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Strange Things Happen at Sundown
USA 2003
produced by Marc Fratto, Frank Garfi, Steve Gonzalez, Brandi Metaxas for Insane-O-Rama Productions
directed by Marc Fratto
starring J. Scott Green, Masha Sapron, Jocasta Bryan, Joseph DeVito, Joshua Nelson, Shannon Moore, Melissa R. Bacelar, Livia Llewellyn, Giovanni DeMarco, Steve Gonzalez, Robert M. Lemkowitz, Gina Ramsden, Jason Adams, Mike Massimino, Kenny Kauderer, Sal Verderame, Nikki Bohannon, Tom Scarola, Tracy Campoli, Benjamin Bauman, Vera Vanguard, Jasi Cotton Lanier, Talya Matia, S.A. Sebastian Gnolfo, Spike, Nicholas Nace, Meredith Faltin, Joseph Anthony, Jacqueline Van Bierk, Patrick Welsh
story by Marc Fratto, Steve Gonzalez, screenplay by Marc Fratto, music by Marc Fratto, Frank Garfi, special effects by Marc Fratto
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
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Marcel (J. Scott Green) has stolen $100,000 from mobster Jimmy Fangs
(Joseph DeVito), and now he and his girlfriend Amy (Jocasta Bryan) are on
the run. And since Jimmy and his second-in-command Joey (Joshua Nelson)
are too busy turning potheads into flesh-eating zombies (literally), they
send a very special thug after Marcel and Amy, the Reaper (embodied by
Steve Gonzalez, voiced by Robert M. Lemkowitz), called so because he
dresses just like the Grim Reaper and never shows his face. But it's not
only the Reaper who's after Marcel and Amy, but also an unnamed assassin
(Masha Sapron), who mercilessly offs Jimmy's men one by one to get to her
prey, as it was Marcel and Amy who have turned her into a vampire, and
painfully so. Oh right, I should have told you, Marcel and Amy are
vampires, and so are Jimmy and gang, and so's the Reaper. All of them have
different approaches to being a vampire though, Amy at one point even
thinks about becoming a born again Christian thanks to a hostage (Shannon
Moore) she and Marcel have taken for food while on the run, but she
eventually fucks that up when she sucks the hostage dry. Eventually,
Marcel, the Reaper, the Reaper's cleanly housewife wife (Livia Llewellyn),
Amy and the nameless assassin all meet for a bloody but also quite
hilarious showdown that holds quite a few surprises ... If a
director makes his first feature and it clocks in (like Strange Things
Happen at Sundown) at 2 hours 15 minutes, that's usually a bad sign,
showing that director had just too many ideas and lacked the ability to
focus - but Strange Things Happen at Sundown proves to be the
exception to that rule. Sure, it's chock-full of ideas from all five
corners of genre cinema and doesn't always seem terribly homogenic - but
it's very well-paced to make one forget about the occasional narrative
shortcomings (and there aren't many), its ironic approach to the story as
such really works here, the many little jokes and quirks set this apart
from the usual genre fare, and the film's so full of surprises and
unexpected plottwists, that to the end one can't never be sure where the
story is leading next. Lots of fun, really.
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review © by Mike Haberfelner
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Robots and rats,
demons and potholes, cuddly toys and shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill Your Bones to is all of that.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to -
a collection of short stories and mini-plays ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle,
all thought up by the twisted mind of screenwriter and film reviewer Michael Haberfelner.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to
the new anthology by Michael Haberfelner
Out now from Amazon!!! |
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