Trying to resolve matters in a land-border dispute, a family's hiring of a strange gunslinger eventually causes them to realize he's the culprit behind a series of ghastly murders around town by draining women of blood and race to stop him before he completes his task.
This is an overall curious and quite enjoyable effort. Basically this here turns out to be a cunning combination of Western and vampire horror, but for once the mixture is not a detriment to the other as they usually result in forsaking one part of the story for the other if the two chosen topics really have little in common with each other. Here, we get a typical Western about a ranch family involved in a border dispute with their neighbors who resorts to underhanded tactics to keep his side of the property without repercussions, involved in numerous shady deals with the authorities to keep himself in line and offers up plenty of shoot-outs, beatings and scenes of everyone wandering around on horse- back to fulfill that part of the storyline, and basically turns the script around by having the loner coming in to deal with the situation being a vampire. By still incorporating those tactics, where he resides in coffins, can't stay out in the sunlight for long periods of time and resorts to blood-drinking to carry out his orders all fall in line with known vampire lore, as well as the defense tactics used to stop his rampage that carries out on the outskirts of the story before being brought in by the land dispute where everything finally makes sense. The only real problems here is the last half, where the vampire far more often than necessary taunts the hero with long-winded speeches about humanity and faith of God, which really hurts his effectiveness as a villain since it all comes off so lame and stupid. Overall, though, it more than makes up for that one little flaw.
Today's Rating/PG: Violence.
This is an overall curious and quite enjoyable effort. Basically this here turns out to be a cunning combination of Western and vampire horror, but for once the mixture is not a detriment to the other as they usually result in forsaking one part of the story for the other if the two chosen topics really have little in common with each other. Here, we get a typical Western about a ranch family involved in a border dispute with their neighbors who resorts to underhanded tactics to keep his side of the property without repercussions, involved in numerous shady deals with the authorities to keep himself in line and offers up plenty of shoot-outs, beatings and scenes of everyone wandering around on horse- back to fulfill that part of the storyline, and basically turns the script around by having the loner coming in to deal with the situation being a vampire. By still incorporating those tactics, where he resides in coffins, can't stay out in the sunlight for long periods of time and resorts to blood-drinking to carry out his orders all fall in line with known vampire lore, as well as the defense tactics used to stop his rampage that carries out on the outskirts of the story before being brought in by the land dispute where everything finally makes sense. The only real problems here is the last half, where the vampire far more often than necessary taunts the hero with long-winded speeches about humanity and faith of God, which really hurts his effectiveness as a villain since it all comes off so lame and stupid. Overall, though, it more than makes up for that one little flaw.
Today's Rating/PG: Violence.