The comedy-horror sub-genre is quite a hard one to execute successfully, usually the comedy lessens the horror or vice-versa and the film winds up being neither one thing nor the other. The Night Watchmen is another in this line of movies but it is definitely one which succeeds better than most. Set in an office building in Baltimore, a coffin containing the body of a famous clown who died while on tour in Romania is wrongly left on the premises. Before long, the corpse is revealed as a powerful vampire and soon many people fall victim to both him and his minions. Its left to the inept security guards to save the day.
There's no question that this one works much better as a comedy than as a horror. Which kind of explains why it begins very strongly but fades a bit in the second half. The reason being that, as is often the way in these types of movies, the action ramps up in the latter half with more emphasis on the horror elements. But it was the character interactions that impressed me most, with a lot of good comic acting from the cast and a lot of funny dialogue. Much of the humour is genuinely laugh-out-loud, even if they did overplay the fart joke somewhat! The cast work very well together and understand the comic material very well, there are no name actors here except for James Remar of Warriors (1979) fame, who plays a slightly sleazy office worker. From the horror side of the fence this one has zombie-like vampires and an evil clown, so it's a bit of a selection box. It does ultimately boil down to a group of people trapped in a building fighting back against hordes of monsters which isn't the most interesting or original set-up, however, I would say that this one is still well worth catching on account of its comic interplay and sense of mischief.
