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Visions Of Hell: The Films Of Jim Van Bebber

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    Ian Jane
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  • Visions Of Hell: The Films Of Jim Van Bebber

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    Released by: Dark Sky Films
    Released on: 5/27/08
    Director: Jim Van Bebber
    Cast: Jim Van Bebber, Paul Harper, Megan Murphy, Ric Walker, Mark Pitman, Marcello Games, Leslie Orr, Maureen Alisse, Amy Yates, Tom Burns
    Year: Various
    The Movies:

    As notorious for his temperamental behavior as he is remarkably talented, Ohio's Jim Van Bebber's films have been popular staples of the underground since he first made a name for himself in 1988 with the notorious Deadbeat At Dawn. The 'success' of that project (in the extras Van Bebber tells us that the contracts all turned out to be bunk and they never made any real money with it) lead to the genesis of a few other projects, the most widely known being The Manson Family. A film that Van Bebber and the rest of his Asmodeus Productions crew started in 1988, the film wasn't finished until over ten years later due to budgeting and scheduling problems galore. Dark Sky Films has collected the bulk of Van Bebber's work, including his two features, and presented them in this four disc boxed set, Visions Of Hell.

    Let's start with the features…

    DEADBEAT AT DAWN:

    Van Bebber took the loan that he was supposed to use to finish film school and instead used the money to make this movie, a cross between The Warriors and Combat Shock. Not only did he write, direct, and do the stunts for the film but he also stars in it as Goose, the leader of a street gang called The Ravens. Goose's old lady, a psychic, wants him out of the gang for good but before he quits he decides he's going to pull off one last drug deal. Before all of this happens, however, his girlfriend is brutally beaten to death by a rival street gang called The Spiders.

    Understandably devastated by the murder, Goose decides he's going to pay The Spiders back in kind and so he buries her body in a trash compactor and sets about plotting his revenge. After spending some time with his father, a junkie with problems of his own, Goose eventually hits the streets and wages a one man war against the Spiders.

    While Deadbeat At Dawn might be a fairly typical action/revenge movie in terms of set up, plot and pacing what makes it interesting is that there's such a fierce spirit behind it. Van Bebber is basically a one man wrecking crew here, doing all his own stunts and handling the fight choreography in addition to his directing and acting duties and you can tell that this was a deeply personal project for him. This enthusiasm and, some might say manic zest for cinema shows in every seedy frame of this scuzzy fucked up fight film, from the opening sequence in which Goose's lady friend deals with her future to the blood soaked finale in which our 'hero' goes balls out nutso on his enemies using every resource available to him to give them the fight of their lives.

    Ven Bebber and his cast might be a little on the wooden side in terms of acting here (something that would change with The Manson Family, where the cast is excellent all around in that regard) but they make it for it with drive and determination. The fights pack a punch that delivers some serious hurt and whatever shortcomings might be inherent in the acting and the storyline are more than compensated for by the right atmosphere, the wanton violence and the time capsule aspect of the film that captures seedier parts of Ohio at the height of their urban decay.

    THE MANSON FAMILY:

    We all know the story of Charles Manson and his 'family' of killer hippies. He brainwashed them using sex, drugs and rock and roll into doing his evil bidding, culminating in some seriously grisly murders - the best known of which occurred in Hollywood with the murder of Sharon Tate and her unborn child. Since then, the media has portrayed Manson as a sort of boogie man, still alive and well in prison to this very day. Every once in a while he applies for parole, and every time he gets tossed back in the clink. At any rate, Manson has almost become part of American popular culture, which is pretty bizarre when you think about it.

    Van Bebber's film focuses more on the family than on Manson himself. Seeing as it was the family that was responsible for the bulk of (if not all of) the killings, this makes for a pretty grisly little movie. Charlie (played here by Marcelo Games also of Deadbeat At Dawn) is essentially a spiritual leader to some already very screwed up beatnik types. He's really only a supporting character in the film. Van Bebber's take on the Manson mythos gives us a fly on the wall account in the form of a pretty realistic fake documentary film, interspersed with an unnecessary and distracting sub plot about some modern day disciples of Manson exacting their revenge on a tabloid TV journalist. While this was probably supposed to function as a way of tying the events of the film together with modern day society, it doesn't fit the tone of the 'retro' footage.

    Van Bebber and company made a point of shooting the film and roughing up the footage enough to give it a very authentic look, recreating a lot of the documentary footage that's out there surrounding the exploits of the titular characters we follow here. Those who have seen the 1972 documentary Manson will find many familiar recreations in Van Bebber's film that look, feel and sound like the real thing. To the filmmakers' credit, they've done a pretty good job of making their material look like it was shot in the late sixties. Juxtaposing it against the modern day footage, none of which is as well made as the other material, doesn't do the movie any favors. I see what they were trying to do I just don't think it worked. It's too…. B-movie. The actors aren't as convincing as those involved in the Manson family footage and it really just feels out of place.

    That one small to medium sized issue aside, (the 'modern day' footage really only adds up to a few minutes of the total running time) they did a great job. There are some seriously twisted and frightening moments here (pay special attention to the blood orgy that occurs just over half way through the film, it's filled with religious iconography and blasphemous imagery that really drives home how evil these people were, regardless of who was to blame for it all!), some of which don't have anything to do with the infamous murders at all but focus more on the psychological aspects of what Manson was able to convince his followers of. There's drug use prevalent throughout the film and there's plenty of 'free love' style sex on screen as well, but it doesn't feel out of place or forced within the context of the movie. It's interesting to watch the characters develop under Manson's influence from happy go lucky hippies communing at the Spahn Ranch to cold-blooded acid eating killers.

    Marc Pitman (another Deadbeat At Dawn player) as Tex, Leslie Orr as Patty, Maureen Allisse (who had a bit part in Van Bebber's Roadkill) as Sadie, Amy Yates as Leslie, Tom Burns (also of Deadbeat and My Sweet Satan) and the director himself as Bobby all put in pretty solid turns in their respective roles and while I can't see anyone winning an Oscar here, for a low budget independent movie made over roughly fifteen years, the acting is definitely above average and surprisingly consistent. Look for Mutilation Man director Andy Copp in a small role and listen for the voices of Phil Anselmo and Sage Stallone over the narrative (as well as the music of Anselmo's post-Pantera project, Superjoint Ritual, which plays over the ending). Pretty much anyone with any connection to Van Bebber seems to have turned in one thing or another on this project.

    The visuals and the sound mix border on the surreal at times, more often than not when LSD is involved in the story. The 'acid trip' look of the film works well and gives the movie a hallucinatory quality that suits the events and the era occurring on screen.

    The much lauded violence and brutality that the film was talked about having before its official release is still intact, though it may not prove to be as over the top as some have claimed, at least not to those of us who are a bit jaded in terms of on screen gore. Still, what is there is quite well done despite a few times where prosthetics and effects work are visible. Much of this is because of the way the camera jumps around a lot, rarely giving us time to notice who realistic one knife wound looks compared to another.

    The gang rape sequence, which is particularly harrowing with its dental and ocular close ups, is a very good example of how clever editing can give a low budget movie just as much if not more impact than anything Hollywood is willing to churn out these days. The Tate-LaBianca murders and the events that followed it are particularly nasty though the film does fall short of showing the full on assault that happened to Sharon Tate in real life that night.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    Both films are presented in their original 1.33.1 fullframe aspect ratio which is how they were meant to be shown in the first place (the menus for each and the featurettes in the extra department are all anamorphic widescreen and the clips are cropped showing that yes, 1.33.1 is the right way to watch this stuff). Deadbeat At Dawn shows its age and its low budget roots in that there's a bit of mild print damage present at pretty much any given point as well as a bit of color fading in some spots. That said, the grainy, gritty, grimy look of the movie adds to the movie's atmosphere quite effectively and compliments that shit-house locations used for the picture almost perfectly. This is squalor, pure and simple, and the transfer represents that as well as it should and as well as it needs to, no more and no less.

    The Manson Family is a different story in that it's got a 'mixed media' thing going on and it was also shot over a much longer period of time. It's also been altered in post production to look like film from the late sixties and unlike more recent efforts to recreate this look, here it works incredibly well. Expect scratches, dirt, debris and color fading to move in and out throughout the picture. There's some completely appropriate tape roll visible during the scenes that are supposed to be taken from VHS sources and detail fades in and out depending on what type of source is being used and when. The footage meant to be shot in the modern day looks quite clean and clear just as you'd expect it to and on the flip side of that coin, so too does the 'older footage' look rough and sloppy, again, just as you'd expect it to.

    Deadbeat At Dawn gets the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono treatment while The Manson Family gets a more interesting Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound mix. Optional English subtitles are provided for both movies. Generally, things sound fine across the board. There's less range with Deadbeat, obviously, than there is with The Manson Family but both pictures are easy enough to understand and follow and there aren't any glaring problems to complain about here.

    The Deadbeat At Dawn DVD includes some great extras starting off with a featurette entitled Deadbeat At Dawn: Half-Desperate, Half Crazy, And Totally Dangerous. Essentially a lengthy interview with Van Bebber, this is a pretty revealing look at what went into making this film and getting it finished. This fifteen minute documentary includes plenty of clips from the film as well as some images from the film's storyboards as Van Bebber talks about the various influences that shaped his film and what it was like working on this picture.

    Dark Sky has also included a Behind The Scenes featurette that was made in 1987/88 on VHS. It's eighteen and a half minutes of on-set footage that shows Van Bebber and his crew working on the train yard scenes and enjoying copious amounts of beer (a recurring theme throughout the extras!). Some narration or interview clips would have helped give this some context but it's cool to be able to take a trip back in time to be a fly on the wall while this movie was being made, which is exactly what this featurette allows us to do.

    Also on the first disc is a collection of three minutes of outtakes from the film, and a still gallery of over fifty behind the scenes, promotional and marketing shots.

    The second disc in the set includes Van Bebber's shot films:

    My Sweet Satan: Preceding The Manson Family, this is Van Bebber's nineteen minute take on another notorious though far lesser known killing. The film tells the story of Ricky Kasso (played here by Van Bebber), the self proclaimed 'acid king' of Long Island who wound up murdering a fellow teenager by the name of Gary Lauwers in the woods. Kasso, a supposed Satanist, takes his knife and basically carves up the unwitting Lauwers as a sacrifice to Satan and, when the film ends, winds up in an asylum where he kills himself two days later.

    Roadkill: The Last Days Of Jon Martin: Made in 1994, the same year as My Sweet Satan, this gory fourteen minute shot was made with the intention of getting investors interested in financing a full length feature version of the story. Mark Gillespie plays the titular Jon Martin, a cannibalistic serial killer who 'helps' out stranded highway travelers by picking them up, taking them home and butchering them. The little details in this one, like the masks of human skin hanging on the wall and piles of beer bottles on the floor make up for the fact that Gillespie spends a lot of time yelling at the TV. That said, the violence in this short hurts and its' interesting to see Martin butcher his male and female victims with equal amounts of overzealousness.

    Doper: Also made in 1994, this twenty-minute piece is about a pot smoker. Shot as a faux-documentary, we meet his co-workers, all of whom adore him and praise his efforts without realizing that he's perpetually stoned each and every shift. Interviews with his friends and family provide some background information on our subject and the whole thing feels like a not-so-thinly veiled pro-pot movie. It's amusing enough, particularly if you've got any experience in 'trying to hide the giggles' yourself but it lacks the intensity of the other content on the disc.

    Kata: Co-directed by Van Bebber and Samuel Turcotte, this 1990 film is simply a six-minute document of a karate expert's kata. As he practices his art we see flashes to other men falling, we assume, because he's struck them down. It's an interesting piece and one of the nicest looking in terms of color use and composition. Those without an interest in the martial arts might not be drawn to it so much but anyone who appreciates karate should enjoy it.

    Into The Black: This thirty-five minute feature stars a very young Van Bebber as a dude in prison. We learn how he kicked a bunch of people in the face, swam across a river, got into some fights and out-toughed some bikers before wailing on some bad buys with nunchucks. Bad guys kidnap a girl and he runs out to save her and winds up in all kinds of trouble. Made in 1983, you can see the seeds of Deadbeat At Dawn starting to take footing in this ultra violent and fast paced movie that, like its better known counterpart, finds Van Bebber doing a ton of crazy stunts and martial arts moves on a bunch of his friends.

    Note: completists will want to hold on to the old Synapse Films release of Deadbeat At Dawn as it includes a commentary track with Van Bebber that has not been carried over to this boxed set collection. It also contains the Chunkblower promo which doesn't appear in this collection either.

    The first disc for The Manson Family includes only two trailers and a pair of still galleries but the second disc contains a feature length documentary called The Van Bebber Family that interviews almost everyone associated with the film (Marcello Games does not appear here and has pretty much disassociated himself with the film for personal reasons). All interviewed discuss their admiration for Van Bebber's direction style (he directed parts of the film naked, just like the actors) and much is made of the cast's penchant for drugs and booze during the shoot, which all agree added to the picture's authenticity. Jim discusses the many problems that the picture ran into over its decade long production schedule and we learn why people with pubic hair shouldn't engage in genital on genital contact is fake blood is all over their bodies. This is, in many ways, as interesting as the feature itself and for should be considered essential viewing for anyone with even passing interesting in the trials and tribulations of making a low budget independent film.

    A second and equally interesting documentary entitled In The Belly Of The Beast is a look at Van Bebber's trip to Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival. This is also quite interesting, though for very different reasons. Appearing alongside a host of other interesting 'fringe' filmmakers like Nacho Cerde, Richard Stanley and Karim Hussein as well as genre stalwarts like Tony Timpone and Chas Balun, this lengthy look at Montreal's gift to world cinema really gives you a good feeling for what the festival is all about and why you should care.

    Last, but certainly not least, there's a ten minute interview with Charles Manson himself included on this disc. Taken from the Charles Manson Superstar documentary, this is an interesting clip that shows that Charlie is just as nuts now as he ever was.

    The Final Word:

    A fantastic collection of work from a gifted, if troubled filmmaker, Visions Of Hell is an essential purchase for any self respecting cult movie fan. These are gutsy, visceral works, the kind that the mainstream eschews and which hit like a pair of brass knuckles to the face. Dark Sky has treated the material with the utmost respect and done a fantastic job with this release.
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