Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat – The forgotten Bruce Campbell horror-comedy

The vampire genre is a surprisingly broad subsection within horror, offering various takes on the simple premise of monsters who have to drink blood to survive and stay out of the sunlight. It’s been used for broad comedy, like in Dracula: Dead and Loving It, gothic romance like in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, teen romance with the Twilight franchise, and, most recently, to make the connection between the oppression of the Irish people in the 16th century and the racial oppression of African Americans in the Jim Crow-era South in Sinners. Many vampire films are well-known and highly regarded, but one that often goes forgotten, blending several of the previously mentioned themes—not so much the racial oppression angle—is 1989’s Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat. 

The film takes place in the remote desert town of Purgatory, where an engineer named David Harrison (Jim Metzler) moves with his family to fix a faulty artificial-plasma plant of his own design. What they don’t realize when they arrive is that the small town is completely overrun with vampires, led by the mysterious Count Mardulak (David Carradine), who use the plant to create a substitute for blood so they don’t have to kill humans. However, there’s a plan set by one of the town’s leaders, Jefferson (John Ireland), and Shane (Maxwell Caulfield), an old romantic adversary of David’s, to take over the town and go back to the traditional ways. Meanwhile, a descendant of Van Helsing named Robert (Bruce Campbell) has also come to town to put a stop to the Count’s reign.

Despite what that description would have you believe, Sundown isn’t some grand epic between two warring vampire factions. It’s a horror-comedy. More specifically, a western horror-comedy. The film was released at the tail end of the ‘80s (technically 1989, but released in the U.S. in 1991), a decade that arguably re-established the horror-comedy subgenre with An American Werewolf in London, and continued with crowd-favorite movies like Monster Squad, The Return of the Living Dead, and Evil Dead 2, except, where those films took the horror element (mostly) seriously and the comedy was more situational, Sundown takes a more comic approach and leans into the western tone.

The movie is a western, almost to a fault, and the opening title card immediately conveys the vibe of the whole film (i.e., classic vampires and a western backdrop). The film opens with a classic crawl in Gothic lettering that explains the existence of vampires, which transitions into the title card featuring a western theme that sounds right out of a John Wayne movie. From there and throughout the movie, it has a slight horror edge, but unlike something like Near Dark (which came out two years earlier), Vampires, or From Desk Till Dawn, where it’s a vampire movie with some western zest around it, this is very much a western with vampires in it.

One of the funniest aspects of the movie (whether it was intentional or not) is that, midway through, they introduce the concept of guns with wooden bullets that can kill vampires, so by the end, it becomes two rival gangs in the west going at it for control of the town. It's not even new-age vampire weapons versus old-school wooden stakes and vampire powers, it's just a bunch of vampires with guns shooting each other. The fact that they're a bunch of monsters becomes incidental when the action kicks in, and for whatever reason, it's one of the most entertaining aspects of the movie.

Speaking of fun ideas, the film is full of them. Before that plot gets going, the simple concept of vampires having complete control over a town, albeit without malicious intent and merely trying to live peacefully, is an interesting concept. Count Mardulak chastises the town at a certain point and holds a mirror up to the vampires—in a proverbial sense, considering a real one would have no effect on them—and reminds them of the vampires they used to be before they came to Purgatory. It makes vampirism seem like an allegory for addiction and recovery, which later vampire projects like He Never Died (underrated) and Midnight Mass would expand upon, but with a more dramatic flair and horrific violence.

The film is full of ideas that serve almost as seeds for later movies and shows. There are early hints to True Blood, since the artificial plasma that the Harrisons come to Purgatory to fix is used to create synthetic blood that the vampires drink as opposed to the real thing and the ensuing uprising occurs because most of the vampires can’t stand the taste of it and don’t want to meld into the human world, despite Count Mardulak’s wishes.

There’s also a romance subplot that comes out of nowhere between a human and a vampire (sounds familiar), the difference being that the vampiric higher-ups, specifically The Count, actually approve of it, as the community’s goal is to coexist peacefully with humans. It’s funny how The Count is the most righteous and altruistic vampire in the movie when you consider who he’s revealed to be by the end. The first thing that came to your mind is correct.

The film has a couple of trope subversions, the best of which is Bruce Campbell’s performance as Robert Van Helsing. The reason that most people know about this movie—and this is coming from personal experience—is due to Campbell being on the poster. The marketing is a little misleading considering, contrary to what the poster would suggest, he isn't the lead, but rather a wacky side character. Regardless, he’s easily the most entertaining part of the movie.

Depending on who you are, Bruce Campbell exists in one of two states in the human mind: the sight of him in a film makes you happy, and the mentioning of his name in conversation makes you smile, or you’ve never heard of him…and that’s it, there’s no other recorded opinion of him anywhere. I mean, people still remember him as the tutorial voice for the original Spiderman games on PS2. How many people can you say that about? Probably not a lot would be my guess.

He's a standout in Sundown because he’s a complete inverse of his persona in the Evil Dead franchise. Whereas Ash is cowardly but self-assured to take action when it's required of him, Robert Van Helsing is intelligent when it comes to the ways of vampires, and inept and nerdy in everything else. He’s a far cry from Anthony Hopkins in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and miles away from Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing. He can barely talk to a pretty girl (no judgment here), let alone kill a vampire. 

That’s what makes him so fun in the role. His nervous tics, awkward behavior, and patented Campbell scream make everything so much more fun when he’s on screen. The underlying gag that follows him around is that every attempt he makes to be assertive or courageous always inevitably fails. If he was the lead, it'd be comparable to Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China, where he's the protagonist, but he isn't the hero of the story. That gimmick would've been welcomed, because one of the problems the movie has is that outside of Campbell's performance, the other human protagonists are pretty dull and there's too many of them.

There’s the Harrison family, Campbell as Van Helsing, and a couple who witness a murder—one of them is played by Bobby from Twin Peaks—and they all share the task of being outsiders looking in and the fish out of water to have the vampire lore explained to them. It makes the sheer number of them feel a little redundant, and since they get lost in the shuffle of the various gunfights towards the end, they don’t contribute much to the story. The effects also aren’t great, specifically the stop-motion animation on the bats. But considering most of the scenes involving the vampires as bats (minus one bedroom encounter) are played for laughs, it’s forgivable for what they’re going for.

Sundown is unique in that it’s one of the last vampire movies made, post-Near Dark and The Lost Boys, that went by the traditional vampire aesthetic. After that, most films went for vampires that were more sexualized and edgy, rather than the Bela Lugosi-inspired look of being classy and formal. Count Mardulak and Shane are prototypical vampires with their slicked-back hair and fancy attire. They also call back to old-school tropes, such as Shane’s ability to be both scary and seductive to potential victims, while The Count is more well-spoken and charismatic. They would fit in perfectly palling around with Jerry from Fright Night, but they’d stick out hanging around David’s gang in The Lost Boys.

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat didn’t revolutionize the genre and won’t change your perceptions on vampire lore, but it’s an entertaining, lesser-seen movie that plays around with the established lore and isn’t afraid to get goofy with its premise. As well as going all in with the genre-blending of horror, comedy, and westerns. If all you want is a movie with Bruce Campbell being funny and vampires shooting each other like the Earp brothers going after the cowboys (at the end of the day, isn’t that what we all want out of a movie?), Sundown won't disappoint.