COLLECTOR'S CRYPT - HEARTLAND OF DARKNESS (VISUAL VENGEANCE BLU RAY)
How many times have been drawn to a film because it was “hard to find”? For most genre fans, discovery is an essential part of the film fanatic journey. Before the internet was so ubiquitous, folks like myself relied on magazines like Fangoria, very early discussion boards and chat interfaces like IRC, and maybe even a local comic/oddity shop that had someone there who dabbled in the macabre. The most common form of discovery was the video store, especially when you visited one that you didn’t frequent. More often than not they would carry about 70% of the titles big chains would, but it’s that other 30% where you would find genre diamonds in the rough. Hell, I found out about SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT from a video store I was visiting on vacation. The allure of hard-to-find films has become less mysterious over the past 10 years with the rise of boutique film labels and the democratization of content distribution via YouTube, finding them hard-to-find isn’t as hard as it used to be. Often times we put hard-to-find films on a pedestal and judge them with some positive bias because the film is for all intents and purposes, new to most who see it. HEARTLAND OF DARKNESS, one of the recent releases from VISUAL VENGEANCE, is one of the said: “hard to find films”. In fact, this is the first time the full film has ever been released in any format. So is HEARTLAND OF DARKNESS a hidden gem in a sea of content, or is this kind of footage best forgotten and not found?
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
In the small town of Copperton, Ohio, Paul Henson, a former big-city journalist, buys a small local newspaper. He quickly falls into a wide-reaching conspiracy of ritualistic murder and cult mind control when he discovers that the entire town may be under the spell of a Satanic reverend and his flock. As the clues and corpses pile up, Henson and his family are thrust into a life-or-death struggle to expose the truth and stop the demonic cabal's reign of evil.
HOW IS IT?
I’ve heaped lots of praise on VISUAL VENGEANCE this year, for a good reason. They have been behind some of the best physical media releases of the year with SOV genre films that defy good taste, big budgets, and often coherence while all the while being highly entertaining, for the most part. I had hoped that the previous BLOOD OF THE CHUPACABRAS release (read the review) would be an outlier in terms of narrative quality, but sadly I’m here to say that HEARTLAND OF DARKNESS falls victim to the same problems that Chuapacabras did, a simple story that takes way too long to tell with very little happening, least of all any horror.
HEARTLAND OF DARKNESS is as simple as it gets when it comes to plotting. A guy moves to a small town where he discovers that the town is run by a power-hungry satanic priest. As exciting as the back half of that sounds, it isn’t until the last 10 minutes that we get anything close to what that summary promises, and that’s a low bar to hit. For the majority of the 104-minute runtime, we watch our main character do the most pedestrian of investigations into the local cult. If the purpose of this movie was to provide a more procedural perspective, it fails in that it doesn’t make any part of the procedure itself look at all worthwhile. This makes HEARTLAND OF DARKNESS a real slog to get through because this would be much better as a 30-minute short or episode versus a feature-length movie.
The infamy of this movie is that it was never actually released officially until now and that it has Linea Quigley in it. While Quigley has earned her spot on the Mount Rushmore of Horror Icons, her draw here is somewhat disingenuous. She’s in the film for a handful of moments, most of which could be edited out, and her signature topless scene is more awkward and arousing. If there is one thing that I find inexcusable in a horror movie it is to be boring. Even the worst-made movies can provide a sliver of entertainment, but HEARTLAND OF DARKNESS offers very little. Aside from the last 10 minutes, really just one scene involving a cross, the film is largely bloodless and action-less. There are a couple of times when we get our gang of satanic cultists out and about, but the camera cuts away before the gore and we don’t even get aftermath shots most of the time. One could argue that this is a budgetary limitation, but considering that VISUAL VENGEANCE has released films made with far less that are exponentially more engaging, I think it’s just a boring script at the end of the day that drags this whole production down.
HOW DOES IT LOOK?
While most of VISUAL VENGEANCE’s releases have been shot on video, HEARTLAND OF DARKNESS was shot on 16mm film. Interestingly enough, and as these things go, since the film took so long to finish and was transferred between facilities across North America there was some damage to the prints. Thankfully, VISUAL VENGEANCE present HEARTLAND OF DARKNESS in the best possible way. While it still looks its age, it doesn’t have all the hallmarks of aging film you’d expect to see. The film is presented in a fullscreen ratio of 1.33:1 and you can see screenshots from the disc throughout the review and below:
HOW DOES IT SOUND?
Once again, nothing too special here as HEARTLAND OF DARKNESS is given a 2.0 Stereo soundtrack, and as always special recognition for including English subtitles on this release as well as the other VISUAL VENGEANCE films. The sound is serviceable considering there are a handful of action scenes and the real standout is the backing score which is better than your average late 80s synthy midi sounds.
ANYTHING SPECIAL?
While I can’t consider myself a fan of HEARTLAND OF DARKENSS, for those that do there is plenty to enjoy on this release. The standout feature, and first one I watched, was Deeper Into Darkness. This 40-minute documentary is a series of single-camera interviews with members of the film’s cast and crew talking about how the film came to be, and all the troubles it ran into along the way. In spite of my dislike of the film, one can’t help but be happy to see all of these people who worked on the movie talking about how happy they are that it finally made it out of post-production and into completion. The biggest takeaway from their story is to make sure you budget and plan as best as you can. In the case of HEARTLAND OF DARKNESS, when the money dried up it wasn’t easy finding another well, and there is only so long you can dedicate to solely searching before moving on.
The other feature I took a look at was a short 5-minute interview done back in 2021 with LINEA QUIGLEY as she reflects on her experience with the film. A lot of time has passed, so it’s understandable that she doesn’t offer too many nuanced details, more of a summary of her experience. She does divulge a pretty funny story about her fear of mice, and it is so nice to see that she remembers the experience fondly. The crew seemed delighted and honored to have her, and were impressed by how down to earth she was and void of ego. For a look at the rest of the special features for this release please see them below:
BONUS MATERIALS
All region Blu-ray
New director-supervised SD master from original tape and film elements
Deeper Into the Darkness: New 40-minute BTS documentary
Commentary with director Eric Swelstad, star Nick Baldasare, cinematographer Scott Spears and composer Jay Woelfel
Commentary with Tony Strauss of Weng’s Chop magazine
Linnea Quigley Remembers: new interview
Archival Linnea Quigley 'Close Up' TV interview
Original TV spots, trailers and behind-the-scenes footage
Complete original Fallen Angels 1990 workprint
Fallen Angels 1990 workprint commentary track with director Eric Swelstad
The Making of Fallen Angels - vintage cast & crew newscast interviews
Blood Church original distributor promotional video
Behind-the-scenes image gallery
Six-page liner notes
Fantasm Magazine excerpt Director spotlight
Limited Edition Heartland of Darkness Prayer Cloth - FIRST PRESSING ONLY
Limited Edition slipcase - FIRST PRESSING ONLY
Collectible Linnea Quigley folded mini-poster
Stick your own VHS sticker set
Reversible sleeve featuring original Blood Church promotional art
Visual Vengeance trailers
Optional English subtitles
LAST RITES
HEARTLAND OF DARKNESS is unfortunately a bit of a let down from a usually consistent VISUAL VENGEANCE. A meandering story that runs overlong coupled with sparse action scenes make this “lost Linea Quigley” film something only die-hard Quigley fans are likely to get much out of. For the rest of you collectors, it is probably best to save those dollars for something more diabolical.
THE GORY DETAILS
Thank you as always to the fine fiends at MVD ENTERTAINMENT for providing Collector’s Crypt with a review copy, and you can purchase HEARTLAND OF DARKNESS now via MVD DIRECT!
Stay up to date with “The Dark Side Of Pop Culture” by following MacabreDaily on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
