“Where the Dead Go To Die” Now Lives on Blu-ray!
The first story in a disturbing 3-part omnibus tale concerns a little boy named Tommy. Constantly at each other’s throats, Tommy’s troubled parents don’t burden him down in their mini bickering wars and abusive verbal tirades where he becomes the passive aggressive fodder for each of them to shell the other with, but when Labby, a talking, red-eye dog proclaiming to be a messenger of God’s word, tells Tommy to kill unborn brother because he’s the antichrist, Tommy’s world is turned upside down when Labby murders both parents and the unborn child in the name of God. In another story, a man steals liquid memories by killing people and extracting an intoxicating substance from their memory glands to inject them into his own body. One particular liquid memory of a dying prostitute sends him through a warped nightmare of the underworld, one where he may never return to normal. The last story focuses on a mask-wearing deformed boy named Ralphie, whose Siamese twin brother’s face protrudes out of the side of his face, and his infatuation with schoolmate and neighbor Sophia. When trying to impress Sophia by relating to her father, Ralphie learns the father records VHS tapes of Sophia being molested by older men and is coerced to partake in an act Sophia is an unwilling participant. At the behest of Labby, what Ralphie does next will put a fatal stop to the madness that surrounds him and his soulmate crush.
In the same clunky spirit of crude early 1990’s computer generated imagery or in the early days of the original Playstation graphics, Jimmy ScreamerClauz’s “Where the Dead Go to Die” fully embraces the ungainly graphics in a 3D world of unimaginable horror where kids and demons intersect with wretched results. The 2012 omnibus reflects three short narratives from ScreamerClauz and combined into one seriously screwed up tale, orchestrated by deal brokered wit Unearthed Films’s Stephen Biro who was sent two of ScreamerClauz’s short films – “Tainted Milk” and “Liquid Memories” – and challenged, or maybe even championed, ScreamerClauz for a third to build toward, and the eventual release of, a feature length product. With the challenge accepted, the full-time musician and 3D animation artist succeeded with an unforgettable story that’s pure evil at heart and a surreal kaleidoscope of ghastly phantasmagoria. ScreamerClauz not only writes, directs, and composes the film he also produces under the Draconian Films and Chainsaw Kiss production companies.
As it has been already established Jimmy ScreamerClauz wears many hats in his production, we can add another with his voice acting of the demonic, fireball-eyed dog, Labby and along with the director’s voiceover participation, other genre actors and filmmakers are casted to voice one, or possibly more than one, of the crudely animated, disturbingly souled characters. “Subject 87” director, “Reality Bleed-Through” actor Brandon Slagle tackles a double voiceover with the memory addicted man as well as Sophia’s sleazy abusive father. As Sophia, the once upon a time softcore horror actress Ruby Larocca (“Witchbabe: The Erotic Witch Project 3,” “Dr. Jekyll & Mistress Hyde”) has real innocent palpability up against Slagle’s aggressively toned, VHS-recording, and peeping perve that is her in character daddy. Larocca also voices the mysterious advice-giver with the Lady in the Well and as the dying Hooker in the arms of the serial killer-for-liquid memories Man. Another multi-voice player in the film and who also had a stint in the sex and violence category is Joey Smack with a string of strangler themed films (“Vampire Strangler,” “The Masked Strangler,” “The Bizarre Case of the Electric Cord Strangler, etc.,”). Smack extends himself into a child and parent performance as the deformed Ralphie in “The Masks That the Monsters Wears” and Tommy’s dad in “Tainted Milk” that gives provides range albeit the quintessential grown man mimicking a child’s voice unmistakableness in the cracking high voice. Much like Larocca, there’s something pleasant in seeing names like Linnea Quigley (“Return of the Living Dead,” “Night of the Demons”) and Devanny Pinn (“Nude Nuns with Big Guns,” “Bloodstruck”) be credited to voice because that takes the focus on their physical appearances and gives them a chance to actually be seen, or rather heard, with their dialogue performance. In this instance, Quigley and Pinn embody the rancid maternity of Sophia and Ralphies’ mothers respectively. “Where the Dead Go to Die” rounds out the cast with more B-movie actors in Trent Haaga (“Terror Firmer,” “Killjoy 2: Deliverance from Evil”) as Ralph’s ashamed dad as well as Carlos Bonilla, Victor Bonacore, and Joshua Michael Greene.
How a filmmaker chooses and utilizes his brand of CGI landscape is how that filmmaker’s film should be judged in the gelling of those areas, in my opinion. “Where the Dead Go to Die’s” crude 3D animation is the intended result from Jimmy ScreamerClauz’s choice in conveying his short story narrative, but that intention won’t stop audiences and critics from browbeating and disparaging the film. Yet, if accepting the former viewpoint and watch with understanding eyes through that recognition lens, “Where the Dead Go to Die” is one messed up and horrifying dystopia accentuated by the animation that gives each chapter more weight toward wretchedness and wrongdoing, gelling with tremendous intent to scramble the proverbial innocence with demonic forces and human perversions. Some of the ideas and concepts swirling around ScreamerClauz’s head and make it into the three tales were just images he thought were visually neat but that speaks loudly on the dark mindset of creativity and many of those images are now temporally seared, scarred permanently into our long-term memory lobes. Granted, tale transitions and recycling back to their sole connection with each other route into choppy territory at best, creating a windy, bumpy road in braiding the three chapters together under a single umbrella of animation style and storytelling, but “Where the Dead Go to Die” is a poignant and throbbing like touching a raw, exposed nerve through gouged muscle and tissue. Every inch of surreal, sawtooth imagery is like a knife twisted into our virtuous side because upon closer look at Jimmy ScreamerClauz’s story containing children being hurt is only separated by the mere stylistic choice of cinematography.
Out from the distribution shadows of Unearthed Films and in the hands of adult animation distributor Mountain Oddities Home Video, also in partnership with MVDVisual, for a new Blu-ray release, one we haven’t seen since Unearthed Films released the DVD and Blu-ray in 2012. The first of two initial releases from Mountain Oddities Home Video, the Blu-ray comes AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition release, on a BD50 packed with extras. Being mostly rudimentary 3D animation installed into a complexity of kaleidoscopic imagery, critiquing the quality is beyond our control but the compression is amply successful with no artefacts to note and the colorful saturation and grading levels provide an enriched, amalgamated dough of diabolic devil-bread, presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio that’s more compromised to its now out of print Unearthed Films counterpart from more than decade earlier. Two English audio options are available: a DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound and a DTS-HD 2.0. At home audio recordings outside the sound barrier studio boxes are not as refined, capturing mic interference and hissing as well as the differences in varying audio volumes that don’t match between interacting characters in the same scene, creating that unshared space and gap. Dialogue is unimpeded and clear and ScreamerClauz’s original gloomy-looming score fuels the deep morosity and malevolent themes. English subtitles are option available. Extras include a director’s commentary track with Jimmy ScreamerClauz, deleted scenes, an online video-conference interview with ScreamerClauz hosted by Quality Violent Cinema, behind-the-scenes featurettes of snipped dialogue recordings and interviews, including Linnea Quigley, Youtuber Diamanda Hagan’s video review of ScreamerClauz’s animated shorts “The Scuzzies,” and the director’s short film catalogue with “The Scuzzies” (that includes commentary), “Labby vs Mr. Pickles Rap Battle,” “Clinical Sodomy,” “Affection,” “Mutwa,” “Reality Bleed-Through Remix.” Mountain Oddities Home Video’s Not Rated release is listed as the uncut version with a 95-minute runtime available with region free playback.
Last Rites: An adult animation pushing the envelope with taboo themes involving kids and when you mess with kids, the public taste goes sour, but “Where the Dead Go to Die” swirls surrealism with poignant acting and strange fever dreaming amongst the basic, albeit creepy, animation.
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