MONDO VIDEO 4: RED SPIRIT LAKE + SPLATTER FARM

For its fourth edition, Mondo Video is dragging two of the most deranged tapes the prime shot-on-video horror era ever spat out, into the light.

When Marilyn sets out to settle her aunt’s estate in the backwoods of Angel Falls, she throws open the gates of hell: her supernatural witch-aunt drew on the powers of Red Spirit Lake, refused to pass them on, and was murdered for it. Now she haunts the SOV fever dream of Charles Pinion’s RED SPIRIT LAKE (1993), best described as stoner surrealism, creatures shambling through snow-covered landscapes, washed-out images, garish seas of color that evoke the cinema of Mario Bava, orgies of violence and sauna sex, all laced with Lynchian atmospheres. You won’t believe it until you’ve seen it.

Twin brothers Alan and Joseph are on their way to a summer trip to visit Aunt Lacey, not knowing it will likely be their last. Together with her farmhand, Lacey lives shut away on a run-down farm where the two of them have succumbed to a fascination with rotting human flesh. For the siblings, a ride to hell begins, one that leads straight to the grave. SPLATTER FARM (1987) is a relentless string of abysmal perversions, captured by the Polonia brothers in the dreamlike quality of VHS amateur film. Here, untouched rural country meets the quirks of a threadbare farmhouse interior.

Before the tapes roll, @valbarano will open the crypt on SOV as a whole. He is the author of Aesthetic Deviations (Headpress, 2023), the first book to take American shot-on-video horror seriously as an art form. He drags these camcorder nightmares into the same room as Bazin, Kracauer and Brakhage and dares you to keep sneering.

Introducing virtually his own film: @charlespinion, the man who kicked off with the psycho-punk splatter of Twisted Issues (1988)