Plot

What happens when normal people find they need to kill, in order to survive? This is the story of such a group of people, suddenly turned into vampires, and carving a path of blood and mayhem throughout New York City. Slowly, they lose their grip on reality, and turn into an army of anti-social, psychopathic misfits; and surely, they turn on each other.—Marc Fratto <insaneorama@yahoo.com>

Strange Things Happen at Sundown is the story of vampires run amuck in New York City. There's a group of low level mobsters with fangs, there's an age-old vampire who does mob hits for money, there's a pair of vampire lovers on the run. Throw in a born again Christian trying to bring one of the vampires over to her side, an Italian girl from Brooklyn bitten by vampires and left to endure an agonizing three-day turn and a psychotic four-hundred year old blood-sucking housewife with a fetish for cleanliness and virgin girls. All of them are being hunted by a nefarious vinyl clad woman whose intentions are mysterious and powers are unmatched...—J. L.

Saturday night: Jimmy 'Fangs' Petrucci [Joseph DeVito] is P.O.ed. He's just been kicked out of the band he manages. You don't do this to Jimmy 'Fangs' and live. First, however, Jimmy has other business to take care of...namely, informing Micky 'Balls' and Fat Frankie that he is taking over Micky's narcotics territory. When Micky and Frankie resist, Jimmy, along with his henchmen -- Joey 'the Butcher' Mandone [Joshua Nelson], Nicky 'the Tooth' [Giovanni DeMarco], and Paulie 'Hands' [Michael Massimino] -- take out Micky, Fat Frankie, and their molls, Annette and Vicky...not with heaters, but with fangs. Just before finishing off Vicky [Melissa Bacelar], Joey recognizes her as a friend of his sister, so he decides to turn Vicky instead. The rest get stabbed in the heart, as all good vampires do to their food after they've finished eating.

Sunday: Marcel Thomas [J Scott Green], one of Jimmy's deliverymen as well as his maker, is on the lam to Montreal with $100,000 of Jimmy's money when he and his girlfriend Amy [Jocasta Bryan] run into car trouble. In need of blood and a car, Marcel takes both from Good Samaritan Jonathan who stops to help. Marcel and Amy also take Jonathan's wife, Annabelle [Shannon Moore], to keep 'on ice' for later. To prove to Annabelle that they are vampires, Marcel allows Annabelle to shoot him in the head. What he doesn't count on is Annabelle taking a second shot, this time shooting out his right eye, something that will take at least a week to regrow. Jimmy is getting concerned. He hasn't heard from Marcel with regards to his money nor is Marcel answering his phone. It looks like something has happened, and the most likely scenario is that Marcel has absconded with the money. Jimmy, Joey, and Nicky stop by Paulie's house to rouse him out of bed. To their horror, they find that Paulie has been shot in the head and stabbed through the heart. Only a black rose has been left as a calling card. Jimmy thinks it might have been Marcel who did the killing, but he's wrong. Unbeknown to anyone, there is a new vampire [Masha Sapron] on the scene [known in the credits only as 'the Narrator'], and she's so unhappy about her situation that she's looking to kill her maker...once she finds him...and God help any other vampires who cross her path. She's a powerful one, this yearling. She is stronger and faster than 95% of the vampires out there. She can go invisible and read minds, while vampires like Amy and Nicky 'the Tooth', have yet to even figure out how to make their own fangs come out.

In the meantime, Jimmy has something to show to Joey and Nicky. Jimmy has a friend who is both a vampire and a drug maker. He has developed a way to mix vampire blood with marijuana, creating a fast and easy way to turn pot smokers into zombies who will do their master's bidding as well as clean up the bodies left behind. To demonstrate, Jimmy rounds up a few employees whom he suspects of stealing from him and forces them to take a few hits. Within seconds, they are reduced to flesh-eating zombies. It is Jimmy's plan to build himself an army of these zombies, but first he must get back that missing $100,000, and Jimmy knows just the guy who can do it...the Reaper. The Reaper [Steve Gonzalez] is a powerful old vampire, so powerful that he casts no reflection in a mirror. Rumor has it that the Reaper is thousands of years old, never was human, and originally came from Romania. No one knows what he looks like because he always wears a long black robe and a cowl over his face. The Reaper and his wife June [Livia Llewellyn], who is 443 years old and once was a countess in Hungary, live in a spotless little house in the suburbs, spotless because June is uber obsessive/compulsive about cleanliness. While Jimmy, Joey, and the Reaper attempt to talk business, June goes bonkers because the Reaper left a dirty spoon in the kitchen sink. Anyway, the Reaper agrees to take on the job of finding Marcel and getting back Jimmy's money.

Sunday night: Marcel and Amy have taken a motel room where Marcel intends to hole up for a few days, at least until his eye stops throbbing. In the meantime, he's in need of a few supplies, so he leaves Amy with Annabelle while he looks for a store that's still open. While Marcel is gone, Annabelle and Amy get into a long talk about Christianity, something that angers Marcel no end because he is totally against playing with food. It's becoming more and more obvious that, although Marcel and Amy were once super in love ("He watched me die and waited for me to be reborn. It was so romantic!"), the ardor has cooled and Amy is bored. She's actually enjoying the talk with Annabelle and learning about Jesus Christ and how accepting Him as her savior will save her from hell.

Monday: The Reaper is on the road, closing in on Marcel while Jimmy and Joey are holed up in Jimmy's studio, waiting for Vicky to change. Jimmy informs Joey that Nicky was killed last night by the same vampire that killed Paulie on Saturday night. Concerned that they may be next, Jimmy hires the best protection around... Christopher and Cynthia [Jason Adams and Gina Ramsden] from Staten Island. While Jimmy, Joey, and Vicky play cards, Christopher and Cynthia stand watch. Suddenly, Christopher can feel someone in the room. Before he knows it, he's dead. The Narrator goes on to kill Cynthia and then Joey. Just before she kills Jimmy, she shows him a picture of Marcel and asks where she can find him. When Jimmy refuses to talk, she mind melds with him and learns that the Reaper is also after Marcel. After killing Jimmy, she then informs Vicky what to expect as she turns into a vampire. Leaving her calling card, the black rose, the Narrator leaves. Amy is superbored and suggests to Marcel that they tie up Annabelle and go hunting together, just like they used to. They break in a house and start feeding on all the occupants. After taking out three or four in the kitchen, Marcel moves up to the bedroom where he finds a couple in bed. After drinking their blood, he hears a baby crying in the next room, and he kills the baby, too. Amy is so disgusted when she finds Marcel sucking on the baby ("I had the decency to kill it before eating it, okay? I'm not completely without compassion.") that when they get back to their motel room and Marcel goes to pee in order to make room for Annabelle, Amy frees Annabelle and the two of them run away together.

Tuesday: Annabelle is heading for her house in the country. Amy notices a hooded guy standing alongside the road. He casts no reflection in the rear view mirror. When Marcel calls Amy on her cellphone and begs her to come back, she refuses and warns him to call off the goon (the one who casts no reflection) that's been following them. After they arrive at her house, Annabelle begins thinking about what she can do to help Amy. However, when Annabelle starts rattling on about the police, lawyers, courts of law, being abused and not at fault and all, Amy finds herself rethinking her decision to run off with Annabelle and comes to another decision. She tears open Annabelle's neck and has lunch. Just as Amy finishes the first course, Marcel phones again. This time he sweet talks her into coming back to him, and she agrees to wait for him to drive up to Annabelle's. He should be there around sundown, he says. Amy hangs up and goes back to Annabelle's neck for more. Just as she feels her fangs starting to come in for the very first time, she is knifed through the heart. The Reaper has found her. Meanwhile, June has been dutifully dusting the bedroom when she notices one of the Reaper's dirty socks lying on the side of the bed. In a fit of anger, she picks up the sock and goes in search of the Reaper, but she fails to notice the car that was parked along the road, watching her house. A call to the Reaper's cellphone, and June has located him. She expects to get there by sundown, she says, provided rush hour traffic isn't too bad. As she pulls away, the car that's been watching her house begins to follow.

Tuesday sundown: Marcel arrives first and is happy to see Annabelle lying dead on the lawn, but Amy is nowhere in sight. He goes into the house and begins walking down a long hallway, unaware that the Reaper is waiting for him at the end with a bottle of holy water ready to toss. As Marcel calls out Amy's name, June arrives. Right behind June, but unseen, is the Narrator. As Marcel nears the end of the hallway, the Reaper steps out and tosses the holy water at him. Also at that very moment, June comes out of a side hallway and is hit smack in the face with the holy water. June hits the floor, writhing in pain, and Marcel attempts to run, but the Narrator is right behind him. She shoots at him, hitting him in his good eye, then asks him why he turned her. "Did you ever look into somebody's eyes right before you're about to do them and see a darkness that just goes on for miles?" Marcel replies. "I could see back then, even when you were drooling on the floor, you were going to be one of the great ones...a mean, tough, hardcore bitch. How could I kill that?" As the Narrator holds the knife to Marcel's chest, Marcel attempts to bargain with her by offering her the $100,000 in his pocket. Just then, the Reaper enters the room. Marcel attempts to bargain with him, too, but the Reaper has a job to do and he's not about to be put off. Emotionlessly and while the Narrator watches, the Reaper plunges his sword into Marcel's heart, takes the $100,000, and heads for the door. "Contrary to what people believe," he turns around and says to the Narrator, "I was human once. Sooner or later that part will die off. Just give it some time...if that's what you want."

Epilogue: Whatever happened to Jimmy's weed? At what looks like a rave, joints are being passed around. Suddenly, the entire audience turns into zombies. They attack the musicians and begin eating them. [Original synopsis by bj_kuehl]