I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle (1990)

Juvenile—or perhaps simply infantile—hardly seems a strong enough description for the events contained within I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle, a late-'80s British horror-comedy that aims for the anarchic spirit of Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead but lands somewhere closer to a particularly deranged episode of Carry On.

The film opens with a gang of scruffy bikers performing a Satanic ritual in an effort to summon some demonic force or other, only to have proceedings rudely interrupted by a rival motorcycle gang who arrive spraying crossbow bolts and assorted weaponry with gleeful abandon. The High Priest is hideously burned in the ensuing mayhem but, with admirable dedication to the cause, manages to complete his ritual by pouring his own blood into the fuel tank of an ominous-looking Norton motorcycle, thereby awakening its insatiable appetite for human blood.

Some time later, brainless dispatch rider Noddy (Neil Morrissey) purchases the cursed machine from a distinctly dubious second-hand dealer, only to discover that it stubbornly refuses to start. Fortunately, an equally dim-witted friend promptly slices his hand open on the bike, dripping a generous helping of fresh blood onto the fuel tank. Having sampled its first meal, the demonic Norton roars enthusiastically into life.

While taking his prized purchase for a celebratory ride, Noddy encounters the very gang responsible for disrupting the earlier Satanic ceremony. Suddenly the motorcycle develops ideas of its own, ignoring every attempt to steer it as it charges headlong into the startled bikers, scattering them spectacularly across the road.

Noddy's suspicions that his new bike may possess a life of its own are reinforced when it repeatedly disappears after dark. One by one it hunts down the offending bikers, exacting gruesome revenge upon those who dared interfere with its previous master and, more importantly, damage its beloved chassis. Eventually even the sceptical Noddy is forced to concede that something supernatural is at work and seeks help from the local priest, who gamely joins him in an attempt to exorcise the homicidal motorcycle before matters get completely out of hand.

This zero-budget slice of British horror nonsense plays like a Carry On version of The Evil Dead, aimed squarely at an audience of semi-comatose bikers who long ago pickled the few functioning brain cells they may once have possessed. Curiously, its toilet humour proved rather ahead of its time, anticipating the sort of schoolboy gross-out comedy that would later become mainstream in films such as There's Something About Mary, American Pie and Freddy Got Fingered. The crowning achievement is surely a scene in which an especially revolting turd launches itself from a toilet bowl directly into Noddy's mouth—a moment of cinematic refinement that perhaps says everything one needs to know about the film's ambitions.

The movie barrels along in the same relentlessly juvenile fashion, piling one idiotic gag upon another with all the subtlety of a runaway cement mixer. To its credit, there is an undeniable enthusiasm behind the madness, and everyone involved appears completely committed to the lunacy unfolding around them.

Unfortunately, enthusiasm alone cannot disguise the fact that this is an astonishingly inept piece of filmmaking. The performances are dreadful, the humour painfully puerile, and the entire enterprise seems aimed exclusively at those who find loud flatulence the absolute pinnacle of comedy.

I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle is about as funny as a loud fart—and, regrettably, it lingers just as unpleasantly.