Starring: Devon Sawa, Julian Sands, Kim Director, Ashley Wisdom

Director: Glenn Danzig
Released: 2021

Mood: If you’re such a generous optimist that you can always see the good in everything and for some reason want to test that ability.

This movie shouldn’t exist, the end.

Just kidding. Well, not about Death Rider in the House of Vampires being the stupidest horror Western I’ve ever seen. I genuinely can’t remember the last time I saw a movie that was this totally f*cking pointless.

But this is a review website, so I must review. Hopefully a couple of minutes here with me can save you the 132 minutes that I suffered on this movie.

Death Rider in the House of Vampires is a short glimpse into the afterlife of vampire Death Rider (Devon Sawa). Is he called Death Rider BECAUSE he’s a vampire? Unsure. He’s technically undead, but he likes to spread death, so who knows.

We spend a LOT of time watching Death Rider crossing various landscapes on horseback, ponying a girl on another horse. This girl has gigantic boobs and is wearing nothing but blue satin booty shorts, and she just kind of flops around and that’s the only action for well over ten minutes. I’m not saying that director Glenn Danzig is hopelessly delusional and thinks he’s Sergio f*cking Leone, but I’m not not saying it either.

They encounter Bela Latigo (Danny Trejo), a vampire vaquero who sasses Death Rider for a couple of minutes and then is easily killed. Lucky for Trejo that he got out early.

They get to the Vampire Sanctuary, where the entry fee is one virgin. The leader is Count Holiday (Julian Sands). There are a bunch of other vampires with names that are half goth and half Western: Kid Vlad, Mina Belle, Carmilla Joe, Bad Bathory, Duke von Wayne, and Drac Cassidy. This is highly entertaining. Unfortunately, it’s the ONLY entertaining thing about the entire script.

All the women want to get with Death Rider – and they do – and the men are of course intimidated by him and are easily defeated. People die. Nobody cares.

Death Rider in the House of Vampires has some good songs in the score. There, I found a positive thing to say.

Now for my other thoughts:

• The set is embarrassing, there are modern light switches in multiple scenes
• The lighting is half-hearted, like they didn’t even try to make it look like it WASN’T daylight when shooting outside
• The cinematography and effects feel like the movie’s budget was one six-pack per cast and crew member
• The costumes and accessories look like they came from Spirit Halloween
• The acting is just so, so, so bad (except the Count, Julian Sands stands out above a bar set so f*cking low he could trip over it)

Most of the movie feels barely a notch above a soft-core porno, in both aesthetic and overall quality. The story is painfully unoriginal; like if you wanted to be kind, you couldn’t refer to this as ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’s reheated nachos.’ It’s not even good enough to be that movie’s regurgitated milk that you accidentally drank way past the expiry date.

I have a soft spot for Devon Sawa, so I’ll give him a pass. I’m also not surprised that Danny Trejo is there, he just likes to pop up in B-movies and have fun and he did look like he had fun in his role. Eli Roth has no excuse, he’s above this.

If you love The Misfits and Danzig, preserve that appreciation by not watching this movie.