Colour, 2002, 77m. / Directed by Dante Tomaselli / Starring Danny Lopes, the Amazing Kreskin / Elite (US R1 NTSC) / WS (1.85:1) / DD5.1
Outside a snowy farmhouse, a young girl, Grace (Lizzy Mahon), burns her hand while hanging up Christmas lights, then gets spooked by a sinister-looking goat standing near the woods. While running inside, she's suddenly accosted by a demonic-looking man in preacher's garb. Cut to a van carrying a group of teens
This ghoulish, stream-of-consciousness freak-out on film from Desecration director Tomaselli is even more disorienting than his first effort, and its refusal to play by the narrative rules may result in more than a few viewers scratching their heads or staring at their DVD player in confusion. However, more adventurous souls with a taste for the surreal will find plenty of juicy material here as the story giddily skips from one gothic image to another with only the thinnest of connective narrative tissue. Tomaselli certainly has his visual skills down pat, with the evocative snowbound setting evoking obscure '70s chillers like You'll Like My Mother, while the more outrageous flights of fancy include some absolutely nightmarish visuals of Sanford (in a genuinely skin-crawling performance) looming towards the camera with a devilish grin on her face. That's really how most of the film works; it creeps
Elite's special edition of Horror includes several worthy extras, kicking off with a Tomaselli commentary track in which he excitedly discusses the process of creating and shooting the film without giving away too much in the way of a literal reading of the story. Other goodies include an extended Horror trailer (really more of a promo reel), a Desecration trailer, a sometimes
As for the film itself, the transfer is a bit problematic; shot on Super 16, the overall appearance is usually fine with sharp but deliberately grainy detail. However, there's also a substantial amount of chroma noise visible on some white, cream and yellow areas; fortunately the snowy scenes are largely unaffected, but bright doorways and lightbulbs jitter with colorful video noise. Perhaps this was an intentional effect as the flaw is wildly inconsistent, but whatever the reason, it's an unfortunate distraction. Audio is solid, boasting a Dolby Digital 5.1 track that's only marginally more aggressive than the already paranoia-inducing 2.0 mix on Desecration. Split surrounds are very limited but overall the ambience is spacious and contributes greatly to the film's mood of unease. Watch it alone in a dark room with rear speakers nearby, if you dare.
Colour, 1999, 87m. / Directed by Dante Tomaselli / Starring Irma St. Paule, Christie Sanford / Image (US R0 NTSC) / WS (1.85:1) / DD2.0
Appropriately, the New Jersey horror film Desecration opens with a prominent thank you to director Alfred Sole, whose Alice, Sweet Alice offers a similar horrific study of Catholic iconography. In this case, however, first time helmer Dante Tomaselli (Sole's nephew) offers an overtly supernatural fever dream, consisting of one delirious set piece after another with only the vaguest shred of a narrative. Haunted by the mysterious death of his mother years earlier and his rigid education at a Catholic school, young Bobby (Danny Lopes) already leads a decidedly abnormal existence. One day he accidentally kills one of the nuns by flying a model plane into her head (don't ask), an event which unleashes all kinds of weird, demonic forces around him. A fellow student plunges into a sylvan hole which promptly vanishes, nuns' faces contort into hideous deformed visions of evil, and mom herself pops up to invite poor Bobby straight to Hell. Filled with an obvious love of avant garde film ranging from David Lynch (an Eraserhead- inspired dream sequence) to Maya Deren (Meshes of the Afternoon), Tomasaelli's pet project began life as a short film, part of which is included on the DVD. Many of his horrific interludes pack a powerful surrealist punch, such as the nightmarish, Rollin-inspired images of nuns screaming and morphing behind a wrought iron gate. The pace lags somewhat during protracted dialogue scenes with Bobby's elderly guardian (Irma St. Paule), but the film also wrings chills from unexpected sources, such as a seemingly kindly priest flashing a terrifying, malefic smile while standing behind Bobby's back. Though filmed on a low budget and sporting flat, cleanly lit visuals without too much flash or depth, Desecration has been given an admirable DVD transfer and offers a generally satisfying viewing experience. The 1.85:1 framing is flattering, though a few tightly composed shots indicate some extra visual space may be obscured (1.66:1 might be more accurate). The straight Dolby Surround track contributes a great deal to the film's creepy, often subliminal directorial tricks, so multi-channel viewing is highly advised to savor the strange ambient noises flooding through even the most perfunctory scenes.
just escaped from rehab after accidentally shooting one of the guards. The driver, Luck (Lopes), steers them into the country to the home of a drug-pushing preacher, Salo (Vincent Lamberti), the same kidnapper from the opening scene. Upon arrival they discover Grace, who is actually Salo's daughter and is living in mind-controlled captivity under the watch of her father's creepy satanist wife (Christie Sanford). Hallucinatory terrors are immediately unleashed, including more goat appearances, a melting doll, flashbacks (or visions) involving Salo's spiritualist father (the Amazing Kreskin), a horde of shuffling zombies, torture on a rack, blood vomiting, and jack-o-lantern acid trips.
you out way under the skin if you let it, even though the reasons why may not be immediately clear. This isn't a "scary" movie in the way many audiences now regard the term; this is much closer to Jodorowsky and David Lynch than Wes Craven. That said, after these outings it would be interesting to see Tomaselli cutting his teeth on a script with a co-writer; his baroque visual talents would be interesting to see melded with a less personal storyline that could be devoured by a wider horror audience. At least his sense of narrative control is obviously being refined, as Horror closes with a deliberately open but tantalizing final scene more effective than the nihilist dead end that closed Desecration.
hilarious still gallery with plenty of FX shots, footage of the Amazing Kreskin performing his feats on the set (which brings to mind the hypnotism performed on Werner Herzog's Heart of Glass), a 10-minute reel of behind-the-scenes footage, and a snippet from the original Desecration short film (different from the one included on the DVD for that feature).
