Welcome to Blood City in some ways is a sister film to Westworld, both movies were that most specific sub-genre – the western/sci-fi hybrid. This combination allowed for the iconography and characteristics of both genres to be played up and for the films to derive strength from the amalgamation. It would only be fair to say that Westworld is the clearly more successful film though. It has a clearer purpose and is directed much better. In the case of Welcome to Blood City, on the other hand, the ideas are better than the execution. The story begins with a group of people waking up in a remote area with no memory of how they got there, soon they are captured and taken to a wild western town where social status is afforded to individuals based on the number of kills they amass. It's soon revealed that nothing is as it seems and these people are guinea pigs in some virtual reality scientific experiment used to test subjects on their reactions and skills - the ultimate aim of the game is to identify who are the potential leaders and killers who can be utilised by the government for military purposes.
It seems a little bit of a questionable decision for the film to reveal this twist so early on. You can't help think that the tension and intrigue would be increased considerably if this had been revealed much later on, letting us get more involved with the western story strand. Overall, the ways the ideas are presented aren't generally fantastic and, like I said, the ideas are better than the way they are delivered on screen. All this said though, I still like the fact that this movie is trying for something different. The idea of virtual reality was quite original back in the 70's and I do like the genre mash-up between sci-fi and western. It also benefits from a decent cast, with 2001: A Space Odyssey's Keir Dullea in the lead and Jack Palance and Samantha Eggar offering good support. On a different note, I saw this on a public domain copy which had really bad pan and scan; and by really bad I mean terrible, not only were the sides cut off but the top of the frame was as well. This seems to be a common copy that many people see – the film would have certainly been improved to some extent by a more acceptable print.
It seems a little bit of a questionable decision for the film to reveal this twist so early on. You can't help think that the tension and intrigue would be increased considerably if this had been revealed much later on, letting us get more involved with the western story strand. Overall, the ways the ideas are presented aren't generally fantastic and, like I said, the ideas are better than the way they are delivered on screen. All this said though, I still like the fact that this movie is trying for something different. The idea of virtual reality was quite original back in the 70's and I do like the genre mash-up between sci-fi and western. It also benefits from a decent cast, with 2001: A Space Odyssey's Keir Dullea in the lead and Jack Palance and Samantha Eggar offering good support. On a different note, I saw this on a public domain copy which had really bad pan and scan; and by really bad I mean terrible, not only were the sides cut off but the top of the frame was as well. This seems to be a common copy that many people see – the film would have certainly been improved to some extent by a more acceptable print.