If it’s possible to have a parasocial relationship with a fictional character, I have it with Buffy Summers. She’s tattooed on my thigh. I’ve dressed as her for comic conventions. I’ve attended Buffy trivia. And I’ve watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer more times than Giles, her watcher – kind of like a guardian-slash-taskmaster, for the uninitiated – got knocked on the head.
Even as a megafan I recognise that many aspects of the show have aged badly. Still, Buffy helped me get through adolescence into adulthood by showing me that nearly everything is survivable: in Buffy’s case, even one’s own death.
Before Sarah Michelle Gellar, Kristy Swanson held the titular role in the oft-forgotten Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie from 1992. There’s no denying that the film lacks the depth, complexity and esteem of the series; it notoriously saw writer Joss Whedon leave the production because he was so dissatisfied with the direction.
Its tagline – “Pert. Wholesome. Way lethal” – sums up its lighthearted tone: Swanson’s Buffy only cares about cheerleading, dating the captain of the basketball team, Jeffrey, and hanging out with her clique of vacuous valley girls. That is, until her watcher Merrick (Donald Sutherland) shows up and throws a stake in the works by revealing her destiny as the Slayer; the one girl in all the world chosen to fight vampires. Buffy is initially reluctant but soon accepts her fate, leaving the frivolity of girlhood to save the world.
Like Sutherland’s TV counterpart Giles, the stuffy and curmudgeonly Merrick soon grows protective over his charge as she prepares to face down an ancient and powerful vampire, Lothos (Rutger Hauer), and his minion Amilyn (Paul Reubens). The biggest difference between Buffy one and Buffy two is the lack of Scoobies, the code name for TV Buffy’s core crew. Unlike the TV show’s Willow and Xander, the film only allows Buffy a trio of bloodless, interchangeable girlfriends (including Hilary Swank in her feature debut).
But let’s not flick the flick so easily. Like the show, I accept the film is flawed, but it does offer us a delightful campiness brimming with exaggerated dialogue. A news reporter describes a victim’s bite wound to “a really gross hickey”. Or when vampires attack the school, they have “this look in their eyes, totally cold, animal,” one student says – “I think they were young Republicans”.
I like to think of the Buffy movie not as a separate universe, but rather as TV Buffy’s origin story. The film is set at Hemery High, which in the show was Buffy’s original school before she burned down the gymnasium and moved to Sunnydale. Flashbacks in the series show us that Buffy was also facile and flighty before becoming the chosen one. In my imagination, film Buffy is like an entree to her more famous iteration. Without the movie, there would’ve been no 1997 Buffy to save me and myriad others from the horrors of high school. And that’s not for nothing.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is available to stream on Disney+ in Australia and the UK and Paramount+ in the US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
