“I want to suck… Oh, hello kiddies. You caught me in the middle of my homework. Your old pal the Crypt Keeper’s a real believer in continuing dead-ucation. Which brings us to tonight’s murderous morsel. It’s a juicy little tale about a real blood sucker who never learned to go for the jugular. I call this plasma play “The Reluctant Vampire.””

Directed by Elliot Silverstein (The Car, A Man Called Horse) and written by Terry Black (Dead Heat), this stars Malcolm McDowell as Daniel Longtooth, a vampire who choose to get his fix from the blood bank he works at. It’s run by Mr. Crosswhite (George Wendt) and he takes every chance to be rude and mean to his workforce, saving his sexual harassment for Sally (Sandra Dickinson).

It turns out that Daniel is drinking so much that the blood bank is in danger of going out of business. He decides that he must use his vampire abilities to get victims and refill the plasma to save the job of Sally, who he is in love with.

Meanwhile, the police — led by Detective Robinson (Paul Gleason, forever a jerk in every movie) — have brought in Rupert Van Helsing (Michael Berryman, looking like Judge Doom) to hunt down the vampire who they believe is haunting the streets, draining muggers and low level criminals of their blood. What complicates matters is that Mr. Crosswhite knows that Daniel is a vampire and is using him to fix his business.

Maybe Sally knows too, as we find out in this episode’s happy ending.

Terry Black wrote five episodes of this show, including three using the name Donald Longtooth. Yes, the same last name as the character in this episode.

I’m not a fan of the total comedy episodes of this show, but what can you do?

This episode is based on “The Reluctant Vampire!” from Vault of Horror #20. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Davis.