Now the late Lemmy of Motorhead was, of course, an eccentric personality and therefore, perhaps, there is nothing strange in the fact that the king of heavy metal decided to star in thrash as the progenitor of Hollywood vampires. A gang of bloodsuckers operate in modern-day Los Angeles and its members indulge in parties and orgies, and also keep their existence secret, so as not to attract unnecessary attention. Alas, paradoxically, the Sunset Society manages to abuse its thrashing position. If to other “junk” films you can apply the installation “ it is the same thrash and low-budget operational film, so that all bad taste can be forgiven”, then in the case of “Sunset Society”, the implementation is so bad and done over the sleeves that it becomes simply boring. Even the shocking dismemberment was not brought, which is why the project, originally conceived as bad, became even worse: neither Lemmy, nor Ron Jeremy, nor the vampire add-on dilute the monotony and amazing inconsistency of the narrative.
The first rule of the Sunset Society is never to speak of the Sunset Society. Do not create new vampires without the permission of other vampires. Much of the story is told in retrospect and is about a vampire chief named Ace (ah, Ace of spades!). There is little meaning in the context of the narrative here, but at least the plot is processed simply: in general, the script setting is one of the few things well done in the film. What happens in the rest of the storyline is incredibly embarrassing: by and large, the project consists of reflections of some middle-aged guys reflecting on their youth, bad dialogue, and a fetishistic spectacle. Of course, since it's a vampire thrash, there's blood everywhere. There's no action at all, but given the budget, it's probably for good. The result is one of the worst films of the year, even by the standards of thrash, which, however, may well fall into trend for fans of heavy metal, to whom this spectacle was addressed in the first place.
Charisma on stage and in life does not always mean charisma on screen. The Sunset Society is a perfect example of this. Lemmy mumbles his lines abstractly, as if the whole movie was one big drug rush for him. The tape is somewhat charming in its shameless presentation of the theme that the life of rock stars is indistinguishable from the life of some vampire monsters, and all together it resembles an endless heroin hell. Unfortunately, neither Lemmy nor the other actors were able to convey this correctly. At some point, a promising and very crazy idea becomes just a series of empty lines that the actors statically throw into the camera. Lesbian schoolgirls openly increase the degree of insanity, which gives a certain feeling that the creators did not shoot the film in the strict sense of the word: these are some production routines; producers, writers and director wrote the story on top of the footage they created, again, without reference to anything, as if just a set of frames.
The soundtrack will certainly appeal to fans of the musicians involved in the cast, but it is unlikely to make sense on its own. The picture is generally disappointing: scenes outside were shot mostly at night with terrible lighting and rarely when there is evidence that the crew had more than one camera at their disposal. The design is difficult to express in words - it simply burys the artistic level of the film in the grave.
The clumsy and slow pace of Sunset Society immediately evokes associations with David DeCoto’s creations, if, of course, Rolf Kanefsky had not developed his own thrash style. In the end, it is unlikely that the Sunset Society has a reason to watch it, except, of course, the name of Lemmy in the cast, and although fans of this kind of film may be particularly curious about the tape, it is unlikely that there is anything attractive here except a drunken, drugged and eternally alive Mr. Kilmister.
2 out of 10