Baltimore
is so accustomed to violent crime and crummy city services, it takes quite a
lot to shock the beleaguered city. However, vampire clowns should do the trick.
Apparently, the only thing standing between the city and a wild pack of
red-haired, face-painted blood-suckers is an incompetent crew of security
guards. Despite everyone’s low expectations, the thin rented-blue line might
just hold up to the undead onslaught in Mitchell Altieri’s wildly funny and
shamelessly gory vampire comedy, The
Night Watchmen (trailer
here), which screens during the 2017 New York City Horror Film Festival.
This
will be a heck of a first night for the new guy. Everyone calls him Rajeev,
because he is stuck with his predecessor’s old uniform and name-tag. His new
colleagues think they will have plenty of time to haze him, because most nights
they just sit around eating donuts, watching adult videos, and spying on the
employees of their primary tenant (a weekly newspaper), especially the cute
one. Unfortunately, this will be no ordinary night. It starts when they
mistakenly receive a coffin that was supposed to be delivered to the city
morgue. Inside lies the remains of Blimpo the Clown, who died under mysterious
circumstances while touring Romania—and you know who else came from the Transylvanian
region. Needless to say, Blimpo will not stay laying down for long.
Good
old Blimpo chews through most of the building, killing or turning most of the
paper’s employees. Plus, he also has more clown vampire reinforcements on the
way. “Rajeev” and the crew, led by Ken, the supposed former Marine, find
themselves in an undead siege. On the positive side, his big crush is still
alive, no thanks to their dubious protection.
Night Watchmen is one of the
funniest horror comedies since Ava’s Possessions and Witching & Bitching, but it is still fabulously gory. We are talking about some
arterial blood sprays that resemble the Bellagio Casino’s water show. To give
you a sense of the film’s tone, our intrepid watchmen soon learn vampires pass
some really nasty gas after getting staked through the heart.
Yes,
Altieri and the battery of co-screenwriters (Jamie Nash, with co-stars Ken
Arnold and Dan DeLuca) go there, frequently. Yet, probably the foulest gags
involve James Remar playing Randall, the spectacularly sleazy newspaper boss.
Good taste prevents us from describing his antics, but it is safe to say you
have never seen the veteran character actor so slimy and skeevy.
