Today, on To Obscurity and Beyond, I'm going to be trying something different. As many of my readers know, the vast majority of what I review are short films. As much as I love films of all lengths, I find that short films are usually the most fun to review. However, a lot of the shorts I want to talk about are usually too short for me to review on their own. Granted, I have individually covered films in the past that are under 10-20 minutes, but these usually don't make for great reviews because often times, there is simply not enough content to digest. To compensate, and for the sake of variety, dear reader, I introduce you to.. Shorts for Sickos! The concept of Shorts for Sickos is extremely simple. In each volume, I will review four different short films, usually of the extreme or weird variety, that are under 10-20 minutes and thus wouldn't make for the best stand-alone reviews. So buckle up and prepare yourself, as volume one is going to be a very, very gory one.
Das Blutville Massaker (2021) - Canada / directed by Ben Gaudet
On the box, Das Blutville Massaker is touted as a lost German splatter film made in 2001 by an unknown filmmaker named Markus Heidman. What is held within, however, is a short and sweet tribute to underground German ultra-gore by teenage Canadian filmmaker Ben Gaudet. The "plot," if you can call it that, takes place in the German town of Blutville, as a psychotic killer goes on a rampage after he watches one too many splatter movies. What ensues is an unapologetic, uncontrolled gorefest of epic proportions.
What Blutville lacks in plot it more than makes up for in its explosive, insanely over-the-top gore effects. There are only a couple of kills, but the ones we get are blood-soaked and are beautifully shot. If I had never heard of or seen Ben's other work before, I would have been fooled. The short is intentionally shot to be as amateurish as possible, and thus nails the amateur-film vibe perfectly. Shot on 8mm video and then purposely copied from tape to tape to degrade the video quality, Das Blutville Massaker also perfectly nails the atmosphere of a lost gore movie. The short is also very well-edited, and the director's influence is made even more obvious as the soundtrack is recycled from the original Violent Shit. While the short is nothing too special when compared to Ben's other work, the gore effects and editing alone are nothing short of impressive, and they truly show the young director's potential to branch out and become even better.
Backyard Mutilations (2020) - United States / directed by Gage Black
Similar to the last film, Backyard Mutilations is another short about a deranged lunatic who goes on a murder spree, inspired by his love of violent cinema. Except this time, the killer brutally maims, stabs, decapitates, mutilates and tears apart his victims in his backyard and in his house. Not only is Backyard Mutilations a literal backyard production, but it's also made by an uprising teenage filmmaker!
Fellow Texan Gage Black began making short films around 2019, with shot-on-video inspired gore shorts such as Violent Murder and Feeders Revenge, both of which remain unreleased to this day. As he kept making films, in association with Ben Gaudet, he began working harder to improve his special effects and his filmmaking skills with projects such as Vibro, Verrückt and Fahrenheit. The results are often very rough yet thoroughly entertaining splatterfests, with great variety in kills and ambitious special effects. Backyard Mutilations may not have much of a plot and is hardly different from something like Verrückt, but it stands as a fun showcase of Gage's experiments with gore effects. Some of the effects are pretty rough as you can tell the props are made of styrofoam and plastic, but there are some well done kills such as the screwdriver and the shovel ones. Even in the short films made since this one, Gage has been steadily improving his skills overall, using better cameras and more elaborate effects and editing. Similar to Ben, I respect Gage's efforts and am curious to see how he will develop his works in the near future.
The Long Island Goregrind Massacre (2021) - United States / directed by Gore Filth
Gore Filth is back with yet another horrific shot-on-video short! This time we venture to Long Island, New York, to a venue where multiple goregrind bands put on a fun show for the crowd. But, after each show, one member of each band gets picked off by an unseen killer with a variety of different weapons.
The best part of this 18-minute short is seeing the bands play. We get live performances of at least one song each from Hit Run Drivers, Charcuterie, Bowel Erosion, Whore Abortion and Splattered Entrails. Each show is energetic and manic, and its fun seeing the banter between the bands and the crowd. That's all well and good, but now for the worst part: the gore effects! I understand the point of the short is to be z-grade schlock, but the effects are just laughably bad. They're undoubtedly some of the worst gore effects I've seen in a long time. Every gore scene is shot in Gore Filth's backyard, with the build-up to each murder being shot at the actual venue, and the scenery change is painfully obvious as the backgrounds never match. But by far, the funniest kill is where the killer randomly gets hit by a car. They roll over the hood of the car and then we see a single piece of intestine hit the fence. This short is bad, it's really bad, but that's the point, and it did get a really good laugh out of me. However, I can't recommend this unless you like goregrind and the cheapest of effects.
Forest of Death (2021) - United States / directed by Damian Bishop
For our final short we'll take a look at Forest of Death, one of the latest offerings from Dungeon Entertainment. Dungeon is a film team, led by Damian Bishop, that mostly makes lo-fi shot-on-video horror-comedy shorts. I have seen a couple of their works in the past such as Valley of Carnage and Date Nite, both of which which I greatly enjoyed and highly recommend. They are very funny and entertaining shorts that are well-made in the spirit of campy shot-on-video cinema. On the other hand, Forest of Death is one of the more serious, more straightforward horror offerings from Dungeon. Being entirely shot, edited and produced by Damian himself, Forest follows a man in a yellow Hazmat suit and gas mask who wades through a sinister forest. The deeper he goes, the worse things get as he finds mutilated body parts and bloodied human bones. To his horror, it's not long until he finds himself being stalked and chased by green mutants in Hazmat suits, and he must fight for his life.
For a short made entirely by one guy, it's very well done and very effectively made. The special effects are the obvious standout, with some really good gore and some creepy masks and mutant makeup. But the short also knows how to build a hell of an atmosphere. The low and droning ambient music and the terrible video quality make the short very creepy and grimy, and the editing and pacing is perfect. It's definitely one of the best-made shorts I've covered in this review.
While there may not have been much in today's reviews in terms of variety, I can not deny that these shorts, despite being rough around the edges overall, clearly had a lot of heart and passion put behind them. And yes, that goes for Long Island Goregrind Massacre as well. Just because these shorts may have rough effects or dodgy technical aspects, it doesn't mean that there wasn't any care or effort put into them. It's great to see how these filmmakers continue to branch out with each work and keep working to build their audience and to improve their craft.
I'm hoping the readers will enjoy this new format of reviewing short films. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them below or to email me! In the meantime, for the next volume of Shorts for Sickos, we will be traveling over to Europe and taking a look at four shorts from four different countries. Trust me, it only gets weirder and more fucked up from here...
RELEASES:
-Das Blutville Massaker has yet to be released in any form. I was given access to the film thanks to Ben Gaudet himself (thanks dude!).
-Backyard Mutilations was included on an anthology called I Was a Teenage Gorehound, released on DVD by SOV Horror. This anthology also features Gore Collector by Ben Gaudet, The Cross by Stephen Bloodworth, and my own shot-on-video short The Tape of Karma, plus a ton of fun extras. If interested, you can order your copy here.
-The Long Island Goregrind Massacre was released on a very limited edition DVD by SOV Horror, and is currently out of print. However, it is possible that more copies will be reprinted soon.
-As far as I'm aware, Forest of Death has yet to be released on physical media, but it can be watched on the Dungeon Entertainment YouTube channel, along with their many other works. You can watch the short here.
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