The first trailer for the latest Wesley Snipes movie, the insane-looking horror western Gallowwalkers, hit the ‘Net a few days ago and has become the latest viral sensation. The movie has been completed and sitting in someone’s basement since 2006 but late last year saw an unexceptional release in the United Kingdom. It looks like the movie is finally heading to our shores, guns blazing, and in full head-ripping mode.

You can check out the trailer here below.

Gallowwalkers takes place during the days when violence ran rampant as criminals and gunfighters battled it out in an America still young and recovering from the national wounds of the Civil War, a time when gunmen who carried a curse that caused their victims to rise from the dead to prey on the living. That was a time known as IN YOUR MOTHERF%$!ING DREAMS, YOU SILLY MAN. Snipes gets the lead role of – what else? – said cursed gunman who finds himself having to kill people he’s already killed before.

That line of work tends to get pretty nasty as evidenced by the moment in this trailer when Snipes rips one of the undead goons’ head and spinal cord off his body like he’s plucking a dandelion out of the ground. If that throwaway gore moment isn’t already an Internet meme then my faith in humanity has been misplaced. Gallowwalkers was directed by Andrew Goth from a script he co-wrote with Joanne Reay. Goth’s previous features are B.U.S.T.E.D (starring David Bowie) and Cold and Dark. Since I have seen neither of those movies I can’t accurately assess how good of a job Goth did directing his latest, but on the basis of this trailer he certainly knows how to frame a money shot.

While Snipes serves out his sentence for income tax evasion at Pennsylvania’s McKean Federal Correctional Institution the world of action cinema suffers without his unique combination of clenched teeth screen presence, hopped-up meth addict martial arts moves, and cold steel gaze that would make Satan wet his tighty-whiteys. The glory days of Snipes’ big screen acting career were pretty much put to rest in 2004 with the release of Blade: Trinity, but a well-received supporting in Antoine Fuqua’s 2009 crime drama Brooklyn’s Finest showed even the most rabid detractors of his work that he was still capable of delivering a solid dramatic performance. But in recent years his career has degenerated into a series of interchangeable direct-to-video action escapades that you can find playing in the middle of the night on the USA Network whenever they run out of DTV Steven Seagal movies to run on repeat.

I don’t think Gallowwalkers is the comeback vehicle that would revitalize Snipes’ damaged movie career. However it does really look a lot better than most of the low-grade C-flicks he has reduced himself to sleepwalking through in the years before he fought the law and the law, needless to say, did to him what he did to Stephen Dorff at the end of the first Blade – without jamming a syringe full of explosive chemicals into his forehead via the best spin kick of all time! Some Mister Falcons are always trying to ice skate uphill.

Standing in for the 19th American West in Gallowwalkers is the African nation of Namibia, which has long been a go-to country for film productions in need of imposing, picaresque desert vistas. Next year Namibia will co-star in Max Mad: Fury Road playing the challenging role of the post-apocalyptic Australian Outback. If the country keeps this up it will find itself being typecast as the endless desert where evil dwells for the rest of its cinematic career.

Gallowwalkers currently has no release date set in the U.S. I sense this flick will be having its lavish world premiere in the New Release section of your neighborhood Best Buy sometime this year. What the hell, count me in for this one. It’s about we see Big Wes saddle up and kick some ass again. Snipes is scheduled for release on July 19 of this year. It would be a shame for him to miss out on the debutante ball for what could be his wackiest movie role since Demolition Man. It would be an even greater shame if we never got the chance to see it.

Trailer

[Source: io9]