PopHorror Let's Get Scared
From the press release:
The summer is just about at a close, but before we welcome autumn and the various pleasures it brings (pumpkin flavored everything, falling leaves, only watching horror movies, etc), we at OCN have thirteen releases tailored to the dog days of summer. From the second batch of sexploitation romps from Doris Wishman, to Bertrand Mandico’s wild and crazy sci-fi fantasy After Blue and the sleazy thrills of Streets of Death– the heat will not only be outdoors. And if you do venture outside, make sure to be safer than the hikers of Dead North and show an appreciation for nature like the denizens of Robinson’s Garden.
But whether you’re spending the last month of summer proper in an urban climate like New York City – Hearts Beat Loud and Summer of Blood – or the suburbia of The Kid Brother or even logged online arguing about memes like the subjects of You Can’t Kill Meme, hopefully it’s at least a bit cooler than the California desert of Lo Desert Sound. Then again, it could always be worse and you could find yourself as the subject of a grim newspaper headline ala Natural Enemies or embroiled in a cult out of Faults. If nothing else, these final days of summer are full of possibilities and films to watch and discover – case in point: The Cornshukker, our first release with new partner label VHSHitfest, which is sure to melt your mind after the rest of your body has by the sun.
Keep reading for notes on all thirteen OCN releases for this month’s and we’ll see you in September!
After Blue (Altered Innocence)
Bertrand Mandico returns to the type of unclassifiable phantasmagoria that made THE WILD BOYS stand out five years ago, with a gorgeously shot (on film!) sci-fi film that is alternately delicate and grotesque, offering a vision of the future that no other filmmaker working today could.The Cornshukker (VHSHitfest)
Bet you haven’t heard of this one! Nearly lost to time and obscurity, Brando Snider’s shot-on-16mm midwestern folk horror film is ERASERHEAD by way of the 1990s and nothing can really prepare you to get on its wavelength. Likely a future cult classic, this is the debut of new OCN partner label VHSHitfest and we can’t wait to share what’s in store later this year too!
Dead North (Saturn’s Core)
W.A.V.E. go camping in this 110 minute assault on good taste, domestic relationships and, yes, hiking. It may offer exactly what you expect – gratuitous nudity, lo-fi death scenes, lots of arguing – but there’s something comforting about knowing your next door neighbor could be making an SOV horror epic without you even knowing.Faults (Yellow Veil Pictures)
Riley Stearns’s understated cult thriller is an exemplary pairing of cast and subject, primarily pitting two powerful performances against one another, towards a nerve-shredding conclusion. One of the more underrated genre films of the 2010s, Stearns’s debut announced him as a filmmaker worth paying attention to which has proven to be the case with this year’s DUAL as yet another example of a filmmaker who is aware of genre conventions and how to consistently subvert them.The Films of Doris Wishman: The Moonlight Years (AGFA + Something Weird)
The second set of Wishman’s films to be released this year, this volume packs in a whole nine feature films from her “gutter-noir” era of filmmaking and it all speaks for itself. Another essential collection for fans of Wisham or just outsider cinema in general. And, yes, you’ll now get to see the sets joined together with the magnetic slipcases!Hearts Beat Loud (Gunpowder & Sky)
A festival hit when it released in 2018, Brett Haley’s winning musical-comedy-drama about a father and daughter starting an impromptu band in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook is a charming slice-of-life film that’s as much about its characters as the place it is set in. A truly great ensemble cast, bolstered by original songs co-written by Keegan DeWitt (who also composed HER SMELL) and a sincere attempt at representation. Don’t be put off by it’s charms!
The Kid Brother (Canadian International Pictures)
A nearly unheard of in America teen movie, starring Kenny Easterday, who was born without legs. An interesting amalgamation of European sensibilities (from the French Canadian documentary crew) to the more US-centric ideals of what 80s teen movies were (the usual trial and tribulations of coming-of-age), there’s really nothing else out there like The Kid Brother.Lo Sound Desert (ETR Media)
The under-represented “low desert” music scene of California (just outside of LA), gets its due in this feature length doc featuring interviews with, and footage of, bands like Queens of the Stone Age and Kyuss. Full of live performances, old home movies and (very) candid interviews, this is a must for anyone interested in the bands in question or just solid rock-docs in general.Natural Enemies (Fun City Editions)
Before going on to direct studio films like REVENGE OF THE NERDS and TROOP BEVERLY HILLS, Jeff Kanew’s narrative feature debut was this gritty, late 70s, character drama featuring the late, great, Hal Holbrook as a man who spends his last day with a cast of real characters before finally, and grimly, killing himself and his family. One of the unsung American films of the 70s and ripe for reappraisal.
Robinson’s Garden (Kani)
Masashi Yamamoto’s vibrant, Japanese punk film is shot by Tom DiCillo and is more concerned with nature than studded jackets, but that doesn’t make its anticapitalism, renegade, stance any more diluted. Sharing more in common with 80s No Wave cinema, or even the hyper-political films of Godard + Gorin, than what was passing for punk cinema in the US at the time, Yamamoto’s film is more than deserving of discovery in the west decades after its initial release.Streets of Death (Culture Shock)
Directly following NIGHT RIPPER, Jeff Hathcock delivered another gory, sleazy, SOV crime/horror film starring Seinfeld’s Larry Thomas – because the world couldn’t have only one of those! If you dug NIGHT RIPPER, you’ll feel right at home here.
Summer of Blood (Factory 25)
New York City has no shortage of vampire movies, or even vampire comedies thanks to VAMPIRE’S KISS and VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN, but Onur Tukel’s very funny, very horny, and pretty bloody SUMMER OF BLOOD may be the most New York of them all with its seemingly renegade approach to capturing the city, mostly at night. One of the better horror comedies, or independent films, to come out of the US in the 2010s.You Can’t Kill Meme (Utopia)
A journey into the darkest holes of the internet and the people who inhabit them, YOU CAN’T KILL MEME exists as a reminder of what our digital selves (and others) do in unseen spaces. Simultaneously a warning and deep dive, it will teach you more than you ever wanted to know about “memetic magick” and the people who practice it.
You may check out home video catalog featuring OCN releases here. Which ones are you going to check out? Let us know in the comments below. Stay tuned to PopHorror for all your news, reviews and much more!
