darkness

In 1993, a film was released in its rawest form, originally thought to never really see the light of day. The underground fans raved over the film and throughout the years it had become a cult classic, much to the director’s surprise. For years the film was released, a chopped mess, in many different countries (on DVD and VHS), all copies originating from the same grainy, poorly put together, original video tape. Now, after 13 years of waiting, 13^th Dream Entertainment and Evolution Digital Studios, dug the underground up from the grave and released it with pure fury. From director Leif Jonker.

Darkness: The Vampire Version

Young Tobe has run into quite a predicament. His quiet little suburban Kansas town has been over run by children of the night. Liven; our lead vampire and his legion of suck heads are quickly spreading their blood thirst throughout the entire town. These vampires seem to have a crazed urge to tear everyone in their path to bloody shreds.

After Losing his family to the disease, as well as their sensitivity to sun light, Tobe decides to take matters into his own hands and find out the four big questions, who? What? Where? And why?

As he begins his heroic search, he runs across a few other young folks in search of the same answers. As a group they travel, killing off blood suckers on their hunt for the main source, the big cheese, Liven!

They realize at one point that this isn’t the first time the blood craze had been spilled upon a town, as Tobe is from a different town from the others. Livens seemed objective is to go through everywhere he can to create bloodlust and carnage. Tobes friends are now being picked off one by one, leaving him and a young girl named Kelly, to fend for themselves on their quest for Liven.

Leif Jonker, for the extreme low budget he had and using college students and friends, pulled off this feature length splat fest, beautifully! The gallons upon gallons of blood, sprayed, spilled and spread in this film is to me, absolutely Gorious (or glorious for those of you, not down with the lingo). The climax of Darkness is quite possibly one of the goriest and most blood filled sequences in film history.

Leif has truly built an independent goldmine with this one. I definitely look forward to future projects from him. There is word (and a trailer) for another Jonker film entitled Demon Machine. I pray it doesn’t take too long for its release, if it has one (fingers crossed).

Ratings:

The story line and screenplay get my rating of a 7. It most def. could have had a bit of a better plot and more of the head vampire (even being a weak character). In all reality, in the film none of our heroes ever sees him (except one who dies) and there is no mention of his actual existence, they just assume. But hey, who cares? Cool flick!

The acting in the film gets a 7. I give this rating because to be quite honest, these were kids without a clue. None of them were real actors. For that matter, I must say that for what they had and what they did, I give them lots of credit. Though I must say that the character Liven, played by Randall Aviks, was probably the weakest character of the entire cast, then again, there is not enough of him to ruin the film.

The score for the film gets a 5. Through the re-editing and adding of a new score, Leif, or whoever chose the band for the re-scoring, made a horrible, horrible mistake by hiring Apostasy. I think a band of quadriplegics could have played better metal from these guys. I mean seriously, “I’ve heard better singing from a mongoose with throat cancer” (line taken from Meet the Feebles). The original, haunting score of the film was fine the way it was. If not for this band, the score would’ve been much higher, probably like a 7 or 8.

Now we come to the good stuff! When it comes down to the splatter factor, Darkness: The vampire version gets my rating of a 10. For a shoe string budget, this film had some fucking gruesome, outstanding gore FX. Leif and his friends went all out and by far made this picture one of the bloodiest things ever put to celluloid.

Over all Darkness: the Vampire version gets my rating of an 8. This is an absolute must own for any gore whore! All I can say now is, go get this film! If you value your love of underground, independent and extremely gory cinema, do it! Well… what the fuck are you waiting for, GO… NOW!!!