Welcome to the Hellmouth of the ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Movie, Revisited (with Pig-Themed Drinking)
In the summer of 1992, screenwriter Joss Whedon and 20th Century Fox held their first cheerleading tryouts for a future pop culture phenomenon. Directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui, the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie brought a pre-Clueless — yet no less Valley-girl — sensibility to the adventures of SoCal’s resident Slayer.
This version of Buffy has a surprisingly star-studded cast: Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, Paul Reubens, Rutger Hauer, Luke Perry, Hilary Swank, David Arquette, Stephen Root, Ricki Lake, Thomas Jane (credited as “Tom Janes”), and even Ben Affleck (in a cameo on the court at a high school basketball game). On the whole, though, it’s a rather inert affair.
I’m not here to beat up on it. There are those who think it’s essential viewing, and I respect that it has a woman in the director’s chair. This was Kuzui’s sophomore effort after Tokyo Pop, which screened at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival and which follows the overseas culture shock of a young American woman who falls in love with a Japanese rock musician.
In real life, Kuzui, an American woman, was already married to the film’s Japanese producer, Katsusuke “Kaz” Kuzui. They both served as nominal executive producers on the Buffy TV series, but Whedon has publicly disparaged this movie and, with everything that’s come to light about him since, you have to wonder what their working relationship was like.
Lo! Unto Us a Slayer Is Born
In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, Kuzui laid the groundwork for a feminist icon, even if this first 86-minute attempt yielded somewhat mixed results. I like Swanson well enough as Buffy, but the camp humor doesn’t quite land for me, and Sutherland’s po-faced mentor, Merrick, feels like he walked in on the wrong vampire flick.
As the movie itself tells us, this is supposed to be the Lite Ages. Reubens loses his left arm, as Donal Logue later would in Blade, except his doesn’t grow back. Hauer plays the violin, vamps it up with lines like “Puh-leeze,” and talks about putting away childish things as if he’s the Apostle Paul (or just doing a dry run for his later appearance as Kurt Barlow in the 2004 Salem’s Lot TV miniseries).
Overshadowed by the success of the TV show, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie now exists as more of a footnote in franchise history, a curio for completists to check off their to-view list. Perhaps while drinking?
The Spot-the-Hog Drinking Game
Because he works at a place called Pizza Pig, my friend Tad and I devised a drinking game as a way to get through the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. As you can see from the image above, there lurks a certain hog in the gym at Buffy’s high school. This hog wants to hug the world. It looks suspiciously like the Pizza Pig mascot, but it’s actually the team mascot of the Hemery Hogs. It also prefigured the wild boar mascot of the Sunnydale Razorbacks on TV.
Every time you spot the hog, you take a drink. That’s how the game works. You might get a good buzz going during the opening credits, which play over a scene at a pep rally, where Buffy and friends shake their pom-poms and their moneymakers, while signs in the background read, “Hog Power.” The second act will leave you thirsty, but by the third act, you’ll be in the gym again at a dance, with the hog leering over characters’ shoulders, compelling you to drink.
Do you think the Hemery Hogs are also ball hogs? Who remembers Herbert, the live pig mascot from the first season of the Buffy TV show? Spoiler alert: Xander Harris (always the show’s worst character) and a bunch of other hyena-possessed kids killed him. It’s enough to make a girl go vegetarian.
Here are some screenshots of the hog playing peekaboo in the third act of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. You’re welcome!
