Strange Things Happen at Sundown

USA 2003
produced by
Marc Fratto, Frank Garfi, Steve Gonzalez, Brandi Metaxas for Insane-O-Rama Productions
directed by Marc Fratto
starring J. Scott Green, Masha Sapron, Jocasta Bryan, Joseph DeVito, Joshua Nelson, Shannon Moore, Melissa R. Bacelar, Livia Llewellyn, Giovanni DeMarco, Steve Gonzalez, Robert M. Lemkowitz, Gina Ramsden, Jason Adams, Mike Massimino, Kenny Kauderer, Sal Verderame, Nikki Bohannon, Tom Scarola, Tracy Campoli, Benjamin Bauman, Vera Vanguard, Jasi Cotton Lanier, Talya Matia, S.A. Sebastian Gnolfo, Spike, Nicholas Nace, Meredith Faltin, Joseph Anthony, Jacqueline Van Bierk, Patrick Welsh
story by Marc Fratto, Steve Gonzalez, screenplay by Marc Fratto, music by Marc Fratto, Frank Garfi, special effects by Marc Fratto

review by
Mike Haberfelner

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Marcel (J. Scott Green) has stolen $100,000 from mobster Jimmy Fangs (Joseph DeVito), and now he and his girlfriend Amy (Jocasta Bryan) are on the run. And since Jimmy and his second-in-command Joey (Joshua Nelson) are too busy turning potheads into flesh-eating zombies (literally), they send a very special thug after Marcel and Amy, the Reaper (embodied by Steve Gonzalez, voiced by Robert M. Lemkowitz), called so because he dresses just like the Grim Reaper and never shows his face. But it's not only the Reaper who's after Marcel and Amy, but also an unnamed assassin (Masha Sapron), who mercilessly offs Jimmy's men one by one to get to her prey, as it was Marcel and Amy who have turned her into a vampire, and painfully so. Oh right, I should have told you, Marcel and Amy are vampires, and so are Jimmy and gang, and so's the Reaper. All of them have different approaches to being a vampire though, Amy at one point even thinks about becoming a born again Christian thanks to a hostage (Shannon Moore) she and Marcel have taken for food while on the run, but she eventually fucks that up when she sucks the hostage dry. Eventually, Marcel, the Reaper, the Reaper's cleanly housewife wife (Livia Llewellyn), Amy and the nameless assassin all meet for a bloody but also quite hilarious showdown that holds quite a few surprises ...

If a director makes his first feature and it clocks in (like Strange Things Happen at Sundown) at 2 hours 15 minutes, that's usually a bad sign, showing that director had just too many ideas and lacked the ability to focus - but Strange Things Happen at Sundown proves to be the exception to that rule. Sure, it's chock-full of ideas from all five corners of genre cinema and doesn't always seem terribly homogenic - but it's very well-paced to make one forget about the occasional narrative shortcomings (and there aren't many), its ironic approach to the story as such really works here, the many little jokes and quirks set this apart from the usual genre fare, and the film's so full of surprises and unexpected plottwists, that to the end one can't never be sure where the story is leading next.

Lots of fun, really.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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