City of Blood (Darrell Roodt, 1987)

An anti-apartheid South African folk horror/thriller/police procedural/character study/political drama made in the tumultuous final years of apartheid (filmed in 1983 but not released until 1987), City of Blood's slower pace and its use of horror as just one of many elements probably won't please viewers looking for a straight-up slasher, serial killer, or supernatural movie, but it's a compelling and unconventional film about apartheid's moral rot. 

City of Blood begins with a mysterious, visually striking prologue taking place 2,000 years in the past, though its relevance to the story won't make itself clear (or at least less murky) until the final scenes. Jumping to the 1980s present, homicide detective Max Wharton (Ian Yule) and medical pathologist Dr. Joe Henderson (Joe Stewardson) are examining the body of a murdered sex worker, the latest in a string of unsolved sex worker murders. Max and Joe get into a heated argument about how to proceed with each other's jobs, which seems pretty gnarly until we understand that this is just how the two old friends and colleagues interact with each other. Max has a hilarious habit of aggressively yelling his early thoughts before pivoting to a quieter, more thoughtful approach.

In a more conventional film, we'd follow the detective as he hunts down the killer, checking in periodically with the pathologist during autopsies while the doc nonchalantly eats a sandwich over the body. Director Darrell Roodt throws us a curveball by making Dr. Joe the main character, and instead of the wacky or unflappable forensic pathologists we see in so many other movies, this doctor is tormented by the breakup of his marriage, the murdered bodies he examines, the political system in South Africa, and the nightmares that keep him up at night and on the streets searching for clues that will help his surly detective friend solve the crime. He's a heavy-hearted dude.

Joe has a lot of competing conflicts, and things get much worse when an imprisoned black activist is beaten to death by overzealous interrogators. The prime minister and two of his goons put relentless pressure on Joe to sign a death certificate stating that the activist died of a heart attack. Joe already has a reputation for being critical of apartheid, so the prime minister figures if the good doc signs off on the heart attack fabrication, the chance of violent protest decreases. Joe tells them all to stick it, and he fends off constant political intimidation while also trying to handle his job duties, manage his depression, covertly investigate the serial murders, navigate a romance with one of the sex workers, and deal with some supernatural weirdness that ties the ancient prologue to the present action.

Roodt keeps control of the varied elements, blending them into a consistent tone. Though the bulk of the film's second half veers closer to drama than horror, the unsettling feeling remains. There's a palpable sense of a political system nearing its end (though not quick enough to help our characters). Meanwhile, the shadow-world of the nightlife exists in its own separate universe, and the black and white populations are still mostly segregated. For a white director's movie about apartheid, City of Blood is surprisingly complex, with most of its characters walking a minefield of moral quandaries.

Darrell Roodt is one of the most successful and prolific South African filmmakers, and he occasionally works in Hollywood, though he mostly makes low-budget indies now. He's probably best known in the States for Sarafina!, with Whoopi Goldberg, Cry, the Beloved Country, with James Earl Jones and Richard Harris, Father Hood, with Patrick Swayze and Halle Berry, Dangerous Ground, with Ice Cube, and Winnie Mandela, with Jennifer Hudson and Terrence Howard. I haven't seen much of his work, but it looks like it varies widely in quality and production budget. He's not afraid of straight-to-video-style schlock or mainstream schmaltz, to put it mildly, and he's also covered nearly every genre. His other horror films include Dracula 3000, Cryptid, Prey, The Lullaby, and Lake Placid: Legacy.