Yes, I have returned at long last! Did y’all miss me? Of course you did. Again, sorry I was away for so long; it’s just that I was up to my ass-crack in design work, trying to finish up the Vegan Black Metal Chef’s rad cookbook (which made $70,000 on Kickstarter, because the internet is an awesome place sometimes). But now that’s mostly been squared away (and of course I will post the link when the book is available on Amazon), so I am returning to my patented horror ramblings (and the crowd goes wild. Yay).

I was planning to do something with my Scary Silents series, but I also wanted to write something I could cross-post in some of the other categories, just so I could feel like I was killing a couple hobos with one brick, as it were. So what I decided to do was browse YouTube for some modern, black and white, silent short films (as I did for my previous post on 1991’s Begotten) and give some of those a gander to see what people of the 21st century were doing with the silent film aesthetic. There are a few good ones floating around out there, and these were the best ones I came across, so let’s get right to it, shall we?

Fetal
Directed, photographed, and edited by Tony Falcon

This one didn’t have an actual title on the video itself, but the film title came up at the end. Maybe they didn’t want to spoil what the movie was about before you watched it? If that was the case, I guess I just spoiled it, so sorry about that. But even if you know the title, this is still really nicely done, beautifully filmed, with some pretty shocking, gross imagery. It’s only a little over four minutes long, but still makes quite an impact. Disturbing in the best way.

The House In Spain
Directed by Chris Hyde

I liked this one a great deal, because it had a lot of that “horror out of the corner of your eye” thing that I dig so much. Main character Jay has flown to his father’s house in Spain after his father ostensibly committed suicide, but it turns out that the death wasn’t quite as self-inflicted as it appeared. Eerie, subtle, and effective; give it a watch if you’re into the Paranormal Activity type vibe.

Witcher
Written and directed by Neil Westwood

This one was pretty straightforward and more atmosphere than plot, but still looked great; the imagery actually reminded me of the aforementioned Begotten a bit, as well as the infamous Häxan. A photographer out in the woods stumbles across a gift box with a note reading, “Do Not Open,” which of course he disregards, much to his eternal chagrin. I think. Props for nice use of a plague doctor getup.

The Unfortunate
Written and directed by Travis Dahlhauser

A decent quasi-homage to Psycho, about a burglar who REALLY breaks into the wrong house. The first half is a nice slow burn, though I thought the use of Bernard Herrmann’s famous “slashing violins” score was a tad over the top. Great little short, though, and pretty impressive that it was made entirely by one guy, and that every scene was done in one take.

Hopefully I will be back to posting on this blog as regularly as I did before, so stay tuned, and until next time, Goddess out.