Page 145 – Spectacle Theater

EXHAUSTED

Posted on July 7, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

EXHAUSTED
Dir. Kim Gok, 2008.
USA. 128 min.
Korean with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, JULY 12 – 7:00 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 19 – 7:00 PM
TUESDAY, JULY 30 – 10:00 PM

An unnamed pimp and semi-retarded prostitute live in a dive apartment on the outskirts of a destitute, unnamed, post apocalyptic South Korean city. They have a domestic routine of sorts, eating cheese sticks and porridge, and taking walks along a dirt- and industry-strewn beach that inevitably turn into fights. Occasionally they post signs that read “We have girl”. Eventually a homely young woman takes notice of the prostitute’s powerlessness, and after one of many escape attempts on the part of the whore, rescues her from her provisional refuge among trashed tires on a beach. But she too has intentions for the young woman that prove to be the most degrading and disturbing of all.

TRIGGER WARNING – Graphic Sexual Violence.

FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART: The End of Sexual Taboos

Posted on July 6, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART: THE END OF SEXUAL TABOOS
(Amos Vogel, 1974)

FRIDAY, JULY 6TH – MIDNIGHT

Can film make revolution? What use is it if it can’t? Film critic Amos Vogel’s seminal work, Film As A Subversive Art, published in 1974, is both an argument for and a catalogue of cinema that refuses, rebels and repulses. Film “designed to eradicate the reactionary values of an establishment that had proven its bankruptcy.”

Vogel died in April 2012. In his honor, Spectacle Theater and The New Inquiry will be hosting a series of talks and screenings, taking selections of many of the near-impossible to see films from his book. July’s screening will feature early animated erotica, some abominable Viennese Actionism, a fairy from the Society For Cutting Up Men, and other arousing anachronisms.

AN INJURY TO ONE

Posted on July 6, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

AN INJURY TO ONE
Dir: Travis Wilkerson, 2002.
53 min. USA.

MONDAY, JULY 1 – 10:00 PM
SUNDAY, JULY 21 – 10:00 PM

Courtesy of Icarus Films

AN INJURY TO ONE provides a corrective—and absolutely compelling—glimpse of a particularly volatile moment in early 20th century American labor history: the rise and fall of Butte, Montana. Specifically, it chronicles the mysterious death of Wobbly organizer Frank Little, a story whose grisly details have taken on a legendary status in the state. Much of the extant evidence is inscribed upon the landscape of Butte and its surroundings. Thus, a connection is drawn between the unsolved murder of Little, and the attempted murder of the town itself.

Butte’s history was entirely shaped by its exploitation by the Anaconda Mining Company, which, at the height of WWI, produced ten percent of the world’s copper from the town’s depths. War profiteering and the company’s extreme indifference to the safety of its employees (mortality rates in the mines were higher than in the trenches of Europe) led to Little’s arrival. “The agitator” found in the desperate, agonized miners overwhelming support for his ideas, which included the abolishment of the wage system and the establishment of a socialist commonwealth.

In August 1917, Little was abducted by still-unknown assailants who hung him from a railroad bridge. Pinned to his chest was a note that read 3′-7′-77″, dimensions of a Montana grave. Eight thousand people attended his funeral, the largest in Butte’s history.

The murder provides AN INJURY TO ONE with a taut, suspenseful narrative, but it isn’t the only story. Butte’s history is bound with the entire history of the American left, the rise of McCarthyism, the destruction of the environment, and even the birth of the detective novel. Former Pinkerton detective Dashiell Hammett was rumored to have been involved in the murder, and later depicted it in Red Harvest.

Archival footage mixes with deftly deployed intertitles, while the lyrics to traditional mining songs are accompanied by music from William Oldham, Jim O’Rourke, and the band Low, producing an appropriately moody, effulgent, and strangely out-of-time soundtrack. The result is a unique film/video hybrid that combines painterly images, incisive writing, and a bold graphic sensibility to produce an articulate example of the aesthetic and political possibilities offered by filmmaking in the digital age. [ICARUS FILMS]

“One of American independent cinema’s great achievements of the past decade.” —Dennis Lim, Los Angeles Times

“An astonishing document: part art and part speculative inquiry, buzzing with ambition and dedication. Takes us from the 19th century to the eve of the 21st, from Butte as land of frontier promise to Butte as land of death and environmental destruction. He wields avant-garde graphics and archival ephemera like a lasso, and his shots of modern-day Butte are allusive still-lifes that defy time and place. This is stirring, must-see stuff.”—Austin Chronicle

“A deft, ambitious exercise in old-school socialist agitprop crafted with the precise mulitmedia flair of a corporate Powerpoint presentation, Travis Wilkerson’s AN INJURY TO ONE retells the gritty class struggles of the previous century through smoothly contemporary digital means.”—The Village Voice

“The most exciting documentary of the season. Passionate, persuasive, and beautifully designed, AN INJURY TO ONE is a model of coherent political filmmaking as convincing in its liberalism as its formalism.”—The New York Sun

“Wilkerson’s austere technique radically responds to the paucity of contemporaneous documentary accounts, performing a powerful act of historical archaeology and reclaiming for the working class its status as subject, not a footnote, of historical events. Wilkerson makes these ghostly historical agents palpable and vocal, asserting the relevance of their story to struggles of today and tomorrow.” —Sundance Film Festival

SK8 NITE 2 with Stale Bagel

Posted on July 6, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

ONE NIGHT ONLY

WEDNESDAY, JULY 17TH – 8PM

Spectacle returns for another night of:

S H E N A N I G A N S
S C R A P E S
S W E A R S
T A P E S
C L I P S
F L I P S

as we present SK8 NIGHT 2, hosted by Jayme Lemperle (stalebagel.tumblr.com / ripndip.com). Turn your brain to jello salad as we sift through a cavalcade of all things sk8ing (skating) related. From classic tapes, to Hollywood’s take, to some homegrown heroes. Revel in the spirit of youth and unlicensed popular music! Swap shred stories! Trade decks! Hang out and do whatever!

Jayme Lemperle is a designer and all around cool dude. This is his second skate night at Spectacle. For more of his work please check out: stalebagel.tumblr.com & ripndip.com

POWER & SOCIETY: Two Documentaries by Adam Curtis

Posted on July 6, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

British filmmaker Adam Curtis has been producing documentary works for the BBC for nearly 30 years. Employing collage-film aesthetics towards journalistic ends, his politically subversive works trace complex and unexpected webs of connection between seemingly far-flung historical events.

Curtis has been quoted as saying, “If you ask me what my politics are, I’m very much a creature of my time. I don’t really have any.” Come and decide for yourself, as we present two of Curtis’s films that explore the concept of social control from economic and political perspectives.

The Century of the Self
Dir. Adam Curtis, 2002
UK, 240 mins

MONDAY, JULY 8 – 7:00 PM
MONDAY, JULY 22 – 7:00 PM

“This series is about how those in power have used Freud’s theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.” – Adam Curtis

Curtis’s best known and most critically acclaimed work, The Century of the Self traces a thread from the publication of Sigmund Freud’s theories of the mind through their development and exploitation at the hands of his American nephew, Edward Bernays, the founder of public relations, and the resulting creation of the modern “self” as the primary agent of contemporary society.

Originally presented as a four-part mini-series on BBC, we’ll be presenting the film in its entirety with a brief intermission.

Part 1 – Happiness Machines
Part 2 – The Engineering of Consent
Part 3 – There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
Part 4 – Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering

The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Dir. Adam Curtis, 2004
UK, 180 mins

MONDAY, JULY 15 – 8:00 PM
MONDAY, JULY 29 – 8:00 PM

“In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions the offered their people. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares.” – Adam Curtis

Curtis’s follow-up to The Century of the Self chronicles the simultaneous rise of the neo-conservative and Islamic fundamentalist movements, and how the “War on Terror” was sold to the public through a series of exaggerations and myths.

Originally presented as a three-part mini-series on BBC, we’ll be presenting the film in its entirety with a brief intermission.
Part 1 – Baby It’s Cold Outside
Part 2 – The Phantom Victory
Part 3 – The Shadows in the Cave

THE MAN OF THE YEAR

Posted on July 6, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

THE MAN OF THE YEAR
Dir. Jose Henrique Fonseca, 2003
Brazil. 116 min.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.
Special thanks to Film Movement

FRIDAY, JULY 12th – 10PM
SATURDAY, JULY 20th – 10PM
SUNDAY, JULY 28th – 7:30PM

Produced (and neglected) in the same wave of favela-flavored arthouse hits as City of God, Carandiru and Lower City, Jose Henrique Fonseca’s The Man Of The Year might trump them all. Barbedly honest and based on a novel by Patricia Melo, Fonseca’s film is a ripping yarn, closer in spirit to the slum noirs and queasy moralities of the American 1950s. Murilo Benicio stars as Maiquel, an easygoing slacker in Rio de Janeiro whose entire life hinges on one banal twist: his decision to bleach his hair. Emboldened by his friends but still something of a blank slate, Maiquel is propelled towards his longtime crush (a spicy, life-loving hairdresser) with newfound gusto.

But when his dye-job provokes a local thug to chide Maiquel in front of his date, the situation spirals into a direct confrontation of classes. When Maiquel kills the man – in a mix of self-defense, pent-up rage and scared-shitlessness – he’s received by the city’s fatcats and police as a stone cold hero. Soon enough, they start asking him for “favors”. What follows is an odyssey sequenced as tightly as a Swiss watch, but never predictable or browbeating – a steady plunge into wealth and fame for Maiquel and his crew, with Faustian repercussions.

Drenched in color and anchored by unforgettable performances The Man Of The Year goes down like a perfect summer thriller. But Fonseca’s brutally funny inquiry also plugs disquietingly into the price of success – indeed of neoliberal economics in total, in keeping with works like Polanski’s Chinatown and Li Yang’s Blind Shaft. This summer, Spectacle and Film Movement are thrilled to present an unsung classic in a special 10th anniversary release. ‘Before you’re born, maybe God decides how to fuck your life!’

TRIGGER WARNING: This film includes images of murder, spousal abuse, drug abuse and alcoholism.

Fonseca employs interior monologue and Breno Silveira’s impressive visuals to create a convincing dream-like expressionism, describing a world where arbitrary violence and the absence of judicial retribution have stoked a pervasive, godless malaise, wherein all moral, ethical or religious boundaries have dissolved. – Time Out London

Brilliantly shot and filled with an iconoclastic sense of humor, Jose Henrique Fonseca’s O Homem do Ano is the first feature film by a very talented young Brazilian director. Following the story of a man who becomes a killer in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, The Man of the Year depicts, in a very original manner, a society in convulsion. – Walter Salles

Imagine if the kids of City of God lived beyond the age of fifteen and became everyday citizens. Now imagine if Quentin Tarantino was Brazilian. The result might be Man of the Year, the debut feature from director José Henrique Fonseca, that opens with so much ballsy attitude and stylish verve that you could be forgiven for thinking you were about to watch not only the man, but one of the films of the year. – Jamie Russell, BBC

Fritz Lang’s DIE NIBELUNGEN

Posted on July 4, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

DIE NIBELUNGEN
Dir. Fritz Lang, 1924
Germany. 280 minutes.
Presented in a new HD restoration

Special thanks to Jason Leaf & Kino Lorber

THE ENTIRE NIBELUNGEN SCREENS SUNDAY, JULY 28! SIEGFRIED BEGINS AT 1:00 PM FOLLOWED BY KRIEMHILD’S REVENGE AT 4:00 PM! DON’T MISS OUT!

Long assailed by shoddy prints and jarring, beyond-incomplete edits, Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen is an undersung silent masterpiece, on par with the biggest and most bombastic works of the 1920s. For sheer scale, its only competition might be Gance’s Napoleon, DeMille’s Cleopatra or, indeed, Lang’s own subsequent Metropolis. But whereas that film – which, like both halves of Die Nibelungen, was co-written by Lang’s wife Thea Von Harbou – took a forward creative hurtle in imagining the nuts and bolts of an industrialized dystopia, Die Nibelungen is unabashedly Teutonic, equal parts pastoral daydream and hellish, demon-populated wasteland. Its images weave a snarling, vicious tangle of beauty and cruelty, with subtle flavors of hatred coloring its human drama via Lang’s flair for lovingly crafted overacting.

Die Nibelungen is presented in the exquisite remaster released last year by Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung from all available negatives, with the full score originally composed by Gottfried Huppertz. Your stupid job, your skyrocking debt, your lingering text messages – abandon them for five hours and treat yourself to a classic adventure story, a film whose sweep and venom see the summer blockbusters of Nolan, Snyder and Abrams arriving out the other end of a paper shredder. Spectacle and Kino are thrilled to present Die Nibelungen this July, because there’s “epic” and then there’s epic.

PART I: SIEGFRIED
Dir. Fritz Lang, 1924
Germany. 149 minutes.

SUNDAY, JULY 7TH – 7pm
SUNDAY, JULY 14TH – 7pm
SUNDAY, JULY 28TH – 1pm

Siegfried, the first half, concerns its nominal hero (Paul Richter), an often shirtless young prince who, in Lang’s wildly overgrown concrete forests, learns how to forge his own iron. Broadsword in hand, Siegfried handily slays the dragon Fafnir and bathes in its blood, a signature sequence that sees our hero battling a 60-foot monster operated by nearly a dozen special effects artists, cocked and loaded with a real flamethrower in its skull! The battle with Fafnir begins a serpentine spree of conquest that sees him quickly rising to the top ranks of the savage metalsmith mutants of the mountain, the Nibelungen.

Of the two episodes, Siegfried is the more phantasmagoric – his travels take him from one jaw-dropping vista to another, ultimately joining the elites of Burgundy, where he begins a torturous love affair with the princess Kriemhild (Margarete Schön.) Lang’s first film in this massive gold-plated diptych ultimately becomes a story a pack of crazy-eyed romantics; Siegfried makes for a surprisingly dark-sided hero, equally propelled by a romantic desire and a bottomless thirst for power. The ensuing love triangle between him, Kriemhild and her warrior-princess sister-in-law Brünhild (Hanna Ralph) steers the second episode’s course forever.

PART II: KRIEMHILD’S REVENGE
Dir. Fritz Lang, 1925
Germany. 131 minutes.

SATURDAY, JULY 13TH – 7pm
THURSDAY, JULY 25TH – 7pm
SUNDAY, JULY 28TH – 4pm

Kriemhild’s Revenge, the ominously titled second half, dwindles whatever fanciful spirit remains down to a nub in its slow march into catastrophe. Kriemhild uses the gold of Siegfried’s Nibelungen comrades as a bargaining chip to keep her own kingdom in check; soon a messenger arrives with a marriage proposal for her – from Atilla The Hun. Kriemhild travels east, and bears the famous death-mongerer a son – but even this is revealed as a mere gesture, part of her overall scheme to exact vengeance on her brother’s in-laws. Piling up dusty corpses on the steps of impossibly grand castles, Kriemhild teases the Hun and Burgundian empires into a bitter, sprawling deathmatch.

The insanity of Brünhild and the superhuman power of Siegfried meld into Kriemhild’s tunnelvision in a flash. For neither the first nor the last time in his career, Lang inverts a character’s deep well of personal pain into a force of blind, corrosive fury leaving none unspared. The director’s obsessiveness – stadium-sized ornamentalism, uncanny double-exposed sunflares, etc – apparently carried into the night of Die Nibelungen’s premiere, when taxis delivered fresh-printed reels direct from his edit station to Germany’s biggest movie theater. It is indeed easy to imagine Lang reworking the film forever; every shot shimmers with perfection.

AN EVENING WITH MIKE DIANA

Posted on June 30, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

SATURDAY, JULY 6 – 8:00 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

In 1994, Mike Diana became the first underground cartoonist convicted of obscenity in the United States. His work, from the notorious ‘zine BOILED ANGEL and beyond, is surreal, perverse, violent, graphic and funny as heck. We’re celebrating his solo show at Superchief Gallery with a rare screening of his two video works, which were both investigated during his trial. Mike will be here for a Q&A between the shows.

BAKED BABY JESUS
Dir. Mike Diana, 1990
USA. 120 min.

Equal parts home movie, performance art and backyard gore-fest, this tour through the Floridian hell-scape leaves no taboo stone unturned. In the short “The Second Cumming” a teenage Joseph pisses on a cross, gets raped by a multi-dicked demon and gives butt-birth to a stillborn baby Jesus. In “Sleazy Love,” Mike finds a (fake) corpse by the railroad tracks and brings her home for some not-so-wholesome fun. Take a trip to “Babyland” infant cemetery, an automobile altercation, an electrical fire, and an abortion rally. Watch Mike’s beloved pet pooch get in on the blasphemous action in “Daisy Licks Jesus.” Fun for the whole family! (If your family is the Manson family.)

BLOOD BROTHERS
Dir. Mike Diana, 1989
USA. 60 min.

Mike’s VHS gore-epic stars his younger brother and sister in a series of queasy misadventures chock full of home-made blood and guts. Frank Henenlotter called it “The ultimate home video gone terribly, terribly wrong. The kids are way too young to do what they’re doing, and the victims look even younger (well, at least the boys do) making it all that much more perverse. All of a sudden I know why 15-year olds are not supposed to watch R-Rated movies!!!”

MARQUIS

Posted on June 30, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

MARQUIS
Dir. Henri Xhonneux, 1989.
France. 78 min.
In French with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, MARCH 4 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, MARCH 14 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 18 – MIDNIGHT
SATURADY, MARCH 26 – 10:00 PM
THURSDAY, MARCH 31 – 10:00 PM

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Clumped in your history book between the chapters on French Revolution and pioneering 18th century erotic fiction grows a horny, pornographic mold called MARQUIS.

Immersed in a world in which uncanny animal masks mirror the spirit of the character within, a canine Marquis de Sade serves a prison sentence for allegedly raping the bovine Justine… but the situation may be more complicated than it seems. In between bouts of banter with his anthropomorphic, meter-long penis Colin, the Marquis gets down to writing a few of his more infamous scenes—many depicted in surreal claymation. Before too long the Revolution has begun, but where will it leave the Marquis?

Co-written by Henri Xhonneux and Roland Topor—animator of 1973’s inimitable surrealist classic “Fantastic Planet”—MARQUIS’s bizarre tone swings at will between irreverent perversion and clear-headed satire, never failing to entertain and utterly confound.

“This is one of the strangest movies I have ever seen. I found it to be discomforting and just weird. It makes you squirm in your seat and wonder what the people making this are like in real life. It’s definitely entertaining and it sort of sucks you in, especially if you don’t know French and have to read subtitles. It is certainly not American and it is certainly very peculiar. I have never seen a movie where everyone is wearing life-like animal costumes and acting like humans in very abnormal ways. This movie gives me the chills. However, I would watch it again just because it is so fascinatingly WEIRD.” —IMDB user ‘ethylester’

“NOT FOR THE PRUDISH.” —Variety

J.R. BOOKWALTER MIDNIGHTS

Posted on June 30, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

Spectacle Midnights proudly salutes a contemporary low budget master – writer, director, composer, and owner of Tempe Video, J.R. Bookwalter!

Bookwalter began making 8mm films in his teens and eventually created THE DEAD NEXT DOOR, an 8mm zombie epic which took him four years to complete (with a little help from SAM RAIMI). His career put him in touch with all aspects of contemporary low budget independent filmmaking, from production to distribution, to publishing his own magazine, to for-hire feature filmmaking. The Spectacle is proud to present the work of the ingenious and passionate Ohio filmmaker – a master of his means – J.R. Bookwalter

OZONE
Dir. J.R. Bookwalter, 1995
USA, 83 min

FRIDAY JULY 5th – MIDNIGHT

After a less-than-satisfying stint making low budget features for CHV, which yielded the video store classic Robot Ninja, J.R. Bookwalter returned to Ohio to reclaim his low budget glory with OZONE, another wildly ambitious shot on video work of pure will, ingenuity and imagination.

Detective Eddie Boone is a good cop who plays by his own rules, and he’s on the trail of a local drug kingpin, DeBartolo. During a stakeout Boone and his partner are ambushed, Boone is injected with a strange drug, and his partner Mike (Tom Hoover) goes MIA. Now, close to the edge and on suspension, Boone must infiltrate a drug fueled, mutant filled underground in search of DeBartolo, his partner, and some answers all while fighting the effects of the bizarre drug, OZONE, which is slowly transforming him into something inhuman and terrifying.

OZONE is Bookwalter’s most original and complex film: a police thriller, a horror film, a gory science fiction fantasy, all brought to low budget life with solid direction, great performances, slimy FX, and early CG. Shot mostly in and around a dreary Ohio hospital, the film is dark and eerie, a nightmarish mystery filled with bizarre creatures and memorable characters. Part Cronenberg, part Nightbreed, and all Bookwalter, OZONE is another milestone of shot on video excellence from a true master of his means.

POLYMORPH
Dir. J.R. Bookwalter, 1996
USA, 86 min.

FRIDAY JULY 12th – MIDNIGHT

POLYMORPH is J.R. Bookwalter’s $10,000 shot on digital video answer to the The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Working from a fun script based on a long shelved idea, this no-budget extraterrestrial nature hike has got more bad CG and fake cocaine than most lesser films could only dream of.

A polymorphous creature resembling a glowing green turd crash lands in the Ohio woods causing a group of science interns and some ruthless drug dealers, led by the sleazily charismatic Carlos (Tom Hoover), to cross paths. After a bloody showdown, the interns and the drug dealers must band together to fight the bodysnatching space slug. Now this ragtag group of survivors must fight to survive with nothing but their wits – and a bag full of hand grenades.

POLYMORPH provides some adorable laughs, real human drama, and warm characters – well, until the polymorphous space monster starts reanimating corpses with glowing green eyes in order to viciously murder any human in its path. This is a backwoods alien killing spree complete with firefights, leather coats, HK style standoffs and splatter. Making great use of lo-fi digital FX and some terrific actors Bookwalter serves up a superior 50s B movie throwback with a totally 90s vibe.

WITCHOUSE 2: BLOOD COVEN
Dir. J.R. Bookwalter, 2003
USA, 77 min.

FRIDAY JULY 19th – MIDNIGHT

In WITCHOUSE 2- BLOOD COVEN J.R. Bookwalter has his first 35mm outing for the legendary Full Moon imprint and does not disappoint. This follow up to B movie master David DeCoteau’s original is an atmospheric, gorgeously shot, multi-format creep fest featuring the legendary Andrew Prine in dual roles – STOP…double Prine!

After 2 horny goths (captured in full-on Blair Witch fashion) are murdered, a professor and her team of students are sent in to investigate the strange goings-on in a small, spooky colonial town which was once the site of bloody witch trials. After unearthing four unmarked graves believed to belong to suspected witches and meeting with fear and suspicion from the townsfolk, the team begins to believe something sinister may be afoot. Mystery, possession, and death follow, in a totally fun and eerie late night, low-budget spellbinder!

Bookwalter brings his knack for likable characters and fun dialogue to this slick and well-paced ghost story which plays like Scooby Doo for grown ups! Using his low budget ingenuity to piece together a film that cleverly swings between formats and distant shooting locations (Europe and Los Angeles), Bookwalter proves he’s a craftsman and stylist with a love of the genre, who turns limitations into charm.

THE DEAD NEXT DOOR
Dir. J.R. Bookwalter, 1989
USA, 84 min.

FRIDAY, JULY 26th – MIDNIGHT

At the tender age of nineteen, Ohio filmmaker and horror film devotee JR BOOKWALTER created the ultimate 8mm zombie epic, THE DEAD NEXT DOOR. This wildly ambitious debut feature took 4 years to complete with a little help from hyperactive horror auteur Sam Raimi (For the Love of the Game) and Raimi’s regular collaborator Scott Spiegel. Bookwalter’s film is the greatest and most sprawling fan made Romero love letter ever realized, and features, according to Bookwalter, a cast of around 1,500!

In a post-Dawn of the Dead world overrun by the living dead, the Zombie Squad is helping search for the key to a special formula which may be able to destroy the zombie menace once and for all. In their search for the secret notes of a mysterious doctor they come head to head with a group of religious fanatics led by a Jim Jones lookalike who is willing to kill to in order to keep his own terrible secret safe. A bloody, FX, zombie filled showdown follows where no fleshy neck area is left unbitten, and no intestine left unchewed!

The DEAD NEXT DOOR is truly impressive in its scale and ingenuity, featuring guerilla shots of zombies attacking the White House and the Washington Memorial! Bookwalter’s film also provides plenty of goofy laughs and gleeful groan inducing references for horror fans (characters with names like Dr. Savini, Commander Carpenter, and Raimi)! Capturing the bucolic splendor of Romero’s Night and Dawn in its more pastoral moments (thanks to the film’s Ohio location), and delivering the goods for the gorehounds in spades, this is the perfect in-world riff for living dead fiends, and a testament to the passion and possibilities of low budget horror moviemaking.

Before THE WALKING DEAD there was THE DEAD NEXT DOOR!