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

Review: Feed the Gods

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

Feed the Gods
Directed by Braden Croft
Random Bench; BMC Pictures; Compound B; MVD Marquee Collection
84 minutes, 2014 / 2021
www.facebook.com/FeedTheGodsFilm
www.randombench.com/films/
www.MVDVisual.com

Films that use the idea to feed local “gods” is not a new concept; just off the top of my head there is Jug Face (2013; reviewed HERE) and two others I won’t name because it is the plot twist of the end. One could even include the original King Kong (1933) as Faye Wray is chained to be sacrificed to the big ape. Actually, this Canadian film is closer to Kong than the others.

The prologue, of which I will not give too many details, is effective in a number of ways. First, it sets up the story of the two main characters, brothers William and Kris. Second, it is creepy and tense as hell at the border of the town of Tendale (population 60, filmed near Vancouver, British Columbia), and third, it can be seen as a social commentary about the heartlessness of the coyotes who work the southern border of the United States thanks to antiquated and cruel immigration laws. But I’m a proud liberal, so please excuse the politicizing. Anyhoo, if the rest of the film is of this caliber, it’s going to be interesting.

Emily Tennant, Tyler Johnston, Shaun Roberts

In the modern-day body of the main story, we meet the brothers as grown-ups: William (Shaun Roberts, who played Albert Wesker in the later Resident Evil franchise and was a semi-regular in the last season of the Canadian “Heartland” show) is a brutish, fly-by-night guy who wears sleeveless tees to show off his hulk and smokes pot, while Kris (Tyler Johnston, Samadriel on “Supernatural) is super uptight and looks like he just stepped out of High School Musical (2006). After finding some family artifacts, the sibs decide to head on back to Tendale (though the stress level is up to Elevendale…sorry) with Kris’s girlfriend in tow, Brit (Emily Tennant, who was the voice of 2017’s “Polly Pocket”). The bros are at odds (you know they will bond by the end, as all road movie companions do, no matter what the genre), with Brit in the middle as mediator. A bit formulaic, but one that tends to work.

On the way to search for their parents, William says prophetically, “Let the hunt begin.” Of course, at some point who is the hunter and who will be the – er – huntee? It’s telegraphed pretty early on (and hell, even on the front of the box), that there is a Bigfoot/Sasquatch problem and the town is living in fear.

Britt Irvin

For a place as isolated as Tendale, it seems to be hopping in the brothers’ perspective. They stay at a B&B run by Emma (Britt Irvin, Stargirl on “Smallville” and the voice of Sunny Flare on “My Little Pony”), which has a couple of extra guests from down undah beside our heroes. It’s not hard to figure out why they are there. Anyway, the film likes to telegraph itself, so while the tension remains (especially between Will and Kris), it remains not hard to figure out what is going to happen next in many cases, and who are the good and bad people.

While the film lulls for a while as we are fed necessary expository information, but somewhere about the half way point, it begins to pick up steam once our three stalwart explorers start to camp out to search for Bigfoot, since they aren’t having much luck with the parents.

Aleks Paunovic

With some really nice yet somehow sympathetic bad guys like the massive Pete (Aleks Paunovic; Julius in the recent “Van Helsing” series), and a couple of good double crosses in various directions, the story goes from predictable to… not. Sure, all the telegraphed things come to fruition, but surprises arise in around that, and there are even a few decent jump scares.

There isn’t a whole lot of blood, not to mention gore, but the story gives us a pretty decent body count, whether it is by the gods or in a Straw Dogs (1971) kind of scenario. The acting is well done, though I really wanted to smack the two brothers on a number of occasions due to some ridiculous and constant bickering for the first two acts, but that is more on the characters than the players.

The extras start with a full-length commentary by director/writer Braden Craft and associate producer and SFX/props builder Travis Shewchuk. Honestly, the commentary for this is kind of a wash-out. After about 20 minutes, I started to skip around a bit. There are large blank gaps, and when they do discuss the film, it is on mostly a superficial level, though the third act is the most interesting. If you listen to it, fine, but you really will not miss much if you do not. There is also a Behind the Scenes featurette (13 min). Again, it is with Craft and Shewchuk, but this is a bit more pertinent. One of the things they discuss that I found thought-provoking is that the original concept was as a found footage, and I am grateful they did it in narrative form instead; there is nothing I find more annoying than running through the woods at night by the light of a hand-held camera.

There is also the theatrical trailer, two other MVD coming attractions for relatively mainstream fare (with the likes of Zoë Bell and Jeff Goldblum), captioning, and a reversable cover.

The film helps show off the beauty of British Columbia. I have been there a few times, and it really is stunning (and recommended). Meanwhile, stick around for at least part way through the credits for more story information, and if there is a sequel, I will happily watch it.

 

Review: On the Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky

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

On the Trail of UFOs: Dark Sky
Directed by Seth Breedlove
Small Town Monsters; 1091 Pictures
85 minutes, 2021
www.smalltownmonsterss.com

They say when you are passionate about something, you don’t have a job. Or something like that. Seth Breedlove and his Small Town Monsters (SMT) company are spearheading a movement on the questionable: Bigfoot, the Momo, and a host of other cryptid creatures. For this documentary, he both goes out of his – er – orbit of “natural” Earth monsters, and looks up at the stars. But from the perspective of being very on the ground.

Over time, Breedlove has gone from films that are mostly documentaries and part re-enactments, to being the point of focus leading the expedition. This makes sense in the world of Covid, keeping it close and personal as much as possible.

Not counting claims of Aliens visiting Ancient Egypt (and helping to build the pyramids? Really?) or Latin America thousands of years ago (if you want a laugh, check out the 1968 book Chariots of the Gods?, by Erick von Damien), UFO sighting claims are actually relatively recent in the United States, dating back to around the Second World War. Though most of the creatures Breedlove has focused on have been around a bit longer than that, the explosion of Alien contact is fully national, rather than isolated segments of the country (for example, as Breedlove’s previous docu showed how the Adirondacks are a focus of detections, rather than, say, Taos, AZ).

Seth Breedlove and Shannon Legro

That being said, Breedlove is joined in this quest by paranormal researcher and author Shannon Legro, who has her own podcast called Into the Fray Radio. She leads the questioning of the people who are claiming sightings. They start off, in this case, in West Virginia, where an older man describes a sighting he had when he was 10 years old. From there, they mostly focus their travels investigating and interviewing around West Virginia with a quick boo northwest into Ohio (STM is based near Akron, OH). I think it is really smart to keep the focus small and concentrate on one relatively small area (i.e., a state) than nationally, or even globally. Especially in these pandemic days.

The film, which is based on a television show by the same name (2020), also wisely manages to bring in some references to the meat of STM concentrations by noting that West Virginia is also the area of the infamous Mothman, and a few interviewed mentions it directly. But there are other weirdness and cryptids mentioned, such as an alien from a crashed UFO, the Green Monster of Flatwoods, WV, which has a museum dedicated to it in that town, and a whole section of the mysterious Men in Black, who may be military, or possibly otherworldly. There are even some paranormal investigators thrown in to help search for information.

Are the Aliens interested in the military which has numerous bases there, power sources of West Virginia such as coal mines, electrical grids and nuclear plants, or the many factories that built them (e.g., Nitroglycerine for TNT came from the WV town of Nitro)? Or perhaps, and for me this is one of the weakest arguments, do they use the coal shafts and caves to travel to a “hollow earth”? It’s all good fun, anyway.

I find it interesting that the crafts all are different shapes. One investigator comments that most are saucer shapes with lights, but the descriptions are numerous, including triangular or other forms. Perhaps they are from different civilizations, or may be built by billionaires on other planets? Okay, the last sentence was totally me. But I mean the first part of that sentence, which I have not seen questioned before.

The film is bolstered by some incredibly well-done animations and re-creations, as well as some possible images of real sightings. There are also various 1950s film clips that I enjoyed, such as ones from Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956; thank you, public domain).

Legro, who also presents the television version, is a good host, and she certainly does the job well. On occasion, though, she seems a bit stiff when reading the narration. She is stoic quite a bit, so the parts where she gets excited really liven it up, such as in the last section. I will acknowledge that it is a fine line when interviewing not to take away from the person who is talking, and when dealing with non-professional talkers, this can be challenging; and she does this quite well. Breedlove, who spearheaded the previous On the Trail of Bigfoot (2021, reviewed HERE), wisely takes a back seat to Legro, and lets her get to work, chirping in with his questions just at the right time.

When dealing with the topics of great mysteries like the supernatural, cryptids, and/or Aliens, there are two aspects to keep in mind. The first is whether or not they actually find one in their search. That is certainly one of the reasons why we watch these documentaries. The second is that usually, you know you are going to be left unfulfilled, like this is the appetizer (questions) without an entrée (answers), but the smells are so good in the restaurant (the program) that you just do not care. That is the ultimate goal for both the program and the viewer.

Breedlove’s documentaries that I have seen, and there have been a few now, have never disappointed, and I always look forward to them. UFO documentaries are pretty much a dime a dozen, but the way he ties in the cryptid connections makes this stand out some from the others, and for that I am grateful.