Dark Town

Dark Town is sort of a modern morality play passing as a vampire movie. In the opening scene, a rich slumlord shows himself to be guilty of racist attitudes in an early scene. It is only fair, therefore, that he end up a vampire, so he can suck the blood of poor blacks and Latinos literally, after already having drained them figuratively.

Various plot elements converge. The literal and figurative bloodsucker starts to propagate vampirism through his own family and friends. Two black gangs converge on his house (and battle in the streets). The city experiences a power outage. The black hero has to team up with a white lesbian social worker to defeat "the man," who in this case is also "the vampire." Hilarity and graphic violence ensue, in the form of vampires feasting on the living, followed by the living slaughtering the vampires in turn.

I quickly lost interest in this film, which seems to feature improvised dialogue by melodramatic amateur actors, but I did notice some plusses along the way:

Completely gratuitous girl-on-girl action.
Excellent DV photography transferred faithfully to DVD.
Dead baby-fu, as Joe Bob Briggs would say.

The film is rated a bottom-dwelling 1.7 at IMDb, but that is not fair. While it is not a good movie, and I did not enjoy it, any objective observer would have to note that it is reasonably competent and original for a low budget vampire movie.

DVD INFO

full-length writer and director commentary
the transfer is widescreen, anamorphically enhanced (16x9), and looks good
DVD is overpriced. If you want it, wait a couple of months and pick it up on eBay or in remainder bins

NUDITY REPORT

Ariana Fronti- two topless scenes

Meghan Stansfield and Janet Martin show their breasts in a lesbian scene.

The Critics Vote ...

No major reviews online.

The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. IMDb voters score it a sterling 1.7/10

The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics, or a C- from our system. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by genre fans, while C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable). D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. We don't score films below C- that often, because we like movies and we think that most of them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-.

Based on this description, it's a D. Even genre fans will have a hard time watching this one, but the director did a nice job at producing sharp images with DV.