CITY OF THE VAMPIRES

City of the Vampires Movie Review

After getting lost, Sam (Matthew Jason Walsh) ends up in Braddock, a city crawling with vampires. He hightails it out of there, leaving Christine (Anne-Marie O'Keefe), his girlfriend, behind. Overcome by guilt, Sammy decides to brave the town in search of the girl. 

Our cowardly hero

Back in the early 1990's, a friend of mine named Brian would occasionally have get-togethers at his place. There was never any alcohol, no girls, no good food--I'm not sure why, but my friends and I would still attend these "parties"--I only had a couple of these outings in me, while the aforementioned friends went to many more. The one good thing about them, however, is at least 3 or 4 of us were fairly creative kids (hello Whitaker, Wes, and Dudas!), and, at some point, Brian would talk his uncle Bob into letting us use his camcorder to film (yes, it was film back then, whipper-snappers) some skits we came up with. God willing, these will never see the light of day (though our "The Pope" segment, which I wasn't actually present for, is something I consider a lost treasure). Watching City of the Vampires, shot in 1993 (a short time after "The Pope"), made me think about those times, and simultaneously wonder if the director also borrowed Bob's camcorder. 

This may be Bob now

The movie has been deemed "A gory & violent take on Night of the Living Dead, only with vampires"--it's really not any of this. The movie is less Romero and more me and my buddies before we could drive--a group of friends with too much time on their hands getting together to make something, and I'm not knocking that in the least. Aside from the flashbacks of Brian's parties, this also reminded me of spending many 1990's Columbus nights watching public access television (hello Barbie, Ginny, and Damon!). Unfortunately, many of the scenes, especially the establishing shots, are so dark you can't see anything, but when we can, the city looks like a wonderful setting for the story. There is also plenty of usage of amateurish special effects to keep you entertained.

Inverted awesomeness

The effects continue, as we get echoed voices, which is doubly hard to swallow, as the sound is already bad without adding this to it. You will likely also enjoy the music, especially if you are a fan of the classic horror flick Halloween--if this is the case, the sounds here will be familiar in that way of when somebody learns how to play the guitar, and they strum their first tune for you, and it kind of resembles "Stairway to Heaven", but then again, it kind of doesn't. Speaking of just learning something, one wishes the talent in the film had taken some acting classes prior to this shoot, as this part of the flick is brutally bad--this gets amplified during the cringeworthy melodramatic final minutes of the film. Oh yeah, in case you're wondering what the vampires look like...

Vampire, or auto accident victim?

Writer/director/editor/one-man band Ron Bonk brought us this one, and surprisingly, he went on to direct, write, and produce several more films after this one--though there's a fair chance you have never heard of any of the titles, you have to give the guy credit for sticking to it. Trust me when I tell you there are many, many more movies out there with a similar production value that are worse than this film. City of the Vampires will at least grab your attention--its downfall is in keeping it, as the whole thing just falls apart near the end. Still, watching it brought back some good personal memories, and I really enjoyed many of the shots of the city, so all was not lost. 

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 4

City of the Vampires Movie Trailer