Welcome to Blood City

Michael (Keir Dullea) wakes up in an unknown landscape with four strangers. After a short introduction, they begin walking, only to be attacked by brigands leading to tragedy and death.

Enter the mysterious man in black, Sheriff Friendlander (Jack Palance), who leads the survivors to a small "western" town populated by "cowboy"-types. Michael and company soon learn that their situation is dire and that something beyond their comprehension is behind it all.

WELCOME TO BLOOD CITY is a sci-fi-thriller that's sort of like a cross between WESTWORLD and a bizarre TWILIGHT ZONE or OUTER LIMITS episode. Palance and Dullea are great in their roles, as is Samantha Eggar as a technician...

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.

The untouchable Jack Palance leads a pack of virtual reality cowboys in this shameless high-concept ripoff of Yul Brynner's WESTWORLD. Several amnesiacs awaken in a dusty old west town, where they are immediately forced into slavery. Their only hope of social advancement is to murder other denizens of Blood City, gaining all-important street cred and working their way up to a face-off with the schizophrenic sheriff, valiantly played to the straight-faced hilt by Palance. The prematurely revealed would-be `twist' is that all the amnesiacs are actually in suspended animation, merely passing a computerized aptitude test in the technologically manufactured west, uh.world. And if you've rented BLOOD CITY in search of blood, there's not a drop to be seen. This constantly deflating film co-stars sci-fi veterans Keir (2001) Dullea and Barry (SPACE:1999) Morse, and was also released as WELCOME TO BLOOD CITY.

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.

The intriguing subject of virtual reality gets a rather unremarkable treatment in Peter Sasdy's sci-fi/western Welcome to Blood City, which sees a group of strangers unknowingly plugged into a computer simulation of a wild west town, the purpose being to identify natural fighters and leaders.

Keir Dullea puts in fine performance as Lewis, a recent arrival who gradually works his way up the social ladder, and Jack Palance is solid as the town's sheriff, but the film suffers from lifeless direction and a badly structured plot, which misses an opportunity for a neat twist at the end by revealing it's virtual reality angle way too early.

My copy was the dreadful pan and scan version, which didn't exactly help the viewing experience, but even cutting it some slack for this fact, Welcome to Blood City was decidedly mediocre. Westworld did the sci-fi/western thing so much better.