Death Rider in the House of Vampires (2021) - Review Thread

Tell thebtskink I found his next movie for Film Club, and welcome back to the “Movies Dracula Wouldn’t Use to Wipe His Ass” series. Is it so bad it’s good? Or is it just a SnoBorderZero fever dream? I’m leaning toward the latter.

I got out of Shang-Chi pretty delighted. I enjoy a good Marvel movie. But my job was not done, because in my effort to be Cinema’s biggest bitch in the world, I had to see what was else was playing and waste my time on that as well. The only film at the theater I hadn’t seen was something called “Death Rider in the House of Vampires,” and with a title like that how could I refuse? And as many movies I see at the theater on my days off, if I ever find one that I never saw advertised at least once in a trailer at all, then I know I’m in for something terrible. This I gotta see.

The bitch is in session and my legs are open. Fuck me, daddy. Into the theater we go.



Opening the film is a shot of a cowboy dressed entirely in black riding across the desert with a topless woman riding a horse, bound and gagged and looking drugged out of her mind. Titties and bondage right off the bat. Great. I love this movie already.

Then it goes on.

And on.

Oh my fucking god, it’s still going.

I realized after a while I’ve been watching for maybe three to five minutes and all I’ve seen is this cowboy ride around with this lady, no dialogue or anything, not even good cinematography to keep me visually invested. It’s just him and her and while it’s true that there are titties also, most of the shots are from the rear and we can’t even enjoy them throughout most of this. I mean, even a bad filmmaker knows you don’t need this much establishment to show someone is going to wherever. This is so much dead space in a movie that it’s mind-boggling. It occurred to me during it that this whole area of the film could serve a simple purpose if they had just chosen to show the opening credits during it, but nope. We’re watching this. This is our purgatory.

Then suddenly Danny Trejo shows up. I don’t know what I expected but in retrospective I should have expected him to pop up in a movie like this. He stands there with vampire fangs and speaks with some ridiculous accent which may or may not be the result of him trying to speak through those false teeth they shoved in his mouth. Trejo says he wants the girl and the dude in black removes his mask to reveal he’s played by Devon Sawa…you know, the guy who was the lead in Final Destination and also played Casper the Horny Ghost and then disappeared from all entertainment anybody would reasonably watch for twenty years. I guess he’s going to be in the new Chucky TV show next month. Good for him. This movie does not encourage me for that though.

Anyway, Devon Sawa is the Death Rider. I deduced that because that’s the title of the movie. That and the last five minutes felt like five hours and I was watching him ride thinking to myself “This is death,” ergo the “Death Rider.” Anyway, Death Rider punches Trejo in the face, which knocks Trejo out because Death Rider is a vampire also. Death Rider ties Trejo up and leaves him in the desert to burn at sunrise as Trejo screams “CAN’T YOU TAKE A JOKE!”

THEN the opening credits start. And whew boy. Remember how I said they should have put the credits over the riding scene? Well, I stand by that. It feels like it should be hard to fuck up a credit sequence, but this movie completely blows it somehow. The actual credit sequence is presented like sepia tone wanted posters splattered in blood. This is a good idea in theory, but it’s utterly boring in execution mostly because there is no music. We watch these images go by with a gushing wind sound effect and a gunshot with every new name that appears. It takes something that could be charming and makes it grating. You know, like Doomsday did with Free Guy.

Death Rider and his pair of boobs then arrive at some vampire bordello, where the price of entering is a virgin girl. He hands over the woman he’s been keeping, and already any suspense of disbelief is shattered (what little it has) because this woman looks used. She aint no virgin. This was before I looked up the cast and found out this role was played by an actual porn star (Tasha Reign, if anybody wants to jerk off after they read this, Frizzo the Clown ). I imagine it was because she didn’t need to be coerced into taking her top off, while a young lady with actual acting ambitions would probably want to be either paid extra or not do it at all. Anyway, they don’t check to see if she’s a virgin or not and he’s allowed in.

He goes by “Rider” here, because he doesn’t want people to know he’s a “Death Rider” because I guess that name is too scary for all the blood-sucking vampires. He is hawt so he instantly gains the attention of vampiress Carmilla Joe, played by the chick who played the hot goth in Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. Credit where credit is due, this movie has spot on casting stemming from trash horror movies. If only it had a Bruce Campbell cameo and then its likability would increase tenfold. Anyway, Carmilla wants to fuck Rider and calls dibs, but her cute blonde gal pal is also horny and wants to ride some Rider. It really occurred to me during the scenes between these two women just how shit the movie was. The cinematography, the blocking, the acting, the dialogue…everything I was seeing during their conversations reminded me of a porn film. It’s almost as if it started production as a porno, shot all the filler in between the fucking, then they went over-budget and couldn’t afford to pay the actors to have sex, so they tried to edit it together into a straight movie instead. It was almost disappointing where every scene in which these two were arguing over a man didn’t end with the two making out then going down on each other. That’s the way all movies with this type of presentation would have ended those scenes, from my experience. Neverending can back me up on this.

From this point on the movie becomes like a bunch of random scenes being strung together. It’s not exactly episodic, because nothing feels like an episode. Nothing serves any real purpose, except showing vampires doing vampire shit. This building is then flooded with a bunch of whores who walk in and smile at all the vampires staying there, and let me tell you something, these scenes are weird. I don’t know how the movie managed to make Come-Fuck-Me gazes this awkward, but the whole environment to these scenes is just…ass backwards. The girls get flirty eyed with the vampire cowboys playing poker and we hear chitter-chatter throughout the scene in the background, but nobody is talking. They all just stare at each other in silence. It’s like a cameraman concentrating hard on extras in a scene who are trying hard to make it look like they’re doing something but they’re not actors, told not to speak so they don’t get paid more, and just try to mime the best they can without really knowing what they’re doing. And what really makes this scene weird is that these hookers are like there in the midst of these vampires in this vampire whorehouse, and they seem to be unaware that these guys are vampires, even though every once in a while one takes a bite out of their neck and lets them bleed out onto the floor, and all of the whores either don’t notice or don’t care. They just go about their business like happy little hoes.

While I’m on that subject, I’m going to digress from that rant with another rant. Vampires are supposed to drink blood, I think we can all agree on that. From what I can tell, these vampires don’t seem to drink blood all that much. They take a chunk out of their victim’s neck and then laugh gleefully as blood gushes out onto the floor. That’s like if I ordered a beer, took a sip, then poured it onto the table. Or hey, look! A delicious pizza! It would be even better if I lathered it on my body instead of consuming it! You know, PG Cooper ’s typical Saturday nights.

Also, Jibbs ’s favorite director Eli Roth is in this movie. I don’t know why, but there he is. I kept staring at him and wondering what I got myself into. I mean, I guess he has acting cred too, but that was the most random appearance that I never would have expected. I’m not surprised to see him in something trashy, but this is some bottom-feeding junk and I don’t know how it got half the actors to agree to this. Anyway, Roth plays another cowboy vampire who is a bit wild, makes a dude swallow molten silver and then explode as a part of these little mini-slices of vampire mayhem.

What is Rider doing? Getting laid. A lot. He visits Carmilla and fucks her. They have a whole scene of vampire foreplay where Carmilla drinks from a whore’s neck then snowballs it into his mouth like cum-spit, before she pulls out her boobies (which are still quite spectacular in the many years since Blair Witch), and the scene cuts away. I guess she didn’t finish the job, because immdiately after, Rider knocks on her blonde friend’s door, seduces her, then they fuck too. This scene didn’t have boobies so I didn’t like it as much. Anyway, he’s in-and-out, puts his pants back on, then leaves her by herself. Next thing she knows, she’s being taken by a bunch of vampire minions led by Carmilla, who told her “I warned you!” They then take her out and tie her to a stake, where she burns to death in the sunlight. The scene is a lot of extended screaming, as they pay for CGI of charred skin and fire for front sequences, then cut to her back in which the effects make it look like her boobs are on fire. Carmilla then visits Rider as he’s sleeping, and she drops a handful of her ashes on his bed. He’s like “The fuck?,” which is his right to be confused by the crazy bitch dropping shit onto his bed. Then she throws a skull at him and is like “Remember her now?” Then she jumps him and tries to stab him, and he’s like “I do believe you are the jealous type!” Yeah, no shit. He then pulls out a silver stake and stabs her in the shoulder and leaves her. I don’t know if he thought she was going to die, but she just kind of lies there and moans.

Rider then goes downstairs for a drink, but he takes the bottle and pours silver shards into it. Like, in plain view of everyone. This motherfucker thinks he’s sneaky, but he’s as obvious as Neverending trying to rile up IanTheCool . Somehow nobody saw his bullshit then everybody drinks it. And I mean everybody. Some vampires then try to start some shit with him, but other vampires start dissolving around them, showing Rider to be a badass because he can kill them without touching them. He then pulls out his guns loaded with silver bullets and shoots all the patrons, including Eli Roth, in which his dissolving to ash is sure to be PhantomKnight ’s favorite movie moment of the year. Rider then goes down to the catacombs underneath the house, while all the whores steal the money of all the dead guests. Look familiar, Frizzo the Clown ?

Rider then goes down to the tomb below and meets up with the head vampire, Count Holiday, who is all “I know who you are and I knew you’d kill everybody and that makes me superior to you.” He goes on his evil lord monologue all the while looking like Bill Nigh in Underworld got style tips from the Volturi from the Twilight movies. Then he’s like “Look at my trophies!” Then he unveils a group of three lady vampires, all standing in place with their backs to the wall like the brides from “Manos” The Hands of Fate. He then wakes up the one in the middle and she starts walking toward Rider. “Rider? Is that you?” It turns out she’s his little sister, and she calls her bro “Rider” for some reason. I mean, we never learn his real name. Maybe it’s “Ryder” or something, but still, that’s weird, sis. Anyway, she’s not just a vampire, she’s some sort of vampire zombie or whatever the fuck. She starts heading toward him with her arms outstretched and like “Give me a hug!” Instead of a hug, Rider sends a silver stake through her heart and she dissolves. That’s not how hugs work, dude.

Anyway, now it’s just Rider and Holiday as Rider takes out Holiday’s guards with his silver weapons, and oddly enough the guards don’t attack him, they just watch him take out each until he gets to the next one in line. Rider then starts fighting Holiday, stakes him and shoots him with silver bullets, but the guy doesn’t go down because he’s the final boss. Then Rider runs out of bullets and then grabs a torch and burns Holiday alive, who is all like “RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDDDDDEEEEEEEEEEER!” because of course he would yell that.

Rider then escapes back into the house and grabs the girl he brought from the group of whores who are stealing money. They then get on the back of the horse and gallop away, and I swear to fucking god movie, if I have to watch another endless scene of horse riding then I’m going to tear that fucking theater screen down. It then pans back to her and she smiles with vampire fangs, and I have no clue what the implication is here. Was she a vampire the whole time or did she get turned while she was there? I don’t know, and the movie doesn’t care either.

The scene then pans up as we see Carmilla watching him ride off while she stands next to a vampire played by the director of the film, and they’re like “We’ll get you next time, Rider.”



Anybody who knows me will definitely know that I am easily fascinated by movies who’s existence confuse me, like Manos and Birdemic. If I ever see a movie and ask myself “What the hell am I watching and why is this a thing?” then I jump down that rabbit hole until I find an answer. Last year, for example, I jumped down the rabbit hole of Ouija Shark and didn’t surface until I found something resembling an answer from my Google searches. Death Rider in the House of Vampires had a little more information available from Google search than Ouija Shark did, probably because there was some pedigree involved. The film was directed by musician Glenn Danzig, who I know absolutely nothing about because I don’t know shit about music. I guess he tried to do a Rob Zombie transition into filmmaking in 2019 with a movie called Verotika, which according to the Bloody Disgusting article I read hails as “The Room of horror movies.” I have not heard of this movie until now, which kind of surprises me. I don’t know how that movie holds up to that title, but comparing what I’m seeing here with The Room doesn’t reflect positively on Death Rider as a viewing experience. The Room is hilarious because you can tell while watching it just how sincere it is. It’s trying hard to be a great movie, it’s just incompetent at it. I don’t feel that sincerity with Death Rider. It feels like it’s trying to emulate a bad movie rather than let its cards fall where they may. Emulating a bad movie rarely pans out.

Take the movie Demon Squad as an example, which is slated to appear on the upcoming season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. That movie isn’t great, but it is sincere. It has no budget, it knows it has no budget, and but it throws caution to the wind and just makes something. Ouija Shark is another example of a movie with no budget that probably knows it’s going to bad, but it approaches itself with a general “Fuck it” attitude and just jumps into someone’s backyard to have a blast with some friends and a video camera. These are the types of crappy movies I love.

Death Rider in the House of Vampires is a different story. This is a movie that is made with a low, but okay-level budget, and has some people working on it who feel like they are capable of doing better and probably could with the resources available. Instead it feels like they’re trying to recreate a bad movie experience by intentionally botching themselves. Nobody looks like they’re having fun, and the movie is too serious to let them be cheeky enough to save it. And what’s frustrating is that if Danzig is that bad of a filmmaker, the people he hired in the film feel like they could elevate it for him into something enjoyable and he’s not letting them. That’s some Uwe Boll shit, right there.

And that’s the long and short of it. If Death Rider wants to be intentionally be bad, it needs to let itself be fun. Even Sharknado understood this, though how fun the Sharknado series is is debatable. Death Rider has elements that might bring a fun flavor to it and then doesn’t allow them to do anything entertaining. It then becomes a dull experience that’ll just suck the life out of you.