Each August I find myself shocked when, like all the Augusts before, I am overwhelmed by the preparation for the Dragon*Con Indie Short Film Festival, which I happen to run. 30,000 people show up for four days of film and yet I somehow believe that I’m going to have a free second in the month before it. You’d think I’d learn.

Not only is free time a vague myth, but my blood pressure is breaking gauges and giving me the look of an over-ripe tomato. This isn’t the time to search across the Net for something new for Short of the Week. No, what I need is some comfort food, a film I know well, and that watching once again will give me a few minutes of relaxation. I need a movie that will make me laugh and won’t take up a lot of time. Oh, and I need ’60s-sounding surf music. I’m not sure why I need the last one, but let’s just go with the flow.

I first saw Teenage Bikini Vampire as a festival submission four years ago and I couldn’t help but giggle. It’s just one of those films. I’ve since seen it ten or twelve times, including on the semi-big-screens of otherwise dour film festivals where it always brings the audience to life.

Sadie is an average teenage girl, with the normal teen issues of growing up and finding herself, except she’s a vampire. Being sunlight-challenged is not doing anything good for her social life. She just wants to dance, go to the beach, and maybe spend some time with the cute surfer dude, but a suntan is not in the cards. Her younger siblings can play with severed limbs happily, but what’s a high school girl to do? It’s up to her loving, murdering parents to find an answer.

The film is structured around one conceptual joke (a good joke, but still just one), and that’s all it would be without the deft hand of writer/director Devi Snively who adds in a dream sequence from a different era and a tune that you’ll be singing next time you find yourself in a convertible on a sunny day. She turns what could have been an internet joke-video into something quite enduring, almost sweet, in an Addams Family kind of way.

The budget is low, and it shows, but it doesn’t harm the joke, which actually plays better with a stagey atmosphere. It’s easy to think of Teenage Bikini Vampire as a skit in the repertoire of a travelling comedy troop, and I could imagine a lengthened version being put on by garage theaters all over the country.

Teenage Bikini Vampire may be the finest low-budget vampire beach movie of all time. As soon as I find another, I’ll let you know. Until then, this one will do nicely.