Plague Town
June 2009 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: Blu-ray	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Dark Sky Pictures has been responsible for issuing, reissuing, and discovering cult horror films. Apparently they helped in producing this one as well, as money spent by MPI, which distributes Dark Sky, is mentioned in one of the commentaries. Plague Town had no theatrical release that I can discover; it was released directly to home video in the middle of May, in both DVD and Blu-ray editions.

It’s one of those rare gems that deals with a topic that is often taboo: homicidal kids. Dark Sky has already visited those dark waters before in a Spanish indie film called Who Can Kill a Child?, which I enthusiastically reviewed a year or so ago. The child monsters in that little opus were caused by a cloud of cosmic dust settling on their small island. We don’t know the reason that the children in this movie, most of them teenagers, are psycho, but we do find out that the village has taken a rather strange mad-scientist approach to correcting the problem. A preface set 14 years in the past shows a woman having a child when a priest comes in and wants to shoot it (at this point we’re not shown the infant). The father kills the priest instead, saying something about "It’s not their fault."

In the present, Doctor Jerry Monohan (David Lombard) is on a vacation back to Ireland with his new wife Annette (Lindsay Goranson) and squabbling daughters Molly (Josslyn DeCrosta) and Jessica (Erica Rhodes). Jessica has dragged along her new Brit boyfriend Robin (James Warke), and the two seem bent on making the trip a trial of endurance for everyone else. They come upon a place that is green on green with lush meadows and trees, little knowing it’s the site of the town that was the setting for our grisly little opening scene. They hear lots of strange sounds, meet some very odd people, and start getting killed off. The attacks and deaths are all pretty grisly, but in a genre manner that will delight fans.

The acting is not the most polished in the world, and the script is not going to win any awards. Where this movie succeeds is in creating a threatening and ominous feeling. The soundtrack aids considerably with eerie, sometimes grating sounds, while the Foley effects place little sounds, like children crying, around the soundfield. It all serves to keep us on edge. All of the audio is very vividly reproduced on the Blu-ray, including some very low bass that should really get your subwoofer going. Unusual for low budget, the movie was shot on film, and that is probably why it looks as good as it does. Contrast is good, though colors are a little under-saturated, which is probably deliberate, and detail is just fine. It’s a very good picture without calling attention to itself as a singularly excellent example of HD.

The extras include a commentary track by director David Gregory and producer Derek Curl. Anecdotes abound, as they have a fine time rehashing the difficulties that presented themselves at every new shooting location. A production featurette lets one get to know Gregory and Curl better as well as allowing many of the cast members to speak out on their roles and casting. There’s a separate featurette in which film-music composer Mark Raskin talks about scoring the movie. Then there’s a trailer and a complete short, and an apparently early movie by Gregory called Scathed. It's a story about a guy and a gal at a bar. She’s mysterious, and bit by bit she tells her strange story. It’s slight, but it has a memorable twist ending. Scathed is not presented in HD and will appear windowboxed on HD screens.

I liked Plague Town. It’s a fine tribute to earlier drive-in films, yet it offers a new twist or two on time-honored setups. The Blu-ray presentation is excellent, and there’s a fuller set of extras than you might expect for such a low-budget film. Keep up the good work and keep on scaring us, Dark Sky!

• Go Back