In recent years, a number of horror films have consisted of little more than small groups of people walking around in dark or semi-dark buildings fighting at times intangible enemies. Some succeed, some do not. "The Night Watchmen" succeeds. A rock musician quits the music scene and the only job he can get is as a night security guard for the "Baltimore Gazette" newspaper. He has a baptism of fire because a famous clown and his entire troupe who had died from a mysterious illness while on tour in Romania have been repatriated, and someone opens his coffin to take a ghoulish souvenir.Soon, the building is crawling with vampires, and the nightwatch team - four men and an office girl - are hemmed in from all sides. It takes only a few minutes for the viewer to realise this film is not to be taken too seriously. It succeeds partly because of the soundtrack but largely because of a non-stop stream of wisecracks, innuendo and at times toilet humour.

Three inept night watchmen, aided by a young rookie (Max Gray Wilbur) and a fearless tabloid journalist (Kara Luiz), fight an epic battle for their lives against a horde of hungry vampires… and clowns.Where to begin on this one? First of all, it is hilarious, original, quirky, and a true midnight movie. Time will tell if this becomes a cult film, but it seems to have enough elements that repeat viewings are inevitable. Horror fans might be lured in by seeing the names James Remar and Tiffany Shepis attached, but really they are neither the stars of the film, nor anywhere near the best part.The humor is what sells this film. And it is not so much the jokes (such as a black man who fumbles with "black culture") as it is the timing and delivery of them. There is almost a Marx Brothers quality to some of the banter, with comments flying by quickly that might be easily missed if you are not fully invested. Then again, some of the jokes are impossible to miss – such as what happens when vampires are killed. We even get a "Twilight" reference or two.On the horror end of this horror-comedy, credit must be given for what may be a new invention: the clown vampire, or "clownpire". With the hundreds, if not thousands, of vampire movies in the world, it stands to reason that at least one of them would have had a clown who became a vampire. But nothing immediately springs to mind. And this film owns the idea, not just making it a throw away, but really the central plot device. You might think that would be silly, cheesy or just plain dumb, but in fact it works very effectively and adds to the creepy factor.The blood keeps coming, just as it should. While not over the top like "Dead Alive", there is enough red to keep everyone happy. There are also a few shots of gratuitous nudity, if that is what you're into. I'm not, but I know it's what the kids want. The only real complaint is the inclusion of an unnecessary romance angle. While it certainly works, it was rather cheesy and even less believable than the clown vampires.For a great genre film shot in Baltimore (with absolutely no John Waters connection), you will want to check out "The Night Watchmen". Already winning awards on the festival circuit, it screened August 2, 2017 at the Fantasia International Film Festival. Who knows what sort of havoc it will cause upon wider release.

"The Night Watchmen" is a vampire movie with clowns … but the clowns are the vampires and – in fact – the titular night watchmen are the clowns! Does that make sense? If not, it doesn't matter. It's a horror comedy with the emphasis laying heavily on the comedy part, and although enjoyable enough while it lasts, it's probably one of the least memorable movies you'll ever watch. The script, written by two of the lead actors, contains a few inventive gimmicks and a small handful of genuine laughs, but overall it's a routine and largely uninspired fan-boy movie with the usual splatter effects and infantile fart, weed and bimbo jokes. We're introduced to the four night watchmen of the Baltimore Gazette newspaper building, located somewhere in the harbor. Their job is generally boring and monotonous, so they entertain themselves by peeping at the sexy office ladies, playing human bowling, smoking weed and stealing other people's lunch packets. Tonight will be different, however, because the coffin of a famous dead clown mistakenly ended up at the newspaper building. The clown mysteriously died during a tour in Romania and got repatriated, but he quickly rises from his coffin and goes on a violent killing spree during the one night that everybody stays in the office to work on a deadline. Personally, I think that the concept of eerie vampire clowns entering the USA via the Baltimore harbor and gradually bloodsucking their way through the rest of the country might even have worked as an actual horror movie, complete with atmospheric tension and scary clowns' make-up, but apparently the makers decided it was better to focus on incompetent watchmen instead. Thanks to the copious amounts of fake blood and the exaggeratedly bad acting, "The Night Watchmen" is entertaining enough to watch at a festival or in the company of drunken friends, but don't expect to still be talking about it a week later.

"The Night Watchmen," named Best Horror Feature at the 2017 International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival, is the movie equivalent of tasty junk food – the cinematic counterpart to fried Twinkie or an Oreo churro. (The latter available at the theater concession stand.) It's a ridiculous tale of vampire clowns terrorizing a Baltimore newspaper office. And, apparently, legendary Baltimore filmmaker John Waters had nothing to do with it.The co-creators, Ken Arnold and Dan DeLuca, play two of the security guards. Arnold's Ken is the nominal leader, while DeLuca's Luca is the mysterious, scary one. The team of watchmen is rounded out by Kevin Jiggetts, playing Ken's sidekick Jiggetts, a pot-loving African-American Jew, and Max Gray Wilbur as a washed-up rock musician in his first night on the job.Following their mysterious deaths while performing in Romania, Baltimore icon Blimpo the Clown and his troupe are shipped home for medical testing. After a delivery mix-up leaves Blimpo's coffin at the newspaper building instead of the medical facility down the block, pervy newspaper owner Randall (James Remar, the only cast member that a viewer is likely to recognize) forces is it open, releasing Vampire Blimpo.The four inept night watchmen and hot-chick newspaper editor Karen (Kara Luiz) must band together like sad-sack Guardians of the Galaxy to fight off the vampire clowns and the newly undead newspaper employees they have created.During the Q&A after a screening at the Phoenix Film Festival, Arnold said he and DeLuca dreamed up the project to amuse themselves between jobs and that their overriding priority was to make people laugh. That they don't take themselves or their movie too seriously is obvious from the look of the film, the cheesy dialogue and the silly subplots.Along the way, however, The Night Watchmen lampoons the conventions of the horror, vampire and zombie genres. The movie gushes bodily fluids, but in a manner that is silly, not scary, goofy, not gory. At one point, after encountering some really disgusting vampire clowns, Karen grumbles that she watched every season of HBO's "True Blood" and it was nothing like this.It's worth noting that, for fans of horror, vampire and zombie movies, The Night Watchmen is full of Easter Eggs that pay homage to previous films in those genres. Besides amusing themselves, the writers clearly are offering middlebrow comedy for a highbrow audience. They hit their mark.###Stu Robinson does writing, editing, media relations and social media through his business, Phoenix-based Lightbulb Communications.