Review: NECROPOLIS: LEGION (2019)
Back in 1986 Charles Band’s Full Moon Pictures released Necropolis. Rather than a city of the dead, it dealt with a reincarnated witch with six breasts. Now as part of it’s “Deadly 10” Full Moon has hired director Chris Alexander (Blood For Irina, Female Werewolf) and writer Brockton McKinney (Evil Bong 777, Puppet Master: Blitzkrieg Massacre) to reboot it as Necropolis: Legion.
Back in the 17th century Maynard Gandy (Joseph Lopez) finds out his hot young wife Eva (Ali Chappell, The Last Ride) is a witch performing human sacrifices. He kills her, but not before the mouths on her breasts have sucked the soul out of one last victim.
In the present day paranormal writer Lisa, (Augie Duke, Eminence Hill, Blood Craft) is doing a book signing in the town Eva used to call home. She also plans to stay in the old house to research her next book. Zia (Lynn Lowery, Fang, Those Who Deserve To Die) turns up and warns her against it. Of course, she doesn’t listen. She goes to the house, gets drunk and drops her wine glass on the floor. In the morning she wakes up and steps on the broken glass. And we all know what happens when you spill blood in a cursed house.
What I’ve just described takes up the film’s first thirty minutes. That might seem like just a slow start until you realize Necropolis: Legion only runs sixty-one minutes including credits. So this is literally half of the movie.
Things do pick up after this. Lisa wanders into the family cemetery and touches Maynard’s tombstone. This causes her to have seems like an epileptic seizure and pass out. It also, for some reason causes Eva’s body to start regenerating.
Much of Necropolis: Legion consists of Duke wandering around in an undershirt and panties. Occasionally she has gory hallucinations. Surprisingly the film uses practical effects rather than CGI and it’s fairly well done. The killer breasts though are a bit of a letdown, Bobbie Bresee had a much more terrifying set all the way back in 1983’s Mausoleum.
With it’s short run time Necropolis: Legion really doesn’t have time to get boring. But it never really gets exciting either. It really doesn’t do much of anything really. And the ending makes almost no sense but does allow them to pad the film out to an hour with flashbacks.
If Full Moon was going to reboot any of its female-driven films, Dark Angel: The Ascent would have been a better choice. It was even meant to be the start of a franchise, something Full Moon seems to love. But instead, we got Necropolis: Legion.
Necropolis: Legion is available to stream on Full Moon’s website and on Amazon. You can check out Full Moon’s Facebook page for more details.