'Barackula': Young Obama Battles Vampires In (Fictional) Forthcoming Online Musical
Justin Sherman as Barack Obama in "Barackula"Photo: Mike Lawson
Film featuring vampire Harvard students slated to debut online within the next two weeks.
By Gil Kaufman
During the most expensive presidential campaign in history, when some of the candidates are dropping more than $1 million a day on TV ads, you really have to wonder if that old saying about any publicity being good publicity still applies.
Take the upcoming movie "Barackula — The Musical," for instance. Sort of like the instant Web hit Will.I.Am video/song "Yes We Can," the political horror film by first-time director Mike Lawson (Bootleg Bandy from "American Pie Presents Band Camp," among other credits) uses Obama's own inspiring words as its source material.
Only "Barackula — The Musical" uses them to tell the fictional story of a young Barack Obama fighting off vampires at his alma mater, Harvard Law School. Currently in post-production and slated to debut online within the next few weeks, "Barackula" is described by Lawson as a "short political horror rock musical about young Barack Obama having to stave off a secret society of vampires at Harvard when he was inducted into presidency at the Harvard Law Review in 1990."
In the flick, the vampire-fighting Obama, played by newcomer Justin Sherman ("The Man Who Couldn't") struggles to persuade the Ivy League vampire society that "opposing political philosophies can coexist or else the society may transform Obama to the dark side." Oh, and along the way you get to see some dancing Harvard student vampires.
Lawson described the film as a mixture of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video and "Jesus Christ Superstar," and it features a pair of original musical numbers, both co-written by Sherman, which make undead allusions to some of Obama's current campaign themes. In the funk-rock-gospel tune "Running," Sherman croons, "The name's Barack Obama/ Just named president of Harvard's law review/ It should be a time of celebration/ But my life's in danger/ My association with a secret society that's after me won't let me go, won't let me be/ So I'm running, I'm running across Harvard's lawn." (It sounds a lot smoother when he sings it, trust us.)
The tie to Obama's call for change is even more overt in the song "This Is Our Time," a rousing "Shaft"-like slice of '70s funk in which Sherman sings, "We can talk about it/ We can compromise/ You don't have to suffer life that makes the man inside/ We don't need any violence/ We just need to unite/ We can join together to make our future bright."
On the busiest day of the campaign season so far, a spokesperson for Obama had no comment about the movie at press time.
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