The Night Watchmen

"The Night Watchmen," named Best Horror Feature at the 2017 International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival, is the movie equivalent of tasty junk food – the cinematic counterpart to fried Twinkie or an Oreo churro. (The latter available at the theater concession stand.) It's a ridiculous tale of vampire clowns terrorizing a Baltimore newspaper office. And, apparently, legendary Baltimore filmmaker John Waters had nothing to do with it.

The co-creators, Ken Arnold and Dan DeLuca, play two of the security guards. Arnold's Ken is the nominal leader, while DeLuca's Luca is the mysterious, scary one. The team of watchmen is rounded out by Kevin Jiggetts, playing Ken's sidekick Jiggetts, a pot-loving African-American Jew, and Max Gray Wilbur as a washed-up rock musician in his first night on the job.

Following their mysterious deaths while performing in Romania, Baltimore icon Blimpo the Clown and his troupe are shipped home for medical testing. After a delivery mix-up leaves Blimpo's coffin at the newspaper building instead of the medical facility down the block, pervy newspaper owner Randall (James Remar, the only cast member that a viewer is likely to recognize) forces is it open, releasing Vampire Blimpo.

The four inept night watchmen and hot-chick newspaper editor Karen (Kara Luiz) must band together like sad-sack Guardians of the Galaxy to fight off the vampire clowns and the newly undead newspaper employees they have created.

During the Q&A after a screening at the Phoenix Film Festival, Arnold said he and DeLuca dreamed up the project to amuse themselves between jobs and that their overriding priority was to make people laugh. That they don't take themselves or their movie too seriously is obvious from the look of the film, the cheesy dialogue and the silly subplots.

Along the way, however, The Night Watchmen lampoons the conventions of the horror, vampire and zombie genres. The movie gushes bodily fluids, but in a manner that is silly, not scary, goofy, not gory. At one point, after encountering some really disgusting vampire clowns, Karen grumbles that she watched every season of HBO's "True Blood" and it was nothing like this.

It's worth noting that, for fans of horror, vampire and zombie movies, The Night Watchmen is full of Easter Eggs that pay homage to previous films in those genres. Besides amusing themselves, the writers clearly are offering middlebrow comedy for a highbrow audience. They hit their mark.

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Stu Robinson does writing, editing, media relations and social media through his business, Phoenix-based Lightbulb Communications.

Another reviewer here has compared this to Return of the Living Dead. That is nuts. Return of the Living Dead had an incredibly solid and witty script and actors with the charisma and talent for humor to back it up, as well as some excellent effects for its time. This movie has none of that.

There are a few minor chuckles in here, I'll give it that much credit, but nothing worth sitting through the rest of this. The effects are standard generic low budget horror level. The actors aren't that bad, but they aren't good enough to make this derivative, lukewarm script enjoyable. Now, I'm not going to be so dramatic as to claim that this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, I've seen much worse than this, but this is still nothing more than a regretful waste of time unless you have really low standards when it comes to horror and/or comedy.

You want a horror comedy about vampires in an office building? Go watch Bloodsucking Bastards (2015) instead. That one's actually funny and enjoyable.

No redeeming social value - check. Gratuitous nudity - check. Way too much blood - check. Acting - passable. Comedy is hard, and these guys try and mostly succeed. Definitely worth a brain off, beer in hand watch. When I saw the IMDB score it was 5.3. Way too low. If you're a reviewer that likes overly long French dramas, you'll hate it.

Nice little vampire horror comedy - a clown vampire got a really big appetite and a bunch of night watchmen are trying to stop him on his killing spree. Not outstanding but still got some nice effects and funny moments, with some lengths in the end.

Saturday afternoon and not feeling my best. Wanted a fun movie that I didn't have to use any brain cells on. This fit the bill perfectly! Campy fun, not to be taken seriously. It's low budget but production values were pretty good. Acting was decent and the story, well it's just a misfits vs vampires story so not much to elaborate on there. As a comedy it did it's job, it entertained me for an hour and a half and made me laugh a few times. Every movie doesn't need to be a thought provoking cinematic masterpiece. And all movies shouldn't be compared to those that are. Sometimes one and done and thanks for the laughs is all that's needed.