Mother May I Sleep With Danger?

Here at WLWfilmreviews, October is horror movie month. Admittedly, Mother May I sleep with Danger is hardly a horror movie. It’s a vampire romance written by James Franco that aired on the Lifetime channel. No one is more surprised than I that I found James Franco’s exercise in lesbian vampire fan fiction actually pretty enjoyable.

The film is about Leah, whose college experimentation with her sexuality involves her dating a girl named Pearl. Pearl is also a vampire. Tori Spelling is also there, playing Leah’s mom who disapproves. That’s not important though. What’s important is a lesbian vampire where both lesbians end up together and alive at the end of the film! They also don’t need to eat humans any more because their lesbian love is so strong they can just drink each other’s blood. That’s ridiculous. I love it.

I cannot stress how much this movie feels like fan fiction. It follows all the tropes and is generally not the best written thing I’ve ever seen. On the other hand, Mother May I Sleep with Danger? is just so happy and gay and full of vampires that it feels like it was basically written specifically for me. Is it super high-quality writing? No. But it involved so many things that I love done to at least low-level competence that I could not give a single fuck.

I think the key to making a successful modern lesbian vampire film is to not take oneself too seriously. And Mother May I Sleep With Danger? is in no danger of doing so. This is silly, campy fun. But on the plus side, it does have more awareness about sexual politics and whatnot than 70’s lesbian vampires films have, so that’s nice. Mother May I Sleep With Danger? is a rare WLW vampire movies where the women are actually the heroes, homosexual love gets to flourish and most of the men are assholes. I’m so pleased!

Objectively, this film is probably not great. I get that. However, I just I had a wholly enjoyable time watching it and it made me happy. I can’t believe I’m saying this but thanks for the happy, lesbian vampire movie, James Franco.

Overall rating: 6.6/10

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