Blood Sick Productions: Red Flag Down (1993) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Blood Sick Productions

While Visual Vengeance have been souping up all of the disparate tape/film/digital independent horror/comedies as of late and rereleasing them restored with plentiful extras on disc, newcomer Brewce Longo and Michael DiFancesco’s company Blood Sick Productions have been a lot closer to grimy and violent SOV (shot on video) films of kindred ilk.  Having released movies like Busted Babies or Coven of the Black Cube, they’ve established themselves as new modern filmmakers working in an intentionally archaic lo-fi aesthete, going out of their way to scrape a scuzzy vista off of the bathroom floor before being melted and imprinted on a fancy Blu-ray disc. 

 
As with some of their prior releases, Blood Sick offer the collectible slipcover and their latest offering Red Flag Down is no exception in the limited-edition front.  What separates this one apart from their usual crop is that it is for once an actual SOV film made in 1993 restored and rereleased on Blu-ray disc for the first time including another short film by the director Christopher Smith.  Rather than trying to emulate the past, this time they just went for it which is an exciting development for the boutique label.  Released in conjunction with VHS tape repressing label Lunchmeat who previously did a videotape run before transferring the material to disc, Red Flag Down is something of a DIY homegrown regional The Most Dangerous Game which itself has been repeated throughout cinematic history in more than a few different reinterpretations over the century.

 
The two owners of a remote paintball pellet gaming resort, one a whiskey-guzzling aristocrat who drunkenly saunters about in his robe while the other is a trigger-happy redneck who seems to have walked right off of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, invite an out-of-town city reporter to do a news story on their establishment.  Sent off to observe and perhaps join in on the gaming with several other players running throughout the forest, their carefree day of play gaming and pellet gun shooting turns deadly when they learn someone has swapped out the pellets with real bullets resulting in some unintended fatalities.  Confronting the mercurial owners, the survivors soon find themselves running for their lives from two pistol wielding maniacs who would rather kill their clientele than profit off of them.

 
As with Visual Vengeance’s recently released Reanimator Academy, Blood Sick Productions and Lunchmeat VHS’ co-opted Blu-ray disc release of the 1993 SOV Red Flag Down is a charming little The Most Dangerous Game riff replete with an aristocratic hunter thriving on his shooting skills against his fellow humans.  Though running a mere hour, this will fit in nicely with any VHS or SOV aficionado’s collection.  With 2.0 stereo sound and 4:3 1.33:1 fullscreen video, Red Flag Down looks appropriately scuzzy and even a little foul adding to the sleazy allure of the video flick.  Some of it is kinda funny here and there with the two villains playing up the cartoonish factor while supporting young performers like the leader of the group of players have decidedly less-than-stellar acting abilities.  Still, most of all, it delivers on the gross and blurry visual schema which makes the film feel a lot dirtier than it actually is. 

 
Loaded with squibs, cornball regional acting and the air of a group of friends getting together and just making a movie on their terms with what little means they have available, Red Flag Down comes to Blu-ray via Blood Sick and Lunchmeat in a special edition that includes a commentary track with the heads of Lunchmeat and Blood Sick, liner notes and another short feature film called Welcome to Florida, Asshole! which feels like a documentary Harmony Korine might’ve directed.  Blood Sick followers who missed out on the VHS run of this will be inclined to pick it up while completists of their catalog will want this for the slipcover and spine.  To the uninitiated this is indeed a hard sell but for those who enjoy swimming in the septic fields of SOV cinema, look no further!

--Andrew Kotwicki