City of the Vampires – review

Director: Ron Bonk

Release Date: 1993

Contains spoilers

So, this straight to VHS release has been on my radar for a while but it was pretty unavailable. No longer, as the folks at SRS Home Video have released it onto DVD and can I say, just look at that cover. Magnificent. That’ll earn it a couple of points for the score (yes I’m that shallow).

The film is on the disc as both a standard version and a treated to make a ‘filmlook’ version – the film looks like an atypical zero-budget straight to VHS release, as it is, and the filmlook just makes it even more blurred (especially if you’re using a high-res display). I’d avoid the treated version.

Fuzzy memories

So after an aerial view of the city of Braddock we get some news reporting about people going missing in the city and the population decreasing considerably (both missing persons and people just leaving). Mention is made of a missing person, Christine (Anne-Marie O'Keefe), her boyfriend Sam also mentioned (Matthew Jason Walsh, Kingdom of the Vampire). IMDb has his surname Hellsing, the blurb (and in film pronunciation) is Helling. Anyway he isn’t in Braddock but remembers being there a month before and we see a fuzzy image of Christine being taken by something – he left her behind.

Sam and his dark thoughts

Sam is suicidal, spending large stretches of video running time looking pained and putting a gun to his head. Meanwhile in Braddock, a woman leaves a building and is scared she is being followed. She gets to her home, where (I assume) her mother is looking after her baby but the mother struggles letting her in and then blood floods under the door. Meanwhile Sam’s had enough of moping and heads back to Braddock.

hunting Sam

The issue with the film is not much happens. He wanders around the industrial wasteland of Braddock (meeting someone who draws a knife and then walks away, adding nothing to film, feel or narrative) and as the sun sets he is set upon by the vampires. The word “city” in the title (as well as the marvelous cover) makes it sound like there will be hundreds of our toothsome friends, an apocalyptic smörgåsbord – the film's budget allows for a lot less of them. He runs from them and goes to a random house where a woman who hunts vampires lives (she kills one by dropping a bucket of garlic bulbs on it... note, bulbs).

burning legion

He goes back out and discovers that the head vampire is Legion (Noel Bonk) and he has turned Christine, having fallen for her, and had all the vampires feed from her to tie them all together collectively. We get Christine controlling her urges with Sam and the lore that they will turn back to human (she never actually died) if the head vampire dies. It’s showdown time and that is the long and short of it. The photography is awful, the effects cheap but some of them work well nonetheless. Acting is clearly something other people do but, despite being bad, this is quite a good poor film – or would be is it wasn’t so darn ponderous at times. 2.5 out of 10 but worth having for your collection simply for that cover.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK