[Music]
Wow! So this is radio land, huh? The infinite turtle, the waves or the
ether fuzz roll on forever. [Music]
This is Death by DVD and you are listening to Harry Scott Sullivan, your host.
I'm Linnea and I like Death by DVD. It's a statement.
And on this episode we are discussing a movie called August Underground.
A movie that some people would largely say isn't even a movie at all. Am I one of those people?
I guess you'll just have to listen and find out, but that raises the question of what is a movie.
Well, it's a noun. One, a series of pictures projected on a screen and rapid succession with objects
shown in successive positions slightly changed so as to produce the optical effect of a continuous
picture in which the objects move, two, a representation as of a story by means of motion picture or a movie,
which is interesting to note that second definition because August Underground is
something that is often accused of not having a story or a plot. And we'll talk more about that later,
I'm sure. But to start things off, let's just talk about what August Underground is.
There are no real lines in the sand with this movie. You've either heard about it and feared it and refused to see it.
You've seen it and absolutely hated it. You've seen it and absolutely love it or you have no idea what August Underground is.
And briefly, let's take a point to talk from the perspective that you don't know what August Underground is
and we'll do a brief history. We'll try and keep it brief of August Underground and then I can share my feelings
because that's what we're all here for, right? 2001 August Underground written by the mysterious Alan Peters and Fred Vogel
directed by Fred Vogel starring Fred Vogel. More often than not, you will hear this movie discussed as or referred to as
a pseudo-snuff film or a fake snuff film. I believe I've even been guilty of using that terminology to refer to this movie.
But it's much more than that. You often also hear it called a found footage movie, a horror movie,
constant genres will be thrown at this and none of them seem to really stick. And I personally have a problem trying to box this into a specific genre.
But I think I've already said it once already. We'll get more into that in just a little while.
August Underground came out about a year, a year and a half after the Blair Witch Project, which greatly changed the face of modern horror and what we know modern horror to be right now.
And boomed a new era of a genre that prior to the Blair Witch Project, and this isn't a point of the show,
so I'm not going to digress and go deeper into it did exist but was never truly capitalized on as it was with that singular film.
And since then there is thousands, thousands and thousands of them, some of them are very good, some of them are very bad.
But in that same time period, the Blair Witch came out and many of you may remember it.
I don't want to exclude our audience that might be a little bit younger. I was around for that time period.
It was revolutionary. It really changed how you even considered thinking about horror movies. And there is a movie called Cannibal Holocaust by a beautiful beautiful person named Regario Dio Dotto.
And I'm sure I'm going to reference it more and more and more as the show continues that does have the quality and the ideas of a found footage movie.
And it's not a point of contention or anything that I want to get into, but I'm painting a fucking picture of this era.
And if you weren't there and you had no idea of horror in the 90s to the 2000s, it was awful.
And horror has always been a genre that specifically was capitalized upon.
It's only point of being is horror movies can make money or you make a horror movie to make money to make your real "movey".
It's treated the same way as artists used to treat porn in the 70s, West Craven, Abel Ferrarra, all these guys shot porn before they made their quote-unquote real movies, which for both of their sakes you have last house on the left and then you've got Driller Killer from a Ferrarra, but they both made porn then horror.
And also, in that same time period somebody who was constantly left out in the discussions of these masters and maistros is a man named Roger Watkins who began dead most of his career in porn, but he made one incredibly significant movie that also referenced a great deal probably coming up here in just a few minutes.
But post-screen, the horror world was pretty terrible. We had a lot of direct-to-video sequels like that children of the corn, 666, 6EyeSixReturn. A lot of trash though.
No insult to Dimension X or whatever the fuck that was called or the era itself, because hey, you're entitled to like those movies and that's fine.
But there wasn't anything that pushed, there wasn't anything that defined the idea of fear and then Blair Witch came out and that movie changed a lot for people.
And I don't have anything to say about the Blair Witch project on this episode. It's just the mark of 1999 and this is what's happening.
2001, this movie, August Underground, was shot mostly in the year 2000. The filmmakers were aware of Blair Witch. They were aware of films like 8mm.
And in that wave of Blair Witch is release and that fear generated by my god, did this really happen? Is this real?
This film that you could say is a lost gem, some people would call it an absolute turd and then there are the people that are completely not knowing of what this is.
But since it's released in 2001, the legacy surrounding this movie has been non-stop.
It's been referred to as the most violent movie you've never seen, credit to the great art editor of Ultraviolet magazine for that. And the reputation of this movie, and this is something that is a constant when it comes to horror and exploitation, you build up these reputations.
You hear about these movies, I always go to the Finlay films, snuff, you hear about it and it's the worst movie on the planet. You know, it's raw. You're not going to believe some of the stuff that happens in this movie.
And it is so tremendously boring, nothing happens. It's poorly shot, it's acquired footage and then there's the slapped on ending.
And those last few minutes of the movie, you're shocked, completely by it. August Underground is a similarity in the sense that you get this build up and you hear about it from people and you read about it.
And it's a legacy sort of thing, I don't know if I can watch a movie like that, I've heard a lot of things about this movie. But the hype is actually all there.
You sit down and you watch snuff and you're really, really annoyed by the entire experience, you sit down and you watch something like August Underground.
The experience itself has, I dare say, changed you a little bit. And I guess this comes to the point of the episode where I get to share my feelings on August Underground for good or bad.
And we come back to the statement I made at the beginning that there are people that would question if this is a movie. Does this have a plot? Does this have a story?
And now we'll unveil my position on all of this, but I'd like to state it here. I'd like to try and do this episode from the middle of the road.
When you're in the middle of the road, you can see the curve and you can see what's coming, but if you're on either side too far in, you're not going to be able to see anything or understand anything or formulate your own opinions and ideas.
The middle of the road sounds scary, but sometimes it's a really good place to be. And that's where I'd like to try and do this episode from the middle of the road.
But is August Underground a movie? Yes, absolutely. Does August Underground have a story? Yeah. And it does have a plot. And these are two things that for the last 20 some years are brought up consistently when it comes to the movie.
And it's not a matter of whether I like it or not. It's a matter of evaluation and it's a matter of what is on screen and available. And I can really understand from first glance watching this movie. It being so incredibly upsetting, so vicious.
So it's predatory. The film truly is predatory. It seems like as you're watching it, it keeps attacking you like it's wearing you out and then attacking you. It's just the Muhammad Ali rope adope beating you senseless and then invading your space. So there's nothing else that you can do, but fall to the ground completely knocked out.
I would say everything you've heard about this movie, all the rumors, all that's the most offensive thing you've seen, it must be close to it. And the invocation of emotion that has come with this movie over the last 20 years is one of the most miraculous and beautiful things.
I think that could surround it the myths, the mystery, whatever you want to call it, you know the Blair Witch didn't happen. There is a sequel and the sequel of the sequel and now there's like a soft reboot sequel and video games and toys and just going to keep making it.
But August Underground has this semblance of a reality that was never broken even though you can find videos of the director Fred Vogel, you can see that it wasn't real. No matter what, this first film, it retained something that even cannibal Holocaust, I don't think actually manages to grasp and that is utter reality.
Now, don't get me wrong, cannibal Holocaust is a fine film, it's one of my favorite films, I love Regario Diado.
The politics of cannibal Holocaust is one of the reasons I love that movie so dearly. The movie has an overwhelming statement and it's made constantly and consistently throughout the film, but it's very much a movie.
No matter how much you can say elements from that film were the very first found footage movie, sure, I can give that to you but there's a soundtrack. There's a score to this movie, there is a rhythm, there is a whole point of what you're seeing on screen that develops through the plot and story, that beginning, middle and end, the traditional aspects of what makes a story, what makes a plot.
All of that is available so you have a feeling of comfort knowing why I can turn this off at any time, this is a movie and that's all that I'm watching as to our August underground has no feeling of safety, there is no net, there is no comfort, there is no guidelines where you can live through another character, what you witness on screen is severe.
It's real and of course it's not real, it's the absolute magic of filmmaking. So what is this movie about? Well according to IMDB, two serial killers go on a murdering rampage, one films the outcome from behind a video camera and that is fairly apt.
That's what happens in the movie, you're witnessing atrocity after atrocity and the unique aspect of this is it's not so much like a snuff tape. I mentioned at the beginning of this that I am guilty of calling August Underground pseudo snuff, foe snuff.
You can't really do something like that because it's not produced for anybody else, the guys of this movie, the power behind this movie is that it's just a tape, you don't know if it's a tape in a series of other tapes that lead to something else, it's just this.
There is no beginning, there is no middle, there is no end, but there is certainly a plot and a story and not all plots and stories are told in the figurative normal "manor" that we recognize, it's not all John Steinbank and Hemingway, there's a little bit more to it.
The idea of storytelling even through that stupid fucking game that everybody plays at parties, charades, that's a form of storytelling and by no means is August Underground a form of charades, but when you watch from that very first scene to the last scene, a story that is absolutely rot and decadence and violence is presented to you.
And it's similar in aspects to something like the Marquis de Saad, you look at the 120 days of "Sotomy" this vile book that details some of the most heinous escapades put onto paper, a book that insured the writer never got out of an asylum, quite possibly the written word and ramblings of an absolutely unstable insane crazy man.
This underground has an invocation of this dread, this absolute fear that is instowed upon you by just viewing it and watching it and that is a power to its own, that is a remark upon the filmmakers and the art committed to the act of making this movie.
There is a tremendous sense of dread that is taken in by just viewing this film, you sincerely feel like you have done something wrong by stumbling across this, you watch it and even in the first few minutes you really feel like, "should I be watching this?"
This doesn't seem right, it doesn't matter that you can find interviews and videos with the filmmakers, there is this absolute horror that washes upon you and for me it makes it rather hard to discern what genre, if it matters, I could call something like August Underground because the feeling that wipes over you and it's very present in this first film, there are two sequels to this movie and maybe some day we'll come back and we'll talk about those two.
But specifically this one has such a captured realism that you can't disregard what goes into it and you have this often brought up debate with film critics of what is art, what is an art.
And I never once felt or will feel my entire life I have a position to say something is or is not art, but there is a thin line between art and pornography, that's also not saying that pornography isn't an art, but still there's a difference between the two.
And there are many, many, what's the word I want to use? Pears perhaps? Two, someone like Fred Vogel in this Underground World of Cinema who don't tread that line, who make fetishistic pieces that rely only on shock, only on violence for the sake of violence.
And that subject is where we really start getting off into things, violence for the sake of violence. I bring it up all the time on the show, it's something I have a great deal of disdain for and I don't quite understand the purpose of movies that are just mean spirited and ugly and violent.
Well, that's mostly what August Underground is accused of being, filmmaker Fred Vogel himself has brought up many times that he wanted to make a nihilistic movie, something that showed an anti-serial killer aspect that would really shock and bother you.
Now, all of those things are true, but nihilism itself, such a fully loaded word and it can have a lot of negative impact.
Sure, this movie is fucking nihilistic, but it offers a little bit more insight than just negativity and just the concept of nihilism.
What this movie rides on is, in fact, the emotion that is invoked by you watching it and it doesn't matter if it's a feeling of disgust, it's a feeling of rage, it's a feeling of shock or offense, what you're witnessing.
At its base is almost ballet style choreographed art.
The choreography, in fact, that goes into what made this film is what makes it completely terrifying and I really like calling it a ballet.
I mean, this is a ballet of obscurity.
A ballet of violence and it crashes with this crescendo of dread.
No matter what, it's days after watching the movie. You have this reflection in your mind of absolute sheer and utter terror and it's presented to you with, as many people say, "No story, no plot."
So what did I mean by that? I said, "This movie definitely has a story and it definitely has a plot."
All these things are exposed to you. It's not some back writing that years later has been added in. As you watch the film, you have to take into this consideration that this wasn't supposed to be something that you could buy.
In the universe that this film exists in, this movie was made by sadistic individuals that were going to watch it for their pleasure. It wasn't for someone else, it wasn't for tape trading, it was something specifically made for that endurance of pain to come back.
This beautiful feeling to flow through them when they're bored or snowed in. And that itself makes it even more terrifying.
And I'm talking about emotion and what matters to me, I guess, that should be a big point here that I state, "So it matters to me when you're making a film that it needs to have some sort of power."
And August Underground, I think, takes the audience and holds a power over them.
I can't think of any other movie that almost demands something from you and whatever your feeling is at the end of this movie, you have felt something.
I don't think that you could say from point A to point B watching, "I think it's 70 minutes of this tape, of this idea of this tape that you could walk away and go, "Well, that was boring."
Anything but, but let's hold on for a second because I just realized there is a movie that comes to mind that also takes the audience and holds a power over them.
It's Roger Watkins' House on Dead and Street, or "Last House on Dead and Street." I mentioned Roger earlier, and I can say certainly his film is an influence on August Underground.
But what Roger did was make a movie about a man being released from prison who begins to make snuff films, films that feature vicious murder and torture for retail, and what that movie does is force you into this sick and twisted world.
It forces pain onto you, but the perspective is from the "bad guy" played by Roger himself.
We follow him through this sorted world, and it's not like you're rooting for him, but he is all you know and all you're loud to know. You're surrounded by all this emotion and chaos.
It's an opera of suffering, as I say August Underground is a ballet of brutality, Roger Watkins' film truly is operatic, finishing with a wonderful crescendo of pain.
But, the point, and why I'm saying this, is the power of the emotion. Dead and Street is filled with an intense and loud soundtrack.
It's got, like, cannibal holocaust, a reality that allows you to know it's only a movie. It's not real.
I think Fred Vogel managed to take the power of that emotion, the suffering in chaos captured in Watkins' film, and he weaponized it for his story.
He drives the story with the emotion.
The story that's being told is a story of absolute pain and suffering, and it's dare I say, slightly political.
And what I mean by that isn't a side of politics, but you never know anyone. You don't know your neighbors, you don't know the people that live two streets behind you.
Some of your cousins, you even really know them. Any person out there could be the characters that are in this movie.
And let's just fucking talk about the movie. What do we see in it? The entire film, we follow this giant guy who is a murderous sociopath.
He is a sexual sadist. And we ascertain all of this information from the heinous acts that are committed on film.
Off screen, we have a cameraman who is capturing these moments of pain, but it's not like some Martin Scorsese art piece.
It's more like your dad filming on Christmas morning with a camera.
You know, hey, hey, make sure to smile. Hold up the present. There is a sense of jockularity and fun happiness to the whole thing.
We're going to look back on these tapes and we're going to have a great time watching them.
We're going to remember that summer and it's going to be a great time. And the fear, I think, really is almost captured in this character.
The character is played by a mysterious man named Alan Peters. And of course, a movie like August Underground would have some mystery to it, but it's not very sincere.
It's not like he disappeared or regarodiodo. Cannibal Holy Cost. He was arrested for that film because he paid the actors to fuck off for a little while after the release.
And internationally, it kind of seemed like he killed his actors in the film. So he was investigated for it, arrested for it.
Not as fun of a story here. Alan Peters helped create this film. He helped push the direction and motivate Fred and they worked together to make this monstrosity and did not want to be known by the world for his credit for this.
So he is Alan Peters. And that's that. But when you look at that, it adds such a duality and beautiful mystery to what you end up watching.
And here for me is what I think is the capturing moments of fear for this movie. It's the fact that you're watching this guy film everything. And I've always wondered who was in charge, who is running this.
And you've got this mountain of a man, which is Fred Vogel. He's like six foot 17 inches tall, a massive, intimidating form. And he's on screen the entire time he's committing these atrocities and someone is directing.
It's almost like Cecil B. Demented, the John Waters movie, this broken, strange piece of cinema art that somebody has been creating and making together through all of these tapes. We don't know the point. We don't know the directive of what Alan Peters' character is doing.
And that is always terrified me that somebody is so nonchalant, somebody is so okay with filming all of these things. So what do they do?
There's so much in this universe we don't see on screen and it builds an anticipatory fear of what's going to happen next. Throughout the film we're allowed these very short glimpses that Alan has captured on film. And we look into this just world of chaos, we see nothing else.
There's no video of these guys playing Nintendo or smoking weed or anything normal. All of these moments lead up to just absolute, vicious, beautiful scenes of pain. And what the fuck do I mean by beautiful?
Let's talk about how this movie was shot before I talk about what I mean by beautiful.
August Underground, I believe, could be wrong, I believe was shot on a Canon XL1 which had the time in 2001 was a pretty expensive camera and honestly to this day I think they're still running like $304.00.
It was a digital video camera and this movie was shot on that and then run through tape after tape after tape. So it's transferred from video onto tape and degraded band way before you could just like purchase a program to do all of this.
They hand degraded everything which gives it this anonymous feeling even the face of the victims. You don't really get a clear shot of there's this almost halo fuzz that surrounds everyone and you're lost.
You're struggling to really look at the film and of course when I first saw this movie I hate well when I first saw this movie segments and shows because who the fuck cares nobody cares about the first time you saw the movie.
But we'll keep this one short when I first saw this movie I saw bootleg of this movie eight maybe nine years after it came out I think eight I think it was 2008 when I first saw August Underground and it wasn't on the world's greatest high definition TV now in 2023 when this episode is being recorded.
Technology has greatly changed and I watched the blu-ray of this film released by unearthed films will talk more about them at the end of the show on a 65 inch 4K television and I hand this just moment of almost shock as I got maybe eight
nine minutes into the film that I just was taken a back really that that feeling from the first time when I saw it how dirty and wrong it felt was still present.
I was speaking about the arrow when this film came out and things like Blair which but in the early 2000s you had websites like augurish staken cheese dot com and rotten dot com that were predecessors to something like live links where you could watch or surfing the dark web rather where you could watch atrocities
gov beheadings from my and mar the war in Iraq had just started so you could get all sorts of Taliban be heading videos just a true brutal atrocities that in just seconds of your mouse click you could be exposed to.
And this film at the same time is released clips from the movie are being surfaced on places like augurish staken cheese dot com where people have found August underground and it has shocked them so much that even before the heavy era of piracy and being able to see and download movies through something like the pirate bay this was being pushed this is real this is extreme that's the art behind this film some of the things that are shown on screen are
irreprehensible they are incredibly disturbing their mind numbingly sick it's a it's a violent film is a cop out to call something like augurish underground it's beyond violent but the way all of this is shown to you and the breakdown where I guess we're getting personal here is genius it's just absolute genius art that is masked as this
decadent dance with violence it's sinfully disgusting it's painful and sociopathic and twisted you really witness unhinged sexual deviance and violence in this film and there isn't really a gauge on what's the worst atrocity committed they're all fucking bad everything that you witness on screen in this movie it's so awful it's terrible you really could start wondering about the people that made this movie
if not for how the movie was made because the genius lays there you know that the person that made this had a greater scheme to things and so so I like to refer to it as a ballet because this movie was practiced and practice and practice and practice and practice art
and you're head editor genius and all around awesome guy has said many times before on the subject of this film the takes are insane there are some scenes that are like 12-11 minutes long maybe even longer but the things that are contained within those scenes are so fucking vicious that you are broken with this reality now we go back to the Alan Peters character who is this real guy but for all intents and purposes of what we're talking about is the real thing
for all intents and purposes of what we're talking about is a character in the movie filming this somebody is tagging along filming all of this and you get into these scenes the first scene of the movie for example we are introduced to a woman that is being tortured in a basement of a barn it looks like and these two people are just hanging out on a Friday night they're just kind of two buddies you can imagine that they might be watching wrestling or smoking some weed or something whatever you and your friends do on average get together
but instead these people are just as joyous and congenial and happy mutilating and torturing and forcing this woman to eat fecal matter and rubbing her deceased boyfriend's penis that's obviously been cut off and her face first fucking scene of the movie first things we're getting into and maybe when you're shocked and all of this is in your face
and it's first presented to you you don't think you don't look at how it how it was put together you're sitting through this ride and the ride is going up and down and all around and it's it's agreeably I can say seemingly there is no plot there is no story
but under evaluation you have to go back and then there's that realization of Jesus Christ some of these scenes didn't have cuts some of these scenes didn't stop and that's so fucking terrifying that this person we never see him we hear him laugh we hear him agon the other guy he's committing these atrocities but we never see this person who I've always felt had this unseen sickening control this this almost godlike control because they're behind the camera they're dictating what the movie is going to be the movie
dictating what vicious violence is really presented to you they are the purveyor of this filth for you know they're like the like the creep from creep show and it hits you slowly as some of these scenes drag on and on and on and on and there are parts of the movie where nothing is happening where they're in a car and they're just driving and they're having a conversation
they're out at a farm nothing's happening they're at a roadside attraction nothing's happening and these scenes all run in this elegant long fashion I think it's elegant because it leads you into the next perverse trap that you run through this monotonous boring scene of 12 minutes of nothing and then all of a sudden you're about to get hit in a face with 14 minutes of pure uncut
absolute degradating horrific violence and what is violence for the sake of violence that's something that I bring up on a lot of episodes one of my heroes somebody had a great deal respect for it chas ballon I get most of my take from violence for the sake of violence and chas ballon you may or may not know he had a magazine called deep red he was a purveyor of underground films violent movies tape trading
it was an all around class act grade eight guy he fucking hated this movie and I get a lot of my sentiment and feelings of violence for the sake of violence and movies that I think are are violent and bland and boring from chas ballon and this I think really is the major only time that I've I've I can put my foot down and be like yeah you're fucking wrong you were wrong and chas is long gone he he's not on this earth anymore but before he
died he just didn't have the time of day for august underground he didn't have I don't I don't think he didn't have respect for Fred Vogel but I don't think he had respect for this movie and he chalked it up to just being inherently mean spirited and violent and it is inherently mean spirited and it is nihilistic but I don't think the violence is for the sake of violence I think there is a sense of dread that it zooms throughout the film and that dread transcends
the violence the creation of point of this movie in my opinion wasn't this vulgar display of violence in fact it was the collection and the stirring of emotions and how does this make you feel as you watch it realizing that how many serial killers really have been caught I mean you used to you can statistically go to IMDB and you can look up serial killers by the number of their victims in fact I think it would shock you if you looked up this article because some of the victim numbers are
intense into the thousands you're familiar with people like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy who even Bundy himself they believe could have over 200 different victims but the aspect of these people could be living next door to you they could be living down the street from you there the guys that work at that restaurant you love to go to you know nothing about them and the anonymity behind this Alan Peters is obviously a real life thing but in the film it just maximizes perfection almost because you're
encapsulated in this world of violence and it feels like there's no escape you almost feel like you're one of the victims you can't really turn to any of the narrators on screen you've got this person Fred Vogel's playing this this mountain of a monster who conveniently apparently is named Peter mountain and then this unseen person and you want to have some reality between them you want to rely on them at the same time who can I trust who can I deal with in both of them you know what Fred Vogel's character is able to do he's
this hammer wielding maniac that will rip you from your bed rape you ravage you and kill everything that's important to you not for money but for absolute sheer pleasure because he was bored but who the fuck is the guy behind the camera we don't get to even have a glimpse of what motivates this person and that motivates the movie with this sheer intense feeling of absolute dread you don't know so much feel dirty it's not like
I feel gross watching this you feel like you've done something wrong and that's such a tremendous thing that a filmmaker an artist could do is invoke through a moving picture you feeling this so you want to question the fact that August underground is it is not a movie you gotta be gone crazy because clearly no matter what right or wrong the feeling that you get
from the first ten minutes of this movie it's permanent it stains you what other movie can do that
when this movie was produced and directed and written and released the mass commercialization of horror had pretty much rendered the genre to nothing
Halloween sequels direct to video trash lingering around the same time period you had rob zombies house of a thousand corpses which did push buttons but you didn't have something quite like August underground which was entirely itself underground you would hear whispers and rumors of it you could get it through tape trading or buy it over the expensive bootleg from some guy you met on the internet that only played the first 45 minutes of the movie
and that forced the movie almost into legendary status because it was just so hard to see you would hear so much about it as I reference with something like snuff and then see the movie and just the things you heard you couldn't even imagine them on screen you films like cannibal holocaust that show absolute vicious violence and real violence is intermingled with it and you start to wonder you have this fear of what's real what isn't and with August underground that fear is present the entire time
you can't tell what isn't real and some of the stuff that seems so certainly 100% real is just absolute cinema magic John McNaughton made a film called Henry Portrait of a serial killer which obviously serves as an inspiration for August underground
there's a particular scene in that movie where Henry Lucas gets a video camera and him and August tool have been filming their exploits and we get this brief scene watching their whole movies and the movies completely filled with fear and as I reference with cannibal holocaust it's driven by a soundtrack there the resort a lot of soundtrack with cannibal holocaust is almost pleasant it almost takes your mind off of all of this terror that is witnessed on screen how awful these people are
in the atrocious acts that they're committing but with Henry Portrait of a serial killer you still have those four walls of a film you can pause it you can turn it off you know you can get away from it the soundtrack enters and it instills this feeling of fear and you have none of that with August underground
you're surrounded by silence and your thoughts and you're constantly wondering while you're watching the movie okay should I be watching this
and Henry Portrait of a serial killer pushed boundaries because you got this almost sob story you're your forced to watch this movie through the avatar of Henry Lucas so you're trying to feel something you're trying to have some reflection
for him and you're misguided constantly throughout the film of what's true what's not is he telling a real story is he lying to this character all all the while these splashes of violence hit you and you go back and you reflect over what these scenes meant
you have a similar fashion with what August underground is but there are these moments where the energy has just faded away we've got five minutes of this goat with giant deformed balls and then right after it were slapped back into this terrible brutal world and the story that is told throughout this film is shown in the depiction of the the immaturity in the non-shelotoness of these people they're like beevus and but had with hammers
dick and fart jokes surrounded by sodomy and hammers through the skull you can't relate you can't find this fixture of almost hope that is added in the usual aspects of the story your narrator whomever you're seeing this movie through whomever's eyes you're seeing this movie through you trust that you you have a trust in them there is no trust there is no safety
August underground catapult to completely into the unknown and to avoid and it's it's sickening and all the while gorgeous it's it's such a funny feeling and it's the slow realization where it creeps upon you there are no cuts
there are there are no scenes being stopped for them to do sent dressing you watch this violence unfold and no matter how many times you're told Fred Vogel's just this guy he's just a guy in Pittsburgh he works on movies no
it seems in this moment in stowed on film forever 100% absolutely real the other films at some point I'd love to come back and talk about mortem it's a great movie but it lacks this just terrible sensation
and it's no fault to that film or the following film but August underground in its own as this just piece of misunderstood history of this just this piece of misunderstood art it speaks so heavily
there's moments where you're watching the Blair Witch project and you can understand the fear they're all yelling for Josh and no one knows where he is
where he is.
"joss" you. that's your motor. just *joss* just *joss* jess *jess* just
and it just cuts you're taken away from this world and when you go black with something like
august underground you almost know that it's gonna come back with something twice as awful as what
you had just seen you start to realize a pattern while you go through the movie and you realize
that you can't trust what's going to happen and no matter what something terrible is going to
happen in this series of unfortunate events continues they travel they go around they leave
their location they go somewhere else and they leave behind them this trail of sadness and sorrow
and brutality and it's so nonchalantly captured i mean it really feels like a fun happy video just
imagine that you were at a thrift store and you found a camera that still had a tape in it it
doesn't matter where it began and it doesn't matter where it ended but the story that's told
is presently true and there is a plot to follow as you're going through it it's just up to you
as the viewer to decode i guess to translate what this violence means and that realization for me is
is crucial because it's so haunting it's such a frightening fact that these weren't made for people
to see these were made for enjoyment this is a tape that you have somehow stumbled upon exposing
your neighbor your mailman the guy at the grocery store that you always have a conversation with
the bag boy
I feel like I've been chasing my own tale a little bit on this episode and I've said the same thing
differently a couple of times and what I've avoided doing are tried to at least is I don't want to
compare August Underground or Fred Vogel or Totag to other entities and contemporaries that
have made similar films especially don't want to name drop or insult anyone else and contemporaries
that have made similar films but what I've especially tried to not do is compare it to other films
and as we get closer to the end of this episode maybe I should compare it to some other films
and I have brought up Cannibal Holocaust by Regarria Dotto and John McNaughton's Henry Portrait of
Assyrio Killer and those are two films I have a great deal of respect for Cannibal Holocaust more than
anything I'm enamored with that movie and a lot of what captures me and I'm reflective of with
Cannibal Holocaust is the feeling that that movie brings out in me it's a very ugly film it's a very
painful and ugly message and we're often misled with with film and entertainment in general that
stories have to be good or positive is there any positivity in August Underground I don't think so
I don't think there's some light at the end of the rainbow wonderful message but you don't
always need something like that and and here I'm gonna get on my fucking high horse
this movie August Underground has a bisonian quality to it and not often can you say modern filmmakers
can even get near the level of maybe not nihilism but hopelessness that Robert Brisson could do
with his films if anyone the only person that has done anything of of impact is somebody like
Paul Schrader who is like the fucking Robert Brisson of of our era but Fred Vogel with this film
and the other ones I do feel there's a presence of it but with this film especially there is such a
fucking loneliness there is an entrepid broken loneliness to who these characters are and what
they stand for they obviously can't relate to other people their fucking sexual deviants who knows
how they found each other but they are committing these awful acts in almost this hope that they're
gonna get something it's not almost a hope that they're gonna get something out of it they're gonna
get some dopamine they're gonna feel better about it they're capturing these moments that mean
nothing to them they're killing and raping and savagely abusing people and that means nothing to
them what means more is capturing it on film for their own entertainment and that is such fucking
balls as a filmmaker to try and get that point of view from what people often would say is a fake
pseudo snuff movie but god damn that is such an incorrect statement it's it's more than the idea
an art editor who are mentioning just as much as cannibal holocaust but you know what he's just
as legendary he has pointed out many times that snuff specifically is made the idea of a snuff tape
is something that is made to capitalize upon this is so much more terrifying because nobody was
supposed to see it but these people who don't even remember what they're doing in 1983 Robert
Brisson made a film named a jang and it's this devious devastating story of this guy who didn't commit
the crime he was accused of but becomes a part of the prison system and his hardened and his
life is is absolutely ruined he loses his wife he loses his daughter he becomes a member of the
system and eventually he gets out of prison spoilers and commits an awful awful awful murder and
it seems so senseless it seems completely emotionless and that's sort of the key to what makes Brissonian
films is everything is depicted through this non-feeling of emotion Paul Schrader made in 2007
Tina film called first reformed and it's a very Brissonian film in the essence of what I'm trying to
discuss that no emotion is shown on screen through these characters then and you're just watching
the story unfold and you yourself you you can't do anything but feel pity feel pain feel
hate as you're going through some of the things that you are shown and almost beaten with
when you're watching this movie first reformed and the same thing that same feeling you have this
masterful work from Paul Schrader that comes from this Brissonian idea of this non-emotional
filmmaking but yet you can go back to 2001 and you look at August Underground and you can find
more reviews of people there's no plot there's no story it's violence for the sake of violence
chas balan champion it's just violent there's no point for this movie and there is and the point
and the the fear is that it's within every single one of us it's within the people next door to you
that chained dog down the street that you walk past and worry about it breaking away all of that this
entrepid feeling of woe and every day as an American you can wake up and read politics and look at
the news and you have all of these ways in your entire life to feel afraid and it's not new it's not
the current regime or the old regime it's just the American way it is a constant sense of
fucking doom and it's so beautifully captured with August Underground I think really you know
you could say it is an incredibly American movie but in the same way that can't be a
holocaust is an American movie made by Italians with an Italian cast but the message and the point
of that movie is the inherent violent nature of us the US the United States of America and that
sentiment even you could look at something like William Hellfire and Joey smacks picture duck the
carbine high massacre came out 1999 still pretty relevant with the era that August Underground came
out at this movie duck the carbine high massacre it's not a fucking parody it's nothing to even take
lightly it's it's such a it's it's treated almost as if it's a vapid piece of art that was
exploiting Columbine and of course it was but if anything it was exploiting the news and the
the coverage and the exploitation of the news was covering at the time and it was a truly American
piece of cinema August Underground is incredibly invocat of the same thing because what is more
American than unholstered pure hateful fucking violence and I'm not talking about whatever war is
going on this week I'm just saying history wise it's violence violence violence and violence and
what do we love everyone loves these mini series and reading about Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer
and what made them do it but what's the one goddamn thing that you really want to know about
you don't want to know about how he was when he was seven years old you want to know about how he
cut that guy up and put him in his fridge and then kept part of the body in his bathtub for six weeks
and that's what August Underground is you don't have these moments of softness you don't have this
mask of sanity like American psycho we don't get to see them go to work and pretend to be people
it is those brief moments of fear that you experience when you watch something like Henry
Portrait of a serial killer and realize they're making these tapes for fun this is just fun for them
this is nothing more than sport and that is scary the thing that makes August Underground different
from the other films and the other films I even mean underground other films but the other
August Underground films is this pristine nature of how things are presented to you in such
utter stark realism you have to have an appreciation for the artist behind that because it truly is
genius the planning sure is one thing but some of the stuff that you're witnessing and you're seeing
on screen and how long these scenes are running for it just forces you into a reality that whether
you like it or not it's real the movie ends abruptly and it just goes to black moments after seeing
stuff that you almost need to rewind that you just can't believe that you've seen it he couldn't
possibly be doing that how could they be possibly be doing that and it leaves me with an utter feeling
of disgust but not because of what I just watched because of how it just ended this is just one
of hundreds of tapes probably thousands who knows it just fucking stops because it's not the end of
the story and we never saw the beginning of the story it's this transition from where the story
begins who knows and it ends we don't know we've gotten this piece that allows us to formulate and
understand what's going on well enough to fucking know that this was not the beginning and this is
not the end and that this is something that will outlive all of us the idea of it these types of
people that are portrayed in this movie they're really real and they're really out there doing stuff
like this and there's nothing that apparently can be done to stop them you have this real and I'm
gonna maybe run a contest if you can count how many times I said the word real on this episode
if you a t-shirt or something but god damn it's vibrant it makes you feel alive you know the similarities
are present already but this film is a bit different than the other August underground film
and there are a great deal of similarities between the tote bag original crew and the formation
of this kind of think tank of artists and the cinema of transgression nix zed lily a lunch rich
it kern it was a collective group of artists coming off the no wave punk scene in the 1980s based
that in new york and these people were making movies that were shocking and violent to stir a
motion not for the sake of violence not for the point of being able to make something that was violent
but for the emotion behind it and with august underground tote bag hadn't fully formed yet
and it formed with the second film august underground's mortem the collective consisted of Fred Vogel
Michael Todd Schneider who many people may know better is Michael maggot crusty wiles and the one the
only there's not a day that goes by don't miss him kill joy the death metal pioneer and lead singer
of famed cult necrophesia and in the same sense of the cinema of transgression you have this
collective of artists that have come together with the most hardcore and potent ideas and of course
august underground's mortem is its own beast that i hope to someday come back into a whole episode
about but the real magic was august underground and it that that is a great word to use as i'm
trying to wrap things up here is magic because what you see on screen has been often replicated
there's a lot of people out there that are still trying to this day to do something like that
and there's a lot of people out there that just don't understand what the power was that made
august underground and it it really and it's just purity it's it's the pure ass macked of true
unholstered filmmaking and the passion to force your audience to feel something you can leave that
as an option you can try and derive things from the plot and the story and push people to feel a
certain thing but august underground doesn't push it doesn't ask it fucking forces you to feel
something and that is remarkable there are just some shots in this movie that i i don't understand
they run on for so long i mean you look at some big giant budget film something like good fellows
or casino where you've got real scenes of torture on these million million million dollar budgets
and you can't and you fade and you trick the audience and this movie august underground is filled with
trickery and it's a lot of magic and i mean that in like david copperfield real magic slight of hand
making you look at one place not registering something going on another place and then bam it all
hits you in the face and all of it is is not compromised by anything else it truly is pure artistry
and it's something that i i don't know i don't know if i'm going to say it the right way but i'll say it
how i feel in my head i think the movie demands fucking respect from that alone and if you
can't see it if you're unable to see it it might be a fault more on you or your lack of imagination that
you you can't see how fucking frightening the framing is on a movie that so many people would say
it has no story it has no plot but i'll be god damn but but that's just wrong it's all there and it's
not like you have to reach or read for it or you have to dig for it it's so available and frightening
available to you charlie manson used to say get in the now and august underground is that it's in
the now twenty some years later the movie is just as invocative just as powerful just as raw as the
the first day you heard the rumor about it the first day that you saw it and if you've never seen
the movie i will say there is maybe a precedent for it some people would word it and would tell you
that august underground is something that you hunt down and see when you've seen everything else
and i don't think that's true but i don't think for the same audience that sits down and really
likes hollowing five this movie might not be for you it it does nothing but stir emotion and it
could potentially be harmful for you but that sort of is the enticing exciting thing about this
this movie could be dangerous film should be dangerous film should make you question the reality
that you're living in film is the only genre it's the only thing it's the only entity on this world
where you are asked to leave your comfort zone to leave your reality you sit down you go to a movie
theater and you're being asked to live in this fantastical world of whatever the fuck you're watching
let's just say it's the wizard of Oz you're supposed to believe that you're going to be transported
from Kansas to this world and there's wizards and ten men and cowardly lions and flying monkeys
and for that brief time period you fucking believe in it you believe in the reality that has
prison presented to you and that itself is dangerous because you have this false sense of hope that
you can live in these film worlds but august underground brings it home to the table because it is
your world it is real that's what is dangerous about the idea of this film because there's no idea
outside of the real regular world and god damn isn't that fucking scary
august underground i would say it's a masterpiece it is eternal it is immortal
as we all will one day Fred Vogel will die but this film will outlive him and i think it will outlive
the idea of it's a found footage movie it's so much more than that is august underground a movie
well by all technical standpoints yes but i think it's more of a force than anything else a
force of transgressive cinema it's punk rock it's a statement and most importantly it can
ever be changed it can never be taken away no one can can go to Fred and say well you blah blah
you didn't do this you didn't do that all of these things and more he did and he set a precedence
for so many people he is so copied just constantly and and big budget movies i was just recently
watching the unfriended series and there's so much oh that's just some knockoff Fred Vogel
shit i said to myself while watching it and you see it you see that this influence has been used by
the mainstream but no one will ever take their hand off their mouth and go well i was influenced by
august underground but i am willing to tell you all of your favorite artists have seen august
underground are you fucking aster has seen august underground and that's a statement itself so i
don't think there is a question of where i stand i wanted to try and do this from the middle of the
road but i do have a stance i do have a side i think it is a mesmerizing motion picture and i think
the chaos and the utter disgust that is invoked through seeing this movie is quite beautiful and
it's beyond a hat off to Fred Vogel it's a masterpiece it's a genius work of directing the articulation
to create something like this is just beyond me i mean it is as intricate and beautiful as
something like the sistine chapel this massive painting that's connected on the top of this
huge holy place took months and months and months from one of the greatest artists of the world known
history to ever do but august underground is these sistine chapel of found footage movies you
can have blarewitch all you want same fucking time period one did much more to change than the other
the blarewitch project will live in infamy forever and for what it's worth i like that movie
but at the end of the day it's just a movie august underground will always haunt you when you've seen it
august underground will always lay in the back of your mind no matter how much you know the people
that made the movie aren't real killers what you see stains you you have something like the
pecipsy tapes a movie that is inherently cruel and we see this vision through the tapes of the serial
killer and no offense to that film it's like it missed the entire point it's like it it missed
every single moment of what made and captured the fear in august underground because it's not what
they do it's not what they do for fun it's not the case of the story it's those brash moments just
like Henry Portrait of a serial killer that you see on screen that was for their entertainment
this reflection in the mind's eye of hate and violence it's art maybe
before we get out of here i would like to talk about the blue ray release of this movie
august underground beforehand has never had a widespread release it's always been something of lore
many people have been forced to bootleg their own copies of it but now finally you can own it yourself
on high definition blue ray from unearthed films a wonderful company headed by steve bairou who
takes the utmost care and giving you some of the most twisted and obscene films of all time and much much more
when it comes to totag historically all their disc releases have been jammed packed with special
features amazing disc releases multiple commentaries everything that you could ever want out of a
release and the unearthed blue ray of this film is the exact same thing it is loaded to discs heavy
special features multiple commentaries you even have a commentary from the killer a commentary with
the great art editor from story board to screen feature ads it's it's just amazing unearthed films
takes an incredible great amount of time and detail into the production of their discs and the
content that they are putting out they go to the filmmakers they make sure that every single thing that
that filmmaker that artist wanted to be seen wanted to show is available on screen I highly recommend
finding it sometimes on episodes like this we would have a warning that would let you know that
you're going to hear about some awful stuff and it could be triggering but I just don't even see
a place for it with august underground some people would really tell you that this is what you need
to watch to push it you like horror movies will you need to see something else I won't say that
to you and I would never encourage you to see something that could potentially damage your cause
problems august underground is not for the week of heart it is not for the faint it is certainly not
for the easily offended but this piece of art is a crucial statement only not only for the politics and
time of the early two thousands but even now august underground is immortal Fred Vogel has created a
piece of art that will outlive its own era it will outlive its own legacy and it will be a permanent
piece of horror that is handed down from generation to generation just like movies like the Beyond
Cannibal Halley Cost Handring Portrait of a serial killer and even snuff by the Finlay and throw
pothagas it is the stuff of legends and I really wanted to talk about this movie on death by DVD
for years and it's funny you know I there's so much more I want to say I don't know if I
formatively got out all my statements and everything I wanted to say about this movie but I think enough
is present I think I got enough on tape that I'll be happy with it unearthedfilms.com find yourself
a copy of august underground august underground's mortem and coming soon august underground penance you
can also go to totag.biz and you can get a copy of august underground signed by Fred Vogel and a
poster signed by Fred Vogel I don't know if the original movie is still offered but as of now
October 2023 the recording of this episode mortem just went up for sale December you've got
penance and that's gonna bring us to the end of this episode I'd like to stick around and talk
more about Fred Vogel and some of his other work but I I want this to reel in your head let's not
get off subject august underground is such a thing of lore and it's so exciting for me to talk
about it that I just have so much I want to say but I find myself coming back to the same statement
over and over and over again and it is the emotion that is present within this film and the structure
of this film and from the very first scene to the last if you think this is just some chaotic
jumble of footage shoved together I implore you please take another look at what you're watching
I just struggle to even come up with names of of famous directors of art and score sezy you know
famous directors that have been able to accomplish what Fred accomplished with this singular
first film and so much of it just comes down to the structure and how this movie was shot I cannot
tip my hat and say enough about Fred Vogel and the ever mysterious Alan Peters gentleman you guys made
a perfect piece of art thank you and thank you for listening to death by DVD you know you can
support this show in the future of it just head to www.patreon.com/deathbydvd where you can find audio
and video episodes never heard before behind the scenes episodes who knows maybe I'll even jump
over there and talk a little bit more about August Underground all on patreon that's it the shows
over the astray is full and the bottle is empty I am Harry scouts Sullivan thank you for choosing
death until next time pleasant tomorrow's death by DVD is recorded in front of a dead
studio audience portions of today's programming have been mechanically reproduced
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