Welcome to Blood City (1977)

This is a film you would have to watch to get a full grasp of just how odd it is. The plot summary is about a group of people that find themselves stranded on an island each with a card that says they've committed murder. None of them have a memory of murder, how they came to be on the island nor their own lives before. The town sheriff, Frendlander, comes along to bring those new arrivals to the island a place called Blood City - where it's kill or be killed. The citizens of Blood City make rank by killing within the law.Jack Palance is aces as usual. He plays Frendlander the "sheriff" and owner of Blood City - one tough cookie here that doesn't want trouble in his town, he just wants everyone to abide by the law.I really enjoyed this film and I hope that is "within the law" of this very odd but good movie for me to do so Mr. Frendlander.8/10

I'm sure WELCOME TO BLOOD CITY sounded like a great idea on paper. It's part western, part science fiction, and the filmmakers managed to snag Jack Palance and Keir Dullea for the main roles. A meager budget may have been the reasons for the cheap sets and costuming, but it was poor writing that resulted in such a dull waste of time. It's unclear where and when this movie is set because it jumps right into the action, but I got the impression that it opens in Japan where our "hero" Lewis (Dullea) is taken by police. Things around him seem chaotic but it's never made clear why because once Lewis is taken we immediately cut to him awakening in the desert surrounded by a group of confused strangers. All of them are in blue jumpsuits, none of them have any memory of who they are (outside of their names), and they've each got a card in their breast pocket identifying them as killers. Understandably, they're all shaken and confused. Everyone except for Lewis, who treats these bizarre circumstances as a joke. He's completely unfazed by his mysterious arrival in the desert and takes every opportunity to crack wise, even when angry hillbillies have a shotgun in his face. When one of the new arrivals tries to intervene in the rape of Martine (Hollis McLaren, the only woman in the new arrivals) by one of the hillbillies, he's shot down in cold blood and Lewis, again, has to crack jokes.That's our hero, everyone. Thoroughly unlikeable from the moment we meet him. The group is soon approached by Frendlander (Palance), who leads them into Blood City and explains the rules. New arrivals are slaves; they will be chosen by a member of the community and put in a year of service before being given the opportunity to join the town as a regular civilian. New arrivals that refuse to acquiesce are fair game to be murdered. There is a contingent of people in Blood City who wear black outfits with red crosses affixed to their chests. These people are straight killers who have risen above the regular folk through murder. The more people you kill, the higher your rank and the more power you hold over the town. Frendlander is the current record- holder with over 20 kills and he's basically the town's overseer. Honestly, the whole thing is sort of a confusing mess and I'm not entirely sure how the society in this town operates. How do civilians become black-suited killers? By killing them? There are still rules and laws to follow in Blood City but killing is all right in certain circumstances? I'm not 100% on the details. Regardless, Blood City isn't real. We discover early on that it's a computer simulation and everyone in town is wired in. It's some sort of government program designed to weed out the weak and pinpoint the most adept killers to be used in the real world as government assassins. I guess?The project is overseen by two scientists, the only important one being Katherine (Samantha Eggar). Katherine is immediately keen on Lewis and wants to ensure he makes it through the program. She becomes straight-up infatuated with him, going so far as to insert herself into the simulation to assist him and…eventually…sleep with him. So, obviously this is the most unregulated government program ever. While she obsesses over Lewis, Lewis is obsessing over Martine. Martine being a pretty young woman, the entire town has its eyes on her. Everyone wants to claim Martine as their slave for obvious raping purposes. There is a surprising amount of rape and rape intention in this film, and it's all targeted at poor Martine. The risk of rampant rape is so bad that Frendlander decides to lock her away for her own safety until a citizen can claim her. Eventually, Frendlander decides he wants Martine all for himself and all the promise of a cool sci-fi/western is flushed away as it becomes a dull 90-minute "save the girl" tale. And it's very, very dull. It feels like nothing happens for long stretches of this movie. The beginning and ending are pretty interesting but everything else is a snooze. Combine the motionless plot with a bunch of characters you most certainly won't care about and WELCOME TO BLOOD CITY is an avoidable mess. I love a good slice of Z-grade cinema cheese but this movie makes every effort to keep it from becoming too much fun.

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.

Always enjoy a film in which Jack Palance,(Frendlander) appears in and know that it will be a great film to view and this film was a big surprise for a 1977 film and I enjoyed it from beginning to end. This film starts out with a large group of men who were chained and pounding on rocks in a place that looked like a desert. Keir Dullea, (Lewis) was one of these men pounding rocks and all of a sudden he is being released by a proclamation from the President of the U.S. The next scene shows Lewis laying on the ground and wakes up and cannot remember anything at all and joins a group of other people in the same situation. These people eventually are met by Jack Palance, (Frendlander) who brings them to his town and they soon find out that they are going to become slaves in his town and have no future to be able to think for themselves. This is a Sci-Fi film and at this point, I cannot say anymore, except, don't miss this film, it is a great 1977 Classic.