Horror Shorts Reviews for August 2021

Horror Shorts Reviews for August 2021

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2021
Images from the Internet

Filmmakers, please note: It is important that you list your films on IMDB. Usually, I do not review films (unless requested) that appear on sites like Alter and Screamfest, because they have a known platform, which is great, while I would rather focus on films with no affiliations.

Caw
Directed by Ricky Glore
www.RickyGlore.com
4:45 minutes, 2021
A pregnant woman in yellow (Stephonika W. Kaye) is being chased by a slasher in a yellow slicker through a forest deep. Why? Well, perhaps its ritualistic, but as is common in the shorter horror shorts, it is a scene out of context, but damn it works fine. The make-up effects look really great, and even in that short time, with no dialogue, the viewer can feel empathy for the woman (perhaps it’s the soon-to-be-or-not-to-be child?). Glore does well to keep the tension going for the scene, and his editing is also top-notch. Not bad for a stand-up comic/filmmaker. 
Full film HERE 

 

The Dark Dawn (aka Il Male)
Directed by Alessandro Spada
Fiatlvx Films
22:41 minutes, 2019
The viewer can tell pretty much from the start that this is a bit different, and that it is going to be interesting. In a secluded area, a Priest (Marco Foresti) walks through a snowy road and woods to an isolated farm house. The camera employs a lens that makes the image not completely sharp, and the colors muted. When one sees a modern genre film from Italy and it has a lone priest carrying what looks like a medical bag, it’s pretty obvious what the theme is going to be, in this case the exorcism of a young woman with a sordid past named Janet (Janet Fischietto), with glazed eyes and chained to a bed. But the events that follow are not expected, with a stunningly done twist ending that comes out of freakin’ nowhere to explain what has happened before. Of course, I won’t give it away. The film was shot nearly 10 years ago, but was released in 2019, and is getting a wider showing now. The cinematography by Flavio Toffoli is excellent, and I cannot recommend this highly enough. It is in Italian with some of the easiest captions I have seen. So worth watching, but do so right to the end of the story.
Full film HERE 

 

The First Snow
Directed by Kyle Bastin
Bastin Films; Media Pit; Pigasus Pictures
11:58 minutes, 2021
A winter’s day, in a deep and dark Greenwood, Indiana acreage. A cold front is a-comin’ (below freezing!! This made me laugh since it gets to -40F pre-windchill where I am, but I digress…) and with it the first snow of the season. Meanwhile, high schooler Jacy (Leah Evelynn Hummel) and her young brother Eli (Jacob Bawi) are getting ready for school, but the pipes are frozen, grandpa (Dennis Crosswhite, who played an uncredited student in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School) has gone missing. The film is a musing on climate change with an angry Mother Earth (Judy Littlefield) ready to kick some student ass. The film is a bit opaque in bits, and the background music drowns some of the dialogue (at least on my system), but the storyline is strong, and the ending is actually very pleasing. It’s not preachy in any kind of way, but still gets its message of damage and love across quite well. It made me think of a song by the band Sparks (HERE). 
Trailer HERE 

 

The Flamboyant Rites of Gay Dracula
Directed by Richard Griffin
Nova Films Productions; Scorpio Releasing
9:08 minutes, 2021
This mock trailer, shot in wide screen, is introduced by Orson Wells (Terry Shea), much as with the old Masterpiece Theater fronted by Alistair Cooke. It seems Dracula (Robert Kersey) is being kicked out by his father, Dracula Sr. (Bruce Church) for being gay. He takes an appropriate Peter Pan bus to find his new life, including changing his name to Homosexuala and hosting the (literal) Fondu Party of the Damned. His nemesis? Well, there is two: of course, there is Anita Bryant (Victoria Paradis) who else, as the Van Helsing, and a rivalry for a suiter’s hand – er – nick by Gay Blacula (Cardryell Truss). Gay Dracula made his premiere previously in Griffin’s 2020 short, “Gay as the Sun.” In fact, Graham Stokes returns from his role in that film as Billy, Gay Dracula’s love focus. The humor here is kind of broad (pun not intended) but effective. The accents come in and out, and are occasionally oddly German (Dracula was Romanian), but that’s all part of the fun for me. Paradis comes close to stealing the show, but this is a laugh fest from beginning to end. It’s one of those things, like Monty Python, that may seem silly, but you can see the smarts written between the lines by Griffin and Robyn Guilford.
Full film HERE 

 

Racyst
Directed by Ricky Glore
www.RickyGlore.com
7:19 minutes, 2019.
When is someone white enough? An “agitated man” (Brian Roesel) can’t seem to cope with what he considers “Other.” People of color and those with accents turn him into a Ken (as opposed to a Karen), but something is suddenly physically wrong with him as his fear manifests into an event Cronenberg may envision in The Brood (1979). The effects work well with a touch of humor to it all, but at the same time reflective of modern technology culture where the Internet is full of Karen and Ken videos. This moral tale hits deep into white rage, pointing a mirror at it, which makes it watchable on many levels. The SFX team on this is currently working on Glore’s upcoming feature film, All Your Friends Are Dead, currently in Kickstarter mode at the above e-address.
Full film HERE 

 

The Serpent Writhes in a Glass Coffin
Directed by Richard Griffin
Nova Films Productions; Scorpio Releasing
6:28 minutes, 2021
Director Richard Griffin has a history of creating fake trailers, such as the excellent “They Stole the Pope’s Blood!” (2014), so it should come as no surprise that he would do one on one of his favorite genres, the Italian Cinema giallos. Many of these had odd names like Bird With a Crystal Plumage (1978) or The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (1970). For this filmette, Louis (Neil Redfield) is a gay serial killer warped by electroshock therapy (a comment on conversion therapy?) who murders his lovers, with the police hot on his trail. Lots of giallo motifs run through the trailer, such as photographer and model, coppers in trench coats, cartoonish blood and violence, extreme close-ups of shadowed-laden faces, and clumsy, overly dramatic dialogue (“Inside his damaged brain was a nightmare carnival where the price of admission was death,” or “I got the mayor making more noise than a dozen king crabs fucking in an oil drum”). There is even a nod to Blazing Saddles (1974) or High Anxiety (1977) concerning a Republican politician. This is a strongly amusing film that you don’t need to know the genre to enjoy it, but if you have seen a few, your smile will probably be that much wider.
Full film HERE