The city of Braddock has a problem.

1993’s City of the Vampires opens with a news report about Braddock. The city appears to be dying, and no one is sure why. The population numbers have plunged. People are scared to go out at night. Most of the people interviewed for the news story talk about how they can’t wait to get out of Braddock. As I watched, I found myself wondering if this was the same Braddock that would later elect John Fetterman as mayor and appear in those Levi’s commercials. The commercials aired around 2009–2010 and were all about how important it was to save the city of Braddock. I remember watching them and thinking, “Why is some Yankee city more worthy of a commercial than the cities that are struggling in the South?”

(Fetterman, at the time, was branded “America’s coolest mayor” by The Guardian. People forget just how much the media loved Fetterman when he was just another predictable liberal.)

As for the movie, it follows Sam Helling (Matthew Jason Walsh) as he explores the city of Braddock at night. He’s looking for his girlfriend Christine (Anne-Marie O’Keefe), but instead he finds himself in a city that has been taken over by vampires. I should mention that some online sites insist the character is named Sam Helsing, which would seem to be a callback to Dracula’s Dr. Van Helsing. Watching the movie, though, it’s made clear that Sam’s last name is indeed Helling. Leave the Van Helsings out of this.

City of the Vampires is a shot-on-video horror film, and it definitely deserves some credit for its ambition. Whereas most SOV horror films were content to just rip off the latest slasher and zombie pictures, City of the Vampires was obviously meant to be a low-budget action epic. There are a few interesting camera angles. There’s a deliberate echo effect on some of the dialogue, the better to give it a supernatural, dreamlike feel. There are several fairly convincing shots of melting faces. Despite the low budget, the filmmakers were obviously trying to make something memorable. One could easily imagine an alternate universe where City of the Vampires launched a whole franchise about vampires taking over American cities in decline. Look out, Gary, Indiana. The bloodsuckers are coming.

That said, it’s still a shot-on-video horror film, and the low budget really does show in more than a few scenes. The film takes place largely at night, it appears to have been shot at night, and there are several scenes so darkly lit that it’s a struggle to make out what’s happening. As cool as the echo effects were, the soundtrack is generally not that clear, and I sometimes found myself straining to hear what people were talking about. Proper lighting and sound recording have been the downfall of many SOV films. They’re the kind of thing people take for granted until they’re gone.

Still, I’ll give this film credit for its ambition. I always appreciate the effort, even if it’s not fully successful.