USA. 2021.
Crew
Director/Screenplay/Music – Glenn Danzig, Producer – James Cullen Bressack, Photography – Glenn Danzig & Pedja Radenkovic, Visual Effects – Stargate Studios (Supervisor – Franco Leng), Makeup Effects – Ojala Productions, Production Design – David Dean Ebert. Production Company – Cleopatra Entertainment/El Diablo Pictures LLC.
Cast
Devon Sawa (Death Rider), Julian Sands (Count Holiday), Kim Director (Carmilla Joe), Ashley Wisdom (Mina Belle), Glenn Danzig (Bad Bathory), Victor Di Mattia (Kid Vlad), Eli Roth (Drac Cassidy), Yulia Klass (Mircarla Mae), Danny Trejo (Bela Latigo), Darren Richardson (Duke Von Wayne), Tasha Reign (Girl on the Horse), Kansas Bowling (Rider’s Sister)
Plot
Death Rider arrives in a town that is a sanctuary for vampires and is ruled over by Count Holiday. The requirement for entry is that Rider bring a virgin. Rider settles into the saloon where the madam Carmilla Joe sets her sights on seducing him. Rider’s presence soon starts to be treated with suspicion by the count and the outlaw Bad Bathory that he claims to know.
Glenn Danzig, more mundanely born as Glenn Anzalone, is better known as a musician. He was lead singer of the punk band Misfits, which started in the 1970s and put out their first record in 1982. Danzig formed a new group as the punk band Samhain who put out the first of three albums in 1984. Anzalone changed his last name to Danzig, while also taking that as the name of the band and that has remained his most famous musical iteration. Danzig (the band) have put out twelve albums since 1988 and moved over in style from punk towards goth metal. In addition, Glenn Danzig has branched out as a comic-book writer and a director, having directed fourteen of the band’s music videos and then made his feature-length directorial debut with the horror anthology film Verotika (2019) based on his comic-book.
The mashup between the Vampire Film and the Western goes all the way back to Curse of the Undead (1959). Since then we have had the likes of Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966), From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter (2000), Vampire Junction (2001), After Sundown (2006), Bloodrayne: Deliverance (2007) and modern-day set efforts like Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989) and Cowboys vs Vampires/Dead West (2010). In the film, Danzig plays a weird game where names of characters and people associated with vampire film and fiction are mashed up with those from Westerns – thus a Bad Bathory, Kid Vlad, Drac Cassidy, Count Holiday, Carmilla Joe and Mircarla Mae, Bela Latigo and a Duke Von Wayne. (I have a list of other Western/genre crosshatches under the essay Weird Westerns).
Death Rider in the House of Vampires comes with a surprising degree of name talent attached, particularly talent with a genre background. Aside from Devon Sawa in the title role, there is Julian Sands in one of his last roles as the head vampire; Eli Roth, director of Cabin Fever (2002) and Hostel (2005), as one of the cowboy vampires; Danny Trejo who appears in the opening scene as the guard posted at the entry to the town; Kim Director, once of Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) fame, who owns the show with entertaining regard whenever she is around playing a hooker; and twin sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska, directors of Dead Hooker in a Trunk (2010) and American Mary (2012), as victims that are brought into the town. There is also James Cullen Bressack, a prominent low-budget director, who is listed as Danzig’s producer.
For a film that brings together such an array of talent under one roof, Death Rider in the House of Vampires ends up being surprisingly dull. The pace in the first half is slow and uneventful. There is no real plot to anything. After Devon Sawa arrives in town, the proceedings go on and on without anything really happening, just assorted characters interacting around the saloon, none of which moves the plot forward.
Things do pick up in the latter third towards a big climactic shootout and a plot of sorts emerges by about the time of Devon Sawa’s showdown with Julian Sands’ big boss vampire. Danzig directs an entertaining saloon shootout, although one suspects that this was a scene that made to work in the editing department more than anything else. And it must be said that the film does provide some top notch vampire meltdown effects.
Death Rider in the House of Vampires has the feel of a self-financed vanity production where Glenn Danzig put up the money to indulge his interest. As such, the film suffers from the weakness of vanity works in that nobody has tamed its excesses or told Danzig to go back to the drawing board and fix what needed to be like his plot. Into the bargain, Danzig casts himself as the most bad-ass vampire present. The IMDB makes claim that Danzig was originally to be cast as Wolverine in X-Men (2000) to which one can only say maybe – more likely someone saw him and perhaps brought him in for a casting session but one finds it harder to believe that consideration went any further than that. His shorter 5’3” build and pudgier face is not exactly the Wolverine you imagine and certainly his quieter, subdued performance here fails to project enough presence for one to be able think you can take him seriously as a Wolverine casting.
Trailer here