The Night Watchmen

Comedy and horror blend together really well and here is yet another example of this.

Telling the story of a group of office workers & security guards who are the last survivors of a vampire outbreak in their building.

Starring James Remar & Tiffany Shepis truth is they are little more than cameo appearances and likely added to give the movie a bit of star power.

With fantastic one liners, high production values and a competent cast this really caught me by surprise and is a really good effort.

The film has some really great writing, memorable vampire clowns and roaring potential for an entire franchise, I walked away from this very pleased.

It's not flawless but is a damn fine effort regardless, we need more of this and less of The Conjuring/Insidious nonsense.

The Good:

Tiffany Shepis

James Remar

Looks great

The Bad:

Lacks closure

One sfx looks pretty bad

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

1980's montage scenes are still awesome

A sure fire way to identify a vampire is by their inability to dance

Necrophilia is when one person makes sweet love to someone else. The someone else is just dead though

Giving a vampire the munchies doesn't sound like a good idea to me

Another reviewer here has compared this to Return of the Living Dead. That is nuts. Return of the Living Dead had an incredibly solid and witty script and actors with the charisma and talent for humor to back it up, as well as some excellent effects for its time. This movie has none of that.

There are a few minor chuckles in here, I'll give it that much credit, but nothing worth sitting through the rest of this. The effects are standard generic low budget horror level. The actors aren't that bad, but they aren't good enough to make this derivative, lukewarm script enjoyable. Now, I'm not going to be so dramatic as to claim that this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen, I've seen much worse than this, but this is still nothing more than a regretful waste of time unless you have really low standards when it comes to horror and/or comedy.

You want a horror comedy about vampires in an office building? Go watch Bloodsucking Bastards (2015) instead. That one's actually funny and enjoyable.

In THE NIGHT WATCHMEN, what seems like another dull night of security duty turns into a ghastly fight for survival, when a coffin is mistakenly delivered to the wrong address. Said sarcophagus contains the remains of a certain Blimpo the clown, who had perished in a mysterious tragedy. In Romania!

Unfortunately, for all involved, including the title characters and some office workers, Blimpo's not quite dead! He's undead! Soon, with the help of his fellow costumed performers, the entire city is besieged by a vampire holocaust!

Insanely over the top, hilariously funny, and containing oceans of blood, this movie simultaneously breathes new life into both the vampire and killer clown sub-genres. Unexpected fun from opening to ending credits!

P.S.- Watch for horror goddess, Tiffany Shepis in a glorious cameo!...

The comedy-horror sub-genre is quite a hard one to execute successfully, usually the comedy lessens the horror or vice-versa and the film winds up being neither one thing nor the other. The Night Watchmen is another in this line of movies but it is definitely one which succeeds better than most. Set in an office building in Baltimore, a coffin containing the body of a famous clown who died while on tour in Romania is wrongly left on the premises. Before long, the corpse is revealed as a powerful vampire and soon many people fall victim to both him and his minions. Its left to the inept security guards to save the day.

There's no question that this one works much better as a comedy than as a horror. Which kind of explains why it begins very strongly but fades a bit in the second half. The reason being that, as is often the way in these types of movies, the action ramps up in the latter half with more emphasis on the horror elements. But it was the character interactions that impressed me most, with a lot of good comic acting from the cast and a lot of funny dialogue. Much of the humour is genuinely laugh-out-loud, even if they did overplay the fart joke somewhat! The cast work very well together and understand the comic material very well, there are no name actors here except for James Remar of Warriors (1979) fame, who plays a slightly sleazy office worker. From the horror side of the fence this one has zombie-like vampires and an evil clown, so it's a bit of a selection box. It does ultimately boil down to a group of people trapped in a building fighting back against hordes of monsters which isn't the most interesting or original set-up, however, I would say that this one is still well worth catching on account of its comic interplay and sense of mischief.

This movie combines zombie and vampire elements with a spooky clown. Sounds like a popcorn flick? Yeah it kinda is, it leaves the impression as if it could be a pilot for a new series. This movie doesn't take itself seriously and you can feel that all the way because with dialogues as cheesy as these, and vampires reacting in funny comic styled ways you can't expect more. It's entertaining to a certain degree and I'm glad it wasn't any longer, 80 minutes were just about right. The beginning seemed a bit more promising than the movie finally was but, who could have expected something different. The cameraman did a good job and the music was fitting, colorgrading was nicer than expected. Good movie to watch with some friends and laugh here or there.