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| Images courtesy of Blood Sick Productions |
You probably haven’t heard of the independent production
company Blood Sick Productions yet unless you’re a regular attendee of PhilaMOCA’s
Psychotronic film events. Started by producer-director
Brewce Longo and Michael DiFancesco, the company is sort of like Troma Entertainment
meets Visual Vengeance by way of an underground thrash metal show with frequent
pit stops to Hot Topic. Usually making a
cameo appearance of some sort in the proceedings, Longo’s efforts go for an
intentionally lo-fi VHS tape aesthetic which appears to be authentic and not
just a digital post-production effect. A
curious case of cultivating a patina that was long thought lost to time,
creating new videotaped do-it-yourself micro-budget horror yarns in the 2020s,
Blood Sick Productions is driven by nostalgia and a penchant for the kind of
grungy borderline softcore homegrown video horror flicks you’d find in the cult
horror section on a worn and overplayed tape.
Gradually unveiling a series of titles on made-on-demand
BD-R discs, among the company’s first releases are Busted Babies and Blood
Sick Productions’ co-founder Brewce Longo’s fourth feature as a
producer-director Coven of the Black Cube. Ostensibly a goth lesbian stoner hangout
flick featuring a few different live acts such as Jakob Battick, Sing Slavic
and Unholy Affair, it tells the story of misandrist witches casting occult
spells and murdering nefarious men under the front of a gothic novelty
shop. Cross-cutting between a young girlfriend
dating the singer of a band, a glamorous shopkeeper who might be a murderous
witch, a guy who runs a pizzeria/video store/dispensary shop that looks like a food
truck with tapes randomly strewn about, Coven of the Black Cube gradually
seems to center around a mysterious black cube with unearthly demonic
powers.
The kind of movies Troma Entertainment ought to still be
making rather than their ultra clean sheen digital aesthetic, Coven of the
Black Cube is from a technical filmmaking acting standpoint more or less
out of shits to give. With camerawork
that generally feels lensed guerilla style on the fly perhaps without permits,
there’s a shoddiness to the look of this that feels like 1990s SOV (shot on
video) trash while also celebrating analog tape over our streaming digital Hell
we’re in. Take for instance a scene
where two of the main characters, the jilted lesbian girlfriend and the stoner
video store owner, watching some VHS tapes together. The scene takes a moment to regard a
flatscreen TV with the wires disconnected and wrapped up, filed away in disuse. In today’s curious media verse fluctuating
between going all in the airspace and landing back in our hands, it felt like a
defiant call to arms seeing new standard home theater equipment disconnected.
Acting is poor and the storytelling kind of meanders so by
the time heavy metal witchcraft and penis needle tortures begin, we kind of don’t
care one way or the other. Sure there
are characters in it, many of whom drift in and out of other Blood Sick
Productions, but mostly its a vibe kind of film that feels strange seeing on
Blu-ray disc rather than VHS tape. For
what its worth, the mixture of gothic queer witch stoner retro vibes doesn’t
have a whole lot of forward momentum but in its way reminded me of the kind of
slice-of-life day-to-day antics captured in Candy Apple.
As someone who consumes a lot of SOV films, Coven
of the Black Cube was an alright hangout flick with some occasional cringe
inducing moments. While I’m not exactly
sure if these will catch on or go much of anywhere, we are seeing in real time
a resurgence of the analog format and those looking for some homegrown witchy
goth horror vibes should have some lo-fi fun here. The Blu-ray disc comes with a running audio
commentary, trailers and some behind-the-scenes stuff, though the film’s
biggest overarching impact will probably result in some viewers running out and
buying back their old CRT units.
--Andrew Kotwicki
