Editorials
‘My Friend Dahmer’ and the Horror of Adolescence
“He was the loneliest kid I ever met…”
Reading about the horrific crimes Jeffrey Dahmer committed between 1978 and 1991 – the murder, dismemberment, necrophilia, and cannibalism of 17 men – it’s hard to imagine he was ever a kid, let alone human. It’s much easier to explain away his actions by envisioning him having always been some kind of full-grown monster – since forever – full of hate and anger and bloodlust, from day one.
But that wasn’t the case. In fact, by most accounts, Jeff had a fairly normal upbringing. Still, something clearly went wrong. My Friend Dahmer sets itself apart from the numerous other Dahmer docudramas by exploring the subject matter through the eyes of the people who may have known Dahmer more intimately than his own family – his classmates. The film is based on the synonymous graphic novel by Derf Backderf, and it’s a subject he knows all too well: in 1978, Backderf was a classmate – and brief friend – of Jeffrey Dahmer.
From the opening moments of the film, we know something is amiss with Jeff (as everyone calls him). During the morning bus ride to school, while the other kids chat and socialize, the lonely Dahmer (Ross Lynch) fixes his attention on a young jogger who plods along the roadside. As the bus passes the runner, Jeff – in a trance-like state – quickly stands and heads to the back of the bus to watch the runner disappear in the distance. It’s only after the bus driver shouts for Jeff to sit down – for the third time – that he’s snapped from his daze and returns to his seat. It’s the first time Jeff seems to realize something about himself – something strange – as if he could audibly hear the click happen inside.
Dahmer’s daily school life seems to continue in a similarly languid haze, one where he just sort of moves from hallway to classroom, dead-eyed and stoop-shouldered. What we learn through his daily interactions is that Dahmer is an anomaly. He’s introverted and unhip, but not a geek; he’s clearly intelligent, but not a brain. He gets picked on by the bullies, even though he himself avoids the nerdy kids. He’s entirely unclassifiable. He just seems to sort of exist. And the pain from this listlessness is evident in the sneer he wears on his face.
He’s only eventually noticed by Backderf (Alex Wolff) and crew when he inexplicably starts faking a seizure in the hallway of school; Backderf and his cronies refer to his spastic episode as “doing a Dahmer”, and they wonder aloud, “Is Dahmer funny?” They decide to sort of adopt him into their little group, making him a pet project of sorts – going so far as to start the “Jeff Dahmer Fan Club”. At one point, as a classmate of Backderf’s asks, “Is Dahmer your muse?”, to which Backderf responds with an uncertain “No”.
Despite his new social circle, Dahmer remains on the outskirts of fitting in. His constant battles with the inner demons which continually plague him – something he tries to subdue with copious amounts of alcohol – keep him from fully being accepted. Dahmer cannot excuse his continuing strangeness forever. The Jeff Dahmer Fan Club, realizing that maybe they’d taken on more than they’d bargained for with Jeff, awkwardly cut ties with him, paying him a few bucks to “do a Dahmer” at the nearby mall in one final pitiful performance. It’s here that Jeff demands to be called “Jeffrey”, signaling the death of the old Dahmer, and the emergence (and acceptance) of this alien being he was always destined to be. By the time he concludes his strange act at the mall – the thing that once earned him the only friends he ever had in high school, and was now his farewell to that same group – no one is proud of themselves.
The end of the film signals the end of their high school careers. After one last failed attempt at normalcy (Dahmer asks a girl to prom – and then promptly abandons her shortly after they arrive), everyone goes their separate ways. Backderf is set to move to New York for college, but Jeffrey has no plans. He spends his first week of freedom in the abandoned house his family vacated after his parents divorced. And it’s this first week that Dahmer commits his first murder.
And that’s My Friend Dahmer – a straight-forward, no-frills look at what one of America’s most notorious serial killers was like in high school. There’s a particularly depressing scene early on, an incredibly brief and subtle thing that really spells out just how hopeless Dahmer’s case is: Jeffrey, pressured by a teacher for an answer he doesn’t know, responds frustratedly in his affected bwaa voice, causing the classroom to erupt with laughter. For a brief moment, there is a restrained joy on Jeff’s face; for probably the first time ever, he was paid attention to by his schoolmates. Not just attention, but positive attention. His smirk quickly fades, however, as his eyes start to dart back and forth; he’s having an internal realization, accepting the impossibility of ever maintaining this type of warmth and popularity among his peers.
It’s a brutal watch for those of us who remember high school. Those of us who were picked on, those of us who did the picking, and those of us who just stood by and watched. High school is a whirlwind of highs and lows, surging hormones and brain chemicals, and existential uncertainty. It’s not a kind place. It’s a jungle. And though he was briefly taken in by a few schoolmates, Jeffrey Dahmer realized quickly he was a novelty to them, and that he would never truly be accepted. Now imagine dealing with all of that while trying to smother your burgeoning homicidal feelings. The film doesn’t necessarily humanize Dahmer, but it doesn’t dehumanize him, either. By the end, you’ll ask yourself an impossible and scary question: did we fail Dahmer?
Backderf says in his novel My Friend Dahmer, “He was the loneliest kid I ever met.” Perhaps the most tragic part of Dahmer’s tale is not the fact that we’ll never know why he did what he did, but that we’ll never know if it could’ve been prevented.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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