Documentary Review: Bloodlines: The Jersey Devil Curse

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2022
Images from the Internet

Bloodlines: The Jersey Devil Curse
Directed by Seth Breedlove
Small Town Monsters; 1091 Pictures
79 minutes; 2022
https://www.smalltownmonsters.com/

Being that I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, whenever the Jersey Devil was brought up, it was generally not attributed to a cryptid, but rather the drivers of that state. I know better now, and I am no longer Jersey Driver-phobic. The Jersey Devil creature? Well, that’s another story, and it is attentively given its due in this documentary, directed by Cryptid Master, Seth Breedlove.

The Jersey Devil (JD) is not omnipresent in the state, but is confined to an actually quite large reserve known as the Pine Barrens. I have been there and walked some trails, but never saw anything weird, just a beautiful pine forest.

 

But the mainstream legend of the beastie started in earnest during the early 1900s, beginning originally as The Leeds Devil, and over time and newspaper articles, it became the name it now retains. The creature is supposedly the size of a large dog, looks like a deer with the head of a horse with long horns, bat wings to fly around, talons in front, either horse feet or cloven hooves in the rear, and eyes that glow red. It supposedly can easily rip people or other animals apart.

Breedlove’s films, which deal specifically on cryptids, have evolved quite well. His early documentaries embraced lots of talking head “experts” (such as writers on the topic, local historians, alleged eye witnesses, and supernatural investigators) and mixed between, separating the interviews were either short animation pieces or dramatizations.

Here, he goes a bit further, for the better interest of the viewer in a mode that I personally found more engaging (that is not to say his earlier films are not). He has a lesser number of interviewees, which makes it easier to associate with them, and there is a stronger reliance on the dramatizations, even going as far to show a 1909 sighting in silent movie form, and in sepia. It is effective. There are a number of animation images of what the Devil may look like dispersed through the documentary, sometimes in still images, occasionally in almost Claymation style, and then there are the really effective mixes of live action and animation.

The early 1900s were the boom of the period of yellow journalism (until FoxNews, of course), so named for the color of the newspapers. As a student of media and technological impacts, I found the detailed description of how these papers, especially in Philadelphia, helped foster the image of the Leeds Devil, and transformed it into the Jersey Devil.

Dr. Brian Regal

Some of the experts describing the history of the cryptid are Dr. Brian Regal, author of the book The Secret History of the Jersey Devil, folklorist Dr. Eleanor Hasken-Wagner, and researcher and writer Mark Matzke, all of whom, among the others, keep the story fresh and manage to engage the viewer (this one, anyway).

They give a history of the – er – history of possible origins of the JD legends, be it from Native Americans telling the story to Quakers who turned it into a devil image, of a longer narrative about the possibility of it being born of a witch in the mid-18th Century. This is dramatized in a lengthy and enjoyable black and white short that is reminiscent of the old Universal Monsters style, but without the overly theatrical acting (Megan Barylak does an excellent job as the midwife).

The Pine Barrens

Myself, I do not necessarily believe in cryptids, but I do enjoy the stories around them, from a cultural and historical perspective, and this documentary covers all of that. The film first premiered in Point Pleasant, WV, at the 2022 Mothman Festival, which seems appropriate.

Breedlove’s previous documentaries have set a very high bar of excellent films about regional monsters, and I do believe that this has topped them. Whether you are a hockey fan, a Jerseyite, or just into the weird world we live in, this might float yer boat.

IMDB listing HERE