A Mock VHS Retro on a Mock VHS Retro DVD!  “Night of the Zodiac” from SRS Cinema!

A bizarre and grotesque dream about the once notorious Zodiac killer inspires Richard Gantz to create a movie worthy of his idol’s praise.  With little income and having just lost his girlfriend and his job, Gantz is on the brink of being homeless and unable to materialize his dream into reality until he receives a mysterious, unexpected phone call.  The Zodiac killer got wind of his project and is offering support to finance and bestow guidance to Gantz’s film as long as the struggling, yet eager, filmmaker can crack Zodiac’s cipher and stomach the enigmatic task before him.  Gifted the Zodiac’s iconic mask and murder knife, Gantz sets out to record his first kills that pays homage to his aging idol but his mentor wants him to be creative with the new chapter worthy of the Zodiac name and gathering a whole new set of slaves for his paradisal afterlife.  When Gantz hits a barrier of inspiration, he solely becomes reliant on the Zodiac’s encouragement that has become few and a far in between. 

Susana Kapostasy is who I like to label a mad genius.  Many filmmakers have attempted to create antiquated formats of yore with watered down imitations, but for the Michigan-born videographer and editor-by-trade Kapostasy, what has been a challenge to most to faithfully recreate has simply become second nature for the video production enthusiast.  Scraping up any and all elderly video camcorders she could find, the “Metal Maniac” director wrote-and-directed her sophomore feature film “Night of the Zodiac,” pulling inspiration from one of the most notorious unsolved murder cases in America by the Zodiac Killer in San Francisco.  From the West Coast to the Midwest, “Night of the Zodiac” is filmed in and around the backdropped Detroit area for the Zodiac’s next round of sliced-up slaves – only in the creative, moviemaking sense, of course.  The 2022 film has the spitting image of a 1980s/1990s SOV with ghastly, gory effects, a killer hair metal soundtrack, and video characteristics that’ll have you trying to adjust the tracking setting on your DVD/Blu-ray player.  The Johnny Braineater Production is produced by star Philip Digby with Kapostasy serving as executive producer alongside co-cinematographer Apollo David Zimmerman.

Stepping into the shoes of the infamous serial killer to embark on a theoretical continuance of the real life mass murdering character is Philip Digby.  Channeling his best Jeffrey Dahmer vibe in looks alone with a crazed and obsessive personality suited for Charles Manson, Digby plays a hodgepodge of America’s most notorious killers, adding his own flare for film into the fold to make him a full-fledged psychopath, as he internally celebrates the moniker after his disparaging roommate/Landlord (Victor-Manuel Ruiz) labels him with an ear-to-ear grin and a nearly whoopie jump for joy.  Digby’s eccentric mania thrusts us beyond a threshold we didn’t even realized we had crossed from the very first opening dream sequences of a rotting, coffin-thronged corpse oozing maggots and putrid viscera and, believe it not, my opinion is this thrust doesn’t do justice to Gantz’s character because of the lack of foundation of setting up viewers with an inbred psychosis that puts into question, how did he survive this long without killing someone before?  Dreams are power but are they powerful enough to twist a seeming normal film lover into a frantic frenzy of vile fates and videotapes?  I think only Freddy Krueger can answer that.  Gantz goes around town slaughtering people in parks, in their driveways, and even makes one very bad magician (Derek Dibella) wish he requested to hire Gantz as a videographer for a promotional video disappear as Gantz strangles him to death.  “Night of the Zodiac” completes the cast with Logan O’Donnell, Mark Polonia (director of “Splatter Farm”), Tim Ritter (director of “Truth or Dare?”), and Benjamin Linn as the voice of the Zodiac.

From the video production veneer to the set decorations and locations to the characters themselves, “Night of the Zodiac” perfectly captures SOV horror in this modern day time capsule.  Not until the credits, when I see master craftsman of SOV horror filmming, Tim Ritter and Mark Polonia, appear in the cast credits did it dawn on me that what Susana Kapostasy had accomplished was a labor of love for the niche market, resurrected four decades later and revered by horror fans who were likely still in diapers or weren’t even born yet – maybe to go as far as not even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes.  Yet, there were clues to “Night of the Zodiac’s” contemporary construction, such as the opening title which had a clean, well-polished illustration and Kapostasy’s film is very self-aware by slathering horror in every recessed corner with mountainous stacks of VHS tapes, posters, and  and often, perhaps every other scene, displayed tribute to filmmakers, like Ritter and Polonia, who were still counterparts and establishing themselves as independent videotape artists during the 80s-90s.  This self-awareness harnesses more comedic relief than horror, accentuated by Gantz’s matter-of-fact imbalance, and the humor loosens the reins on “Night of the Zodiac’s” cold cruelty a tad but what the gore spools back in audiences by spilling lots of blood. 

SRS Cinema releases “Night of the Zodiac” onto DVD with a single layer encoding and presented in a throwback letterbox 1:33:1 aspect ratio.  Kapostasy uses a slew of equipment – Cannon XL2, Sony Video 8 AF, Panasonic AG 450, JVC GY X2BU, JVC GY X3, Panasonic AG 456, Panasonic AG 196, Sony CCD FX 330, and a Sony VO 4800 U-Matic S VTR – with some be more present-time cams run through U-matic VHS playback to degrade for SOV quality.  The intentional SOV has a variety of distinct looks with distinct quirks that flexes higher magenta levels in earlier scenes as well as tracking lines and aliasing artefacts.  Detail levels also vary but the overall VHS brands generally remain the same with soft, indistinguishable contours with also a surprising amount of depth and hue range.  The English Dolby Digital 2-channel (2.0) mix can sound boxy at times and come accompanied with a piercing, underlining interference.   Telephone conversations have no distortion depth so the other person on other line sounds present in the room.   The soundtrack from Anguish, Locust Point, and the brunt of it provided by Stoker is metal madness but does overshadow the dialogue when shredding through the scenes.  Dialogue is often clear, but again, no depth and echoey.  There are no subtitles available for this release.  Bonus Features include an audio commentary by director Susana Kapostasy, star Philip Digby, and costar Victor-Manuel Ruiz that goes over a lot of technical aspects of “Night of the Zodiac’s” look and how they obtained the gore and blood for the film, a Tim Ritter conversation about how he became involved with Kapostasy’s video enthusiasm and provided analog input, a blood cannon showcase that’s instructionally descriptive as well as you’ll see Kapostasy’s foot accidently go into the 5 gallon Homer bucket, a gore score Ouija board gag, recreating the Zodiac cipher, and the trailer.  SRS Cinema’s release dons a retro VHS design front cover with an exact and beautiful illustration of Gantz’s copycat Zodiac attire with a cropped version of the front cover on the disc art inside the traditional black snapper case.  “Night of the Zodiac” has a runtime of 86 minutes, is not rated, and has an all-region NTSC playback. Difficult to immerse oneself into a half-a-century old unsolved murder while sticking to glorifying merely the guts and gore, “Night of the Zodiac” stuns more qualitatively with video techniques thought archaic and obsolete but Susana Kapostasy steadfast proves otherwise in her undying love for the flawed, yet nostalgic format.

A Mock VHS Retro on a Mock VHS Retro DVD!  “Night of the Zodiac” from SRS Cinema!