banish Satan from a motorbike with garlic, crucifixes, and holy water. The bike responds by sprouting spikes, glowing red, and generally looking like a rejected toy from the Transformers bargain bin. Imagine Optimus Prime if he had a midlife crisis, bought a leather jacket, and decided to bite people.
The exorcism itself feels less like spiritual warfare and more like two drunk dads trying to fix a carburetor. At one point, Daniels even loses his fingers to the bike’s brake lever, which is a sentence I wish I didn’t have to type.
The Hospital Scene: NHS, Meet Evil Kawasaki
As if the absurdity wasn’t enough, the bike later storms a hospital to finish off Kim. Yes, a motorcycle drives down sterile corridors like it’s auditioning for ER: The Fast and the Furious Edition. It slices a hospital employee clean in half, proving that not even universal healthcare can save you from a Yamaha with fangs.
The Finale: Gym Tan Exorcise
The grand finale takes place in a gym, because why not? After terrorizing innocent patrons, the bike finally meets its match in… a sunbed. That’s right, folks, the ultimate weapon against vampiric evil isn’t holy water, garlic, or divine intervention. It’s a tanning bed, the same device used by bronzed teenagers in the 90s. Evil defeated by melanoma. Truly inspirational.
The bike melts, everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and then the movie has the gall to hint at a sequel with the old “blood drips onto the fuel tank” gag. Thankfully, nobody was insane enough to actually greenlight I Bought Another Vampire Motorcycle.
The Real Horror: Wasted Potential
Now, a possessed motorcycle could’ve been fun in the right hands. Imagine Sam Raimi directing, with slapstick energy and manic camera work. Instead, we get a film that feels like it was shot over a long weekend in Birmingham with a crew that was mostly drunk. The jokes don’t land, the gore is cheap, and the pacing makes watching paint dry look exhilarating.
Even the title feels like a Craigslist scam. “I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle” sounds like a bad country song, not a horror-comedy. And yet, somehow, it’s still less painful than actually watching the movie.
Final Verdict
I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle is proof that not every stupid idea deserves funding. It’s not scary, it’s not funny, and it’s barely coherent. The only thing possessed here is the audience—by regret.
