Critic Reviews

Once Bitten is that extreme rarity, a youth movie that's made the grown-up discovery of how sexy and amusing a situation can be if you leave things to the imagination.

Every season it appears that Hollywood has truly and finally run out of comic things to say with coming- of-age scenarios, and every once in a while it's demonstrated that the genre simply needs intelligent handling. Once Bitten is one of the better things to happen lately to adolescent sex comedies simply because it isn't gross; because it isn't mean- minded; because Jim Carrey has a way of pouting that makes him look like he has buck teeth. [27 Nov 1985]

Once Bitten affects a glossy, sophisticated look that does little to upgrade the film's adolescent humor. As directed by Howard Storm, it has a lot more stylishness than wit. Miss Hutton looks great in black, but her predatory vampire grows tiresome very quickly, as do all the Bloody Mary jokes.

This attempt to combine elements of vampire lore with the limited format of the teen sex comedy is a monstrous movie all right, a frighteningly awful horror comedy.