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Heartland Of Darkness (Visual Vengeance) Blu-ray Review

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    Ian Jane
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  • Heartland Of Darkness (Visual Vengeance) Blu-ray Review

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    Heartland Of Darkness (Visual Vengeance) Blu-ray Review
    Released by: Visual Vengeance
    Released on: November 29th, 2022.
    Director: Eric Swelstad
    Cast: Nick Baldasare, Linnea Quigley, Dino Tripodis, Shanna Thomas, Sharon Klopfenstein
    Year: 1989
    Purchase From Amazon

    Heartland Of Darkness – Movie Review:

    Written and directed by Eric Swelstad in 1989 but never officially released on any format until 2022, Heartland Of Darkness was shot on location in Ohio and it tells the story of a widower named Paul Henson (Dino Tripodis), a journalist from the big city of Chicago who, along with his daughter Christine (Sharon Klopfenstein) relocates to the small town of Copperton where he buys the local newspaper.

    A short time after taking over The Chronicle, a woman named Evelyn (Mary Alice Demas) shows up at the office looking for work. Moments later, she's working as Paul's new secretary. A few minutes after that, a hot chick named Shannon (Shanna Thomas) shows up at the office looking for work. She used to work at The New York Times so you know she means business and so does Paul, who hires her immediately. Later, Paul meets Julia Francine (Linnea Quigley), the sexy high school teacher who takes off her top, because of course she takes off her top.

    Eventually people start turning up dead, victims of brutal, ritualistic killings. Paul, understandably, starts digging into the murders and soon starts to wonder if a local man of the cloth named Reverend Donovan (Nick Baldasare of Beyond Dream’s Door) isn’t actually the leader of a Satanic cult that uses human sacrifices to further their somewhat poorly defined evil agenda.

    Shot on 16mm but edited on tape, and also known as Blood Church and at one point Fallen Angels, Heartland Of Darkness is a low budget movie rife with low budget movie clichés, but it’s also a lot of fun and has a lot going for it. If you enjoy things like Bad guys in sunglasses and leather jackets that look like they walked off of the set of a Sisters Of Mercy video, Linnea Quigley with big hair looking all hot, decent gore and wonky black magic rituals, odds are pretty good that you’ll find much to appreciate from the efforts of Swelstad and company.


    The movie all feels very much of its time, with loads of eighties fashion and furnishing on display. Thematically, it plays with the Satanic Panic idea that had starting gripping North America earlier in the decade causing parents to do dumb shit like prevent their kids from playing Dungeons And Dragons lest they somehow wind up giving themselves over to Lucifer himself. It’s amusing to look back on it from the modern day, though it never really truly went away, and its good fodder for a low budget horror picture.


    The acting is fairly middle of the road but Baldasare is pretty fun as the film’s heavy and Swelstad paces the movie pretty nicely, building things effectively in the first two thirds so that when things start to really go off the rails in the final act, we’re definitely invested in the movie and want to see where it’s all headed. The fact that the movie was made on a low budget might be painfully obvious at times, but this never takes away from the fact that it’s pretty creative when it comes to the kill scenes and murder set pieces and throws enough unexpected elements into its finale to entertain.

    Heartland Of Darkness – Blu-ray Review:

    Visual Vengeance brings Heartland Of Darkness to region free Blu-ray on a 50GB framed at 1.33.1 and offered up in AVC encoded 1080i high definition using a “new director-supervised SD master from original tape and film elements.” This looks about as good as it probably can, given the source material available – the film was shot on 16mm and then seemingly moved onto tape for editing. The image is fairly soft and detail can’t rise above the source material, nor should it, but things do look better than they probably would have on DVD. But with that said, it’s all very watchable. The film’s color scheme is replicated well and black levels are decent enough.

    Heartland Of Darkness gets an English language Dolby Digital 2.0 mix, with optional subtitles provided in English only. Audio quality is on par with the video quality in that it’s limited by the source materials but perfectly acceptable given the film’s low-fi roots. Most of the time the dialogue is perfectly audible and the movie’s heavy metal soundtrack sounds pretty solid.

    Extras start off with an audio commentary with director Eric Swelstad, star Nick Baldasare, cinematographer Scott Spears and composer Jay Woelfel. It’s a really interesting discussion about where the ideas for the movie came from, how it started off as Fallen Angels, what went into getting it into the finished form we see it in today, getting the cast and crew together, Quigley’s part in the movie, scoring the picture, shooting on 16mm, problems that they ran into during the making of the movie, locations and lots more. A second commentary with Tony Strauss of Weng’s Chop magazine is also included on the disc and it’s more of an analytical track, talking about what works and what doesn’t work as well as the movie plays out, offering feedback on the direction, the performances, the effects and more.

    Deeper Into the Darkness is a new thirty-nine minute featurette that digs into the behind the scenes details and making of the movie. Made up of a bunch of cast and crew interviews, it’s a really interesting piece that inevitably covers some of the same ground as the commentary track but also a fair bit of new ground. A lot of work went into finally getting this movie out there and this does a nice job of detailing that.

    Linnea Quigley Remembers is a new six minute interview with the film’s most recognizable name. She talks for a few minutes about her role and her experiences on set. Linnea Quigley also shows up in a twenty minute ‘Close Up Columbus’ TV interview, taken from a rough tape source, where she talks about her thoughts on the script and her character, some of her other roles such as Return Of The Living Dead, why likes performing in horror films and quite a bit more.

    Also of interest is the complete original Fallen Angels workprint from 1990, running thirty-seven minutes and taken from a tape source with time code. A commentary track with director Eric Swelstad is available for the workprint as well where he talks about how this version came to exist, how it made its way around the internet before this release, making this cut after production wrapped in 1989 and how he hoped to use it to get investors interested in helping to finance getting the rest of the movie made.

    The Making Of Fallen Angels is a selection of twenty-one minutes’ worth of vintage cast and crew newscast interviews that offer some insight into the making of the movie. Taken from some rough tape sources, there's some very cool behind the scenes footage in the first couple of minutes which then segues into the standard talking head interviews with Quigley, Eric “Swellstead” and Marc Edward Heuck.

    Finishing up the extras on the disc are two different trailers for Heartland Of Darkness, a Fallen Angels TV spot, a three minute look at the filming of Reverend Donovan's death scene, a slide show from Fantasm Magazine that reproduces an interview with Swelstad, a behind the scenes still gallery, a thirteen minute Blood Church original distributor promotional video and a Visual Vengeance promo trailer. Menus and chapter selection options are also provided.

    As far as the packaging goes, the disc comes bundled with a color booklet containing six pages of liner notes titled The Devil Went Down To Ohio written by Tony Strauss, a Linnea Quigley folded mini-poster, a set of ‘Stick your own’ VHS stickers and reversible cover sleeve art (featuring alternate Blood Church art on the reverse side, which is a cool touch). The first pressing of this release also comes with a limited edition Heartland Of Darkness prayer cloth and a slipcover.

    Heartland Of Darkness – The Final Word:

    Heartland Of Darkness is very much a product of its time but it’s an interesting artifact and a pretty entertaining piece of low budget schlock. Visual Vengeance continues to deliver top tier work with their insanely stacked special edition and this latest release is absolutely loaded with supplements making this quiet the package overall. Recommended for those with a taste for low budget horror and Satanic panic pictures.


    Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Heartland Of Darkness Blu-ray screen caps!

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    Ian Jane
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    Last edited by Ian Jane; 12-06-2022, 06:39 PM.
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