Welcome To Lake Nowhere.

So, I’m not looking at a vintage VHS title today, but Christopher Phelps & Maxim Von Scoy’s cabin-in-the-woods slasher, Lake Nowhere very well could have been.

It was a long journey to get this movie made, as the crowdfunding teaser pitch first surfaced online in 2013. After a very tumultuous production with some additional footage being shot much later, the final product finally hit Vimeo last week. Lake Nowhere was made by a collective called Ravacon that, much like Canada’s Astron 6, revels in that home video B-movie aesthetic. Although, Ravacon’s output is decidedly not as overtly comical as their Northern counterparts.

I thought Lake Nowhere was pretty entertaining. In typical retro fashion, the piece starts out with some highly amusing faux trailers. The Italian gillao The River Runs Red was as spot on a representation of that subgenre as Edgar Wright’s Don’t from back in 2007 and the extended trailer for Harvest Man played out like a cross between Treevenge and an old GI Joe cartoon I remember watching as a kid. These trailers book-ended a beer commercial for Wolf White that made me momentarily question if I wasn’t watching a Canadian production.

But, onto our feature presentation. Lake Nowhere was a super authentic portrayal of the home video era horror. If Phelps & Scoy were trying to emulate the dark and washed out look of The Evil Dead, they succeeded. Helped out by extensive VHS degradation that thankfully died down before it got too distracting, this movie was almost indistinguishable from its eighties counterparts.

They look so happy, don't they?

The story was fairly standard and contained your average genre setups, but I did appreciate that it wasn’t clearly evident who the final girl (of the three lovely actresses Laura Hajek, Wray Villanova and Melody Kology) was going to be. The main antagonist was pretty menacing in that he towered over the rest of the cast in much the way Kane Hodder did in the later Friday the 13th films. As for the gore gags, they were fairly well done, almost charming in that lo-fi kind of way.

Lake Nowhere came to a close in fifty minutes, which meant that not only did it not overstay its welcome, but that the filmmakers shied away from committing the crime made by so many indie horrors of padding out their product to feature length. Though this curt length naturally made traditional distribution avenues problematic, it has fortunately found a home on Vimeo.

Not anymore...

If you’re a fan of vintage slashers and Don Dohler’s age-old adage “blood, boobs and beast”, then head on over to Vimeo to rent Lake Nowhere for a mere three dollars.

Case of Wolf White not included.

Trailer Tuesdays: Brain Damage

The TIFF schedule came out today, and while I recover from negotiating their insufferable website, I thought I'd post a trailer for a classic that screened at Midnight Madness's inaugural year waaaaay back in 1988.

I actually only saw this for the first time just recently. Well, if five years can be considered recently. Jesus, time flies! Anyway, here's hoping I see something this year that is as zany and resilient as Frank Henenlotter's oeuvre. Talk soon, kids! 

DKTM 312

Hey kids. Hope you enjoying your weekend, as there are only a few left this summer. Here's a few video nuggets before I shoot off to the city today.

Uninvited Guests.

Toronto artist (and sometime filmmaker) Matthew Therrien recently went down the YouTube horror short rabbit hole and was inspired to create his own one evening for zero dollars. Here below, is Houseguests.

I think it's pretty effective, and starts with the great nugget (as most good shorts do) of what would you do if you went to take a piss in the night and there was someone in your bed when you came back? Plus, Therrien got to plug some of his own artwork in the short, too.

Land of the Rising Scare.

I found this neat video from last month that I wanted to share. See below how The Film Theorists broke down what makes Japanese horror so scary and compelling. They bring up some really accurate points about the differences between Western and Eastern horror. Enjoy.

Road To Nowhere.

The retro slasher Lake Nowhere from Christopher Phelps & Maxim Van Scoy dropped this week on VOD. Click here to rent it from Vimeo for a couple of bones. Here's the trailer below.

Stranger Sounds.

Volume 1 of the soundtrack to the Netflix series Stranger Things came out last week, and it's pretty glorious. I have since wedged it into my writing playlist between Perturbator and Videogram, and they are getting along swimmingly.

Make your own Stranger header at http://makeitstranger.com/

I think what grabbed me the most was how symbiotic the score is with the show. I hear tracks like Kids, Biking To School & Dispatch and it immediately recalls the events of the show. Ultimately, how I feel about this soundtrack is pretty much almost exactly how I felt about the show itself. Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein, like The Duffer Brothers, have wonderfully captured the essence of the seventies and eighties. Although, on occasion maybe too well.

I've listened to Vol. 1 about a dozen times through now, and you do start to recognize the patterns and blatant similarities. Tracks like Cops Are Good At Finding, Friendship, Castle Byers are almost interchangeable with the stuff Tangerine Dream were orchestrating in their heyday.

Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is quietly judging you.

Same goes for the latter half of the track Upside Down if you put it side-by-side with John Carpenter & Alan Howarth's work on Halloween III.

However, this emulation is not restricted to days gone by, as I could hear shades of the more recent work of Disasterpiece on It Follows in tracks like One Blink For Yes.

Now, I know this all may sound like an accusation, but it really isn't. After all, at the end of the day, who really gives a shit? The whole point of the show was capture a period in time, and I don't think anyone can dispute that everyone involved did a bang-up job. Besides, the music does kick ass, and obviously has re-playability if I've now listened to it ump-teen times.

Huh. My second post featuring the alphabet this week...

Volume 2 releases today, and I've been listening to that over the last few days, as well. It features more of the original score from Dixon and Stein, including some reprises of sections from Vol. 1. Even though there are some “hey I know this” moments, namely on tracks Rolling Out The Pool and They Found Us - I don't even have to say what they reference as it will be immediately apparent - but overall it's just a fantastic tapestry of genre music.

Click here to buy Volume 1 via Lakeshore Records.

Death Two Point Five

As you may have noticed from the banner on the right, The ABC's of Death 2.5 released last week. For those who don't know, 2.5 is a collection of the best 26 letter “M” contest entries from Part 2. The entry that I co-wrote with my buddy Schwartz (M is for Manure) thankfully made it on there, but today I wanted to post about my personal faves from 2.5. Here they are in no particular order;

M is for Make Believe by Summer Johnson

I remember supporting this one quite heavily during the competition. I think the dark humour really lands, and Johnson really commits to it. Three minutes is pretty short-form, yet it often made me wonder about the events beyond the frame. Why was he dressed like that? Where were these kid's parents? What was that “green stuff”? A great piece of work.

M is for Marriage by Todd E. Freeman

Doubling as a proof of concept for a larger project, the idea of Freeman's short is an intriguing one. What if one could physically manifest someone's emotional trauma? I really like the look and tone of this piece. The feature version, entitled Love Sick, had a positive showing at last year's Frontieres in Montreal, so I hope to hear about the next phase sometime soon.

M is for Matador by Gigi Saul Guerrero

Guerrero has been tearing up the short film circuit for a while now, and I had previously thought the first thing I'd seen of hers 2014's El Gigante. Not so. Upon watching 2.5, I realized it was here. I should have recognized it, as all her recurring traits, like punishing violence, unrelenting choas and production design that oozes through the screen were all present here, as well. It was just announced that her feature film project, El Cucuy will be shopped at this year's Fantastic Fest Film Market and I'd say she is more than ready to make the leap from the short to long form.

M is for Magnetic Tape by Tim Rutherford & Cody Kennedy

This one shouldn't surprise you. There have now been a few shorts now that have been set inside this Edmonton video store - they even have there own web series called Straight To Video. I love the energy these guys bring to their projects and think it every bit as relevant as higher profile stuff like Turbo Kid – which coincidentally also started out as a contest entry for the first ABC's. I could also say that of the highly amusing Mad-Max-on-Big-Wheels entry, M is for Marauder by Steve Daniels.

M is for Meat by Wolfgang Matzl

I was pretty taken by this short by Austrian filmmaker Matzl during the competition, as well. Though I figured it wouldn't win as his style was similar to that of Robert Morgan, who was already a part of ABC's 2 (actually the same can be said for Chris Younes' M is for Maeusiophobia that also featured a sequence similar to Part 2's crowning jewel Z is for Zygote), but I really dug the look and style. It's a simple and easy premise, but it works so well in a short form like this.

Overall, 2.5 is a pretty solid culmination of the best the contest had to offer. I certainly saves you the trouble of having to sort through the chaff of over five hundred entries that were originally entered.

ABC's of Death 2.5 is now available to rent or purchase on Vimeo. Check it out here.

Trailer Tuesdays: Your Vice Is a Locked Room..

Hey all. After posting about Francesca last weekend, I've got giallo on the brain. Here is a vintage Italian horror flick with a title so long, I couldn't fit it in the header!

Edwige & Edgar, what a beauty combination!

DKTM 311

Hey all. This edition of Don't Kill the Messenger is going to be decidedly retro. Here's what I've got for you this week.

Slashermania!

A while back, I spoke of an indie comics project from the UK called Slashermania. The brainchild of Russell Hillman, he seeks to combine the best elements of Friday the 13th and The Running Man into one big, well, Slashermania.

The Kickstarter campaign has just begun, so check out the pitch trailer below.

If this seems like your bag, check out the campaign page by going here.

Viva Giallo!

Last year at Sitges saw the premiere of Luciano Onetti's modern giallo, Francesca. Now, it is set to be released on home video by Unearthed Films on September 27th. Check out the Blu-ray artwork and trailer below.

Survive!

Here is the new poster for Rob Zombie's newest flick 31. 

As we all know, Zombie is pretty hit and miss, but I'm still interested in checking this one out, even if it does look more like 1000 Corpses than Devil's Rejects. 31 is set to be released on October 21st.