Tag Archives: Horror

Making Polterheist, an Interview with Dave Gilbank

17 Feb

Director Dave Gilbank.jpgBy Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

  • Extended cut and reprinted from
    Absolute Underground Magazine with permission.
  • Movie Available on Amazon UK

How can anyone go wrong with a crime heist type film with supernatural elements mixed in? When the budget is tight, and you are dealing with a possession scenario, it has all the makings of going either way. In what I found when watching this indie work is a huge respect and perfect use of the tropes commonly found in a ghost story.

Quite often, it is not about the scares that can take place. Instead, it’s with how unfinished business gets resolved, especially by those whose life gets cut short. In this hilarious mashup of drama and comedy, I was certainly hooked. This mini-review serves as my intro to Dave Gilbank, the writer-director of Polterheist. He’s been making independent works for about 15 years, and is now based in the UK–the place to experience many a classic haunt due to its millennia-old history–and I had to ask how this story came about.

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Netherworld Collectables Celebrates 6 Years This Weekend!

15 Feb

Darryl Gasbarri

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

The Lower Mainland is not home to many unique collectables shops. For horror entertainment, Netherworld Collectables in New Westminster, BC is the place to go. On Saturday, Feb 16th, the shop will be celebrating its 6th anniversary! Confirmed are appearances from actress Tristan Risk, burlesque dancer Jacqueline Breakwell, and actor Mike Kovac (to name a few) and many other surprises to come.

Darryl Gasbarri is a chap who knows his material. He’s been a fan of the genre since the 80s. To know its origins which includes Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and the influence German Expressionism had on the Universal Monsters from the Golden Age of Hollywood is just as important, but it’s his fondness for lower budget B movies of other eras that keeps him going. He recalls the days where he and his pals would meet to watch anything they could find at the video rental shop. To reflect those times, his store carries an eclectic stock of material from this era, which includes light up VHS tapes! (for display only) But the list does not end there. There are movie props hanging from the ceiling and a human spine in the middle of the store. A morgue this place is not, but a curious shop with taxidermy items (supplied by Cranium of Curiosities) it can easily become!

“When I got older and I was getting more into the scene, I found it was very difficult to get things that I wanted to own,” laughed Gasbarri.

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Soldier of War, A Movie Review

1 Feb

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

* Spoiler Alert

Arriving on VOD March 3rd with a DVD following on April 9th

Soldier of War may seem like a misleading title, but this horror crime drama has a lot of terrific layers of backstory to examine. Anyone wondering about what the world might be like should the Nazis successfully invade England or curious about the experiments going on by either side to turn the tide of war is encouraged to check out this film written by John and Peter Adams.

This film is not simply about what gets unleashed from a lost military bunker in Shafton Forest. When the kills come swiftly, I was not disappointed at the Jason Voorhees wannabe. This character was military, and a human. Just what he is now … that’s hard to say when considering how he gets defeated.
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Dark Horse Comics to Give Berserk a Deluxe Treatment, A Review

26 Jan

Preorder on Amazon

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Dark Horse Comics continued releasing of translated manga has spanned decades, and most of my collection owes a huge debt to them. Coming on February 27, 2019 will be a deluxe hardcover release of Kentaro Miura’s Berserk manga (see image for preorder link) and just when I thought all the He-Man or Legend of Zelda hardcovers were massive, this compendium is a couple of pages more. Plus, it’s a start to a massive commitment to a series which began publication around 1988.

Whether this company’s decision to print them all is up in the air, to read the story (and look at all the blood and carnage contained within) in all its visceral glory, has me interested. The mature and adult content in this series is not for everyone, but I tend to ignore the hentai aspects of the world and focus on the hero’s journey.  In how it differs greatly from the 90s anime–which introduced me to Guts, a lone mercenary, out to do what he feels right–I had to explore. Like the Berserkers of Nordic lore, the rage that wells within gives him supernatural powers; this premise is enough to entice me to read.

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