Bespectacled child star Jonathan Lipnicki (TV's Meego) finds the seamy underworld of the bloodsucking undead far more fun than previously reported in The Little Vampire, an adaptation of a popular series of children's books. Maybe after so many films using vampires as metaphors for libidinal chaos, their appearance as childhood playmates can't help but seem strange. Or maybe the sight of grade-schooler Rollo Weeks sinking his teeth into a terrified cow would look strange in any context. Either way, The Little Vampire is awfully unsettling. Probably the only film this year, children's or otherwise, that prominently features one character giving another the gift of a dead mouse "from the old country," Vampire features Lipnicki as a young American kid transplanted to darkest Scotland, where his father has taken a job building an elaborate golf course. Newly housed in a creepy mansion, Lipnicki begins experiencing visions of vampires, dressing in a cape, equipping himself with paper fangs, and generally creeping out his family and schoolmates. Just in time for Lipnicki to avoid being committed, he discovers a family of real vampires (headed by Richard E. Grant and Alice Krige and dressed in costumes rescued from the Les Misérables dumpster) and sets about saving them from an evil vampire hunter. After a series of hyper-inflated crises, a flying cow shits on the vampire hunter's car, confirming The Little Vampire as a film that can't easily or accurately be described as a must-see.