cult film freak: JIM CARREY & KAREN KOPINS IN 'ONCE BITTEN' WITH LAUREN HUTTON

Karen Kopins and Jim Carrey in ONCE BITTEN Year: 1985 Rating: ***1/2

Bizarre that the future highest paid comic actor (at the time a hyperactive standup comedian) with the talents to go insanely overboard with zany expressions and physical zaniness, would actually consecutively headline a TV-series and motion picture as the straight man passively watching the goofiness occur around him...

In 1984, after THE DUCK FACTORY was cancelled, Jim Carrey got his big screen debut in ONCE BITTEN (which gained a cult following on cable television): cleverly stretching a then-timely joke that goes along with while blending into the sex-comedy template: in that four-hundred-year-old vampire Lauren Hutton could never find a modern day virgin to remain youthful... ironic since those comedies are about shy boys trying desperately to lose theirs'...

Lauren Hutton and Jim Carrey in ONCE BITTEN

Leading to technically the most important character, even more intriguing than first-billed, equally sensuous and sarcastic vamp Lauren Hutton, and that's sexless good girl Karen Kopins, who impressed test audiences to the point of being added in the movie poster, deservedly...

While Carrey does an okay acting job... sporadically unleashing his limitless skills... it's Kopins that really holds ONCE BITTEN together and, despite being perfectly entertaining camp one minute and tilting the cringe-meter the next, it's a pretty decent horror farce before genuine horror became semi-humorous, and still holds up since (backed by Hutton's gay butler Cleavon Little, her prior conquest slaves and Carrey's loser high school pals) even the wackiness is taken somewhat seriously: there's eternity on the line, after all.