This Forgotten '70s Sci-Fi Western Starring Jack Palance Is A Blast Worth Watching

The sci-fi Western has a long and storied history that has yielded some indisputable classics, from "Westworld" to the "Mad Max" movies. There's also been plenty of sci-fi Western TV shows that are worth a watch, including the original "Wild Wild West" series. Then, there are those films that slipped under the radar. Sean Connery's '80s sci-fi Western "Outland," for example, deserves more recognition than it gets — as might "Welcome to Blood City," an overlooked 1977 effort starring the great Jack Palance.

In the mid-70s, Palance wasn't exactly at the height of his powers. He'd risen to fame in the 1950s with roles in the 1952 film noir "Sudden Fear" and 1953 Western "Shane," before starring alongside Anthony Perkins in 1957's "The Lonely Man," joining Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster in 1966's "The Professionals," and fronting 1970's "The McMasters." Following his portrayal of the titular count in the 1973 British TV film, "Bram Stoker's Dracula," however, Palance shifted his focus away from Hollywood to work in Italy.

It wasn't until he began hosting "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" in 1982 that he would enjoy a career revival. By the end of the '80s, Palance had returned to high-profile film projects, appearing in 1988's "Young Guns," 1989's "Tango & Cash," and finding time to yell at Tim Burton on the set of 1989's "Batman." The revival culminated in Palance finally winning an Oscar for playing Curly in 1991's "City Slickers." By comparison, the late '70s were a bit of a low point for the actor, which probably has something to do with why "Welcome to Blood City" never got much recognition. Well, that and it was a bit rubbish. Still, there's something to the movie, which features a delightfully unhinged performance from Palance.

Having already established himself as one of the great Western actors, Jack Palance took a break from his late-70s Italian excursion to travel to Canada. There, alongside Keir Dullea and Samantha Eggar, he made "Welcome to Blood City," a sci-fi Western heavily indebted to "Westworld." Unlike that seminal 1973 effort, however, "Welcome to Blood City" failed to make much of an impact.

The film is directed by Peter Sasdy, who had overseen multiple Hammer horror projects including 1970's "Taste the Blood of Dracula" and 1971's "Hands of the Ripper." He also had extensive experience directing TV series in the United Kingdom, including Nigel Kneale's TV play "The Stone Tape." Palance had worked extensively in the U.K. by the time he teamed up with Sasdy for "Welcome to Blood City." But this was the pair's first official collaboration.

Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as momentous a pairing as it could have been. The film follows a group of people who awaken near the Old Western town of Blood City with no memory of who they are. Soon, Palance's Sheriff Frendlander turns up on his steed to guide the group to the nearby town, where he informs them they must either submit to becoming Blood City slaves or fight to survive. Keir Dullea plays Lewis, one of the group who chooses to fight. But what he doesn't know is that this entire experience is a simulation being run by a team of programmers to test potential law enforcement recruits. The audience, however, knows the truth fairly early on, as Sasdy makes the strange choice to cut back and forth between the control room and Blood City, thereby revealing the twist by about the 20-minute mark.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, no critics reviewed "Welcome to Blood City." A Time Out review from 2012 takes Peter Sasdy and writer Stephen Schneck to task for "refus[ing] to commit themselves to any social or political meaning." But there are some positive takes on Letterboxd, where one reviewer writes, "This film unfolds like a dusty 'Twilight Zone' episode," and notes how the movie's roughness "gives it a faintly hypnotic quality. awkward, sparse, but oddly haunting in its moral cruelty."

There's certainly something to that. In one sense, "Welcome to Blood City" is a cheap-looking "Westworld" knockoff. In another, its shoddiness somehow imbues the whole thing with a mesmeric quality. Perhaps it's just the rough copy available on Tubi — a pan and scan nightmare with framing that frequently decapitate the film's stars. But the low quality is like witnessing someone's vague memory of watching the movie back in '77. What's more, Palance hams it up as a Sheriff oddly delighted at the prospect of witnessing these newly arrived visitors murdering their way out of trouble. Seeing the man whose distinct visage inspired comic book villains and a comic book version of Dracula get all worked up over the impending deaths of his new recruits is weirdly unsettling. The film is, like Palance's 1980s fantasy movie with a cult following, "Hawk the Slayer," hypnotic in its own way.

"Welcome to Blood City" is often cited as the first film to feature virtual reality — though nobody actually uses that term. Unlike "Westworld," the fake Old West in this movie is not populated by androids but is itself a complete computerized confection. It's interesting to see how the filmmakers tackled such a premise in 1977, even if it does fall short of greatness.