Review: Heartland of Darkness

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2023
Images from the Internet

Heartland of Darkness (aka Fallen Angels; Blood Church)
Directed by Eric Swelstad
Donovan Productions; HOD Productions;
Visual Vengeance; Wild Eye Releasing; MVD Entertainment
101 minutes, 1992 / 2022
www.wildeyereleasing.com
www.mvdvisual.com

While this film was to be released in 1992 (though filmed in ’89, and not really finished until 30 years later), it had never been offered on any home format until now. And typical of the Visual Vengeance sub-brand of Wild Eye Releasing, this Blu-ray was supervised by director Eric Swelstad into an SD master from the original sources.

Who doesn’t love a good satanic cult movie, unless you are a fundamentalist yahoo? This film does not necessarily tread new ground, even though it is 30 years old. While many devil’s cult releases have come since then, it was preceded by the likes of The Devil’s Rain and Race with the Devil, both from 1975. But as I watch each film with an open mind, let’s hit the play button, shall we?

First of all, y’gotta love a film that, in its credits, presents Scream Queen Linnea Quigley with an “And” at the end of the cast list, even though it is 1992. Off to a good start.

Amusingly, I start off with a question about the prologue. Without giving away the reason, a man is being chased through the woods by said cult. I understand that the chasers are wearing sunglasses to indicate that they are a united group, but sunglasses after dark? Is this a Cramps song? Seems like a visual oxymoron, like someone wearing a baseball cap backwards, and shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand. The map does not match the territory.

Dino Tripodis, Sharon Klopfenstein

As the story begins, ex-Chicago Tribune writer (saywhat?) Paul (stand-up and future DJ Dino Tripodis in his first IMDB listing) and his teenage daughter Christine (Sharon Klopfenstein, in her only role, as with most of the cast), who wears less and less as the film goes on, has just moved into a small town in Ohio (though mostly filmed around the Columbus area). Paul has taken over the local newspaper, The Copperton Chronicle, which obviously has been shuttered for years. Love the old typewriters. As I was a phototypesetter for a local Brooklyn weekly newspaper (The Weekly) in Bay Ridge during the late 1970s, this may indicate it had been shuttered for quite a few years. He soon hires Evelyn (Mary Alice Demas). Also hired right off is ex-The New York Times writer (saywhat?) and shoulder-pads wearing Shannon (Shanna Thomas). Love interest or cult plant? We shall see.

There are lots of personality contradictions. For example, the Sherriff (Lee Page) is grumpy to Paul, but gives him information. The local priest, Rev. Donovan (Nick Baldasare), obviously the bad guy, pressures Paul and Christine to show up at church. Would not fly with atheistic me. I mean, the biblical god killed way more innocent people than Satan did in their holy book. But I digress… Another digressive question: Paul is trying to make the local, small-town newspaper into a journalistic hotspot. Have ya ever seen a small-town newspaper? Usually, it is 90% local business advertising (i.e., the paper’s bread and butter), and the rest is what is going on at the Rotary Club, “coffee time” jokes, or who has a 75th wedding anniversary. The hardest news you will find will be how the local crop did this year, or changes in the trucking rules.

Nick Baldasare

Meanwhile, back to the show, Donovan quickly presents himself to be the villain that he is (again, no surprise), through his sermon (of which Christine is enamored). I mean, you know something is off when the congregation says a communal “Yes” rather than “Amen.” He is also setting in motion a temptress, Julia (Quigley, who is topless within 5 minutes of her intro; gotta love it), to seduce the newcomers into the fold.

Paul and Shannon are joined by Reverend Kane (John Dunleavy), who is a Satanic cult expert. Perhaps the character was named after the Puritan Satanist hunter, Solomon Kane, from the Robert E. Howard novels. He, Paul, and Shannon, confront Donovan. Which leads me to some other questions: people are killed off by the cult for the smallest of infractions, even their own members (e.g., plans to leave town), so if confronted by this trio, why are they not immediately killed off like the others, especially after the newspaper first releases a story about the possibility of the local murders being cult-related? And when do students (Catherine) and especially teachers (Quigley) show up in high school (where they teach about Aleister Crowley and the positive side of Hitler) wearing belly-showing clothes and neck diving tops? Oh, yeah, in B-movies…

Linnea Quigley

When it is payback time, aka Act 3, the action naturally ramps up. I smiled how one scene near the end reflected an inverted version the beginning, something rare in most films.

The acting runs from quite decent, such as the two male leads, to just wooden and terrible (I will leave out the names), but that is to be expected in B-films. During the 1980s and ‘90s, indie films leaned towards bad acting, but that is also part of its charm, in my opinion.

There are hours upon hours of extras on this Blu-ray, so if you are interested in this kind of thing, you should be happy. It took me three days to watch everything, including these extras. First up is a full-length commentary with the director, Eric Swelstad, the lead actor Nick Baldasaere, cinematographer Scott Spears, and composer Jay Woelfel. I was amused that they brought up the sunglasses after dark; in fact, they mention a bunch of topics I did above, though I watched this after the film. While sometimes hard to tell who is talking, they are respectful, do not talk over each other, and tell interesting stories. It was better than I expected with this large a crowd. The second full lengther is with Tony Strauss of Weng’s Chop magazine. It a bit of a more academic deep dive into the culture before and after the film, info on the shoot itself, and histories of the actors. Often these dives are dull, but Strauss’ keeps it a bit light without losing any of his topic’s integrity. Some of what he says is reflective of the previous commentary, but even then, he adds more on top of it.

One of the noteworthy extras is the 2020 documentary featurette, “Deeper into the Darkness” (39 min). This is a well put-together collection of interviews of crew members and Baldasaere, mixed with archival footage both in front and behind the camera. Really fun to watch, actually. I really enjoyed the part about Quigley (though she is not interviewed), and the release has been dubbed “The Lost Linnea Quigley Film,” which I found amusing. There is also a trailer for “Deeper into the Darkness.” Meanwhile there are two Quigly-related shorts, a new interview called “Linnea Quigley Remembers” (6 min), and a very grainy, obviously VHS taped off the TV archival interview on the program “Close-up” (20 min). The newer one is just Linnea talking about her experience with the film and gets to plug her website. The older interview by Jane Sachs is from Columbus Fox Television, as Quigley not only talks about this film (under the title Fallen Angels), but her career and her animal rights work. All very cool, but I especially liked the many commercials between the two segments, including a promo for an upcoming Beach Boys special.

The complete, original Fallen Angels 1990 workprint (37 min), is also available with a commentary track with director Eric Swelstad, which is how I watched it. This was to be shown to promote investors. It has the timeclock on the bottom and is grainy, which helped me appreciate the modern, final cut. Unfortunately, there is no subtitles for this version, which is not surprising. It is extremely abbreviated, with some different moments here and there with more raw edits, including video noise between scenes. For the ritual scene, it is almost like a blooper reel as parts are shot over and over. Also, some scenes, such as a key Quigley bit, is shown both with and without nudity. A lot of the conversation is similar in information to the other commentaries. Naturally, there is a “The Making of Fallen Angels” (18 min), which is vintage newscast interviews with Quigley and Swelstad in a longer format. Again, it is a grainy and extremely “noisy” VHS copy, but it is interesting as a lot of the info is unique and not mentioned in the commentaries.

A 1990s abbreviated version of the film for distributor promotion, edited by someone out of the loop of the director, is Blood Church (13 min). Again, fuzzy, washed out, and time stamped. It is kinda weird and incoherent. A SFX featurette is “Heartland of Darkness: Filming [Name Redacted]’s Death” (3 min). I have removed the character’s name because it would be a spoiler. This was cool. Following, is an article scanned from Fantasm magazine, which I saw but did not read.

Then there is the behind-the-scenes image gallery, television spots, two versions of this film’s original coming attractions and the new one for this release, as well as a couple of Visual Vengeance trailers, and optional English subtitles.

On the physical side, there is a six-page liner notes booklet, a Limited Edition slipcase (first pressing only), a collectible Linnea Quigley folded mini-poster, a stick your own’ VHS sticker set, and a reversible sleeve featuring original Blood Church promotional art

For a low budget (appx $100,000) indie film (despite all the Pepsi placements), the practical SFX (with one exception) looks astoundingly good, and there is a lot of it. So is the nudity by more than one character.

Before this, I had never heard of Heartland of Darkness, which is no surprise considering it seen as a “lost film,” but despite my questions, I found it to be a very enjoyable vintage piece of its period.

IMBD listing HERE