City of Fear

The "scary" city in question is Sofia, Bulgaria, which I happen to know well. Hadn't realised it was the wild west as recently as 2000 though, with thugs firing machine guns on every street corner. Of course it wasn't, even back then it was a modern sophisticated city - they just chose it as a cheap place to shoot this rubbish. Of course there are lots of films out there which are useless in every respect. This one is just a little bit more so.

Some other reviewers seem to like hopeless lead "actor", Gary Daniels. I'd never heard of him and pray I never will again. The only thing more ridiculous than his dyed-blond mullet, dopey expressions (it's impossible to tell what emotion he's trying and failing to convey) and silly accent is the guy's complete inability to act - it felt like he was reading off cards held up by someone just out of shot, with no real idea what the words meant. Apparently this guy is a kick boxer who once fought someone who fought JCVD. Great! They managed to match him with a female lead who also couldn't act. Can't imagine why they cast this freakishly tall woman, who must be well over six feet and towered over Daniels, even with her frizzy hair tamped absurdly down to minimise the difference.

The rest of the "acting" plumbed further depths (probably because the local actors they recruited didn't speak English and no-one bothered to tell them what they were saying) and the film dragged on at a snail's pace with a stupid stilted script and a plot that was silly and clichéd at the same time. Neither Daniels nor anyone else showed that much fighting ability and the action scenes were either routine or daft, as when on TWO occasions, just as a vital witness is about to tell our hero all, they both get sprayed with machine gun fire, the witness is riddled with bullets but the hero unhurt.

There's nothing entertaining here and no reason to watch. Literally I have never seen anything worse. The only so-bad-it's-funny laugh comes with the final line: "This is one story that should never be told." If only the film-makers had figured that out!

For me at least, alarm bells immediately start ringing if I learn that a recent action or horror film has been shot in an Eastern European location. Please note that is in no way whatsoever any disrespect to the utilised foreign crews, quite the contrary - they are entirely as competent as any other, rather my problem is that the recent trend to shoot genre flicks in said countries has invariably produced some of the most truly mundane and inane action and horror fodder there is going! The film in question only reaffirms my viewpoint in fact and proves to be a fairly lacklustre affair affair at best. Having said that, matters do at least get off to a cracking start with our hero, Gary Daniels having a great fight in a car park. Sadly, this is undoubtedly the highlight of the entire film and certainly the best action scene contained in its run time. To be fair, it's not a terrible film by any means and Daniels surprisingly gives a better acting performance than normal (no, really!) but I'd be hard pressed to recommend it to anyone other than die hard fans of Gary's work. A shame really.

Just about everyone on here is correct – this is strictly a lower tier Gary Daniels film that suffers from a lacklustre script, disinterested direction, and many, many mistakes. Daniels deserves more than this, I mean come on! One time me and Gary were out on a shoot in South Africa, and were boozed up on the local hooch, and I swear he somehow managed to roundhouse kick a giraffe right in the jaw! But here he is, running around Sofia in Bulgaria, trying to get to the bottom of something or other.

You see Gary is a reporter travelling to Bulgaria to see his scientist mate, and see him he does, getting carried out of his house in a coffin. Before you can say "Riot and Epicentre are much better films that this" Gary's got a seven foot tall stripper sidekick and is up against the Russian mafia and the Bulgarian military! Plus, everyone's got a secret and you can't help but think that Daniels should have just got the first flight home to blighty or Australia or America or wherever he's supposed to be from this time.

There's a staggering amount of continuity errors in this film (microphones, camera shadows, extras grinning at the camera), and too many 'wait a minute…how?' moments for anything to be believable, but Daniels is likable enough (although he adopts a strange stance throughout this film…you'd have to see it to know what I mean)…there's plenty of other Daniels films out there before you should try this one.

Gary Daniels (SUBMERGED) is the star of the show in this low-rent C-grade thriller that eschews action for plot, and comes off all the worse because of that. The story is a convoluted mystery involving Daniels as a reporter investigating the death of an old buddy. Cops, robbers and the Russian mafia are inevitably involved and repeatedly try to kill Daniels before he finds out too much. Sigh.

Yep, it's a story as old as the hills and portrayed particularly badly here, with sloppy, nonsensical editing and a real 'cheap' feel to it in every aspect of the production. Like many modern B-movies this was filmed in Bulgaria, and the producers actually deserve kudos for setting their film in Bulgaria rather than pretending that Eastern Europe looks like America.

Otherwise things are strictly routine and the film follows the tired formula of plot, action, plot action ad infinitum. The bad news for action fans is that it isn't even very good. A car chase plays it safe all the while, offering nothing new or unseen to the genre, and the martial arts fights are few and far between. The shoot-outs are cheesy beyond belief. There are probably about half a dozen spread out throughout the film which is just not enough.

Now, Daniels is a great martial artist, and when he does get to fight, he does a damn good job. So it's bizarre that they didn't let him do it more often! Daniels is a better fighter than he is an actor but he does a good job here compared to others in the cast. He's one of those actors that are impossible to dislike. As for the rest of the cast, they're instantly forgettable. One guy does a poor Jim Carrey impersonation while the love interest is played by the particularly bland and unattractive Carol Campbell.

Things begin to make more sense when you realise this was written and produced by none other than notorious exploitation legend Harry Alan Towers under his 'Peter Welbeck' pseudonym. CITY OF FEAR carries on in Towers' cheap, anything-for-a-buck tradition that the 81 year old shows no signs of stopping just yet.

I wish to preface these comments by saying that I don't usually like to criticise the efforts of other Directors. That being said however, this is positively the worst film I have ever seen in my life. I have had the misfortune of being witness to some absolute travesties of cinema in my time but this must be right up there with "Scorpio Rising" in my opinion as an example of the worst possible waste of time, money, effort, and attention I can ever claim to have been associated with. From the very moment the titles began, I was dubious. This was followed by a wave of disbelief, a hope that this was a spoof, then the fits of embarrassed laughter took over and I can honestly say that every film-making mistake and cliche that I could think of at the time was being paraded on screen before my very eyes. The acting was non-existent, the lead actor was tragically mannered, wooden, and frighteningly bad. So bad that i could only imagine he was there for the "Fight sequences" if you could call them that. They too were cliched, pointless and boring. I'm not even going to comment on the other 1 dimensional jokes of characters that are thrown in there. Every possible stereotype and cliche you could imagine. As soon as you thought that they were all used up, there would be one more you had forgotten about being thrust at you. The directing was woeful, the pace mind numbing, the writing abysmal. I had to wonder how the Director managed to decipher the bar napkins the script must have come off through the obvious state he must have been in to bother to make such drivel. The financiers mustn't have even read anything, and it is a insulting piece of garbage that quite frankly saddens me. To think that there are so many deserving film makers all around the world that struggle to even get the necessary equipment and film stock to make their pictures, and here we see it squandered on what any deranged monkey could see was a piece of rubbish. If i could give it minus stars I would. But for comedy value, or for a lesson on what not to do, it can have it's one star.