Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat | |
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Directed by | Anthony Hickox |
Written by |
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Produced by | Jefferson Richard |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Levie Isaacks |
Edited by | Christopher Cibelli |
Music by | Richard Stone |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Vestron Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 104 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $2.8 million |
Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat is a 1989 American Western comedy horror film directed by Anthony Hickox and starring David Carradine, Bruce Campbell, Morgan Brittany, and Deborah Foreman. It was written by Hickox and John Burgess.
Its only public screenings were at film festivals in Seattle and Palm Springs, as well as at Cannes. Released in 1991 on VHS and in 2008 on DVD, it has earned a cult following. [1]
Under the leadership of the ancient Jozek Mardulak, a colony of vampires seeks a peaceful life in the desolate desert town of Purgatory; key to the transition is repairing the town's artificial blood factory. Mardulak summons the human designer of the plant, David Harrison, who brings his wife and two young daughters along for what he thinks will be a pleasant desert vacation.
Ethan Jefferson is a vampire who wants to return to hunting and feasting on humans. Soon, the plant manager and his family are caught up in a civil war, as Jefferson organizes a revolution.
In the midst of the vampire civil war, a young descendant of the Van Helsing family arrives intent on destroying all vampires.
Parts of the film were shot at Moab, Spanish Valley, Thompson Springs, Hittle Bottom and Arches National Park in Utah. [2]
In Creature Feature, the movie received 3 out of 5 stars, noting that it was infused with cinematic vitality [3] TV Guide similarly gave the movie 3 out of 5 stars, finding the movie to be enjoyable, but that the ending collapses under its own cleverness. [4] Entertainment Weekly gave the movie a C−, finding it to be anemic. [5]
David Carradine was an American actor, director, and producer, whose career included over 200 major and minor roles in film, television and on stage. He was widely known to television audiences as the star of the 1970s television series Kung Fu, playing Kwai Chang Caine, a peace-loving Shaolin monk traveling through the American Old West.
Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a fictional character from the 1897 gothic horror novel Dracula written by Bram Stoker. Van Helsing is a Dutch polymath doctor with a wide range of interests and accomplishments, partly attested by the string of letters that follows his name: "MD, D.Ph., D.Litt., etc.", indicating a wealth of experience, education and expertise. He is a doctor, professor, lawyer, philosopher, scientist, and metaphysician. The character is best known through many adaptations of the story as a vampire slayer, monster hunter and the arch-nemesis of Count Dracula, and the prototypical and the archetypal parapsychologist in subsequent works of paranormal fiction. Some later works tell new stories about Van Helsing, while others, such as Dracula (2020) and I Woke Up a Vampire (2023) have characters that are his descendants.
Dracula is a 1958 British gothic horror film directed by Terence Fisher and written by Jimmy Sangster based on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel of the same name. The first in the series of Hammer Horror films starring Christopher Lee as Count Dracula, the film also features Peter Cushing as Doctor Van Helsing, along with Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling, Carol Marsh, and John Van Eyssen. In the United States, the film was retitled Horror of Dracula to avoid confusion with the U.S. original by Universal Pictures, 1931's Dracula.
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Sundown is a synonym for sunset.
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