I BOUGHT A VAMPIRE MOTORCYCLE

"Most good motorbikes run on petrol. Unfortunately, this is a bad motorbike. It runs on blood!” – so went the voice-over in the original trailer for I BOUGHT A VAMPIRE MOTORCYCLE. No surprise there, since the titular vehicle ends up in the hands of a biker gang who interrupt a satanic ritual in Birmingham at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. When the leader of the cult is killed, he decides to possess the motorbike of one of the bikers. And then, on his own – or rather on his own wheel – he sets out to murder the rest of his executioners.

The combination of satanic horror and biker film had already appeared in last year’s BLOODY HELL! section with PSYCHOMANIA. But clearly that wasn’t enough for the Brits, and less than two decades later, they once again served up this botched cinematic cocktail. Unlike its predecessor, however, I BOUGHT A VAMPIRE MOTORCYCLE is a knowingly tacky, ironic and funny film, heavily inspired by the work of Sam Raimi, with particular reference to the first two EVIL DEAD films.

You watch it with a mix of amusement and disbelief, since director Dirk Campbell very much left the brakes in the workshop. Suffice it to say that the headlight of the titular motorbike shines blood red, the murder scenes are as gory as they are deliberately ludicrous, and the moment that stays with you after the screening is, above all, the scene in which the protagonist has a dialogue with his own poo. Don't say we didn't warn you!

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Text: Grzegorz Fortuna