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Released by: Saturn’s Core
Released on: March 29th, 2022.
Director: Charles Pinion
Cast: Richard Kern, Holly Adams, Charles Pinion, Amanda Collins, Alyssa Taylor Wendt, David Aaron Clark, Kembra Pfahler
Year: 1993/1996
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Red Spirit Lake / We Await – Movie Review:
Saturn's Core offers up two of infamous transgressive filmmaker Charles Pinion's shot on video efforts, on Blu-ray for the first time in a pretty stacked special edition release.
Red Spirit Lake:
The first feature, directed in 1993 and at one point released on VHS by Something Weird Video as one of Frank Henenlotter's Sexy Shockers From The Video Underground, opens with a scene where a woman is tortured by an elite, wealthy man named Diego Sardonia (Juergen J. Straub) and his cronies (one of whom is Richard Kern). This woman, Abigail, is a witch and owns a massive piece of property referred to as Red Spirit Lake. Shortly after, Abigail winds up dead and her niece Marilyn (Annabelle Davis) inherits the property. Sardonia and his pals, however, still want the property so that they can exploit its supernatural qualities. Two local men, Thomas (Mark Adomaitis) and Mathias (played by director Pinion), know more than they first let on and are probably insane.
At any rate, Marilyn, a witch herself, settles in to her new digs and invites some of her college friends up to celebrate. This, of course coincides with Diego's attempts to usurp the property rights from her, at which point, things go from weird to a whole lot weirder.
Featuring music by Cop Shoot Cop, Lydia Lunch, Clint Ruin and The Lunachicks and co-written by Pinion and Annabel Lee, Red Spirit Lake is a strange, transgressive horror picture that starts off like a home invasion film of sorts. There's some pretty strong content in here, including a nasty rape scene and some strong violence, as well as some strangely frank nudity, and even some genital mutilation thrown in for good measure. It doesn't always work, but it is always interesting.
Pinion seems out to push buttons here and he does a pretty good job of getting very much up in the audience's face. Even when the movie loses sight of its plot, which happens just past the half way mark, he throws in enough exploitative insanity to keep thing engaging. Those who don't appreciate low budget SOV horror films won't be won over by the look of the picture but more adventurous fans of underground cinema will find a lot to like here, as it really does go way over the top before it’s all over and done with. On top of that, the acting is considerably better than you might expect, at least in the context of the insane world that Pinion and company have created here, and while the effects aren’t always the most convincing, the upstate New York settings offer and appropriately bleak, wintery landscape for all of this to play off of and give the movie quite a bit of legitimately impressive atmosphere.
Pinion might not have had the budget to pull things off exactly as he may have envisioned, but he definitely gets an A for effort here. If nothing else, Red Spirit Lake is a movie you won’t soon forget.
We Await:
The second movie, made a few years later in 1996, is a pretty quick watch, clocking in at just over fifty-four minutes. In the movie, a family of cannibals (one of whom is Pinion himself) watch a televangelist program. When a man named R. K. Tripple gets stuck in the middle of nowhere after his car breaks down, he winds up going to the family for help where they start trying to communicate with some sort of gem that produces a green fungus that produces some sort of mass hallucination. A lot of violence ensues and before it's all over the characters come face to face with a giant, naked Kaiju-style Jesus (played by adult film performer David Aaron Clark).
There isn't much plot here, instead, the movie is really just a series of very strange set pieces and visuals, some clearly meant to shock, the movie once again features a great soundtrack with contributions from Crash Worship, Neurosis, and Unsane. The whole thing is trippy as trippy can be, again using some really strong violence, weird sex and insane visuals to keep us intrigued. It’s hard to make heads or tails of the movie as a whole, but as it deals in blasphemous imagery and taboo-busting motifs, it’s hard not to want to see how it all plays out even if, ultimately, it doesn’t make any sense.
Red Spirit Lake / We Await – Blu-ray Review:
Red Spirit Lake and We Await come to region free Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 1080i high definition transfers that were transferred from the original master tapes. Both movies are framed at 1.33.1 with Red Spit Lake taking up 17GBs of space and We Await using 13GBs of space on the shared 50GB disc. These look very much like the micro-budget SOV productions that they are, but everything is more than watchable if you keep thes low budget origins in mind. Detail can't surpass the source material but the disc is well authored and compression is obviously much better here than had the movies been put onto a DVD. Colors and black levels look alright, skin tones too. Again, don't expect a revelation here but those accustomed to the way that camcorder epics such as these look on optical discs will be more than happy with this way this has turned out, so long as expectations are kept in check.
The 16-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo audio for Red Spirit Lake and We Await, available with optional English subtitles, sounds fine for what it is. Levels are balanced well enough and there isn't much in the way of hiss or distortion to complain about. Again, the limitations of the source material do factor into the equation here, but overall, given the film's roots, the audio is decent.
Each film on the disc features a commentary track with director Charles Pinion moderated by Mike Hunchback of Seminal Psychosis. It’s a pretty interesting talk that covers a lot of ground, with Mr. Hunchback doing a good job of keeping Pinion engaged and talking. They cover casting the film, working with the different actors in the movie, shooting on video, the film’s low budget, the upstate New York shooting locations and plenty more. Unfortunately, the disc that was sent to us for review Red Spirit Lake plays the track for Red Spirit Lake over We Await. Oops!
Red Reason To Live is an interview with director Charles Pinion on Red Spirit Lake that runs for fifteen minutes. This covers some of the same ground as the commentary but also goes over where Pinion was at personally and professionally when he made the movie, shooting on video instead of film, collaborating with some interesting musicians and more.
From there, check out the three and a half minute Dissection Of A Shot featurette that offers up some interesting raw footage from the shoot. Also on hand are just under thirty-five minutes of outtakes and deleted scenes from Red Spirit Lake that are interesting to see, though when you watch them you can see why most of the material was excised, even if it definitely would have made the movie a lot more 'extreme' had it been left in.
There are also two short films here, the three minute Madball, which was shot on 16mm, and the nine minute Try Again, which was shot on HD digital video.
The Ultra Rare Footage section includes some interesting oddities from the Pinion vault including a minute of footage from 1988 showing 42nd Street, a minute in the 'Screw Magazine Bathroom,' and twop minutes of live footage of a band called Mechanical Sterility. There's also a lengthy forty nine minute video document of the band COTA performing an entire live set.
Psychic Powerful is second interview with Pinion that focuses on We Await and which runs sixteen minutes. He talks here about what inspired him to make the movie, revising the script quite a few times before settling on what was shot, putting the movie's soundtrack together and more.
Disembowelment Of A Shot is five minutes of raw behind the scenes footage shot during the making of We Await. There's also nineteen minute of deleted and unused footage from We Await included here, as well as a five minute excerpt from the VHS release of We Await titled Spirit Drive. The thirty-one minute Spirit Drive Document is an interesting behind the scenes bit that documents a day on the shoot.
Trailers for both features are also included on the disc as are bonus trailers for a few other Saturn's Core releases (Psycho Sisters, Sinistre, and Shatter Dead) as well as menus and chapter selection options.
Additionally, this release also comes with the excellent Blood Video: Charles Pinion Edition is a twenty-eight page booklet designed by Matt Desiderio of Horror Boobs featuring a career spanning interview with Charles Pinion conducted by Mike Hunchback. This is definitely worth checking out and a nice addition to the release. Reversible cover sleeve art, featuring newly commissioned artwork by Corinne Halbert, is also provided.
Red Spirit Lake / We Await - The Final Word:
Saturn’s Core Releasing’s Blu-ray release of Charles Pinion’s Red Spirit Lake and We Await is about as niche as it goes and while it doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of finding a massive, mainstream audience, those who appreciate outre films and SOV oddities should find a lot to love here. The presentations are about as good as can be, given the movies’ analogue roots, and the extra features do a great job of documenting the movies’ history and adding to the experience.
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Red Spirit Lake / We Await Blu-ray screen caps!
