"Long Night in a Dead City" Review by Anthony T

Back in July, yours truly reviewed this film on our sister site Anthony T's Horror Chamber as I had the chance to catch the world premiere of Richard Griffin’s latest film “Long Night in a Dead City”. which is now available on VOD.

The film is about a person (Aidan Laliberte) who wakes up in the middle of nowhere on New Year’s Eve. With no memory of what happened to him, he sets out to look for his brother whom he was hanging out with. Along the way, he meets a mysterious woman (Sarah Reed) who leads him down the spiraling path to drugs, sex and murder. Will he be able to find his way out the nightmare before becomes missing forever.

“Long Night in a Dead City” is maybe Richard Griffin’s most dark and surreal film to date. Yes, this is coming from a person that has seen his other surreal and entertaining films “Beyond the Dunwich Horror”, “Exhumed” and “The Disco Exorcist”.

What makes this film very good was Richard Griffin’s direction. He does a very good job pulling off all the surreal aspects that this film has. Whether it’s the way that he directs the action to how his cinematography Nate Sliva captures the images, everything had a David Lynch feel to them. It kept my interested as this is one of those films where the imagery is so surreal in a good way that it makes you interested in the story. The other thing that I liked was the way that Griffin directs his cast. There isn’t much dialogue in the film but he makes sure that the performers make the scenes very haunting. He gets very good performances from his leads Adrian and Sarah Reed. They both made their characters stand out which is needed for the film to succeed. It helped made this one a very surreal one from start to finish.

The screenplay from Lenny Schwartz was good even thought its very surreal. One of the things that I liked about it was the way that he does a good job focusing on his main character. Whether it going to into the state of mind of the main character to minimizing the main character’s dialogue, it makes the character and his journey a surreal and entertaining one. This is what made this character interesting which was definitely needed for this The other thing that makes the screenplay good was the fact that the action keeps everything moving at good pace. It allowed me to digest the basics of everything that was going in the story considering its one of those films where you have to pay attention to everything and not wonder off. If your film is going to be surreal and/or go the David Lynch route make sure it hooks the viewer in so that it allows the viewer to draw their conclusions about what happened and makes them want to rewatch the fil to pick up things that they’ve missed the first time around. This film does that as this story was entertaining and grabs your attention.

I highly suggest you find a way to check this film out as will be hitting the film festival circuit soon. With great direction, very good lead performances and a surreal screenplay, “Long Night in a Dead City” is one film that will take you on surreal trip that you won’t forget.

To rent or purchase this film on VOD, you can goto: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/longnightinadeadcity

Review Rating: Five Stars

"Future Justice" Review - Written by Anthony T

’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve reviewed a film here on the site. When deciding on what film to review, I had a couple of choices but I had a film sitting there for a while that I wanted to see but haven’t had the time to until now. “Future Justice” is the latest from director Richard Griffin. He’s done some very entertaining low budget films in the past like “Nun of That”, “Dr. Frankenstein’s Hungry Dead” and most recently “The Sins of Dracula”. His latest film marks the second nationwide release on his Scorpio Film Releasing DVD label.

The film is about a prisoner being returned to earth by group of military police officers. When they land, they find that a nuclear war has eliminated most of the earth’s population. As they search for answers, they find a group of people hold up in an underground bunker. Unknown to them, they’ve arrival home has drawn the attention of a vicious gang that is looking to kill in order to survive. Now they are holed up in an underground bunker looking for a way to defeat the vicious gang before they end up dead.

This was one of those films where I thought I wasn’t going to like it ten minutes in. Still, I decided to still watch this film because I wanted to a review a film after having not done one in almost a month. Thankfully, I decided to stick with this film, as it got better as the film went along.

This might not be one of Richard Griffin’s best film, but he still does a good job with the way he handles the film given that it’s low budget. One of the things that I liked was the way that he directs the film’s action sequences. Whether it was the way they were choreographed to how it’s directed, Griffin does a good job making sure the action scenes have a level of intensity that grabs your interest. When that happens, it can make up for most of the flaws. The other thing I liked was the way he directs his cast. Whether it’s the way he gets his cast to be interested in the material to making sure they have chemistry, Griffin does a good job getting good and solid performances from cast especially in the last third of the film.

The screenplay by the film’s star Nathaniel Sylva was good as it delivered a solid story. I liked how he takes time setting up the action. Sylva spends time in the story to get to know and develop the characters between all of the action sequences in the film. It made the characters worth watching and made me interested. When you have a film on a small budget, you need to make sure the characters are interesting and this screenplay does that, if not you just have a collection of action sequences. Thankfully, it focuses on the characters as much as it focuses on the action.

“Future Justice” is one of those films that has a bad open but rebound nicely enough to make this film entertaining. It’s something you should check out, if you’re in the mood for a post-apocalyptic action film.

Review Rating: Three and a Half stars

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Horrorpalooza 2014: Horrifying Stills for the Upcoming Film "The Sins of Dracula"

Scorpio Film Releasing recently send us over stills for the upcoming film "The Sins of Dracula". The upcoming film is the latest from director Richard Griffin (Frankenstein's Hungry Dead) and stars Michael Thurber (Exhumed) Jamie Dufault (Murder University) and Sarah Nicklin (The Disco Exorcist).

"The Sins of Dracula" will be having its world premiere at Cinemaworld in Lincoln, RI on October 26th at 7PM.

For more information on this film, you can visit the film's official Facebook page at:  https://www.facebook.com/TheSinsOfDracula

Plot Synopsis:

As the star of his church choir, there’s nothing that brings Billy more joy than the opportunity to sing for an audience. However, as his desire to perform grows, the stalwart youth finds that waiting until Sunday to get his fix just simply isn’t enough. Going against the advice of his pastor, Billy follows his girlfriend into the world of secular entertainment, joining the local community theatre troupe. There, Billy is introduced to a whole new world, where his fellow thespians dabble in drugs, sexual perversion, and table-top game-play. Yet, for all the newly minted depravities Billy encounters, none could prepare him for the darkest truth of them all: The theatre group is actually a front for a Satanic cult intent on raising Dracula from the grave!