Strange Things Happen at Sundown (2003)

   

Co-Produced, Edited, Cinematographed, Written, Composed & Directed by: Marc Fratto

Starring:

J. Scott Green .... Marcel
Masha Sapron .... Narrator
Jocasta Bryan .... Amy
Shannon Moore .... Annabelle
Joseph DeVito .... Jimmy Fangs
Joshua Nelson .... Joey the Butcher
Sal Verderame .... Fat Frankie
Steve Gonzalez .... The Reaper

Release Date: Direct-to-DVD: November 30, 2003

 

Rating:

 

The city of New York can be a nasty place especially with mobsters but at night things get alot more creepier as a certain mob happens to be a bunch of vampires lead by Jimmy Fangs (Joseph DeVito) and his aggressive sidekick Joey the Butcher (Joshua Nelson) who feasts on human blood and flesh as well as turning others into vampires and zombies by making them smoke their own marijuana.

To top it all off a couple of vampires not happy with one another Marcel (J. Scott Green) and Amy (Jocasta Bryan) are stranded in the middle of a road after their vehicle breaks down and are hungry for blood but then finds a couple of people trying to help them only to be attacked and one of them killed the other one they kidnap by the name of Anabelle (Shannon Moore) whom they plan to save for another time but she seems to form a friendship with Amy leading to more things.

Meanwhile, there's a vampiress who kills other vampires the Narrator (Masha Sapron) who hunts these vampires down and feasts on them as well as other locals on her way.

 

I liked the titled of this film but I was prepared for it to be a no budgeter since I got this with the collection of the Tomb of Terrors since 95 percent of those flicks were made on nothing and having a terrible plot. However, this one didn't seem too bad but there were some leaky holes in it and bland moments too.
There's a beginning with a mafia doing business that went bad and then they become vampires attacking which didn't look suspenseful enough since it looked like the whole company seemed like amateurs but again it was not bad for a first try. There's also descriptions of these characters flashing on the screen which really seemed necessary for the plot of this film since it seemed to be a spoof on a mafia vampire type of flick.
Then there's a nice narration by a vampiress who is alos a vampire hunter which is icing on the cake for a plot like this one. There's alot of mysterious moments surrounding this character making alot of the moments here fun to watch.
There's also great scene's that involves a chase in the forest with a vampire and a vampiress couple but yet this moment was trying to look intense and disturbing but everything about this moment looked incredibly corny and cheesy by bboth reasons. A.) It's close to no budget and B.) The silly performances too.
Then there's a mafia discussion going bad with some scumbag employees and one of the mafia vampires is holding a bat next to someone which looked suspenseful wondering if he's gonna beat this person to death and the results don't look pretty at all which is a compli9ment to everyone who created this piece.
But then we spot the three main mafia vampire members paying a visit to the reaper going to his house and I was thinking this looks pretty corny and it totally was since this guy was dressed in a reaper uniform with a nagging housewife. To top it off he was wearing coloured socks and sportsgear shoes. I was thinking to myself that this scene didn't fit at all into the sotry in which I was thinking to myself it seemed to be mainly a horror in the beginning with some dark comedic elements and now ti seems like a totally whacky comedy. Yet, there's some hilarious moments here. This reaper wasn't really a reaper just an image he was portraying as one of the mafia members. However this took me a while to figure that all out. The nagging wife has a secret of her own too in the end which brings back the horror.
The horror does come back together with other vampires going out on a feast at night to fill their hunger in which there's disturbing moments with them killing two parents and even one of them feasts on a baby which is not for everyone to watch. Yet the results on this baby looks very fake. But to make up for that there's many flashback sequences that look disturbing which involves mainly women who are bleeding to death after being chewed up by vampires as these scene's look like a grizzly piece of art.
Then there's the final showdown with this vampiress hunter against the mafia and reaper guy too which looks exciting.
There are some boring scene's with a victim forming a friendship with a vampiress almost leading to a lesbian love scnee which seems a bit confusing since these two women were straight. So there's good and bad moments drawn here. Plus the movie sometimes got quite bland since it was overly long and going around in circles at times.
Bottom line is this film almost pays a homage to those old school flicks as well as spoofing shows like The Sopranos but with vampires as Mafia members. Plus these vampires can live in daylight and use marijuana to change others into vampires in which the makers tried to be more original but didn't go too far.
Watch this movie for the fun of it.

Alot of the acting was quite rough and some of it melodramatic too. J. Scott Green (Marcel) seemed a bit over the top in the beginning of his performance as an aggressive vampire in the film but he does indeed get into character later on and knew on how to act menacing and having a bad ass attitude too. He shows some not so bad energy in his role so I give him good credit for really trying.
Masha Sapron
(Narrator) was a nice drawing card in the film as a vampiress and hunter in which she does the job perfectly with her real outrageous tough as nails behavior and her violent aggressions too. She put everything that she got into this film and knew her craft with this role. She also knew on how to act lustful for blood too. Her looks were a real bonus to top it all off.
Shannon Moore
(Annabelle) however was way too melodramatic and annoying in her role as a kidnapped victim in the flick as her screaming and crying was way too over the top and not at all believeable. I just wondered who the hell fired this person? However, I've seen worst however. She comes across well by acting insecure in certain spots of her scene's. A good pointer there.
Joseph DeVito
(Jimmy Fangs) who played a leader of the vampire mafia pack seemed a bit wooden and mellodramatic at times but yet he came across nicely with his low voice and intimidating behavior. He was okay in his role in which he does his best by portraying a leader but yet needed the odd improvement on this.
Joshua Nelson
(Joey the Butcher) looked like he was having too much fun by playing a violent assistant in the flick as his co-hort in which isn't necessarily a bad thing but sometimes he wasn't believeable but if you give him a baseball bat then he really could come across as a threat. So he knew how to show some of this during certain moments and I must give him some good credit for this.
S
al Verderame (Fat Frankie) portrayed a nice godfather type of mafia vampire member in which he brings out some nice powerful moments with his speaking as well as having some good evil chuckles whenever someone gets beaten up. Although his role wasn't overly huge I found him to be the best actor out of the whole cast.

Bit part actress Spike is lying on a bed as a gratititous naked chick with some vampires biting at her flesh with big boobs revealed and they were big I'm not kidding you.

Many bodies are bitten and chewed up
Guts are torn out and eaten
A woman pukes out her guts
Body pieces are eaten
Some dead bodies are lying on the ground bloodied
Lots of bloodsheds and pools of blood with dead bodies layed around
A baby is eaten
Hearts are torn out and eaten
Some machette's stabbed in the neck in many scene's
Bloody stabbings
Slit throats
Bloodied bodies in various flashback sequences
Spear in the ass

There's alot of great low keyboard thumping music and other types of neat effects with the dark moments on these vampire's which sounds very horror 80's like. It goes to show this type of music can be effective for todays standards. There's also some piano playing and other music effects which sometimes sounds effective and other times not all composed by Marc Fratto and Frank Garfi.