If Westworld had been lobotomized, dragged through a spaghetti western, and then forgotten in a broom closet at Pinewood Studios, the result might look something like Peter Sasdy’s 1977 misfire Welcome to Blood City. It’s the kind of film that thinks it’s being profound because the characters don’t know what’s going on—when in reality, neither does the audience, nor, it seems, the director.
This is a movie where big ideas come to die.
You know it’s trouble when the film opens with Keir Dullea waking up in a field with amnesia. That’s right—Dave from 2001: A Space Odyssey is back, but instead of hurtling through space-time, he’s stumbling around a budget western set like a community theater cowboy with a migraine. He’s joined by four other strangers—also amnesiacs—who quickly realize they’re in some sort of Old West hellscape populated by townsfolk with itchy trigger fingers and a law system written by Ayn Rand on meth.
They’re told the rules quickly: kill five people, and you become a citizen. That’s it. No trial. No reasoning. No nuance. Just shoot your way to social security. The whole thing smells like someone took the “kill or be killed” part of a libertarian manifesto and made it into a game show hosted by death.
Welcome to Blood City, population: confusion.
Jack Palance plays the local sheriff, which is to say he growls a lot and looks like he smells of whiskey and unresolved war crimes. He walks around with the swagger of a man who once won a gunfight against God and has been dining out on it ever since. His idea of justice is a shotgun and a smirk. He doesn’t so much act as lean menacingly, occasionally barking lines that sound like they were scribbled on a whiskey napkin during a blackout.
And then there’s Samantha Eggar, whose role consists mostly of standing around looking like she’s got a migraine from reading the script. She’s supposed to be the moral compass, but she’s about as effective as a weather vane in a hurricane of nonsense.
As for the plot—well, calling it a “plot” is charitable. It’s more like a loose pile of high-concept spaghetti with all the sauce drained out. We’re supposed to be asking questions: Is this a simulation? A dystopia? A government experiment? But by the halfway mark, we don’t care anymore. The film gives you breadcrumbs, but they’re moldy and lead you in a circle. There are suggestions of a sci-fi twist, hints that the whole thing is a test for something back in “the real world,” but it’s delivered with the clarity of a drunk mime at a philosophy convention.
It’s as if Peter Sasdy tried to make a thinking man’s western but forgot to include the thinking. He’d previously crafted atmospheric horror with Taste the Blood of Dracula and Hands of the Ripper, but here, the atmosphere is dryer than a saloon cracker and the suspense is DOA. The pacing is glacial, the action dull, and the characters behave like mannequins given just enough AI to tie their shoes and kill each other.
The film tries to raise questions about morality, free will, violence, and social engineering—but each idea is dropped faster than an extra on the kill list. Characters spout philosophy like they read it off the back of a cereal box. Is murder still murder if you’re told it’s a game?” one character mutters, eyes dead, like even he doesn’t believe what he’s saying.
And let’s talk aesthetics. The Old West set looks like it was built over a long weekend by three hungover interns and a goat. The lighting is flat. The camera lingers too long on nothing. Even the gunfights, which should offer at least some pulp satisfaction, are clumsy affairs choreographed like a drunken slap fight in slow motion. There’s more tension in an episode of Little House on the Prairie.
The soundtrack? It sounds like someone took a kazoo and a synthesizer, locked them in a room, and let them scream at each other. There’s no cohesion. No tone. Just a constant reminder that what you’re watching is the cinematic equivalent of a dead fish floating in a baptismal font.
But the worst crime of all is how boring it is. This should’ve been a glorious trainwreck. A satirical bloodbath with a point. Instead, it’s a slow death by plot ambiguity, poorly sketched characters, and a director who clearly wanted to be anywhere else. The twist at the end—yes, there is one—is supposed to make you re-evaluate everything that came before. Instead, it makes you re-evaluate your life choices and question why you didn’t turn the damn thing off an hour ago.
In the final moments, we’re shown glimpses of the real world—hinting that this western nightmare is part of some behavioral experiment. A social simulation, a test of violence. But it’s too little, too late. The film squanders its premise so thoroughly, it makes The Thirteenth Floor look like Blade Runner.
Final Verdict:
Welcome to Blood City is a confusing, ponderous, misfired bullet of a film. It’s a western that wants to be a parable, a sci-fi story that wants to be an allegory, and a movie that forgot to be entertaining. Peter Sasdy aimed for profundity and ended up with a film that’s too dumb to be smart and too slow to be fun.
It’s like being trapped in a saloon where the whiskey is fake, the poker chips are plastic, and every gunfight ends in a lecture. If this is the future of society, I say we all flunk the test and ride off into the nearest volcano.
One star. And that’s just for Jack Palance’s mustache, which is the only thing in the film with any gravitas.
