Black And White: City of Blood (1987)

City of Blood (South Africa, 1987)
Rating: **
Starring: Joe Stewardson, Ian Yule, Ken Gampu

The most exciting part of being a slasher completist is finding rarities, possible hidden gems lost in the midst of mainstream releases and overabundance of cult flick nostalgia and, for most, I indeed get to find and watch genuine diamonds in the rough. City of Blood (1987) is not one of these gem, but I hardly find it fitting to deserve being lost, neither.

Two thousand years ago, a pair of African tribesmen get ambushed by someone hurling a tied rock, braining one of them dead. The other tribesman run for his life and soon stops to drink some water from a fall, only to be snuck up by someone in a tribal mask who proceeds to beat him on the head with a spiked club.

Fast forward to present day South Africa, where an increasing number of butchered prostitutes have the local police searching for a possible serial killer. Our protagonist, a medical examiner named Joe Henderson, believes there is a more political reason behind the murders after he notices on a crime scene a blood symbol resembling a spiked fist, but his colleagues at the police force is quick to quite him down knowing that any word of this out could catastrophically escalate the issue.

Suffering depression after losing his wife and child, Joe buries his woes working behind the desk until he nearly signed a death certificate with no name on it, which later leads to two agents representing the prime minister visiting him later, urging him to sign it, more or less falsifying a legal document. Intrigued by this and believing this is somewhat connected to the murders going on recently, Joe goes to investigate this shady act on his own, putting himself on the line of fire of not only his country's governing power, but also a murderous masked butcher out on the prowl at night.

Addressing the elephant in the room, City of Blood (1987) is only one small part slasher and barely the bodycounter it wanted you to think that it was. The opening alone would make you think the rest of the movie is going to be a cool hack-a-thon with a homicidal maniac dressed up as an African witch doctor but, truth be told, it's nothing more than a ploy to lead us into watching a political crime thriller involving race wars and forged paper works, only to return to our familiar masked murderer route a bit too late at the end with little to no satisfying conclusion.

Majority of the movie simply focuses on a single man's investigation on a devious government move, which honestly isn't all that bad. The idea of being coerced into approving a sham legal document by the powers that be for the sake of keeping the public under control for the price of one's credibility and morality does spell an interesting thriller, if only the characters involved are more interesting and if the direction has more going on for it than our hero debating on whether he should agree on signing a bogus document, sitting around and talking to people to get their side as he tries to figure out what course of action he should take.

Too much of the movie's time were spent on the casts being one-note players, never going beyond one trait of either being depressed or tired, as well as feeding us the terrors of governing powers through a very muddled plot with a dreary pace and hardly anything exciting happening, simply killing off any means on getting us invested on this movie's approach. A real shame really. The first fifteen minutes or so have us watching our masked tribesmen do brutal slayings and give an effective chase, only for it all to be thrown out in favor of some dull moral drama that surely messed a lot of slasher fans' expectations.

City of Blood (1987) is more or less a feature length political commercial about Black Power groups and corrupt officials, with slasher elements thrown in possibly to make it stand out a bit more. If it was to be handled differently, I'm sure this is a genuine gem of a rare slasher with its unique premise, but for what it is right now, its a boring mess with a bit of an identity crisis but it is watchable if you have the patience for it and/or if you're into something quite odd for your bodycounters.

Bodycount:
1 male hit on the head with a swung rock
1 male brained to death with a spiked club
1 female seen murdered, struck with a spiked club
1 female brained offscreen with a spiked club
1 male mentioned dead from torture, body later seen in autopsy room
1 male found stabbed on the chest with multiple spears
1 male shot
Total: 7

A Man's Weakness. A Devil's Strength: Dust Devil (1992)

Dust Devil (The Final Cut) (United Kingdom/South Africa, 1992)
Rating: ****1/2
Starring: Robert John Burke, Chelsea Field, Zakes Mokae

(Note: this review is based on the longer and nearly unedited "Final Cut". Such swag.)

"Back in the first times, in the time of the red light, Desert Wind was a man like us. Until by mischance, he grew wings and flew like a bird. He became a hunter, and like a hawk, he flew to seek his prey. Taking refuge in those far corners of the world where magic still lingers. But having once been a man, so does he still suffer the passions of a man, flying in the rages sometimes, and throwing himself down like a child, to vent his wrath upon the earth. The people of the great Namib have another name for those violent winds that blow from nowhere. They call them Dust Devils"

Under the scorching sun in a Namibian desert, a lone traveler hitchhikes his way into a traveling woman's house for a passionate tryst. What first appears to be a one-night stand later turns deadly as the traveler snaps his partner's neck. Slaughtering her body further, the man who calls himself a "Dust Devil" paints religious mysticism all over the interior of the house with the woman's blood before finally setting it on fire.

As he does this deed, a mysterious phone call somehow connected his actions to the life of two separate individuals; one is Sgt. Ben Mukurob, a tired detective who's been living a life under the memory of his late son, while the other is Wendy Robinson, a wife in Johannesburg living with a man who is accusing her of cheating. The next morning had Mukurob sent in to investigate the fire while Wendy sets out on a road trip away from her suffocating life; Mukurob finds that there is a possibility that he has a serial killing type on his hands with an apparent obsession with witchcraft, forcing him to try and look into old world magic as a mean to capture whoever was responsible.

All the while, Wendy crosses path with the Dust Devil, seeing him as a harmless hitchhiker. Though a magical feat got her nervous of his company at first, she eventually warms up to him in an infatuated state, not knowing what he really is. The investigation, and too the Dust Devil's revelation of his supposed goal, would eventually tie these two roads together in one final conflict between sane and insane, the rational and the mystic.

When lovers die inside; Wendy and her husband shares a
downing turn for their relationship.

Visually powerful and atmospherically overwhelming, Richard Stanley of HARDWARE: M.A.R.K.-13 (1990) and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) fame directs his second horror feature Dust Devil with more focus on tone over gory substance, making it one of the finer underrated horror films of its time. Post-production, however, had left the film in a state of development hell which resulted in multiple cuts and editing upon US release with rather sizable number of inconsistencies in the plot. It wasn't until a few years of self-financing later that this "Final Cut" came to be, a stimulating heavy mixture of a serial killer thriller, a crime drama, slasher film violence and supernatural horror that leaves us either wanting more or needing to understand due to its underlying themes of nihilism, wanting, violence triggered by racism and sexism, and belief.

If I could describe the film as anything else, I would add that it's a South African take on a Western; exploiting everything that dwells and happens under the sun, made more haunting by the wide openness of the Namib desert and its savage nature, particularly using the theme of sandstorms to back-up the killer's supposed supernatural state. A lot of giallo-inspired imagery and cinematography really help the movie's hauntingly impressive visuals, particularly wide eye aerial shots and dream sequences tinted in nauseatingly candied color. A very (and I mean very) impressively haunting score by none other than Britain's own Simon Boswell was also thrown into the fray, a spellbinding hybrid of ethnicity and Gregorian tune that just breathes class.

Apart from that, the heavy use of characterization also gives this film more depth that most horror films in particular; Chelsea Field brought out much plight for her character Wendy, tempting us to pity her despite some unlikable traits. We also then have Zakes Mokae as Ben Mukurob, the more interesting second lead whose performance goes so well with the character's backstory and personality, a mix between a hard-boiled detective and a depressed family man. Others include John Matshikiza as a mystic living in a new age and too the film's narrator, giving an air of magic and power whenever he's around, and of course, John Burke as the Dust Devil, a rather charming face to suit what should be an equally charming serial killer, giving a bit of mystery and untold danger to the role, preying on the spiritually weak and longing.

Magic. Explained by a believer to a skeptic.

As much as I want to call it flawless, Dust Devil still suffers a few (and tiny) bumps along the way; while some might find the film's dual plot focus to be an acceptable albeit complicated attempt to bring out something more in a horror film, not all will find this enjoyable as it sometimes strays away (or back) its focus unexpectedly. Some people might find the deep symbolism here confusing, which might somehow explain why this thinking man's horror isn't all that well-known to our crowd. In a technical sense, there's also the matter of bad dubbing and/or uneven acting of some of the lesser casts.

Those expecting a B-grade slasher movie from this needs to look elsewhere, as Dust Devil (1992) tries to be anything but that, and in a certain level, it worked! While there is a few count of violence, they're not overly brutal (Save for one. You'll know what it is when you see it), but the overall result sure makes up a lot for it, giving us one of the most unsung horror film in all it's hypnotic glory.

Bodycount:
1 female gets her neck broken
1 male found dismembered
1 male seen dead (dream)
1 male had his heart torn off (dream)
1 male gutted with hunting knife
1 male had his head blown off with shotgun
1 male handcuffed to a flipped jeep, left for dead
Total: 7

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