Just as I was starting to believe that the vampire movie genre was bankrupt of originality, I am gifted with a film unlike any other vampire film I’ve ever seen. Don’t you just love when that happens? I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t have reservations about this movie going in, especially with it being a sequel to The Hamiltons, a film I had not seen nor heard of before this film made it onto my docket. However all of my reservations subsided within fifteen minutes of pressing the play button. With a title like “The Thompsons” I was expecting it to be nothing more than vamp ripoff of Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, but this film has heart along with the appropriate amount of blood and gore to keep it from becoming too sappy.

 Narrated by Francis Hamilton, the middle child in a family of five, he along with his siblings David, Wendell, Darlene, and Lenny travel a lot. After death of their parents, the family became restless and for years have been on an endless journey to find a permanent place to call home. A place they can be their true selves, a place where they don’t have to hide their “disease” as Francis calls it. The entire family was born vampires, and as vampires they must consume blood to survive. As a result of their affliction, they are unable to settle in one place too long because it would only be a matter of time before they were discovered, hence their constant moving.

If you were to print out all the quotes from the interviews in Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis, a 116-minute documentary, you would swear that Lewis himself wrote them all. Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy, Carol Burnett, Billy Crystal, Chevy Chase, John Landis, Carl Reiner, Richard Lewis (no relation) and Alec Baldwin are all so effusive in their compliments as to almost defy belief. Woody Harrelson says if you don't like Jerry Lewis, he doesn't even want to hang out with you. Comedian/Actor Richard Belzer (Law and Order) shows off his Jerry Lewis tattoo. Jerry Seinfeld says that if you don't laugh at Jerry Lewis, you don't understand comedy. Everyone interviewed in this film is completely unreserved in their love and respect for the man.

The film is a fairly comprehensive, looking at the 80-year career of the 85-year-old hyphenate (he is comedian/director/writer/actor/singer). Director Gregg Barson was given pretty much a free hand to record Jerry Lewis, the man behind the scenes in his daily life and activities. What comes out is a fairly vibrant and fresh perspective on the legend and icon. I was personally surprised how intelligent and sharp he still is. From news reports in recent years, it was easy to get the impression that he was a doddering and delusional old nut job. One omission from the documentary is any mention of Lewis's involvement in the Muscular Dystrophy Association which he singlehandedly turned into the most prominent charity in the world over many generations. It seems recently he has become disenchanted with the management, but it is not clarified here. What is brought into perspective is the truly monumental success of the man's life and career. It is hard to estimate the money he has made, but it must be astounding. At one point during a comedy tour he had a little time to churn out a movie. He made The Bellboy for a little under 1 million dollars with no studio help and has personally pocketed over 300 million dollars from that film alone. For many years, Paramount Pictures wouldn't have known what to do if they didn't get two Jerry pictures a year, he was that important to their bottom line.

If you watched any comedic movie in the late '90s, you’ve seen Harland Williams. A funny guy who always played the dummy (see Half Baked and Down Periscope), his career never took off the way similar stand-up comics like Jim Carrey and Norm MacDonald did. In this special, Harland performs his trademark wry and goofy comedy in a new, innovative way: the comedian does his routine outside and with no audience.

It’s just him and a microphone on top of a mesa in the Mojave Desert. Harland doesn’t mind breaking the fourth wall, telling the viewer at the start that it’s okay there’s no audience; that he believes you are smart and “I think you’ll know when to laugh.” Just in case we miss something, though, he throws sunflower seeds at us if he feels something was particularly funny, like his polio walk. (“C’mon, polio doesn’t even exist any more!”) This breaking of the fourth wall makes you feel like you’re there on the mesa with him.