Fade to Black, Episode 4 (1999)

Written and directed by Steve Sherrick and Jason Santo
Starring
- April Cresey
- Dan Gorgone
- Jason Santo
- Joe Vaccariello
- Roman Berman

Anyone else remember the first few issues of Conan the Barbarian, waaay back in the early ’70s? It was kind of an experiment (back before licensing characters from other media became de rigeur in the comics industry), so the powers-that-be handed the art chores off to a relatively unknown name, a young artist with an unusual style named Barry Windsor-Smith (known simply as Barry Smith in the beginning). His first issues were engaging, but his art had almost an offputting quality; it was unusual and attention-grabbing, but somewhat unpracticed. Over the next handful of issues, however, his art improved dramatically, until by six issues into the series it almost seemed a different hand had drawn the pictures. There was still that exotic quality which had probably garnered Windsor-Smith the assignment in the first place, but the added practice had added both a solidity and confidence to his figure-drawing skills and a fluidity to his rendition of action and motion.

The point of all of that? Well, if you’ve got a memory for such things, you recall that a few months ago I reviewed Fade to Black Episode 3, a public-access short film compilation by Random Foo Pictures. I’ve just finally gotten to the next Fade to Black screener in my stack, Episode 4, and the steady improvement between these two installments is just as visible as in the Windsor-Smith Conan issues.

Worlds Apart (1999)

The lion’s share of the compilation, about 45 minutes, is taken up with this film, which is itself a mark of increasing confidence on the part of our filmmakers; it frees the film from being a mere vignette and give it as much time to develop as, say, your average TV drama episode (minus commercials).

“Yeah, like I’ve really got any idea what I’m doing, dinking around here…”

We begin with some expository dialogue between young marrieds Susan and Rick (April Cresey and Dan Gorgone). I’ll just pause right here to state a niggling annoyance: It took me forever to find out what these characters’ names were. Hell, I had to wait to find out Jason Santo’s character’s name until the closing credits. But I digress. Here’s what the exposition lets us know: He’s been working the graveyard shift for the last six months in order to finance the recent purchase of their older starter home. Yeah, it’s been hard on them, but they’re doing okay. in fact, tonight, they’re planning on getting, uh, “re-acquainted”; thus they don’t let things like the weird brownout-like flickering of the kitchen lights distract them for long.

Later that night, though, Susan dwells on it, finding it unsettling — a feeling compounded by seeing a stranger’s face for a fleeting moment looking over her shoulder in the bathroom mirror. (I tell you, mirrored doors on bathroom cabinets have been a boon to filmmakers from day one.) She keeps it to herself, for fear of marital ribbing.

“Wow — sometimes I forget just how short you are.”

A few other oddities go on, though, mostly centering on the basement — Rick almost gets electrocuted (yeah, like a do-it-yourselfer needs a paranormal reason for that), and Susan hears strange noises when she’s there alone one night. When she investigates, she hears a voice whisper her name — and she wakes up in the guest bedroom when Rick comes home. Yeah, she asks Rick all casual-like the next day if they can ge a dog. Good idea.

But before they can procure a pooch, Susan has a closer encounter with the spook Lance (Jason Santo), in what she assumes to be a dream; he asks for her help to understand something that happened to him years ago. And he expresses, shall we say, interest in her.

It doesn’t seem like a dream to Rick, though, when he comes home from work and catches a quick, surreal glimpse of Susan and Lance lying together on the guest bed.

“Just for one winter vacation, could we PLEASE go someplace nice, like Acapulco?”

And here’s where the movie really shines. Because the central conflict here isn’t between the tenants and the ghostly inhabitant, it’s between themselves — neither of them has been completely open with the other about “happenings,” in an effort to spare the other worry, and now that the spectre (so to speak) of infidelity has been introduced, the ghostly presence starts to come between them.

There are many things to recommend this one. The loose and easy manner of interaction between Rick and Susan rings completely true of a couple who’ve been married just a few years — still young marrieds, though not newlyweds. In fact, it’s their onscreen chemistry that really anchors the whole movie (just as a lack of chemistry in their relationship would completely sink it). In fact, if I found out that the actors were actually married it wouldn’t surprise me.

There are also several technical gimmicks that work nicely here. In addition to effective editing all around, there’s a scene in which Rick’s parapsychologist friend Larry (we all have one of those, right?) comes over with the requisite Ghostbustery equipment; he and Rick get stranded in the basement when the light mysteriously goes out — and the only illumination is the strobing red indicator on Larry’s equipment. It’s a simple device, but very effective.

At least he didn’t get hit in the, uh, bullseye.

Given that quietly supernatural thrillers are a big-deal genre these days, my advice to the Random Foo boys on this one:

1) Expand this story into a full-length script.

2) Buy a copy of Hall of Mirrors (the best-looking movie for the least bucks I’ve ever seen) for inspiration.

3) Take the cobbled-from-other-movies soundtrack to a starving musician and say, “Compose us an original score like these.”

4) Re-shoot this as a feature film and get it into Blockbuster.

Wordbox (1996)

Included mostly to fill out the running time, this short actually predates the whole Random Foo phenomenon. Shot in black-and-white 16mm that’s played up for that whole noir effect, it centers on some desperate individuals who pay $5000 apiece to learn their one-word fortunes from an mysterious artifact called the Wordbox. Unfortunately, as we all know, predictions of the future are notoriously hard to interpret correctly…

“I mean sure, it’s nice, but I can get one just like it at SuperTarget for $8.95.”

Too short for real story development, this short does show that putting a 16mm camera in the hands of at least some of the Random Foo crew would not be a waste of resources.