HOME GROWN HORRORS – VOLUME ONE: BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR (1989)/WINTERBEAST (1992)/FATAL EXAM (1990) Blu-ray
Director(s): Jay Woelfel/Christopher Thies/Jack Snyder
Vinegar Syndrome

Vinegar Syndrome goes regional with their Blu-ray box set HOME GROWN HORRORS (volume one, no less).

BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR: Ever since he started psychology classes and volunteering as a subject in the sleep lab, mathematics student Ben Dobbs (Nick Baldasare, THEY BITE) has been having increasingly violent dreams involving the murders of his long-dead parents and a scary game of hide 'n seek with a kid brother Ricky (Lucas Simpson) who never existed. Ben gives his psychology professor Noxx (Norm Singer) a transcript of his nightmare that the older man recognizes in the details of a decades old case study of D.F. White who believed his dreams conjured a demonic force that killed everyone who tried to help him. When Noxx himself experiences some of Ben's dream apparitions in waking life, he comes to believe White's story and tries to help Ben. When Noxx is brutally murdered in front of him by a monster, Ben is unsure where his dreams begin or end while teachers aides Julie (Susan Pinsky) and Eric (Rick Kesler, SLAMMER GIRLS) become suspicious when it seems as if Noxx's entire existence has been erased by something that must kill to close the chain of knowledge about what it is and how to destroy it.

The best film in the set, the Columbus, Ohio-lensed "nightmare logic" horror film BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR – bearing less of a resemblance to A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET than its late eighties contemporaries AFTER MIDNIGHT and NIGHTWISH – is expectedly rough around the edges but feature film debuting director Jay Woelfel (GHOST LAKE) already demonstrates an assured visual style and diverting storytelling style – due in part to having already directed a shot-on-video short film version of the story – in which the sometimes head-scratching cutaways one sees in other regional flicks used for the sake of coverage here have ambiguous but deliberate meaning. Baldasare and Kesler (reversing the roles they played in the short version) are engaging even if the film's themes and character shadings feel underdeveloped in spite of having more running time to explore them, padding out the running time by incorporating elements of Woelfel's earlier short AT THE DOOR OF DARKNESS – based on a dream of and featuring the aforementioned Daniel White – and more literally in the home video cut of the film which tacked on his short film COME TO ME SOFTLY – featuring Kesler – to beef up the running time. The amorphous waking/dreaming structure does not entirely make up for the crudeness of the make-up effects, and the silliness of the creature designs feel more Troma fodder than surreal; however, the final result did achieve the distinction of being the first homegrown Ohio feature to achieve wide distribution, with Woelfel being the one director in this set who continued with his craft – including a move to Los Angeles that resulted in a couple Charles Band efforts like TRANCERS 6 and DEMONICUS as director and more as a composer before returning to the Ohio area with fare like CLOSED FOR THE SEASON (shot around the Chippewa Lake Park also used in the Eric Stanze effort DEADWOOD PARK) and ASYLUM OF DARKNESS (also starring Baldasare).

WINTERBEAST: People have been vanishing for years on snowy Lone Peak, their mutilated remains attributed to bear attacks or wolf scavenging. When one of his rangers disappears, however, new ranger Sergeant Bill Whitman (Tim R. Morgan) gets extreme pushback from Wild Goose Lodge owner David Sheldon (Bill Harlow) when he wants to warn tourists off the trails. Locals, among them fellow ranger Sally Bradford (Lisa Breer) and souvenir shop owner Charlie Perkins (Charles Majka), believe that the Indian demon god Chocura is responsible, but he turns out to be one of many dangers (human or otherwise) in the snow as additional sacrifices pave the way towards opening the gateway between the world of the living and the demons.

In spite of its title WINTERBEAST is not a bigfoot or yeti film, nor is its Native American demon god a variation on the Wendigo – from such snowbound regional flicks as the Canadian GHOSTKEEPER or Michigan-lensed FROSTBITER – the film having more in common with the likes of EQUINOX with its stop-motion clay monsters. Shot over roughly five years, the film's structure shows it with a mix of Super 8 sound and 16mm photography, differing lighting styles, Morgan's moustache real in some shots and glued on in others, characters who seem to have more importance early on but who barely figure into the climax, and a mismatch of tone between the early build-up of legends and superstitions with later monster kill cutaways that are as comical because of the crude effects as their staging and direction. The film becomes momentarily creepy and disturbing with the revelation of one human character's madness as he puts on a dance show for his mummified clientele, but the end result is something that could only have developed a following towards the end of the home video horror boom.

Last and very least is FATAL EXAM in which college student Nick (Mike Coleman) is taking a parapsychology course as an elective in which his professor Hughes (Gilio Gherardini) proposes in lieu of a final exam that some of the class volunteer to do a paranormal investigation of a remote mansion in which Malcolm Nostrand (Mike Suzor) butchered his family three years before and subsequent interested buyers in the property have been chased off by strange phenomena. Joining Nick for the weekend is his sister Dana (Carol Fitzgerald Carlberg), her boyfriend Roger (Terry Comer), tech wiz Dave (Paul Steger), stoner Jim (Greg Rhodes) and Sharon (Maureen Lampert), couple Kurt (Dave Mayer) and Stacy (Teresa Nienhaus), and shifty Syd (Joe Midyett) and Jill (Karen Greer). No one panics a whole lot when Jim sees a severed head in a coffee table cabinet, nor when one of the couples vanishes overnight. When Nick discovers a painting depicting the need for four sacrifices to appease a demon whose apparition Dave captures on camera, the survivor suspect that among their number are more potential victims as well as possibly their killers.

Although the story seems overfamiliar and ideal for a cheap and gory horror quickie, FATAL EXAM is "fatally" overlong and flat-out boring at 114 minutes. Every plot point is painfully relayed in both dialogue like a radio play while first time director Jack Snyder also feels the need to show reaction shots of everyone in the scene with each revelation while also not knowing how to elide the unnecessary bits in between plot points (when Dave decides to check each track of his four-track recorder to isolate a sound, we're going to have to listen to each track). The gore is handmade and the plot twists are not particularly surprising, but the primitive effects opticals are nice for a point between film and video when the genre was getting lazy even at the lower budget end. The acting is rather flat but hard to gauge since all of the sound is post-synched by nonprofessionals who might have sounded better in-the-moment, and the synth score that might have worked on a film with punchier editing just seems to drone. If Vinegar Syndrome's THE HOUSE ON TOMBSTONE HILL was as close as a Troma pickup got to a Filmirage production, FATAL EXAM is a Filmirage production if someone decided everything needed to be shown and explained.

BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR was picked up for video distribution by VidAmerica in an eighty-six minute version with the aforementioned padding of Woelfel's short film. When Cinema Epoch put the film out on DVD, Woelfel was able to reconstruct something akin to his director's cut – removing the footage from the short and adding a scene from workprint – along with a new 5.1 surround soundtrack and a host of extras including two commentary tracks. Since the 16mm film was only ever finished on video, Vinegar Syndrome had to reconform the 16mm negative reels to Woelfel's director's cut for their 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray, resorting to the tape master for roughly five minutes of shots spread throughout the film when the film for that material could not be found. The 2K restoration scrapes away the video haze, revealing more considered gel lighting where there was once noise, helping (and hindering) the effects to the best of their ability, and giving the film more of a sense of production value to the location work. The 5.1 remix is not present in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 – one gets a sense from the extras that Woelfel was dissatisfied with the original mix more so than neither he nor Vinegar Syndrome wanting to take the time to reconform that mix to the director's cut – with clear dialogue and scoring, with the sparseness of the sound mix at times seeming more suggestive of the increasingly depopulated world of the waking dreamers than limitations of the mix. Optional English SDH subtitles are included.

The disc is the most stacked of the set in terms of extras, porting over the two DVD commentaries and including two brand new ones. In the 2006 commentary by Woelfel, cinematographer Scott Spears, and actors Baldasare and Kesler, in which Woelfel notes the recurring theme of miscommunication (via the telephone imagery) and how some of that was scuttled by the distributor wanting some of the phone conversation scenes removed, the replacement of monster footage with the "dream seductress" (and the difficulty of finding a nude model in Ohio), the reversing of roles between the short and feature version, and Woelfel even namechecking Pete Walker for one particularly bit of imagery. On the solo track from the DVD by Woelfel, he reveals that the credits were animated on film because he did not like the look of video credits, how he was instructed to state that the film was made for "under a million" when courting distributors, making the film with Ohio State students as part of a production class for credit while also being wary of letting the college think they had any ownership in the film, the influence of poetry videos on some of the film's imagery (knowing that he was partially making the film for film teachers who expecting something arty), and some details about trying to reconstruct the director's cut for the DVD and doing a 5.1 mix.

The first new track reunites Woelfel, Spears, Baldasare, and Kesler includes some recovered notes from Woelfel from the time of shooting, anecdotes about casting and "clothing" a naked actress, the film's color scheme (from the gels and the red balloon to the blue in the wardrobes of Baldasare and Kesler), and Woelfel discouraging Freudian interpretations of admittedly Freudian imagery that lacks the sort of deep meaning they might suggest. The solo audio commentary by actor Nick Baldasare moderated by filmmaker Dave Parker might seem like overkill but he reveals himself to be an avowed film fan – and collector of Vinegar Syndrome horror titles – covering some of the same ground but also providing some more background on his friendships with Kesler and Woelfel, as well as reflecting on the character implications of having him screaming in reaction to what he was told was a monster in the reverse angle but would be replaced with a beautiful naked woman when Woelfel was required to add some nudity for the distributor.

In the new documentary "Where Horror Lies: The Making of BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR" (41:04), Woelfel reveals that he first sought to option a Ray Bradbury story when he and producer Dyrk Ashton started toying with the idea of a feature, but Bradbury informed them that his stories were unavailable because of the then-new RAY BRADBURY THEATER television series, and that Woelfel was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft but avoided any specific stories due to copyright concerns. He reveals that he was picked among some students to travel to Cannes where he garnered interest from both Troma and Ed Wood associate Stephen C. Apostolof, but returned to Ohio to discover that the investor who had $30,000 available was a scammer who is apparently still actively pursuing business ventures, and it would be another three years before the film got off the ground. Ashton, Spears, Baldasare, and Kesler are on hand to provide more production information, but the story is mainly Woelfel's, including attempts to shop the film with distributors on the tail end of the video boom, the VidAmerica deal, and his move to Los Angeles where colleagues lamented that he might have been signed to a three picture deal had BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR come about just a few years earlier.

Ported over from the DVD is "The Making of BEHIND DREAM'S DOOR" (34:21) that includes a visit to the Ohio State campus and its now defunct cinema department, discussion of the participants' formative experiences with the horror genre, comparisons between the short and feature versions of the film and how the rapport between the two lead actors meant that they could switch roles (with Kesler being attracted to the secondary role in the feature because of the logic of the character's survival instinct while Baldasare notes in the short that the Baxter character gets what he deserves). "Getting Monstered" (6:23) is a short piece focusing on Kesler's prosthetic encounter with the final monster. There is also a trio of outtakes assemblages including unused and alternate takes (10:57), alternate effects footage (5:24) – including the several takes of Dobbs' hand being impaled by a wooden stake – and a combination of bloopers and behind the scenes footage (5:54) in which the actors tend to break character and fall into giggles as soon as cut is called. We also get a pair of Columbus- area 5:30 Live (4:07) news stories on the film which label the film as a slasher in spite of Woelfel's dislike of the genre and hype up the distributor interest in the local production. A pair of deleted scenes includes the "Sewer Escape Scene" (1:05) concluding Dobbs' encounter with an older version of himself that was unusable due to a light leak in the camera, and what is presumably "The Phone Booth" (1:08) sequence mentioned in one of the commentary tracks.

Closing out the disc are three of Woelfel's shorts, all of which figure into the feature. First up is the 1983 BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR short film (20:52) in which Kesler plays Dobbs and Baldasare plays Baxter, the only actors and characters in this version which reveals a number of images and structural elements already in place for the feature film. Woelfel appears in a commentary track discussing how the film originated in his desire to demonstrate for an Ohio State production class that he was capable of also directing a project he wrote. "Beyond Dream's Door: The Short Version" (7:47) is a short behind the scenes piece feature remarks from Woelfel, Baldasare, Kesler, and videographer Jose Cardenas. Also included is a selection of raw footage (4:29). "At the Door of Darkness" (7:31) is another 1983 short film built around White's dream and narrated by Woelfel, revealing both imagery and themes that would be incorporated into the feature.

"Come to Me Softly" (8:10) is a 1988 short film Woelfel shot in 35mm in his parents' historic Victorian mansion with Kesler as a salesman pursuing a beautiful woman with a monstrous surprise in store for him. The short includes actress Catherine Enke playing on the piano music performed and recorded by Woelfel that sounds very much like Francesco de Masi's main theme music for Riccardo Freda's THE GHOST, and on the commentary track Woelfel does indeed reveal that it was based on music he heard in a Euro horror film (a Paul Naschy film, suggesting that it was THE HANGING WOMAN/BEYOND THE LIVING DEAD). Kesler also appears in a short video interview (1:34). The disc closes out with the original video trailer for BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR (2:00) and a re-release trailer (2:51).

While WINTERBEAST seemed a likely candidate for pick up by Troma, it actually found life on home video from the Tempe Video label, and it was another equivalent DVD-era indie label Sub Rosa Studios that brought us a DVD special edition of the film utilizing the existing video master while adding a commentary track, making-of, and deleted scenes. Like BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR, the mix of 16mm and Super 8 footage was conformed only on analog video for its original release, and the material had to be scanned in 2K and digitally conformed for Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray. The textural variations are more evident in high definition, with the Super 8 footage sometimes looking superior to the 16mm if only because of the better lighting. The original mono mix is included in both DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and Dolby Digital 2.0, and the differences between the Super 8 sound and loosely-synched and sometimes overdubbed sound of the 16mm footage are apparent throughout. Optional English SDH subtitles are included.

The major extra of the disc is the unfinished workprint version of the film "It Came from Lone Peak" (73:22) which is only three minutes shorter than the finished film but includes a lot of unused material, particularly an attempt at a surreal dreamlike structure which includes a surprising full frontal nude shot of Morgan running through the snow in just ski boots and a scarf and images of a beautiful woman with beastly fangs. Also included is some unused monster footage as well as the original deaths of two characters which ended up getting reshot. The DVD commentary with writer/director Christopher Thies, producer Mark Frizzell, and cinematographer Craig Mathieson is ported over, with the trio discussing the protracted shoot, the cheap but troublesome studio space in which most of the interiors were actually shot, as well as the sync issues resulting from the damage to a homemade sync generator created by Mathieson. Frizzel returns for a brand new track in which he covers much of the same material but in a more focused manner, along with more anecdotes about the cast, his creature effects, and finding distribution for the film. Moderator Brad Henderson provides some details of the Vinegar Syndrome restoration of the materials.

In addition to the ported extras including the making-of "Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be?" (19:36), deleted scenes (13:00) and an audio interview with composer Michael Perilstein (3:44) which mainly hypes a potential CD release, the disc also includes a host of brand new extras. In "Sweat and Persistence" (27:39), Frizzell discusses his interest in filmmaking as a youth, how working in several industries prepared him for the rigors of production, and the learning experience of working at the Boston-based animation studio Olive Jar on various commercials, MTV videos, and television shows (including working on professional projects by day and WINTERBEAST effects by night in the same workspace), and meeting Thies who had a similar idea from which the "Winterbeast" originated. In "I Saw It in a Dream" (10:35), actor Charles Majka recalls meeting Frizzel through his brother and working with him at a tech company building circuit boards, discusses his ballet training, and also reveals that he also acted in a still unreleased Frizzel film (one of four productions being shot at the studio space during WINTERBEAST), while in "My First Career" (13:36), his brother David Majka – briefly seen in the film as the missing ranger with the chest-bursting demon – mainly recalls working more on other Frizzel television and commercial projects.

In "So Bad, It's Good" (10:19), actress Dori May Kelly recalls the shoots and the hiatus as Frizzel tried to raise more money, the portion of the shoot lensed on video, her memories of the cast and crew, as well as her contemporary reaction to the finished film. In "He Wears Sunglasses at Night" (14:15), actor Mike Magri discusses his stage career, meeting Morgan on a production, replacing the original actor cast as Stillman, and getting his head bitten off by one of Frizzel's creatures. "A Movie for Filmmakers" (18:44) is an interview with filmmaker Simon Barrett (V/H/S) who muses on the formative experience of discovering the film and his admiration of its qualities while he still remains unclear about the details of the film's plot. The "Soap Opera Footage" (11:49) consists of the pickup shoot on broadcast video, material of which was reshot on 16mm because the filmmakers did not like the look even though it does appear much slicker than the film footage.

FATAL EXAM failed to find a distributor – length might have been the sole consideration considering the quality of some of the other 8mm and 3/4" video-lensed regional flicks that landed video distribution and cable around this time – but a video master was apparently struck since it did pop up online from time to time. Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray (apparently the only film in the set where the filmmakers protected for widescreen framing) comes from a new 2K scan of the original 16mm camera negatives preceded by a quality disclaimer noting some shots were blown-up from 8mm and that the audio was recorded and mixed on non-professional equipment. The image is appropriately swimming with grain while occasional saturated wardrobe and bloodshed suggest that the ill-considered color scheme is more responsible than fading of the materials for the overall look of the film while the increased resolution makes the mismatch in footage shot on different days as apparent as the out-of-focus shots the production elected to use rather than reshoot. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono audio is as good as the original mix since all of the dialogue was post-dubbed, with the limitations of the consumer-level recording equipment evident in the highs and lows of the score. Optional English SDH subtitles are included.

The film is accompanied by a new group audio commentary with writer/director Snyder, composer Carl Leta, effects artist William Crawford, and actors Comer, Coleman, and Mayer in which Snyder concedes that the film is overwritten while the actors rib each other about their performances – casting was not an audition so much as answering yes to "are you free this weekend" – and the shortcomings of the production which was shot on several weekends with even shots within single scenes captured on different days. More entertaining is the documentary "Fatal Examination" (47:40) including the aforementioned participants – alone and socially-distanced inside a small theater – along with Carlberg who had been in graduate school during the production and married, later widowed and subsequently married Snyder. Snyder notes his admiration of John Carpenter's THE THING and its scenario of isolation and paranoia while expressing his dislike of conventional slasher horror despite the similarity of setting and scenario. Crawford's discussion of his homemade effects and makeshift studio also point out a miniature effect that was convincing enough in the film to go completely unnoticed as a special effect. His production anecdotes shed some more light on the production, noting that it was shot with four cameras (three of which were spring-wound silent cameras), that the dialogue had to be lip-read for post-dubbing, that the film was screened silent for the cast with the accompaniment of the director's Goblin DAWN OF THE DEAD LP, and before the music, effects, and dialogue tracks were mixed together at a professional studio, the film had to be viewed as three separate ill-synchronized VHS tapes to hear it all together.

The three discs each come with reversible covers and are packaged in one of Vinegar Syndrome's custom hard cases designed by Tom Hodge of The Dude Designs limited to 7,000 units and only available at Vinegar Syndrome. (Eric Cotenas)

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