WELCOME TO BLOOD CITY (1977)

[The Burgomaster]

This movie is included in Mill Creek's Sci-Fi Invasion 50-Movie Pack.  First of all, the quality of Mill Creek's copy of this movie is very disappointing.  The picture is fuzzy and the pan-and-scan framing is terrible.  Often, the tops of character's heads are cut off at the top of the screen or you just see part of a face or a nose at the edge of the screen.

As for the movie itself, it starts off as sort of a cross between PLANET OF THE APES and DELIVERANCE, but quickly turns into a WESTWORLD rip-off.  A group of people with amnesia end up in a western town where Jack Palance is the head honcho.  Newcomers are forced to become slaves of the town's inhabitants for one year.  After a year they gain their freedom.  If they kill 20 people, they become "immortal."  Meanwhile, scientists at a control center watch the action on video monitors.

Overall, this movie is pretty dull and unoriginal.  Jack Palance is okay, but Keir Dullea and Samantha Eggar are pretty boring.  I rate it a dismal 1.5 out of 5.

WARNING: THIS CLIP CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDou6TSVF1Q
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[Jack]

I looked up my old review of it:

Welcome to Blood City (1977) - Some people wake up in an old West town, can't remember anything, and soon find that the inhabitants of the place enslave new arrivals for a year.  After that they get to be citizens and can do their own enslaving of newcomers.  Jack Palance is the crazy sheriff of the town,  totally immoral and actually quite a fan of the whole system they've got set up.  I just couldn't care what happened to any of these people.  The plot was mainly just a bunch of talking as we learned tiny details about something we already knew more than enough about.  Towards the end it seemed as if the main plot concerned trying to free an innocent girl, but then that sputtered out and I'm like "Okay, why the hell should I keep watching after that?"  1.5/5.

Looks like we've got a pretty similar opinion   

[Archivist]

I believe that this was mentioned in one of my favourite childhood books, 'Sci Fi Now', written in the early 80's.  There's even a colour still from the movie featuring Jack Palance.  I'll have to look into this, I quite like tracking down movies I heard of as a child but never saw.