Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1991) is an American horror-comedy you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Anthony Hickox. The premise is exactly as enjoyable as it sounds: a remote Western town populated entirely by vampires who have decided, under the enlightened leadership of Count Mardulak, to go vegetarian — synthetic blood, sunscreen, and a strict no-killing policy.

David Carradine plays Mardulak with the gravity of a man who genuinely believes reformed vampires can build a functioning society. Bruce Campbell arrives as a descendant of Van Helsing, fully committed to the wrong idea that everyone in town needs to be stopped. The comedy comes from watching two very earnest men pursue completely incompatible goals while the vampiric old guard — furious about the synthetic-blood mandate — plots to overthrow the whole experiment from within.

It is not a film that asks much of the viewer, which is its charm. Hickox keeps things moving with enough B-movie energy that the absurd logic holds together for a hundred minutes. Stream Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1991) online on iFILM.