I've always liked watching wrestling ever since I was a kid, in fact, it is the only sport I enjoy watching. Sure, it is hardly a secret that entertainment wrestling such as WWE is staged, but that doesn't make the skills the wrestlers use any less impressive. Kill City Cup leans even more heavily into the entertainment side of things, with a ridiculous backstory to the event, and larger than life wrestlers who wouldn't seem out of place in a Mortal Kombat video game.
The pre-blurb states that after a devastating worldwide resource war in 2035, a man rose to power, Mr. Kill (Brian Kahrs - House of Blood). Due to being the sole owner of a miracle energy source dubbed 'Green Electricity', he soon managed to become the ruler of the world. This evil man realised that in order to keep the population distracted from their many problems he would need have to create a means to do so. His answer was the Kill City Cup, a modern-day gladiator contest in which the winner would get the chance to ask one request of Mr. Kill.
The press release was a little vague if this was a one off show or if it was part of a series, so I will review it as if it were a one off. The action takes place in a wrestling ring, but this is even more staged than the likes of WWE, including fatalities, special effects, and slow motion effects for some of the more interesting moves. There is no crowd watching, instead the action takes place within a sci-fi looking set, occasionally there is a shot of a post-apocalyptic backdrop in which crowds of people are watching the matches on a huge screen. I did wish there had been an actual crowd at times, as the canned crowd noises began to get a bit annoying. I also wish there had been more commentary. You have Randy Carver Jr. as the commentator, but he only really says one or two lines of dialogue a minute, usually some sort of cheesy joke based on what is happening in the ring. Mr. Kill also occasionally chimes in with his own opinion on what is happening.
Over around fifty five minutes you have a bunch of elimination matches, with the victor from each then appearing later on. Despite the ringmaster (Rye Mullis) stating there are no rules, the wrestlers all actually genuinely wrestle, though with no referee to stop them, they are able to do some crazy things, such as one wrestler who brings metal spikes with him to the ring, and steel chairs and a table being put to typical wrestling use. Some of the wrestlers have unique abilities, such as Zip Monk (Conner Murphy), whose crucifix is able to repel attacks, and a Voodoo Witch Doctor who sucks out the soul of one of the people he defeats in the ring! There was a fun variety of wrestlers who included among them a Friday the 13th Jason Voorhees type slasher, and even Mr. Kill's son who had been transformed into a hulking cyborg by the dictator's warlord (who himself also fights). The matches often seemed to peter out, initially they have three people fighting, with later matches being more traditional one vs one. I think the idea was that the defeated wrestlers are killed, but often they seemed to vanish from the match, or are killed in such a way that it really isn't obvious that is what happened.
Kill City Cup was entertaining, I thought the story could have been better implemented as the main thread of Russian Crush (Natalia Markova) trying to win wasn't that well told. Due to the relatively open end to this it felt like there would be more of these to follow, but having most the wrestlers 'dead' by the end meant if that does happen there would need to be a mostly fresh batch of fighters. More fun than I expected, but definitely rough around the edges, this can currently be viewed on YouTube.
SCORE:
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