VHS Review // Only Fangs (2025)
What I like about this movie right away is that it has that thirty second "elevator pitch" in which you can summarize it and, to me, that just feels like someone had an idea and then put that idea to life. As someone who has a lot of ideas, I understand the complexities that might come with them. Some of my ideas for movies, for example, are just basic plots but then you have to really think about where it's going to go and perhaps most importantly how it will end.
"Only Fangs" tells the story of a group of monster hunters (:"Monster Bros") who meet up with a group of vampires. Rather than just going out there, stalking and killing prey, the two teams work together to create "Only Fangs", an experience in which people pay to be fed on. This does mirror a lot of what you'll see in commentary about the site Only Fans, in the sense that people in the movie will treat it the same way, saying only simps give up their money for example.
The film has a texture as if you could be watching it on VHS in real time- in a time when DVD doesn't even exist yet- but certain aspects such as the title being a nod to a website that wouldn't have existed back then just bring us back to the present. So I enjoy that this movie feels like a throwback to the days of VHS in the sense of the overall feeling you get from watching it (and it's on VHS) but also a lot of what happens within the film is very 2025 coded. It can be thought of as a sort of modern-retro in that sense, which I like.
This cast is also just full of women, which I think is great if you want to get into that conversation about Hollywood being a male-driven industry. I recently saw the actress Jessa Flux in the movie "Crackoon" (which is really everything you could want from a movie with such a title) and just a few weeks prior for the holidays we watched "Christmas Bloody Christmas", which features Kansas Bowling, who is also in here. But I also really love the three actresses who played the main trio of vampires (which includes Kansas Bowling) because they just felt so powerful and the type of characters you want to follow around for a series of films.
While this movie is titled based on a website where people typically take off their clothes, you might also think of this as being the type of film that's just filled with nudity- which before the advent of the internet would have been the type of VHS passed around between teenagers in high school. But there isn't as much nudity in this as I expected- which is good, it gives the film more substance in a way- and the scenes in which there is nudity seem to be less sexual and more comedic. The one scene with the biting of the ass is one of the straight up funniest moments I've ever seen in any film.
At first, the music in this film feels like something you'd hear out of a VHS release as it has that big hair band sound. I said of one of the early songs that it was like what would happen if you couldn't get the rights to Poison. But as the film goes, the music changes and there are definitely songs in here that I enjoy. The Striped Bananas (CT represent) have a song in here called "Vampire of Mine" and a Pittsburgh band called Pummeled have a song called "Poppie". I do wish there was some sort of official soundtrack or playlist to this film, even if it had to be filled out with songs the directors thought were fitting but might not have appeared in the film itself.
So as I started this review with and will go back to now, it's not enough just to have an idea but you need a direction for it as well. As "Only Fangs" goes on, we learn that by having all of these people to drink the blood of plus turning others into vampires along the way, the vampires who started this film are just becoming too powerful and need to be stopped. The way this goes from a fun, vampire comedy to "Oh we have to save the world now" is what makes "Only Fangs" so special because it's not just a singular piece of art but rather complex.
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