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Hacker's Source review of Let Us Go and Burn Her Body; Or, The Devil Done Let Out
Jun 22, 2006 12:33PM
Let Us Go and Burn Her Body or The Devil Done Let Out - DVD
Directed by Damon Blalack
Running Time: 112 minutes
Major Brand Productions
by D. S. Ullery
(c) The Hacker's Source issue 19
This is a terrific movie. I generally try not to launch into such statements at the top of a critique, but I was extremely impressed with what director Damon Blalack did with Let Us Go and Burn Her Body.
This creepy little number tells the story of Rebecca (Erika O' Bar), a parapsychologist with a failing marriage who is tracking down various local ghost stories in the Oklahoma area.
Rebecca has been having these odd dreams where she is running from evil spirits in a field during what seems to be the eighteenth century, and the combination of those dreams and the ghost stories she keeps hearing create even more tension in the aforementioned strained marriage.
Then one afternoon, Rebecca begins to see shadow people moving where there should be no one, and as the days pass she receives a visit from a dark man claiming to be the Devil himself, warning her not to keep pushing her investigations.
Needless to say, a series of events, as well as a continuation of those offbeat dreams, begins to chip away at Rebecca's resolve and soon she believes her self to be the victim of a full out paranormal vendetta.
That's about all the plot I'm going to dispense because this is the type of movie that someone has to see to feel its impact. I found the characters compelling, with O' Bar really scoring as the increasingly erratic Rebecca, and Carl Buffington radiating menace as a man who may be Satan.
Writer /director Blalack deserves kudos for knowing how to stage an effective sequence. The appearance of the Shadow Man in a bathroom had me jumping, and the clues he drops throughout the film suggest that all is not as it seems.
I was won over by this potential for translating the events in different ways. Without revealing any particulars, let's just say that the film ends with the suggestion that it could easily be a case of psychosis as much as a supernatural event. Blalack masterfully suggests this possibility the entire time, yet never bludgeons us with the notion. It's subtle.
Let Us Burn Her Body is an excellent example of how to use a plot and a clever narrative to make the most of an Indie budget. Fans of the genre should definitely keep their eye on Damon Blalack.
Directed by Damon Blalack
Running Time: 112 minutes
Major Brand Productions
by D. S. Ullery
(c) The Hacker's Source issue 19
This is a terrific movie. I generally try not to launch into such statements at the top of a critique, but I was extremely impressed with what director Damon Blalack did with Let Us Go and Burn Her Body.
This creepy little number tells the story of Rebecca (Erika O' Bar), a parapsychologist with a failing marriage who is tracking down various local ghost stories in the Oklahoma area.
Rebecca has been having these odd dreams where she is running from evil spirits in a field during what seems to be the eighteenth century, and the combination of those dreams and the ghost stories she keeps hearing create even more tension in the aforementioned strained marriage.
Then one afternoon, Rebecca begins to see shadow people moving where there should be no one, and as the days pass she receives a visit from a dark man claiming to be the Devil himself, warning her not to keep pushing her investigations.
Needless to say, a series of events, as well as a continuation of those offbeat dreams, begins to chip away at Rebecca's resolve and soon she believes her self to be the victim of a full out paranormal vendetta.
That's about all the plot I'm going to dispense because this is the type of movie that someone has to see to feel its impact. I found the characters compelling, with O' Bar really scoring as the increasingly erratic Rebecca, and Carl Buffington radiating menace as a man who may be Satan.
Writer /director Blalack deserves kudos for knowing how to stage an effective sequence. The appearance of the Shadow Man in a bathroom had me jumping, and the clues he drops throughout the film suggest that all is not as it seems.
I was won over by this potential for translating the events in different ways. Without revealing any particulars, let's just say that the film ends with the suggestion that it could easily be a case of psychosis as much as a supernatural event. Blalack masterfully suggests this possibility the entire time, yet never bludgeons us with the notion. It's subtle.
Let Us Burn Her Body is an excellent example of how to use a plot and a clever narrative to make the most of an Indie budget. Fans of the genre should definitely keep their eye on Damon Blalack.
Tulsa World's review of Let Us Go and Burn Her Body; Or, The Devil Done Let Out
Jun 22, 2006 12:30PM
Shot from the hip
Tulsa World (OK)
April 16, 2005
Author: JOHN WOOLEY World Scene Writer
Estimated printed pages: 3
Oklahoma filmmakers to be showcased at Bare Bones Film Festival
The do-it-yourself -- or DIY ethos -- a generation ago embraced by street-level punk-rock bands, has moved into video, as filmmakers with little more than a camera and a couple of actors create their own kinds of personalized art.
Few, however, have embraced DIY as wholeheartedly as Oklahoma's Damon Blalack, whose feature-length movie "Let Us Go and Burn Her Body; Or, the Devil Done Let Out," debuts at 1 p.m. Saturday at Muskogee's Roxy Theater, as part of the Bare Bones Film Festival.
In addition to writing, producing and directing the picture, Blalack also cast it, decorated the sets, ran lighting and sound, did all the grip work, shot it and edited it.
"There were days I had a boom pole in one hand, a camera in the other, and a DAT audio recorder strapped to my waist," he recalled with a chuckle in a recent telephone interview. "I started doing it myself out of necessity. I was having trouble finding people to help. Then, as I got into it, I actually had opportunities to get people for a day or two, but I decided to just go ahead and finish it myself and have that experience."
Blalack made the picture as his thesis project for a master's degree in the University of Oklahoma's media arts graduate program.
"After they saw the rough cut, my (thesis) committee said, 'You must've gotten a lot of help on this,' " he recalled. "I said, 'No, I did it all myself.' They were impressed."
The movie blends documentary footage -- including interviews with ghost hunter Justin Faulk -- with the fictional story of a paranormal investigator (well played by Erika O'Bar) who starts believing that she's being shadowed by the devil himself.
There's a strong element of repression in the story, which is told from the investigator's point of view. The repression and the female POV, along with other elements in the picture, hearken back to Gothic fiction, which had its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
"That's what I'm drawn to," he said. "I wanted to take the roots of that tradition, that type of story, and put it in a modern setting."
He was encouraged, however, by his instructors at OU to create a work that was more than a straight narrative feature.
"They wanted me to do something experimental, or a documentary," he remembered. "I've always had a strong love of narrative, so I was kind of fighting against that all the time I was in the department.
"Then, my mentor professor, Heidi Mau, introduced me to hybrid documentaries. I saw that doing a hybrid documentary would allow me to explore narrative and, at the same time, to work on the documentary that they were responsive to.
"Initially, I wanted it to be more of a documentary," he added. "I wanted it to be about 60 percent documentary and 40 percent narrative, but eventually the narrative part won out."
"Let Us Go and Burn Her Body" boasts several scary moments and a sustained sense of weirdness that intensifies as the title character slips inexorably into a state that may or may not be madness.
Blalack, however, shies away from calling it a horror film.
"I tend not to label it horror, because when people hear that, they expect a lot of blood and gore," he explained. "Horror is my favorite genre, but I'm calling this a psychological thriller -- a gothic."
No such distinctions apply to "Stiffs by Sid," a 12-minute faux documentary by former Tulsan Rick Lavon. It's scheduled to be shown at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Roxy.
"It's a sort of mockmentary in the style of 'A Mighty Wind' and 'This Is Spinal Tap,' " wrote Lavon in an email. "It involves a company that provides actual zombies to Hollywood productions."
Those who enjoyed the "splatstick" of "Return of the Living Dead" and the "Evil Dead" features are the target audience for "Stiffs by Sid," whose often realistic zombie scenes may shock those who haven't been exposed to a lot of contemporary horror pictures.
Both funny and gross, it would probably be rated R for its gore content.
Lavon, a 1977 graduate of the University of Tulsa, is currently working in television in New York and has worked on several feature films. "Stiffs by Sid" is the first movie he's written and directed.
John Wooley 581-8477
john.wooley@tulsaworld.com
Edition: Final Home
Section: Movie Reviews
Page: D3
Copyright 2005 Tulsa World. World Publishing Co.
Record Number: 050416_Mo_D3_Shotf75625
Tulsa World (OK)
April 16, 2005
Author: JOHN WOOLEY World Scene Writer
Estimated printed pages: 3
Oklahoma filmmakers to be showcased at Bare Bones Film Festival
The do-it-yourself -- or DIY ethos -- a generation ago embraced by street-level punk-rock bands, has moved into video, as filmmakers with little more than a camera and a couple of actors create their own kinds of personalized art.
Few, however, have embraced DIY as wholeheartedly as Oklahoma's Damon Blalack, whose feature-length movie "Let Us Go and Burn Her Body; Or, the Devil Done Let Out," debuts at 1 p.m. Saturday at Muskogee's Roxy Theater, as part of the Bare Bones Film Festival.
In addition to writing, producing and directing the picture, Blalack also cast it, decorated the sets, ran lighting and sound, did all the grip work, shot it and edited it.
"There were days I had a boom pole in one hand, a camera in the other, and a DAT audio recorder strapped to my waist," he recalled with a chuckle in a recent telephone interview. "I started doing it myself out of necessity. I was having trouble finding people to help. Then, as I got into it, I actually had opportunities to get people for a day or two, but I decided to just go ahead and finish it myself and have that experience."
Blalack made the picture as his thesis project for a master's degree in the University of Oklahoma's media arts graduate program.
"After they saw the rough cut, my (thesis) committee said, 'You must've gotten a lot of help on this,' " he recalled. "I said, 'No, I did it all myself.' They were impressed."
The movie blends documentary footage -- including interviews with ghost hunter Justin Faulk -- with the fictional story of a paranormal investigator (well played by Erika O'Bar) who starts believing that she's being shadowed by the devil himself.
There's a strong element of repression in the story, which is told from the investigator's point of view. The repression and the female POV, along with other elements in the picture, hearken back to Gothic fiction, which had its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
"That's what I'm drawn to," he said. "I wanted to take the roots of that tradition, that type of story, and put it in a modern setting."
He was encouraged, however, by his instructors at OU to create a work that was more than a straight narrative feature.
"They wanted me to do something experimental, or a documentary," he remembered. "I've always had a strong love of narrative, so I was kind of fighting against that all the time I was in the department.
"Then, my mentor professor, Heidi Mau, introduced me to hybrid documentaries. I saw that doing a hybrid documentary would allow me to explore narrative and, at the same time, to work on the documentary that they were responsive to.
"Initially, I wanted it to be more of a documentary," he added. "I wanted it to be about 60 percent documentary and 40 percent narrative, but eventually the narrative part won out."
"Let Us Go and Burn Her Body" boasts several scary moments and a sustained sense of weirdness that intensifies as the title character slips inexorably into a state that may or may not be madness.
Blalack, however, shies away from calling it a horror film.
"I tend not to label it horror, because when people hear that, they expect a lot of blood and gore," he explained. "Horror is my favorite genre, but I'm calling this a psychological thriller -- a gothic."
No such distinctions apply to "Stiffs by Sid," a 12-minute faux documentary by former Tulsan Rick Lavon. It's scheduled to be shown at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Roxy.
"It's a sort of mockmentary in the style of 'A Mighty Wind' and 'This Is Spinal Tap,' " wrote Lavon in an email. "It involves a company that provides actual zombies to Hollywood productions."
Those who enjoyed the "splatstick" of "Return of the Living Dead" and the "Evil Dead" features are the target audience for "Stiffs by Sid," whose often realistic zombie scenes may shock those who haven't been exposed to a lot of contemporary horror pictures.
Both funny and gross, it would probably be rated R for its gore content.
Lavon, a 1977 graduate of the University of Tulsa, is currently working in television in New York and has worked on several feature films. "Stiffs by Sid" is the first movie he's written and directed.
John Wooley 581-8477
john.wooley@tulsaworld.com
Edition: Final Home
Section: Movie Reviews
Page: D3
Copyright 2005 Tulsa World. World Publishing Co.
Record Number: 050416_Mo_D3_Shotf75625
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Let Us Go and Burn Her Body; Or, the Devil Done Let Out | posted 2006-07-06 11:46 |
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