Welcome to Blood City

Some folks say that's there the best movie from director Peter Sasby, who worked for Hammer films in the seventies. This is an ambitious feature, no doubt, and Sasby shows here another face of his career. Many folks too could compare this with WESTWORLD, and I understand why, because myself thought about the Michael Crichton's film where Yul Brynner had more or less the Jack Palance's place; however both plots are quite different, just the overall atmosphere, scheme and settings are rather close. Good cast too. The problem is that I saw the film in an awful pan f...scan frame instead its genuine original LBX. That upsets me very much.

A film with aspirations higher than its abilities. The vaguely interesting central idea is played out in a muddled script, and the whole production looks schlocky and amateurish. Dullea is a bland hero, Palance his usual eccentric self, Eggar gives a good performance....but what are these actors doing in such a cut-rate film anyway??? By the way, the videocassette version is very poorly framed, and the Panavision cinematography suffers BADLY. (*1/2)

The untouchable Jack Palance leads a pack of virtual reality cowboys in this shameless high-concept ripoff of Yul Brynner's WESTWORLD. Several amnesiacs awaken in a dusty old west town, where they are immediately forced into slavery. Their only hope of social advancement is to murder other denizens of Blood City, gaining all-important street cred and working their way up to a face-off with the schizophrenic sheriff, valiantly played to the straight-faced hilt by Palance. The prematurely revealed would-be `twist' is that all the amnesiacs are actually in suspended animation, merely passing a computerized aptitude test in the technologically manufactured west, uh.world. And if you've rented BLOOD CITY in search of blood, there's not a drop to be seen. This constantly deflating film co-stars sci-fi veterans Keir (2001) Dullea and Barry (SPACE:1999) Morse, and was also released as WELCOME TO BLOOD CITY.

Jack Palance was the main reason to see this, and while he doesn't disappoint the film in general does. An interesting concept here, but not enough is done with it and the low budget really hinders it.

Palance's performance is also the best thing about the film, he is so much fun while keeping his dignity intact, he resists the temptation also to overact like he sometimes did in similar roles. In fact, the acting is the component that comes off the least badly here, Keir Dullea is decent and Samantha Eggar while deserving more to do gives the film's second best performance, being quite thoughtful and with a good deal of authority. Roy Budd provides an appropriately eerie and thrilling music score without intruding too much. There are also some charmingly offbeat parts in the script.

Welcome to Blood City however is badly let down by being so lifelessly directed by Peter Sasdy, who has shown before that he is a competent director, and the painfully obvious low budget, especially in the choppy editing, dizzying camera angles and dreadfully fuzzy picture quality. The settings are also pretty limited and never feel authentic. Apart from some offbeat moments, the script is completely devoid of tension, while the story is often very dull and the suspense is marred by the virtual reality concept being revealed far too early. There are some interesting ideas here, but nowhere near enough is done with them. The characters are very one-dimensional, and despite Dulleas' performance any empathy towards his character's plight was rarely on this viewer's mind.

All in all, a very odd film that had potential but executes it pretty badly. 4/10 Bethany Cox

The intriguing subject of virtual reality gets a rather unremarkable treatment in Peter Sasdy's sci-fi/western Welcome to Blood City, which sees a group of strangers unknowingly plugged into a computer simulation of a wild west town, the purpose being to identify natural fighters and leaders.

Keir Dullea puts in fine performance as Lewis, a recent arrival who gradually works his way up the social ladder, and Jack Palance is solid as the town's sheriff, but the film suffers from lifeless direction and a badly structured plot, which misses an opportunity for a neat twist at the end by revealing it's virtual reality angle way too early.

My copy was the dreadful pan and scan version, which didn't exactly help the viewing experience, but even cutting it some slack for this fact, Welcome to Blood City was decidedly mediocre. Westworld did the sci-fi/western thing so much better.