Vengeance of the Dead

By Jason Santo • Sep 7th, 2003 • Category: Horror

Vengeance of the Dead is a tidy little horror/thriller from Wisconsin filmmakers Don Adams and Harry Picardi, with lots of twists and turns and many offbeat touches throughout.

A young guy goes to visit his grandpa down on the farm, and soon is spending those soft summer nights sleepwalking and torching elderly neighbors, apparently coaxed/goaded along by some restless ghosts.

Vengeance of the Dead challenges many b-movie conventions by casting a cadre of old men as central characters (the grandpa “planing wood” while spying on his granddaughter is especially memorable) and the movie offers up a more complex storyline than usual fare. Being shot on film, and featuring several unwise fire stunts, the movie takes Microcinema production value up a notch.

Another interesting note is that that the cinematographer on Vengeance of the Dead is Pete Biagi, the beleaguered DP on Stolen Summer (the first “Project Greenlight” film), a project whose every flaw and foible was displayed for all to see on HBO.

I watched the DVD of Vengeance of the Dead and found it was chock-full of cool extras about the filmmakers and their projects. Most interesting is footage from an unfinished film called Warwolf and a series of local news stories (covering, I believe, several years) that follow the determined duo’s attempts to make an independent film. The sardonic director’s commentary by Don Adams is also a plus.

Vengeance of the Dead is what solid b-movie filmmaking looks like.

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