"Long Night in a Dead City" Film Review

This is a review that has been sitting on my laptop for a bit but I wanted to talk about it. A couple of weeks ago, yours truly had the chance the world premiere of Richard Griffin’s latest film “Long Night in a Dead City” The screening took place at the Columbus Theater where a part of the film was shot. This is also Griffin’s second to last film as he recently announced the action comedy Strapped for Danger will be his final film.

The film is about a person (Aidan Laliberte) who wakes up in the middle of nowhere on New Year’s Eve. With no memory of what happened to him, he sets out to look for his brother whom he was hanging out with. Along the way, he meets a mysterious woman (Sarah Reed) who leads him down the spiraling path to drugs, sex and murder. Will he be able to find his way out the nightmare before becomes missing forever.

“Long Night in a Dead City” is maybe Richard Griffin’s most dark and surreal film to date. Yes, this is coming from a person that has seen his other surreal and entertaining films “Beyond the Dunwich Horror”, “Exhumed” and “The Disco Exorcist”.

What makes this film very good was Richard Griffin’s direction. He does a very good job pulling off all the surreal aspects that this film has. Whether it’s the way that he directs the action to how his cinematography Nate Sliva captures the images, everything had a David Lynch feel to them. It kept my interested as this is one of those films where the imagery is so surreal in a good way that it makes you interested in the story. The other thing that I liked was the way that Griffin directs his cast. There isn’t much dialogue in the film but he makes sure that the performers make the scenes very haunting. He gets very good performances from his leads Adrian and Sarah Reed. They both made their characters stand out which is needed for the film to succeed. It helped made this one a very surreal one from start to finish.

The screenplay from Lenny Schwartz was good even thought its very surreal. One of the things that I liked about it was the way that he does a good job focusing on his main character. Whether it going to into the state of mind of the main character to minimizing the main character’s dialogue, it makes the character and his journey a surreal and entertaining one. This is what made this character interesting which was definitely needed for this The other thing that makes the screenplay good was the fact that the action keeps everything moving at good pace. It allowed me to digest the basics of everything that was going in the story considering its one of those films where you have to pay attention to everything and not wonder off. If your film is going to be surreal and/or go the David Lynch route make sure it hooks the viewer in so that it allows the viewer to draw their conclusions about what happened and makes them want to rewatch the fil to pick up things that they’ve missed the first time around. This film does that as this story was entertaining and grabs your attention.

I highly suggest you find a way to check this film out as will be hitting the film festival circuit soon. With great direction, very good lead performances and a surreal screenplay, “Long Night in a Dead City” is one film that will take you on surreal trip that you won’t forget.

For more information on this film, you can visit the film’s official Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/LongNightDeadCity

Review Rating: Five Stars

Film Review: "Flesh for the Inferno"

Flesh for the Inferno” is the latest film from Rhode Island director Richard Griffin who has done some very good micro budget films in the past including “The Disco Exorcist” “Nun of That”, “Beyond the Dunwich Horror” and “The Sins of Dracula”.

The film is about a group of kids who come upon an abandoned building in hopes of cleaning it up and preparing it for renovation. What the group finds inside is a tomb where the souls of three nuns have been trapped for years. Soon they realize, the nuns are hell bent for revenge and are ready to do the devil’s work. Now trapped in the building, they must find a way to stop these nuns from carrying out their devilish deed before their souls become trapped in the building with them for all eternity.

I really enjoyed this film a lot, as this makes up from Griffin’s last film “Future Justice” which was an okay film. “Flesh for the Inferno” is a very shocking and intense film from start to finish.

One of the things that makes this film very good was its direction. Director Richard Griffin does a very good making sure this film had a very dark and creepy tone. I liked how he was able to make sure that the look of the film had a very creepy and uneasy feel to it as it added a level of darkness to it. This really helped make some of the film key scenes feel very sinister like a seventies exploitation film. Griffin also does a very good job making sure that the performances matched up to the level that is needed for everything to work. I liked, the way that he gets his cast to make sure that they make their characters interesting. This helped make the performance aspect worked in an entertaining way as they weren’t annoying and helped make some of the film’s more shocking scenes work as well.

The other thing that I liked about this was that there were other aspects that enhances the film and made it look better given its budget. Whether it’s Timothy Fife score or Jill Poisson’s cinematography to the gore effects on the film, everything helped enhanced this film to the point that gives this film its horrific feel. It’s what help make this film very good and scary.

The screenplay written by Michael Varrati was very good. What makes this very good was the way that he keeps the action movie. He does a good job making sure nothing is rushed. That is hard to do when the film’s running time is seventy eight minutes but Varrati does it by timing the horror aspects well enough that it allows for story development. The other thing that I liked about the screenplay was the way the story felt very dark throughout. Varrati makes sure the story’s dark elements works so well with the film, as some of the scenes felt very dark and creepy especially with the death scenes as it had creativity to it.

Fans of nunsploitation or exploitation horror should really check this film out. “Flesh for the Inferno” is Richard Griffin’s most shocking film since the “The Disco Exorcist” and is one of his best films. I highly recommend that you check this film out if you dare.

Review Rating: Five Stars

Film Review: Future Justice

’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve reviewed a film here on the site. When deciding on what film to review, I had a couple of choices but I had a film sitting there for a while that I wanted to see but haven’t had the time to until now. “Future Justice” is the latest from director Richard Griffin. He’s done some very entertaining low budget films in the past like “Nun of That”, “Dr. Frankenstein’s Hungry Dead” and most recently “The Sins of Dracula”. His latest film marks the second nationwide release on his Scorpio Film Releasing DVD label.

The film is about a prisoner being returned to earth by group of military police officers. When they land, they find that a nuclear war has eliminated most of the earth’s population. As they search for answers, they find a group of people hold up in an underground bunker. Unknown to them, they’ve arrival home has drawn the attention of a vicious gang that is looking to kill in order to survive. Now they are holed up in an underground bunker looking for a way to defeat the vicious gang before they end up dead.

This was one of those films where I thought I wasn’t going to like after watching the first ten minutes. Still, I decided to still watch this film because I wanted to a review a film after having not done one in almost a month. Thankfully, I decided to stick with this film, as it got better as the film went along.

This might not be one of Richard Griffin’s best film, but he still does a good job with the way he handles the film given that it’s low budget. One of the things that I liked was the way that he directs the film’s action sequences. Whether it was the way they were choreographed to how it’s directed, Griffin does a good job making sure the action scenes have a level of intensity that grabs your interest. When that happens, it can make up for most of the flaws. The other thing I liked was the way he directs his cast. Whether it’s the way he gets his cast to be interested in the material to making sure they have chemistry, Griffin does a good job getting good and solid performances from cast especially in the last third of the film.

The screenplay by the film’s star Nathaniel Sylva was good as it delivered a solid story. I liked how he takes time setting up the action. Sylva spends time in the story to get to know and develop the characters between all of the action sequences in the film. It made the characters worth watching and made me interested. When you have a film on a small budget, you need to make sure the characters are interesting and this screenplay does that, if not you just have a collection of action sequences. Thankfully, it focuses on the characters as much as it focuses on the action.

“Future Justice” is one of those films that has a bad open but rebound nicely enough to make this film entertaining. It’s something you should check out, if you’re in the mood for a post-apocalyptic action film.

Review Rating: Three and a Half stars

Shocking Stills for the Upcoming Vampire Film "The Sins of Dracula"

Scorpio Film Releasing recently released stills for the upcoming release "The Sins of Dracula". The upcoming film is the latest from director Richard Griffin (Frankenstein's Hungry Dead) and stars Michael Thurber (Exhumed) Jamie Dufault (Murder University) and Sarah Nicklin (The Disco Exorcist).

"The Sins of Dracula" hits DVD on March 24th.

Plot Synopsis:

As the star of his church choir, there’s nothing that brings Billy more joy than the opportunity to sing for an audience. However, as his desire to perform grows, the stalwart youth finds that waiting until Sunday to get his fix just simply isn’t enough. Going against the advice of his pastor, Billy follows his girlfriend into the world of secular entertainment, joining the local community theatre troupe. There, Billy is introduced to a whole new world, where his fellow thespians dabble in drugs, sexual perversion, and table-top game-play. Yet, for all the newly minted depravities Billy encounters, none could prepare him for the darkest truth of them all: The theatre group is actually a front for a Satanic cult intent on raising Dracula from the grave!