You’re not going to get a lot of butts in seats for a movie in which a woman marries a vampire without titling that film I Married a Vampire, but that reveal would be a little more fun if you were able to go into a screening without that knowledge. Of course, the fact that marriage to a bloodsucker is the inevitable outcome of this story is made clear from the outset, when young Viola (Rachel Golden) picks up her parents from the airport in an unnamed city; they’ve arrived in town after learning secondhand from Viola’s sister that she’s gotten married, and are insistent on meeting her new husband. Of course, before she brings mom and dad home, she’s got to give them the whole story of how she met her undead husband …

Two months earlier, Viola lands in not-New York (the end credits thank the city of Boston, but no notable landmarks of any kind are seen in any of her exploration montages) and is ready to start her life anew, far from Iowa. Unfortunately, she falls victim to all of the various swindles that eighties metropoles had to offer; she ends up in a disgusting apartment after getting swindled by a shady landlord, is robbed and grifted by her supposed poet neighbor Portia, gets stiffed for a heavy retainer by a lawyer who promises to help her get her money back from the landlord, gets pressured into giving up her last bit of savings to the cult of Muhammad Buddha Christ, and can only find work as a night cleaner for a man who sexually assaults her. All of this finally starts to change when her co-worker Olivia introduces Viola to her “brother” Robespiere [sic] (Brendan Hickey). Viola, to her credit, immediately cottons on to the fact that they’re vampires, but she later laughs off her suspicions as the result of too much beer and the lingering effects of a horror movie double feature. When she returns to Robespiere when she’s run out of options, she finds herself a new woman, charged with the confidence she needs to get her savings back from the grifters, and if they put up a fight, her new beau can take them out. 

There are some genuinely wonderful performances and sequences in I Married a Vampire, even if the film gets off to a sluggish start. Viola’s parents, Morris and Doris, are an interesting pair, since they’re both grumps who are blind to their poor parenting in different ways. Morris, for his part, is quite funny, while Doris’s haranguing of her wayward daughter is less fun. The script is pretty sharp from the get-go, and one gets the impression that writer/director Jay Raskin had a vision that he came close to fulfilling here, but was ultimately restrained by the budget provided him as a result of this being a Troma-level production. Once we get the framing device set-up out of the way, the actual narrative gets underway, and we get to meet a fantastic cast of awful characters. First, Viola encounters Mr. Gluttonshire, who tries to pick her up under the impression that she’s a sex worker. Then, she meets Mr. Keeper, the landlord who tells her that she won’t be able to find a place for $300 a month, but sets her up with an infested shoebox studio for $400… plus a finder’s fee and the deposit ($1000 total, or about $3300 in 2026), eating up a third of the money she worked hard to save for her move. When night falls, she learns that her unit abuts a loud rock venue that also fills her entire apartment with flashing lights. 

It’s in this sequence that we meet Portia (Temple Aaron), who all but steals the show. She’s exactly the kind of street-savvy gutter-dweller that you’ve met before, in the movies if nowhere else. She tells Viola that she’s a poet, and that she writes song lyrics for rock bands, and that she can get Viola a great deal on a stereo, only $50! She also explains that the reason they have no water is because they’re connected to the club next door, and they only have water pressure when there’s a good band (when the music is good, no one’s using the bar bathroom, so they’re not competing with the constant flushing for water), which happens every two or three months. Only someone as naive as Viola would be capable of falling for Portia’s obvious bullshit, but it’s charming in its way, and Portia is a tragic figure in her own right. I genuinely believed that she was going to end up on the business end of Robespiere’s fangs once Viola gets her understated revenge later, but she’s the only one who gets off relatively easy, as the vampire merely hypnotizes her to stop lying to and stealing from her friends. 

It’s here, in this circumvention of the expectation of how violent this will be, that this stands out for a Troma release. They’re never classy movies, and this one certainly isn’t that, but it demonstrates restraint in areas that other Troma-branded flicks don’t. It’s notable in the quiet, non-bloody, non-gory story resolution that Portia gets, but also in the understated nature of the revenge Robespiere enacts for Viola. You hear “Troma” and think that you’re going to get some geysers of blood or at least some viscera, but most of the violence occurs offscreen, with no gross-out bits at all. Even more shockingly, although Viola is violated by Mr. Gluttonshire, there’s no titillation factor and the film doesn’t use it as an excuse to force the lead actress’s top off. I’m not saying that the N.O.W. should be giving Jay Raskin an award or anything, but for a flick from the studio that brought you Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator, it’s almost admirable. There’s no real violence, we don’t see any of it, and when it’s over, Viola is still fully clothed; it feels almost modest.

The romance between Viola and Robespiere is dreadfully dull, unfortunately, and the sequences wherein she goes to all of her antagonists and asks for her money back, is laughed at, and then gets her revenge via supernatural husband gets a little repetitive. The film runs out of steam once it stops being about all of the nasty urbanites who prey on naive farm girls and watching Viola tolerate it all like she’s the protagonist of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. Normally, the revenge portion of these films is supposed to be where all the fun happens, but I Married a Vampire is a little frontloaded with scuzzballs, which means that it doesn’t quite finish as strongly as it ought to, which is likely why it’s mostly forgotten. It’s still well worth checking out, however; just know you’re likely to get distracted in the back half. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond