Quote from: Mardroid on 11 October, 2015, 02:56:38 PM
Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat.
This film was new to me, when I came across it on the Horror channel. When I saw from the sypnosis that it starred Bruce Campbell, I decided to record it. I only got round to watching it recently over two nights. (I was so tired the first night a couple of weeks back, I drifted off during the film. Not due to boredom, this really was a case of the mind being willing but the body was weak.)
It seems this film came out in 1989.
It's basically a kind of horror (although not a particularly scary one) comedy western. Western, in the sense that it plays with Western tropes, i.e. the small town in the West setting, characters, music and gunplay. And a gang of vampires on horseback turn up too.But it's set in the modern (well 80s) day so there are trucks, cars, etc. too.
It is very, very silly. But it KNOWS it is. The affects are pretty bad too but again, they're played for laughs. The premise follows a town in the West which is a last haven for vampires who wish to experience modern life and get along with humans although there are few actual humans in the town. (I think the only ones are those that turn up in the course of the film, namely a man and his family who created the blueprints of a blood substitute machine, three youngsters, and a bumbling descendant of Van Helsing played by Campbell.) They do this with the aid of sunglasses, sunblock and a strange yellow coloured blood substitute. They even sit around in the local diner with their food going mouldy for appearances sake in case any humans pass through. (They don't eat it you see. Why they leave it out for days on end without changing it, I'm not sure. Probably because not all that many humans pass through, and they're lazy, I guess.)
Except of course, there's a large proportion of the vampires who want to go back to the old ways... Kind predictable, I know.
I was amused that the Head Vampire (Count Mardulak) has a surname similar to my own, played by the late great David Carradine*. (I share the first syllable of my surname with the count. It's a happy coincidence that 'Mardroid' is one letter different from a cyborg character in the Dreddverse.)
The film is very silly. The acting is cheesy. It's not a good film, but it is amusing and I found it entertaining.
As for Campbell, he only turns up some way into the film. It was interesting seeing him play this bumbling clumsy geek character rather than the, well, equally bumbling but generally much more suave and tough characters I seem to associate him with. Okay, that's mainly Ash** (although he's not all that suave) and the Prince of Thieves character from Hercules/Xena. To be fair he has played other kinds of characters.
*Why did you have to die in such a stupid way Mr. Carradine. Dear me.
**Side-note: I am so stoked for the new Ash vs. the Evil Dead series coming to Starz this Halloween! But I don't have Starz! Aaaagh!
David Carradine and assuming your talking about the guy fromKung-Fu, (He has brother called John[/b , I believe!) I recall reading about how he was found after accidently killing himself doing something. A very embarrassing way to go for such a man and I always thought the lisp (Wether intentional or not!) was a bad idea in for the Kill-Bill films.
