Strange Things Happen at Sundown (2003)

Posted on Nov 03, 2004 under Horror |

Written and directed by Marc Fratto
Starring
- J. Scott Green
- Masha Sapron
- Jocasta Bryan
- Joseph DeVito
- Joshua Nelson
Produced by Marc Fratto, Frank Garfi, Steve Gonzalez, and Brandi Metaxas

Many times in my reviews I have referred to movies as being “ambitious” or “unambitious,” and have even called attention to instances in which filmmaker ambition, out of balance with other factors, has left a movie poorer than it would otherwise have been with the bar set lower. Unfortunately, in a breach that practically qualifies as a sin for someone in my chosen avocation, I have neglected to define my terms. Allow me to rectify this here.

In some cases, there is simply an imbalance between a film’s ambition and the production resources available. Thus you end up with a movie like Blood Red Planet, in which interstellar exploration is expressed with hideously impoverished sets and costumes, or Lost on Mars, in which every plot event of any interest takes place off-camera, because the budget doesn’t allow for anything except people standing around talking about all the exciting stuff that has happened elsewhere.

“Sooner or later, all my ties end up looking like this.”

In other movies, there’s a lack of ambition in exploring theme, in which the central premise of the movie fairly demands to be explored at some depth, a demand that is largely unheeded. Thus you get Seedpeople, which rips off Invasion of the Body Snatchers while substituting rote plot mechanics for any of the societal questions raised by either version, or Binge & Purge, whose premise of cannibal supermodels is practically pregnant with all sorts of little social metaphors that go entirely unexplored.

I should pre-emptively note that Strange Things Happen At Sundown is better than any of the four movies mentioned above. There’s some impressive cinematography for such a low-budget feature, innocuous locations are well-used, and the acting is a little underwhelming in spots, at least it doesn’t proclaim the fact that the entire cast was composed of friends and family who couldn’t think of a decent excuse to get out of it. And the script is impressive, as well; unlike so many other shot-on-video vampire flicks which are nothing more than an excuse to replicate all one’s favorite gore effects and softcore scenes on one tape, the screenplay shows some surprising polish; characters are explored, violence and sex are used as tools of the story instead of the other way around, and there are sections of dialogue which absolutely sing.

“No, I don’t think turning into a bat would help right now.”

So why all the talk about unfulfilled ambitions? Because this movie is overly ambitious in the scope of the story it tries to tell. There’s simply too damned much of it, and in an effort to get them all into one feature, too many plot threads are truncated, ignored, and just plain forgotten.

Let’s get into it: Jimmy Fangs (Joseph DeVito) and his posse — Joey the Butcher (Joshua Nelson), Nicky the Tooth (Giovanni DeMarco), and Paulie Hands (Mike Massimino) — are a quartet of mean, loyal East Coast mobsters who’re carving out an empire for themselves in the local underground economy. They’re also vampires. (The rules of vampirism as used here: vampires can go out in daylight, their teeth retract, they have to feed every couple of days, they can be killed by a knife to the heart, and only the oldest and most powerful vampires leave no reflection.) But Jimmy’s finding that success has its own dangers. For one thing, he’s just had $100,000 dollars go missing, along with its courier. And for another, some other vampire is carving up his men, starting with Paulie.

Suburban easy chair — OF DOOM!!!!!

That’s one plotline, and it’s great fun. All four of them, and any other mafia types involved, hit that Jersey wiseguy inflection and attitude dead-on. These scenes offer the most honest kind of humor in the movie, humor that doesn’t need to be overplayed to succeed; it’s simply the outgrowth of the fact that these four are down-to-earth Italian businessmen who just happen to be vampires too.

In another plotline, the money courier, Marcel (J. Scott Green) has just skipped town for Canada with the haul and his girlfriend Amy (Jocasta Bryan). Both of them are vampires, too, and their storyline takes us into more standard vampire territory: black trenchcoats, human fodder, and tragically romantic musings about the loneliness of the vampire life. Along the way, they east a husband and keep the wife Annabelle (Shannon Moore) for later, and Amy finds herself responding to Annabelle’s honest innocence and born-again faith as her relationship with the increasingly sadistic Marcel falters.

In yet another plotline, Paulie’s unknown assassin stalks the streets — a solitary unnamed female vampire (Masha Sapron) given to cold and angry voiceovers and uncompromising violence. She works her way through Jimmy’s posse, her motives hidden for much of the movie but her rage at being made into a vampire very clear.

You’re right, your tonsils are very pretty.

And then, as a plotline growing out of a plotline, Jimmy Fangs hires the most fearsome, most ancient vampire — The Reaper (Steve Gonzalez, voiced by Robert M. Lemkowitz) — to hunt down Marcel and get his money back. The Reaper dresses in a black cloak and cowl, speaks in sepulchral tones… and lives in a charming little suburban house with his Norman Rockwell wife, where she harps on him for dirty dishes and smelly socks.

That last plot thread should clue you in to my major complaint. Not only are there too many stories, there are too many different flavors of story. From the lightminded wiseguys of Jimmy Fang’s crew, to the heady pathos of Marcel and Amy, to the hardboiled vampire hitwoman, to the outright spoof of the Reaper, it becomes a mishmash of textures, the cinematic version of that creative writing game in which everyone writes a paragraph and passes the paper to the next person.

And that’s not even all of the storylines. There’s also the one in which Jimmy has had his own blood cells infused into pot, rendering its mortal smokers his drooling zombie slaves; he plans to unleash it on the city this week. There’s also the one in which Joey the Butcher recognizes the girl hanging off a rival kingpin that Jimmy and friends suck dry, and instead of killing her he decides to keep her and let her turn into one of them — mainly because he likes her ass. And then there’s the one with the two extra protectors Jimmy hires, who’re caught like flies in amber in the fashions they knew when they “turned”: the ’80s. Even at two and a quarter hours, this poor feature is busting at the seams, with a full choir each singing in its own key, and then abruptly falling silent as each runs out of breath. Heck, the entire “vampire mobster” plotline disappears entirely a full forty-five minutes before the closing credits.

**“Hey — you’re not my normal nurse!”**

Most movies that miss their mark do so by falling short. This one does so by shooting past the mark. There is indeed a memorable vampire movie diluted here amid the extraneous footage. The music is simple but extraordinarily effective. And while one expects goriness in a low-budget horror film, it’s rare to find it portrayed so effectively and disturbingly as the scenes here of vampire victims writhing and convulsing in pain. If the entire movie were tightened, such elements would increase in effectiveness tenfold.

Of course, that does mean that some scenes and storylines no doubt beloved of all involved in the production would end up on the cutting room floor. All I can say is that there’s a hard-hearted self-editing philosophy called “killing your babies” — especially apt in this case, given some of the events in the movie.