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Look, Horror Fans, when you run a horror site and Wild Eye Releasing dumps press releases for two Mark Polonia joints in your lap in the same week…well, there’s really no choice. We’re runnin’ ‘em both! Ladies and Gentlemen, we humbly present you the trailers […]
Movies & TV NewsLook, Horror Fans, when you run a horror site and Wild Eye Releasing dumps press releases for two Mark Polonia joints in your lap in the same week…well, there’s really no choice. We’re runnin’ ‘em both!
Ladies and Gentlemen, we humbly present you the trailers and info for both cinematic gems Sharkula and Amityville in Space, coming this June and July, respectively. Please read on and watch below, Horror Fans….
From the makers of Sharkenstein and Noah’s Shark, sink your teeth into Sharkula this summer!
The curse of Count Dracula lives on in shark infested waters, claiming the lives of a tourist community. A sea hunt for the new species results in monsters, madness and bloodshed. This great white is putting the bite back into terror, and it has help with the aid of new vampires intent on seeing it survive.
From writer-director Mark Polonia and starring Kyle Rappaport (Return to Return to Nuke ‘Em High Aka Vol. 2) as Renfield and Jeff Kirkendall (Return to Splatter Farm) as Dracula, Sharkula takes to the red sea this June from Wild Eye Releasing!
And not to be outdone….
From Wild Eye Releasing, pack your bags for a frightening intergalactic stay at Amityville.
The ultimate battle against the Amityville curse begins after the infamous murder house is exorcised from Earth and reappears in outer space in Amityville In Space—coming this July!
From director Mark Polonia (Sharkula), and starring Titus Himmelberger, Cassandra Hayes, Tim Hatch, Ryan Dalton and Jeff Kirkendall, Amityville In Space is set to remind you that screams go unheard in space.
I really do try to avoid proclaiming things “objectively true,” but it happens sometimes. I’m opinionated. Go figure. So, at the risk of pissing off some segment of Toxic Fandom du Jour, I’m going to go ahead and state that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre […]
Movie Reviews Movies & TVI really do try to avoid proclaiming things “objectively true,” but it happens sometimes. I’m opinionated. Go figure. So, at the risk of pissing off some segment of Toxic Fandom du Jour, I’m going to go ahead and state that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is one of the best and most important horror films ever made. That, my friends, is objectively true.
One could be forgiven for mistakenly assuming that after nearly 50 years, the TCM canon would include a few highlights—an additional movie or two that are worthy of the immense legacy of the Leatherface mythos birthed by the original lightning-in-a-bottle masterpiece. Unfortunately, though, this franchise has been arguably the most bungled of all of horror’s major players.
Aside from a now well-regarded first sequel by original director Tobe Hooper in 1986—a movie that gleefully threw a wrench into the proceedings with its overtly comedic approach and over-the-top spectacle—the TCM franchise is full of underfunded, half-baked non sequiturs and outright flops. The closest thing to real success was the 2003 remake—a glossy, WWE-inspired Michael Bay production that had more impact on the movie business at large as the progenitor of the remake boom than it had on the franchise it was trying to reinvent.
It follows, then, that one could also be forgiven for not getting too excited about the latest entry into this messy mélange, particularly an entry that saw its original directors fired over “creative differences” after filming had already commenced, and then got unceremoniously dumped onto Netflix upon its completion.
Low expectations, don’t fail me now….
The latest ill-advised road trip into the heart of the Lone Star State—director David Blue Garcia’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), follows a group of young entrepreneurs who’ve decided to purchase a locale called Harlow—an entire ghost town in the ruralest of rural Texas—in which they envision a thriving community centered around a business hub populated by their own innovative startups. Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and Dante (Jacob Latimore), along with Melody’s sister Lila (Elsie Fisher) and Dante’s girlfriend Ruth (Nell Hudson), arrive in time to scope out the place before a party bus carrying potential investors soon follows.
While attempting to remove a tattered confederate flag from the side of a dilapidated orphanage, the group discovers the building’s still occupied by an elderly woman named Ginny (Alice Krige) and her “boy” (or extremely large and shadowy grown-ass man, as it were). Ginny swears up and down that she has the deed to the property proving her rightful ownership. As she and Dante begin to argue, Ginny suffers a heart attack. She and her “boy” are loaded into the back of an ambulance and driven off…with Ruth riding shotgun, for some reason.
As horror movie luck would have it, Ginny dies enroute to the hospital which causes her “boy” to freak out. And by “freak out,” I mean cause the ambulance to crash while butchering everyone onboard and then cutting off a fresh face to wear. And just like that, Leatherface is back. And by “that,” I mean exactly how Michael Myers was brought out of retirement via an opportunistic vehicle maelstrom in Halloween (2018). More on that movie later.
The rest of Texas Chainsaw Massacre plays out in entirely predictable, cliché-laden terms. Leatherface heads back to Harlow where he dispatches just about everyone. In the meantime, word gets out to Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), the original movie’s lone survivor, now a grizzled Texas ranger/late-model Laurie Strode doppelganger (speaking of Halloween). Sally, like Laurie was four years ago, is on a mission to put an end to the boogieman after decades of mental anguish. But unlike Laurie, Sally’s inclusion here is seemingly arbitrary, extremely brief, and likely the result of a cynical promotional ploy.
After an abundance of bloody but by-the-numbers carnage, some of our heroes finally confront ol’ Leatherface, and as my favorite one-sheet asks, “Who will survive and what will be left of them?”
This movie is a mess. That’s not to say it’s ALL bad. But mostly.
In broad terms, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) checks all the boxes of an ultra-generic modern slasher flick. It’s lit like an Aerosmith video (see: 1990s). Though there are some admittedly excellent kills, there’s way too much CGI gore. There’s a hollow flinch of an attempt to graft on a bit of sociopolitical zeitgeist, or at least the appearance of it, and there’s only a cursory emphasis on character and story. The result is a movie that will evoke a few smiles from Horror Fans over the course of its one-hour and twenty-one-minute runtime, and little else.
In terms of this movie’s place as the self-proclaimed direct sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre? To that end, it misses badly. It doesn’t ever once feel like it resides in the same universe as the original. The few explicit references to the 1974 film are as superfluous and uncompelling as any found in the rest of the franchise.
Leatherface doesn’t ring true, either. That’s no fault of this movie’s man behind the mask, Mark Burnham, who was a great pick for the part, misused though he was. But the original Leatherface was one member of a family of cannibal killers and a much more complex character—partially shaped by that family dynamic—than his later slasher peers would be. He was portrayed as frightened and vulnerable one moment and barbarically homicidal the next, his various masks representing a range of personalities. There were clear implications of severe mental illness and who knows what else, all giving way to utter, manic lunacy and derangement that together created an unmistakable, unforgettable, and apparently unmatchable tone.
That’s one of the things that sets the TCM universe apart from the others. The potential horrifying reality of it. Here, though, Leatherface could be any generic slasher. And to top it all off, his new look is tragically reminiscent of Admiral Akbar from Star Wars, which didn’t exactly have me repeating, “It’s only a movie…it’s only a movie….” Not in a good way, at least.
And it’s not just the apparent indifference to the prior characterization of Leatherface that’s bothersome. It’s that this Texas Chainsaw Massacre goes a step further and portrays him no differently than Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. Like them, Leatherface is now a supernatural killing machine with super strength and apparent invincibility. He might as well be wearing a stainless-steel space-hockey mask.
Things don’t feel very “Texas,” either. The movie was mostly filmed in Bulgaria, and somehow you can tell.
The filmmakers casually yet ham-handedly raise a few sociopolitical issues but to no apparent end. For example, one of our protagonists survived a school shooting and another is a gun-totin’, truck-drivin’ local. And…that’s it. No exploration of that dynamic at all outside of the obvious foreshadowing that the girl who’s scared of guns will end up having to shoot Leatherface before the credits roll. Otherwise, it’s just a stereotype-infused set up with no substantive payoff. What does seem clear is that at one point in its development, this movie wanted to skewer everyone—boomers, zoomers, liberals, conservatives, city slickers and hillbillies alike. Instead, it misses us all and only succeeds at appearing incredibly tone-deaf and incoherent on the “substance” side of things.
Most egregiously, it seems like Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) took inspiration from every corner of the horror movie universe other than the very movie it’s attempting to build upon. Again, it lifted its general approach from the rebooted Halloween series, including its setup, its incorporation of a legacy character, and the way its culmination plays out. But also, the killer here is essentially Jason Voorhees in a Leatherface costume, and the lesson our protagonists come away with is cribbed directly from A Nightmare on Elm Street: Confront your boogieman lest he haunt your dreams forever. In trying so hard to be the quintessential slasher movie, Texas Chainsaw Massacre fails to deliver any of the cache of horror film gravitas that its title evokes.
The things this movie does well are few and far between, but if you look hard enough…. A handful of the kills are great, particularly the first one when Leatherface snaps a guy’s arm and causes a compound fracture, the protruding bones of which he uses to stab the man to death through the throat. It’s brutal and over the top. It’s just in the wrong franchise. There are also several great shots that depict Leatherface, chainsaw in hand, sprinting after his intended victims as the movie races toward its climax. These shots are the one element that successfully recalls the terror of seeing the chainsaw wielding hulk sprinting through the woods just inches behind Sally Hardesty all those decades ago.
It feels like there was the germ of an inspired movie here at one time. But utter mismanagement stripped away whatever that was and left an incoherent and wholly unimaginative slasher flick in its place. In a word, it’s generic. Maybe after nearly half a century, it’s time to accept that nobody is going to get this right. So, it’s up to us to either accept these inferior movies for what they are or find something else to watch.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the space race was on! The competition to reach and exploit the infinity of space between Cold War enemies USA and USSR was a constant theme of the news and popular culture. Who would be the first to […]
Movie Reviews Movies & TVIn the late 1950s and early 1960s, the space race was on! The competition to reach and exploit the infinity of space between Cold War enemies USA and USSR was a constant theme of the news and popular culture. Who would be the first to breach Earth’s atmosphere? Who would be the first to set foot on the moon? To orbit Earth? Each side poured millions upon millions into the race to be the first to meet these milestones.
And each side had their own heroes…a new and special breed of fearless explorer who took the risk to conquer space. Sometimes the Space Race demanded the ultimate sacrifice, as pilots and astronauts gave their lives to reach their goals. Men like John Glenn and Yuri Gagarin became icons of their respective superpower…heroes whose names filled the newspapers and TV broadcasts.
It’s no wonder that this Space Race wound up giving moviemakers their own new frontier to conquer. During this period, a lot of films revolved around astronauts and space exploration. But in 1959, one modest little film took a daringly different approach to the heroes of the void…they turned one of them into a lumbering, bloodthirsty monster!
That movie was English director Robert Day’s First Man Into Space, a low budget movie that retold the story of Icarus for the modern age. In this case, Icarus was Lt. Dan Prescott, a daredevil who reached too far, too fast…and tumbled back to Earth as a murderous monstrosity. This was a risky—many would say tasteless—approach to take in a day and age when astronauts were portrayed as fearless, clean cut military men who typified everything a man could aspire to.
Along with the glory of space exploration, there was also fear of the unknown. Our knowledge of space was not as common or thorough back then as it is in the 21st century. There was real anxiety over what could be “out there….” Could there be killer radiation? Alien spores and viruses that could threaten life on Earth? Or maybe even vast and hostile intelligences? Of course, alien invaders were a very popular film subject in the 1950s, with the invaders signifying the fear of “the other”—those who were not the same as us.
First Man Into Space did not take that route. There were no alien monsters in the movie. Instead, one of our best and brightest became the monster. Imagine if Chuck Yeager or John Glenn returned to Earth from one of their pioneer voyages as a hideous mutant. In 1959, such an approach made First Man Into Space not only disturbingly creepy, but downright subversive.
I wouldn’t claim the movie to be a great classic or even above average in many respects, but it does have some hidden depths to it and can be interpreted in more than one way. It’s also a good example of concise, economic filmmaking, telling a tight story in less than 90 minutes. Obviously, it made an impression on someone…the late ‘70s schlock horror The Incredible Melting Man is pretty much an uncredited remake. But where First Man Into Space was a sober and grim story, Incredible Melting Man was dependent on campy, unbelievable gore and the admittedly brilliant makeup FX of Rick Baker to tell its story. It makes its impression in an entirely different way.
The movie was an American/British co-production, with filming taking place in both England and America. The American locations were Brooklyn, New York and New Mexico, while the British scenes were done in Hampstead Heath near London. The actors were almost entirely American, and one would be hard pressed to find any trace of British involvement with the exception of a peculiar cameo from Roger Delgado, later to be the evil Master in Dr. Who. The budget was slightly higher than for most sci-fi B-movies, which helped give it a solid appearance.
Let’s dive into the story of First Man Into Space. Spoilers follow!
Lt. Dan Prescott (Bill Edwards) is executing a test flight of the experimental Y-13 rocket-powered aircraft. The Y-13 is launched straight up like a rocket but once in the ionosphere, it can level off and fly like a plane. Monitoring Dan’s flight is his brother Chuck Prescott, along with Dr. Paul van Essen and Air Force Captain Ben Richards. We learn right away that stodgy, by-the-book Chuck is going to butt heads with his reckless younger brother, who insists on taking the Y-13 past its pre-determined limit. Dan is a risk taker with little use for authority. The Y-13 winds up entering a zone of weightlessness, which disorients Dan. Dr. Van Essen calmly guides Dan back to gravity and a safe landing.
Things get more tense when Dan skips his mandatory debriefing so he can hang out with his hot Italian girlfriend Francesca (Marla Landi). I have to say, I might make the same error, but stiff-necked Chuck is furious with Dan almost to the point of advising he not continue with the project. “I got where I am by taking chances,” snarls Dan. “While you’d be afraid to drive a go-kart across the street!” Captain Richards agrees that Dan is a handful but says there is no better pilot. He will take the Y-13 up again for the next stage of the project.
The next flight begins and sure enough, Dan once again takes the Y-13 past its limits. He is exhilarated by going further up than any man before him and is suddenly determined to enter space itself. With Chuck and Richards yelling for him to level off, Dan hits the emergency booster and finds himself 250 miles above the Earth’s surface…the first man into space! But something unknown is waiting for him. The Y-13 suddenly enters a blizzard of strange particles that stick to the craft like mud. Dan ejects himself from the Y-13 and all contact with him is lost.
The next information comes when a farmer finds a parachute and the remains of the ejector pod on his property. Chuck investigates and finds the pod is basically intact but coated with a kind of hardened substance…the same material the Y-13 flew into. Dan is nowhere to be found, which is perplexing. Tests on the strange material find that it cannot be penetrated by any type of radiation, including x-rays and ultraviolet light.
Later that night, a lumbering, gasping figure approaches the blood bank in nearby Alvarado and violently breaks into it. A nurse hears bottles being broken in the blood storage area and enters the room…only to have her throat brutally slashed by something monstrous! The next day’s newspapers tell of the gruesome crime as well as violent attacks on local cattle, who are drained of blood. Chuck and Alvarado police chief Wilson investigate. The wounds of both the nurse and the cattle are sprinkled with shiny specks of metallic material. A terrible theory is starting to form in Chuck’s mind….
Dr. Van Essen discovers the specks are meteor dust. He also learns that the parts of the escape pod that are coated by the strange space material are completely intact and unaffected by radiation. The parts that are not coated have been turned into pulverized carbon. This weird space substance seems to be a kind of protective layer that keeps anything it coats free of dangerous radiation.
Meanwhile, the monster is still on the rampage. A trucker is attacked, and his blood drained in a diner’s parking lot. When two police pull over a car that’s driving erratically, they are horrified when a dead body tumbles out of the front seat and a grotesque creature lunges at them. We now get a good look at the former Dan Prescott, and he won’t be winning any beauty contests. Still wearing his space suit, he’s covered with a kind of stony crust, with only one staring eye and part of his mouth exposed. The makeup is gruesomely effective. And so is Dan. The cops are also slaughtered.
When these latest murders are discovered, there’s no longer any doubt in Chuck’s mind: The monster is Dan. Van Essen believes that when the Y-13 ejector pod was caught in the “blizzard” of the strange space material, the hatch popped open. For a terrible second, Dan was exposed to the vacuum of space and his blood began to boil. But this protective material formed an instant coating, saving his life and helping him survive the return trip to Earth. But his body is starved of oxygen and his mind has been driven to an animal level by the experience. Only two instincts now drive the former astronaut: He must replenish himself with fresh blood and he must somehow get “home”—the base where his ship was launched. The rock-like coating has made him impervious to bullets…as the cops found out the hard way.
As Chuck, Van Essen, Richards, and Francesca discuss the situation at the base, things come to a head when the hulking, wheezing Dan smashes through a window nearby. He’s returned home, but his mind is still deranged. And Van Essen believes he will soon run out of oxygen no matter how much blood he’s consumed. He doesn’t have long to live.
Chuck believes he can still somehow reach his brother. At first, it doesn’t look like that will happen, but finally Dan wheezes out his first word since returning to Earth: “Chuck?”
Van Essen says that if they can get Dan to the atmospheric testing chamber where high-altitude conditions can be created, it will help him breathe and possibly restore his mind. Van Essen gets on the base P.A. and calmly guides the confused and still dangerous monster through the evacuated base to the chamber.
They manage to get him into the chamber and Chuck, wearing an oxygen mask, stays there while Van Essen adjusts the atmosphere. The gamble works…Dan’s mind begins to clear, and he starts to speak. “It’s been so strange and dark…feel like I’m suffering from some terrible disease. Like I’ve got no blood in my veins.”
As things get easier for Dan, they become more difficult for Chuck. Dan continues his pathetic tale: “I’ve been groping my way through a maze of fear and doubt.” He describes when the space storm hit “…like 50,000 machine guns all hammering at once.” While Dan speaks, Van Essen monitors his body condition. When Richards asks how high Dan flew, the voice of the gung-ho pilot returns for a minute, excitedly saying he went as high as 300 miles above Earth.
But his heart is beginning to weaken. When Chuck tells Van Essen to increase the atmosphere, Dan says “It’s no use…I’m finished.” He speaks to Francesca: “I’m sorry it had to be this way. But I just had to be…the first man into space.” And those are Dan’s last words, as his body finally gives out.
Chuck is taken out of the chamber just in time save his own life. The final word goes to a somber Van Essen: “The conquest of new worlds always makes demands on human life. And there will always be men who accept the risks.”
To be honest, First Man Into Space was not the first film to feature an astronaut returning to Earth and becoming a monster. That honor goes to 1955’s The Creeping Unknown, the first of the Quatermass movies from Hammer Studios. In that worthy film, Victor Carroon crash lands back on Earth after a space voyage and is infected with an alien organism that gradually turns him into a hideous devouring blob. There are strong similarities between the two films, but also important differences that help First Man rise above a mere knockoff.
First Man Into Space begins in a conventional, even hokey manner as the differing personalities of Chuck and Dan are showcased. The concept of sibling rivalry in a military milieu is cliched, but in this case, it was absolutely necessary to set up the horror to come later in the movie. Dan is a cocky hotshot and not entirely likable, but his joy as he breaks the barriers of space is infectious. Dan grins broadly when he leaves Earth’s atmosphere. This makes it all the more horrible when we see him later on as a gasping, crusty monster who drains people’s blood. Bill Edwards does a fine job with both drastic sides of Dan’s character.
To play the part of a stodgy, by-the-book career military man, you couldn’t get a better guy than Marshall Thompson, who was the star of two other excellent space age chillers, Fiend Without A Face and It! The Terror From Beyond Space. Chuck is not exactly a ground-breaking character in any way and is typical of his time, but there are some small moments where he comes across as something more. At first, he and Francesca are bitter enemies, but eventually they become closer when their genuine concern for Dan becomes obvious. Chuck tells her, “I was always making sure Dan didn’t climb too high in the trees when we were kids.” He is still doing the same thing here in the movie. Thompson’s best moment is a very small one: when Dan is in the high-altitude chamber waiting for the atmosphere to change, Chuck reaches out and pats Dan’s shoulder in brotherly fashion.
That’s maybe the most striking thing about First Man Into Space, how most of the cast tries to help Dan even when he is at his most violent and monstrous. In The Creeping Unknown, when Carroon finally becomes a monster, the only thought is to kill and destroy him. Nobody is more merciless towards Carroon than Prof. Quatermass, the man who sent him into space.
It’s a different story in First Man. Once Dan the killer creature breaks through the window at the base, all thoughts turn to trying to restore his mind and maybe even cure him. Van Essen, who first helped Dan cope with weightlessness, again becomes the calm voice of reason. Even before Dan’s wits return, the scientist’s voice seems to soothe him. Wilson, the lead cop whose men were murdered by Dan, could have taken some clear shots at him but refrains. In the era of the ‘50s, when aliens and monsters were almost always menaces to be destroyed without mercy, the different approach taken here makes this movie very unusual.
Most monster movies end with a shootout. This one ends with Dan coming to his senses in his last moments. We see traces of the hero pilot again for just a moment. The murders Dan commits earlier are done without mercy, like the attacks of a rabid animal. He probably doesn’t even remember committing them as his mind is restored. Those last few minutes of Dan telling of his experience is the best part of the movie.
Is the message of the film that Dan should have obeyed orders? He would have probably avoided the horror that happened to him if he did. But if it hadn’t happened to him, it would have happened to somebody else. I don’t think the message is entirely that man should “stay in his lane”. But it does say that sometimes the results of taking those risks can be horrible. Van Essen’s final speech, which could be seen as corny by some, is maybe a little deeper than it first seems.
First Man Into Space is a modest film to be sure, but as a look into man’s race into the unknown depths of space, it’s far from thoughtless. It’s more subversive than it seems on the surface….
What constitutes the perfect life? Does such a thing even really exist? Say you work all day, every day to build said perfect life. Then one day, it just starts to unravel for no “real” reason until it’s all gone. What would you do to […]
Movie Reviews Movies & TVWhat constitutes the perfect life? Does such a thing even really exist? Say you work all day, every day to build said perfect life. Then one day, it just starts to unravel for no “real” reason until it’s all gone. What would you do to try and save everything you’ve worked so hard for? Would you even try to save it all if you could? In a deeply dark and unsettling film from writer/director duo Ming Siu Goh and Scott C. Hillyard called Repossession, we watch this happen to a seemingly normal guy. However, is seeing believing?
Repossession is a slow burn of a film set in the high pace city of Singapore, where success and status are everything. Our main character is a 50-year-old man named Jim (Gerald Chew), a pretty high on the chain businessman with a comfortable life. He’s got a lovely family made up of a lovely wife Linda (Amy Cheng) and daughter, and a nice home. Anyone on the outside looking in would think that Jim has it made. That is, until Jim is unexpectedly laid off from his job. Naturally, Jim doesn’t know how to handle the news or how to break the news to his family. He decides to keep this punch to the gut to himself and confides what’s going on only to his best friend, Vinod (Sivakumar Palakrishnan). I mean, that’s what friends are for, right?
Jim continues to keep the loss of his job a secret from his family as he tries to find ways to make ends meet because bills are starting to pile up and Linda is becoming suspicious as to why debt is now an issue. Jim looks for and finds a way to make ends meet, by working as a driver for an Uber type of service. He’s a bit humiliated by his new job as he’s afraid of being recognized by former co-workers or friends, but he also realizes that a job is a job.
As the film goes on, there’s a malevolent presence that makes its presence known to Jim and it begins to act out violently towards the people who matter to him. So, not only is the debt racking up for ol’ Jim, but the body count does, too. The really annoying thing is that there’s no clear reason as to why this demon is attacking the people Jim loves. Is Jim the demon? Did Jim summon the evil force from something he did in his past? It’s not really explained. A lot of things in Repossession are left unexplained, and I found this to be quite frustrating.
Repossession is another disjointed, just okay movie. It’s not necessarily a horror movie. It’s a psychological thriller, maybe? It’s a slow burn in whatever category in falls under, for sure. The cast still manages to do a great job with the material, and the visuals are fantastic. Even so, not my type of flick. If you’d like to give Repossession a watch and fill me in on something I missed, you can catch in on Prime currently for $4.99.
If you haven’t yet heard of Eduardo Rodriguez, you haven’t been paying attention. The Venezuelan director, whose grad school thesis project Daughter made a splash in the short film category at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, has been steadily building a career in the horror […]
Movie Reviews Movies & TVIf you haven’t yet heard of Eduardo Rodriguez, you haven’t been paying attention.
The Venezuelan director, whose grad school thesis project Daughter made a splash in the short film category at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, has been steadily building a career in the horror genre. His directorial debut was an underappreciated but effective journey into Mexican black magic, Curandero. He did reshoots on The Messengers and then helmed You’re Not Alone, which took a bit of the luster off his resume.
But he’s back with a vengeance in Treehouse Pictures’ The Darkness of the Road. It’s a psychological thriller about a single mother and her daughter, whose late-night drive on a desert road will provide enough goosebumps and adrenaline to keep you on edge from start to finish.
It’s not clear where Siri (Najarra Townsend) and her daughter, Eve (Gwyneth Glover), are headed, but the film’s opening scene – flashback or dream? – makes it clear whatever they left behind wasn’t in their best interest.
From the get-go it’s obvious their clunker of a car isn’t going to lead them to the promised land anytime soon. They make a stop at a creepy, desolate convenience store for gas and other items. Inside is a clerk (Johnny Whitworth) whose manner is gruff and whose motives seem sinister, but a distraction presents itself in the form of a hitchhiker named Iris (Leah Lauren).
Once outside, Iris, initially rebuffed, is offered a ride after diagnosing and temporarily resolving a starter issue with Siri’s car. Off they go, only to discover Eve, thought to be asleep in the back seat, is missing.
So begins a night of disturbances, whether the car, the oncoming storm, or something terrifying – an almost translucent figure that darts across the road, causing Siri to jam on the breaks and stall her vehicle a final time. Now stuck in limbo (purgatory?) with spotty cell service, Siri and Iris (she, too, had a daughter, but she died) begin to reveal things about themselves while plotting ways to find Eve.
But how can they retrace their steps to the store with that creature outside? And the ever-present lightning and overnight chill make what would be an arduous task even more problematic.
The darkness of this road is shrouded in more than the absence of light. Siri is prone to flashbacks of medical facilities, syringes, even suicide. One might suspect there’s more to this than terrifying isolation. When Eve pops up in this middle-of-nowhere stretch of road, it only gets more mysterious. Had Siri’s daughter really been abducted? Was that sleep or death? Was the creature a demon or an angel? Is this the road between heaven and hell?
You won’t get answers here. You may not get definitive answers from watching the film. But what you will get is a tremendously entertaining, mystifying, occasionally terrifying glimpse of what lies between life and death. It’s a thought-provoking allegory on grief that is more unsettling than satisfying.
Rodriguez masters the more-is-less art of filmmaking with The Darkness of the Road. His minimalist approach – tiny cast, spartan use of special effects, reliance on just two sets (the store and the road) – pays dividends by instilling an almost claustrophobic atmosphere. What there is of cinematography is beautifully done. The music evokes tension and apprehension. The lighting is effectively moody.
More than anything, he milks every emotion out of this amazing cast. You believe every grimace, every shudder, every teardrop. This is a wonderfully scripted, wonderfully acted piece of work, and the director took every production dollar and made it pay tenfold.
Available now on streaming platforms from Uncork’d Entertainment, you’d do well to light up your screen with Darkness. It’s just that good.
Congrats everyone! We’ve managed to make it through another shit show to witness the next to come! Can you dig it?! On a serious note, I hope everyone reading this is doing as well as possible. Times are tough, but I hope that this can […]
Movie Reviews Movies & TVCongrats everyone! We’ve managed to make it through another shit show to witness the next to come! Can you dig it?! On a serious note, I hope everyone reading this is doing as well as possible. Times are tough, but I hope that this can give you a little bit of a break from “real” life or maybe even a chuckle.
So, I just watched an incredibly weird and confusing, but thoroughly enjoyable film called That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes. This essentially French offering is written and directed by Onur Turkel (Scenes from An Empty Church) and stars Franck Raharinosy as our protagonist Leonard, a down on his luck fellow, even though he tries his best.
Leonard works as a chef in a restaurant in downtown New York. The only problem is that he’s a horrible cook. No one has one good thing to say about his food, except for Leonard. The owner of the restaurant wants to get rid of him. The co-workers he works with are all assholes. There’s also the love of Leonard’s life (Nora Arnezder) whom he’s getting ready to lose thanks to a stupid mistake he’s made. Essentially, Leonard’s life is in a downward spiral.
Throw in a bunch of strange characters and frightening hallucinations brought on by either the stress of his life going to shit, or the theta-waves being put off by the strange boxes around town that are supposed to be “accelerators” of some type, and life begins to get really fucked up for Leonard. As for the watchers of this film, you’ll feel just as disoriented as poor Leonard does and it’s a really fun time!
Now, That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes is NOT a film for everyone. Not only is it very arthouse-y, but there are several scenes of graphic male nudity, sexually explicit dialogue, some BDSM, etc. So, if that’s not up your alley so to speak, there’s your warning. There’s also some graphic conversation about bowel movements, so again, it’s not a Disney film by any means. It’s very raw and it pulls no punches.
It’s also confusing when it comes to the dialogue because the movie flip- flops from French to English at times, and it’s subtitled here and there. It also switches from color to black and white, but the reason for this becomes apparent as you watch the film. Also, if you want to watch a film that makes complete sense, again, this film is not for you. There really isn’t a solid story here to follow. This movie is just a bizarre, disconnected series of events that don’t make sense, but you want to keep watching to see what happens at the end.
That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes is a trippy and confusing, but entertaining and twisted mashup of a sci-fi, horror, arthouse, comedy, and thriller films. It doesn’t give you any kind of definitive answer to anything you see on the screen and that’s what’s kind of awesome about it. You take away from it what you want to take away. The cast is phenomenal. The visuals are beautiful as is the score. Again, this film isn’t for everyone, but if this sounds like something you’d like to try out, do it! I thought this was a really fun watch and I’ll probably watch it a few more times! Let me know your thoughts if you decide to take my advice.
Remember the name Clyde Phillips. Like many of you, your humble reviewer was sitting in front of the TV on September 22, 2013, tuned into to Showtime to watch Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall)—the Miami Metro Homicide blood spatter analyst turned vigilante serial killer—as he […]
Movies & TV TV ReviewsRemember the name Clyde Phillips.
Like many of you, your humble reviewer was sitting in front of the TV on September 22, 2013, tuned into to Showtime to watch Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall)—the Miami Metro Homicide blood spatter analyst turned vigilante serial killer—as he ostensibly drove his boat into an oncoming hurricane, only to turn up in a short epilogue as a lumberjack in an Oregonian logging camp. Fade to black. It was as inauspicious an ending to a beloved series as this reviewer’s ever witnessed, even when considering the monumental, dragon-filled fizzle of a certain other hit series on a rival network some five and half years later. After eight hit seasons that featured the highest highs and the lowest lows, Dexter had managed to give us a near-universally reviled series finale.
However, trouble had started brewing on Dexter several seasons prior to that disappointing early-autumn night nine years ago. The first four seasons of the show were truly excellent. They were the embodiment of can’t-miss television that became so by finding a successful formula and then mining it in myriad clever and creative ways to deliver high-octane, compelling, and at times devastating drama. It was typified by fantastic casting and the resultant wonderful performances across the board from an ensemble cast, and the unmerciful weaponizing of the almighty cliffhanger. This period of Dexter defined what became known as “binge-worthy” TV, especially as the show made its way on to Netflix.
And then, as if someone had flipped a switch, the last four seasons of Dexter were an unmitigated mess.
Here’s where we get back to Mr. Phillips. Clyde Phillips was Dexter’s showrunner during those salad days, having led the writer’s room to greater and greater heights that culminated with the show’s fourth and best season as Dexter took on John Lithgow’s unforgettable Trinity Killer. That season’s finale was dramatic. It was tragic. Earth-shattering, even. And, as it turns out, it was series-shattering, too.
When all was said and done, Dexter was teed up to head in a new direction. And with that, Phillips decided the time was right to depart the show.
Although the series continued casting outstanding actors to play opposite Michael C. Hall’s titular protagonist in subsequent seasons, Dexter never found its post-Clyde Phillips footing. The event’s depicted during its fourth season removed what had been the show’s dramatic engine, thereby forcing Dexter’s writers to essentially assemble a new one and to do it without Phillips leading the way. Unfortunately, it would prove too big a challenge to overcome.
By the time Ravenous Monster belched forth from the pits of hell, we were left covering the show’s demise. Beginning with season five and seeing it through to that disappointing fake suicide mission as “Slice of Life” skimmed the waves toward the oncoming CGI hurricane in the waning moments of the series finale, we discussed at length the reasons we thought the show tanked. But the one thing we kept circling back to was the name Clyde Phillips.
Common sense would lead any reasonable person to believe that Dexter was a cautionary tale as television series go. A classic case of squandered potential and an unfulfilled artistic commitment at that. For fans of the show in the wake of its bomb of a finale, it felt like the inability to find closure after losing a loved one.
But you know what, Horror Fans? Cliches exist for a reason. Sometimes empty platitudes suddenly fill up. Sometimes good things really do come to those who wait, and after nearly a decade the impossible happened: Phillips and Hall disclosed that they were both finally willing and able to give Dexter fans the final season we were clamoring for, and that had certainly been merited by the show’s first four seasons if not its atrophied second half.
And thus, on November 7, 2021, Dexter: New Blood debuted on Showtime in a bold attempt to right one of TV’s golden era’s most egregious sins. There are mild spoilers ahead, Horror Fans….
Approximately a decade after Dexter had faked his death off the coast of Miami, we find him living as Jim Lindsay in fictional Iron Lake, New York. When he’s not cashiering at the tiny town’s camping supply/sporting goods shop, “Jim” lives alone in a cabin in the woods. He also happens to date the town’s chief of police, Angela Bishop (Julia Jones). In classic voice-over form, Dexter tells us that he’s managed to suppress his “Dark Passenger”—his serial killing urges—since he’d left Miami behind.
But we recognize within the first few minutes of the premiere that this town is full of people who fit Dexter’s code, i.e., murderers and rapists who go unpunished. According to the code, these people are okay to butcher. One of them, Matt Caldwell (Steve M. Robertson), is the douchebag son of local business owner Kurt Caldwell (Clancy Brown). Dexter learns that Matt once drove his speed boat into another boat, killing five people…and got away with it. Uh-oh.
After another encounter with Matt Caldwell, “Jim” finally fails to fend off his reemerging Dark Passenger, killing Matt and breaking Dexter’s near-decade long no-kill streak. As things are spinning out of control, Dexter’s estranged son Harrison (Jack Alcott) from his past life suddenly shows up, throwing everything into chaos.
Fans of the original series know all about Harrison’s tragic and traumatic early life and when it looks like he’s shown up in Iron Lake with a Dark Passenger of his own, Dexter sees an opportunity…even if Dexter’s hallucinatory dead sister Deb (Jennifer Carpenter)—with whom he argues frequently—sees it differently. Double uh-oh.
As Dexter struggles to maintain “Jim’s” identity while also reconciling with Harrison as Dexter, a shifty Kurt Caldwell tries to take Harrison under his wing while behaving suspiciously about the “disappearance” of his own son. Dexter suspects that Kurt is a bad guy. And soon we realize that Dexter’s right on the money as Kurt is revealed to be a serial killer preying on vulnerable local young women.
Just as Harrison’s Dark Passenger makes itself known and Kurt schemes to manipulate him, internet sensation/true crime podcaster Molly Park (Jamie Chung) shows up and offers to share her theories about the area’s missing girls with Angela. She also has a few theories on the Bay Harbor Butcher case from Miami about ten years back, incidentally. If there was ever an appropriate time to write the words: “triple uh-oh,” it’s now, Horror Fans.
From here we’re hurtled toward the inevitable fulfillment of Dexter Morgan’s arc as he and Harrison must find closure, however that arrives. In the meantime, will Dexter get away with killing Matt Caldwell? Will his true identity be found out? Can he put an end to Kurt Caldwell’s 25-year reign of terror? Can he help Harrison mold his Dark Passenger? And what of his relationship with Angela?
Dexter: New Blood is a successful return to form. It doesn’t quite meet the highs of the original run (how could it?), but it’s a huge improvement over its final four seasons. That begs the question: Why? Is it really as simple as Clyde Phillips coming back to help finish what he’d started? Well, yes…mostly.
It’s important to remember that as impressive as well-written TV can be, this stuff ain’t rocket science. These excerpts from Ravenous Monster’s reviews of seasons six and eight, respectively, get at the simple recipe for success—that aforementioned “dramatic engine”—that Clyde Phillips brought to the series early and brought back to New Blood:
“The series thrived on portraying Dexter’s attempt to reconcile his dark side with his attempt to function in a family unit with Rita (Julie Benz) and her children, and later their own child. That inherently tense and dramatic dynamic is the successful thrust of the first four seasons and it’s what’s been sorely missing ever since.”
And…
“The end of Season Four marked the ‘beginning of the end.’ Dexter’s home life with Rita and the kids juxtaposed against his life as a prolific serial murderer was what fueled the narrative. When the Trinity Killer murdered Rita, it created a huge void that required incredible skill in the writer’s room to overcome. But unfortunately, the series’ show runner left the series after season four and subsequently left Dexter without someone to adequately guide the ship over the course of its final four seasons.”
That’s basically it: Dexter the family man vs. Dexter the serial killer. When the family dynamic goes away, the show stops working. Phillips brought this simple formula back to the Dexter, creatively plugging in new variables where they belong: Angela for Rita, Iron Lake PD for Miami Metro Homicide, Deb’s ghost for Harry’s ghost, teenaged Harrison for baby Harrison and so on.
In some respects, New Blood does things better than the original run did. For example, our protagonist is a psychopath and a prolific murderer. He’s both sick and immoral, code or not. So, making us root for such a man is a pretty tough ask. It’s also a bit of a precarious context in which to write. The original run largely handled it by avoiding the homicidal gorilla in the room. Conversely, New Blood leans into the conundrum.
When large revelations happen, we expect Dexter to react a certain way—because he’s our protagonist—however, the script allows for Hall to drop performative gems, clearly playing these beats in such a way that emphasizes the subtextual reality that Dexter’s primary concerns are not that of a hero, but rather those of a sick man who lacks any empathy and who’s mostly guided by his code’s primary objective: Don’t get caught butchering people. The results are uncomfortable and at times bone chilling. And all along, Michael C. Hall delivers what’s arguably his finest performance.
New Blood is not without its faults. Most of them are the byproducts of having a mere ten episodes to wrap up eight seasons worth of flawed legacy storytelling and reconcile that with eight more years of fans’ frustrations and unrealistic expectations. So, there were times during the season that required foregoing setting up some major beats with well-developed, organic storytelling and instead relied on cheap tricks to get us where we needed to be sooner than is ideal but on a timeline necessitated by the limited number of episodes.
The most egregious example happens when Jim Lindsay gets outed as Dexter Morgan. This needed to happen relatively early in the season, but without any time to set up a plausible scenario, we were given three wildly implausible coincidences happening simultaneously to get us there, instead. On a positive note, one of these plot contrivances comes in the form of fan service by way of Dexter’s former coworker at Miami Metro, Angel Batista (David Zayas) in a brief cameo that’s largely the lynchpin for unravelling Jim’s/Dexter’s ruse.
Unsurprisingly, the finale’s conclusion has polarized some fans. Shocking, I know. Without giving too much away, it’s worth mentioning a few things about that. Centuries of storytelling inform us that Dexter’s character arc would resolve exactly the way it did. It was an inevitability. Heroes ride off into the sunset after saving the day. While Dexter Morgan is this story’s protagonist, he’s most definitely not its hero, though it’s easy to conflate those ideas. And no matter what happens going forward it’s important to remember that this series was originally conceived as a one-and-done chance to redo Dexter’s FINAL season. For what it’s worth, this reviewer hopes it stays that way.
Dexter: New Blood accomplished its goal. Fans got a well-crafted final season to a beloved series, one that seemed like a total pipe dream not too long ago. As a result, we got true closure. No ambiguity. No CGI hurricanes. No irreconcilable disappointment. Clyde Phillips and company seem to have accomplished the impossible by simply stripping away the nonsense and getting back to basics.
Despite my overwhelming desire to visit macabre places around the globe, I have yet to step foot in the magical city of Prague. When it comes to European locations steeped in mysticism and ghostly lore, few can be mentioned in the same breath as this […]
Book Reviews Books & ComicsDespite my overwhelming desire to visit macabre places around the globe, I have yet to step foot in the magical city of Prague. When it comes to European locations steeped in mysticism and ghostly lore, few can be mentioned in the same breath as this ancient city of the Czech Republic. The Golem once tread the Jewish ghetto here and alchemists, warlocks and occultists have flocked to the city for centuries. While it is now a vibrant, modern city, the past still lingers here, and many notorious locations can still be visited.
Sure sounds like a great locale for a horror novel, doesn’t it? Author Nicole Jarvis agrees and has made the city almost a central character in her new novel The Lights of Prague. Her version of Prague is a dangerous, haunted place, but one well worth visiting. After you’re done with The Lights of Prague, you’ll actually feel like you’ve been to Kampa Island, stood in the shadows of Tyn Cathedral and crossed the Charles Bridge which stands over the dark waters of Vlatava River. Jarvis’ painstaking descriptions of 19th century Prague add a lot of authenticity to the novel and could almost function as a guide to the legendary town.
The Lights of Prague is a great Gothic horror full of action and adventure. It’s not really the kind of horror novel full of gore and revulsion, but more of a blood and thunder adventure that happens to feature vampires, ghosts, and other denizens of the night. It would make a great movie. As I read it, I could almost see the film in my mind. Who would play the characters of Domek, Ora and Czernin? I’ll let you use your own imaginations to fill those roles…
One thing I really like about the novel is that it is absolutely self-contained. Mercifully, this is not something needlessly dragged out into a trilogy or…God forbid…even more volumes. This story has a beginning, a middle, and a definite end. Will we see more of Domek, Ora, and the Lamplighters? I hope so! There’s a lot of room for their adventures to continue.
In addition to being an adventure with plenty of horror overtones, The Lights of Prague also has something to say about the conflict between rich and poor, privileged and underdogs, and the inequalities of society, both human and vampire. It’s a tale of how simple human decency can defeat the darkest of impulses…although not without cost.
The tale takes place in mid-19th century Prague, a time of change in the old city. One of the changes is the coming of gaslight to the dark and dangerous streets. For the first time, powerful lamps cast a constant glow in the formerly pitch black streets. Working to keep the new gas lamps lit is a union of working-class men known as the Lamplighters. But the Lamplighters hold back the night in more ways than just igniting a lamp. They are a brotherhood dedicated to fighting the supernatural monsters that prowl the darkness.
One of the Lamplighters is the story’s hero, Domek Myska. Domek is a humble, scrupulously honest fellow who takes his job very seriously. He’s still devoted to his mother, a fortuneteller who uses Tarot cards, and helps out around his uncle’s watch shop. He’s shy around women and loves opera music. But when it comes to fighting monsters, he’s a fierce warrior motivated by a terrible incident in his childhood.
The monsters haunting Prague are a varied lot. In the dark waters of the Vlatava River and its tributaries lurk the vodniks—evil beast-like creatures of the deep. In places where the darkness is deepest and the lights of the gas lamps don’t reach reside the bubaks, living pools of black energy that feed on fear. Ghosts also stalk the streets of Prague. Many are harmless, but some are very powerful and malevolent. There are also evil humans…occultists and dark alchemists, as well as the more typical thieves and murderers.
But the greatest threat of all is the pijavice…vampires! These bloodlusting undead come in many shapes and forms, from almost bestial inhabitants of the catacombs to powerful and rich pijavice who are protected by privilege. The Lamplighters spend much of their time waging a secret battle with the vampires for control of Prague.
One night, Domek encounters a strange vampire who is hellbent on protecting a jar he is carrying. After a pitched battle, Domek finally destroys the vampire and opens the jar…only to find that it contains a will o’ the wisp. A powerful ghostly spirit in the shape of a glowing orb, this wisp is bound to whomever controls the jar. That means Domek is now the master of Kaja, the wisp…a creature of immense power.
This creates a moral dilemma for Domek. Should he turn Kaja over to Paluska, the stern leader of the Lamplighters? With the power of the wisp on their side, the Lamplighters can win great victories against the monsters of Prague. But good-hearted Domek feels that perhaps he should also free Kaja from a life of slavery.
There’s more to the situation. While battling the vampire, Domek also encounters the White Lady, an immensely powerful ghost known to haunt the Royal Castle. She has never been seen outside the Castle grounds…until that night. What is her connection to the wisp? And if that’s not enough, Domek finds that the apartment he shares with roommate and fellow Lamplighter Anton has been ransacked. Somebody is already looking for the magic jar.
The other major character in the story is Lady Ora Fischerova, who couldn’t be more different from Domek. Where he lives in humble surroundings, she is rich. Where Domek’s life revolves around work and survival, Ora spends her time at fancy parties, operas, and art exhibits. And while Domek is a human being, Ora is a vampire. She is hundreds of years old with a complex past including a human husband now deceased.
Ora is determined to deny the darker side of her vampiric nature. She drinks animal blood only and avoids preying on humans. In fact, most of her friends are human and fully aware of what she is. These friends include Sokol and Valka, two government agents attached to a group dedicated to fighting pijavice. Ora has become something of a collaborator with them, giving them insight on vampire culture and helping them against the worst.
Ora is something of a tragic character. A witty party girl on the surface, she’s wracked by guilt and constantly at war with her dark side. Other vampires detest her, and she still has to take pains to conceal her true nature from the humans she longs to join.
She has now become aware of something strange going on in Prague’s pijavice underground. Some vampires are beginning to boast that they are “cured.” This means they can operate in broad daylight and have become immune to hawthorn wood, which otherwise is a deadly bane to them. A new faction of vampires seems to be taking over. If they can really find a cure, they will be a danger to the whole human race. At the urging of Sokol, Ora goes undercover to try and find out more of what’s going on.
As you might expect, Domek and Ora meet and are instantly attracted to each other. The sworn vampire killer becomes smitten with the reluctant vampire lady even as he struggles to figure out how to handle the powerful spirit he controls.
From there, their relationship takes a lot of twists and turns, many of them disastrous. They both become aware of a great vampire conspiracy that is capturing wisps from all over Europe and using them to change the balance of power. There are also elements of the Lamplighters who want to use Kaja’s power to destroy all vampires, including Ora. The Czech government also seems to be deeply involved in all the subterfuge. Domek and Ora discover they can trust nobody…not even each other.
It ends in a wild blood and thunder climax as all the various factions collide and a lot of secrets are revealed. I can honestly say that I could see some of the surprises coming, but this didn’t affect my enjoyment of the story at all. The Lights of Prague is paced really well and when the action starts to flag a bit for some romance, it will soon reignite even hotter than before.
Despite all the action and monsters, there’s always a focus on character. Domek is a great hero because he’s such an honest and decent guy, yet that honesty is a torment to him and causes a lot of problems. Ora is much more cynical and world-wearier, but with a desperate desire to experience the humanity she lost centuries ago. Another intriguing relationship is the one that develops between Domek and Kaja. The wisp is quite articulate and very tricky to deal with. At first, he despises his new master Domek, but as the novel moves along, the two learn how to work together. The resolution to Kaja’s story is very satisfying and is linked to the ghostly White Lady.
Side characters are also well developed. There’s the mysterious Bazil, a player in both the vampire and human criminal underground. What part does he play, and can he be trusted? You won’t know until almost the last page of the book. We also get introduced to the scary Lord Czernin, the ancient vampire overlord who lives in his old castle far in the country. He was Ora’s master for a long time until she broke away from him. I get the feeling that author Jarvis really wanted this character to be Dracula but couldn’t pull the trigger. Czernin is a master plotter, but he is wildly out of touch with the rapidly changing world of the 19th century.
The maze of characters and their interaction rivals the twisting alleys of Prague itself. Plenty of darkness but there’s always light on the other side of it. This is a fun, cinematic adventure with plenty of horror and history…I look forward to a sequel!
Something evil lurks in the backwoods of Black Holler. When a college camping trip crosses paths with the evil entity, it’s up to Laquita Johnson, to save her witless classmates, and bring an end to the curse that haunts the land. Last month, I had […]
Movie Interviews Movies & TVSomething evil lurks in the backwoods of Black Holler. When a college camping trip crosses paths with the evil entity, it’s up to Laquita Johnson, to save her witless classmates, and bring an end to the curse that haunts the land.
Last month, I had the pleasure of watching the fantastically fun Horror-Comedy Black Holler. You can read my review here on Ravenous Monster. And as luck would have it, Black Holler director Jason Berg recently had the time and the patience to sit down and answer some questions about the production of his latest release….
Ravenous Monster: What was the genesis for Black Holler?
Jason Berg: Black Holler started as an idea from Rachel (Ward Heggen) and Heidi (Ervin). They had put together the beginnings of a short that played with a lot of the genre tropes common in ‘70s and ‘80s horror and that’s when they approached me. We fleshed it out into probably a 12-page script and realized very quickly that the story was too big and so we set about the task of writing a feature.
RavMon: The film was co-written between yourself, Heidi Ervin and Rachel Ward Heggen, how did the three of you cross paths to make the film? Have you worked together on any prior projects?
JB: No, we’d never worked on anything before, but Rachel and I knew each other from college, and I had heard of Heidi as a local standup. I was working in production in Nashville when Rachel reached out about a project she’d been developing with Heidi, and they pitched a really funny idea and showed me what they’d written already. I loved it immediately, said yes, and we got to work.
RavMon: Bringing an independent movie from idea to completion is not an easy task. Were there any moments where you felt like the movie may not come to fruition?
JB: Ha! All the moments? I’m kidding, but there were a lot of obstacles during production that could have sunk us. It’s something that I’m super proud of actually because we developed a kind of siege mentality, and everybody supported each other in really great ways when things got hard. We never gave up and Black Holler exists in part through the sheer force of collective will from the cast and crew that worked on it.
RavMon: Following on that trail, were there any unexpected difficulties you encountered while filming in the woods?
JB: The woods, while great from a budget standpoint, is not a very forgiving place to film. It was a lot of lugging equipment through overgrowth and searching for power options. We all got intimately familiar with deet and permethrin and if they didn’t know before, everyone who worked on the film can spot poison ivy now. I think that the difficulties were all expected but maybe we underestimated their severity. We got very lucky with a couple locations though and once we had those pegged down things became a bit easier.
RavMon: Tamiko Robinson Steele is great as Laquita. It’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the part. Was the character written for her specifically, or did she audition once casting began?
JB: Tamiko is AMAZING, and I have to take a moment to shout her out specifically for some things viewers of the film won’t see. She is an absolute joy on set, always upbeat and high energy, and I once saw her go from fully asleep to nailing a take in less than 30 seconds. If you’re reading this and you’re working on something, you should one-hundred percent hire her. She was known to us from the beginning and the character developed with her in mind for sure because to us she was always Laquita.
RavMon: The rest of the cast matched their characters perfectly as well, were they found through auditions, or were they already known to you?
JB: They were all known to us from various branches of the local creative scene prior to the film. The way Black Holler was developed—essentially from a short story, to a script for a short, to eventually expanding into a feature—is pretty non-traditional. That said, it afforded us a lot of opportunities that we wouldn’t have had otherwise and one of those was definitely in character development. We had already cast the film as a short so when we decided to make it into a feature we were able to write for the actors that we had in the roles. Our cast are all talented and VERY funny, so we kept set open and collaborative. I think that let them embody those roles and try things that they felt made sense for their characters which ultimately made the film better.
RavMon: The biggest laugh I got was the Classic Brett bit. I’ll be honest, it took a few rounds for me to even pick up on the joke, but once I got it, it got me good. The joke gave me something to look forward to with each scene change. Do you recall where that particular idea came from?
JB: I’m glad to hear that landed for you because it’s my favorite goof as well and its origin is kind of a perfect encapsulation of Black Holler. Heidi and I were outside one of the rehearsal spaces we used and we had just gotten some bad news around the availability of the actor originally cast as Brett. We were trying to figure out what we were going to do because we had already filmed a few scenes with this person and our schedule was fragile at best. As we talked through it though we were like hold on, replacing an actor mid-series is also a trope from the era if not the genre we are using as our touchstone, maybe this can work? That situation gave us not only a great joke, but also some breathing room in our scheduling and the opportunity to showcase more local talent. The flexibility we had during production and the ability to turn problems into jokes is both the thing I’m most proud of and the thing that our audience will probably never fully understand.
RavMon: It was a nice touch to include the mural of Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix in the opening credits. Was there a particular reason behind its inclusion in the film?
JB: One of the most exciting things for me personally about the original idea for Black Holler was that it elevated a black woman from “Sassy best friend #2” that gets killed 10 minutes into the film to that rarified Final Girl status. Cinema from the era that we were referencing was pretty abysmal when it comes to representation and we wanted to signal early on that while we were using films like Sleepaway Camp and Foxy Brown as inspiration, we’d be reframing core elements in ways that were more inclusive.
RavMon: Are there any future projects we can look forward to seeing from you, horror or otherwise?
JB: It’s quite a departure from Black Holler but in 2019 I worked on a feature documentary around homelessness here in Seattle called Stories of Us: Camp Second Chance which will be available on PBS soon. I’m currently working on short documentary exploring the benefits of cognitive role-play in the autistic community. Spoiler alert: fewer fart jokes in both….
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Big thanks to Jason Berg for taking the time for this interview. Black Holler is currently available on VOD. I highly recommend giving it a watch. Show some support for independent artists and show the cast and crew of Black Holler a little bit of love. They’ve earned it.
Try to resist the impulse though we might, we define our eras by their crimes. You think of sooty, oppressive, desperately poor Victorian London and you think of Jack the Ripper. Get as dewy-eyed as you want about Woodstock and the Summer of Love, but […]
Movie Reviews Movies & TVTry to resist the impulse though we might, we define our eras by their crimes. You think of sooty, oppressive, desperately poor Victorian London and you think of Jack the Ripper. Get as dewy-eyed as you want about Woodstock and the Summer of Love, but a dark corner of the ‘60s will always belong to Charles Manson and the Family. And while he doesn’t command quite the same recognition, Ricky Kasso, the Acid King, became an icon of the 1980s.
Even in a decade filled with Satanic ritual sacrifice, the 1984 murder of Gary Lauwers stands out—probably because unlike every other alleged Satanic crime, it actually happened. Kasso, a homeless seventeen-year-old obsessed with the occult, survived on the streets of Northport, New York by selling LSD, and killed Lauwers, a former friend, under the influence of his product. But when Kasso commanded Lauwers to say he loved Satan while carving his eyes out with a knife, his legend was sealed.
It’s a legend that Jesse P. Pollack and Dan Jones studiously avoid in their new documentary, The Acid King. Told largely through interviews with friends, classmates, and others who knew Kasso on a personal level, as well as a few directors and musicians who created work inspired by the case, The Acid King forgoes sensationalism in favor of a far more tragic reality. Rather than a teen Satanist rebel, Pollack and Jones paint a picture of a lost soul: homeless, angry, rejected, and lost in drug addiction. Kasso’s Northport isn’t a secret hub of devil-worship, but a town full of aimless, alienated kids who found solace in drugs and the ‘80s metal ethos of rebellion.
It’s a wise narrative choice that makes The Acid King a far more engaging film. By painting such a vivid portrait of the world that Kasso inhabited, The Acid King deftly shows that if he was a monster, he wasn’t a self-created one. The film discusses the cultural fallout of Lauwers’s murder only as an epilogue, instead posing a tougher and more haunting question: if the moral guardians of the time cared more about poverty, abuse, and mental illness than Ozzy Osbourne’s lyrics, would there have been a Ricky Kasso case? In an era of school shooter drills, it’s a question that remains all too relevant.
The Acid King dissects its subject with such skill, restraint, and sensitivity that it’s hard to find much to criticize. Certain segments replaying taped police and witness testimony could have benefitted from subtitles, but that’s a minor complaint. Pollack and Jones have created a powerful, nuanced, and at times difficult film. Here’s hoping it gets the attention it deserves—and needs.
