Starring:
- Keir Dullea
- Jack Palance
- Samantha Eggar
- Barry Morse
A group of strangers find themselves dumped into a desolate countryside. They have no knowledge of who they are other than a card in their pockets telling each of them the number of people they've killed.
I don't know what more that I can say about this movie that wouldn't be a huge spoiler. (If you insist, I'll give more info at the end of the post hidden by the spoiler tag.)
I first saw this by chance on late night TV in the early 90s, with no idea of what it was.
Was it perfect? No. Was it interesting? Absolutely. Somehow it always stuck with me and every now and then for the last few decades, something reminds me of the premise. Today some comments made on a post about the kind of people who become ICE recruits brought it to mind again. https://piefed.social/post/930947
So I looked it up on and it's on Tubi, and I rewatched it for the first time in over three decades. Still thought-provoking.
- Welcome to Blood City - Tubi (English audio)
- Welcome to Blood City - YouTube (English audio)
Technical note: Unfortunately, it seems to only be available in very low quality, both on Tubi and YouTube: 360p, videotape transfer with artefacts, poor pan-and-scan. The subs on Tubi seem to be ripped from YouTube's autogenerate!
More links below but even the scantiest review or description is a huge spoiler. If you can, I'd recommend watching it with no more info in advance.
SPOILER, if you want to know anyway
Several people wake up with no memory. They're accosted by varmints with cowboy hats and six-shooters. A sheriff on horseback finds them and takes them to town. But this town has its own particular rules: either live as a slave or kill to become a citizen.
So the movie's a Western... only it isn't. A modern-day war is ongoing. During an evacuation, ordinary citizens were diverted off the streets. Unbeknownst to them, they've been placed into a game, a "pseudo reality" (the phrase "virtual reality" hadn't even been invented yet) which scientists use to test their personalities and find the ideal candidates for military roles to fight the war. Welcome to Blood City is the first ever film about virtual reality.
Because of the mix of future tech and old west, WTBC often gets dismissed as a Westworld rip-off but it's much more significant than that: It's not about tech gone wrong, it's about society gone wrong, and the choices we'd be confronted with in such a society. As with a lot of interesting speculative fiction, it makes you think: what would you do?
As Tarantino (is it really him?) says, the premise and first two acts are AWESOME, but it falls down in the third act. If they'd devised a better resolution, this would have a scifi classic. Prime material for a new and improved remake.