Brimstone Incorporated Review from Buffalora Entertainment Group!
It really amuses me sometimes reading what people think on IMDb. Mid-way through watching Brimstone Incorporated by James L. Edwards, creator of Her Name Was Christa (see review for Her Name Was Christa here), I brought up its page on that vast library of film and happened to see what folks had been writing. Seriously do some people take films way too seriously when it’s obvious the subject matter isn’t meant to be taken as such?
Someone is saying how the stories in this anthology “hardly made sense” and are “farfetched”. Oh yeah, I mean, the wraparound is all about new arrivals being interviewed before descending into Hell. Not too farfetched at all (said out loud with a sarcastic voice).
Brimstone Incorporated is a fun and sometimes trashy run around the place low budget late night cheesefest. It fits into the same cupboard of grin-inducing nightmares as Todd Sheets’ flicks.
James totally floored me recently when I reviewed Her Name Was Christa, which intelligently approached the subject of necrophilia slow burning and building up its characters. Beholding the comic style cover of Brimstone Incorporated, I figured this wasn’t going to be a serious study at all but something far more light-hearted.
Most of the cast are back in full force. For instance, ‘80s schoolgirl lookalike from Her Name Was Christa, Drew Fortier, plays Gregory, of Tempter and Associates. Gregory has the job of sitting down and interviewing all new arrivals at the gateway to Hell. He needs to assess which level they belong.
First interview happens to be James L. Edwards himself as Richard. He proclaims his innocence. When asked if he had ever killed anybody, he’s like “No!” and is the same to many questions. Gregory decides to flashback him to his final night on Earth. Our beginning tale is called First Date.
Richard meets Renee, a lady he’s been chatting with online. She’s a heavily religious woman with a quick temper. As the date continues at the mom & pop diner they’ve chosen, she gets irate over the waitress, over him, over everything. Until she reacts to what she sees as flirting with an all-out massacre…
Shianne Day who played Christa, is Renee, another totally different level of character. In fact, she’s two this time. Kind of like listening to Siouxsie Sioux and her gang of Banshees. The music begins ominous, similar to First Date when things are okay, but you sense something is not quite right, then Siouxie whispers or hums, building up to a sudden scream! Once again Shianne dominates proceedings. She is totally in charge of this segment. As are the effects. They are not too over-the-top and constant, just here and there to give us some splatter when required and very effective.
Gregory’s next client is Justin, a scrawny kid who is rather bewildered by it all. He simply does not know why he’s there, or how he got there. His story, Mama’s Boy, starts with Justin asking his girlfriend, Iris, to meet at the barn they know so well. When she arrives, her throat is cut by a cloaked figure. Soon afterwards he arrives, looking for her. As he walks through the darkened barn, we see her corpse dragged away behind him.
Justin then takes his latest girlfriend, Brittany home to meet his Mama. Brittany is played by another Christa cast member, Kaylee Williams who has been in a ton of underground movies like Porkchop 2 and 3, plus The Leaf Blower Massacre 2. Random titles, sure, yet there’s enough of her around the place. As a matter of fact, Tim Hale (Justin) has a choc full CV. A fair few are short flicks however but again his face is spread out the genre nicely.
Back to the story. The introductions with Mama go fine, but when she closes the front door after them, there’s a darkness across her features…
Mama’s Boy is more sinister, less light-hearted and brooding. Brittany asks a really stupid question and the complete mood transforms in an instance. Again, this is a calculated slow burner and you just know something is going to happen and it’ll be messy.
“Over the years I’ve seen a parade of young women walking through that door, fighting for my son’s attention” Mama says to Brittany as we see images of dead teens and students. “Do you know what all of them had in common? They all disappeared…” The plot deepens as Mama opens up about her past, and more specifically, the death of Justin’s father.
Mama’s Boy has a neat twist ending but then ‘the twist’ chatters and goes on a little bit too long. Everything could have been said in less than a minute at this stage, saving us long boring spoon-fed dialogue (if you watch it you’ll understand, I don’t want to give out a big spoiler).
Story three is called Skunk Weed and is directed by Brad Twigg of WrestleMassacre plus many others. We meet Bennie, a guy who creates advert jingles. Speaking on the phone to his brother, he’s pleasantly surprised by a delivery he received days ago from John. Hidden within a coffee carton is a bag of weed. It transpires than Bennie hasn’t left his apartment for twelve-years due to agoraphobia. He smokes some of the weed, thus begins a wild set of hallucinations including a stop motion animated creature, blood-filled eggs, and much more.
This is a more contained gruesome entry. Rick Jermain plays Bennie and he is alone throughout other than speaking on the phone with his brother. We watch the mental decline of a man faced by horrors in his mind. This is something like Domiziano Cristopharo and his entourage of maniacs would come up with. Skunk Weed is fascinating and captivating. The effects are suitably macabre and very moist.
Since I mentioned the make-up effects in the first segment as well, I failed to repeat how absolutely excellent it all is throughout. There isn’t a huge robust tower of prosthetics or whatever, but it’s blood, stabs, gunshots, that sort of thing, lingering on the crimson aftermaths. Ron George, the central man behind it all is a workhorse within the industry, chalking up over 200 credits. He’s worked in films such as Flowers 02, Murder Clown 1985, way too many to list and example in appreciation of the scale here, and a handful of Mushroomhead music videos too. Cool. Ron performed wonders on everything but the final chapter. For that we have a large team consisted of Daniel (WrestleMassacre) Brooks and Darren (The Sideling Hill) Ricci, among others.
Brimstone Incorporated feels a little disjointed, padded, and forced now and then but is still very watchable. James has an eye for detail and likes to homage classic horrors, as illustrated via t-shirts (and the Fulci Zombi mask in his previous flick) plus a carefully shot Giallo series of slaughters in Mama’s Boy.
For an evening’s entertainment, picking a horror romp like this is worth it, but have a nice clear mind, sit back, and don’t take it all too seriously.
Directed by: James L. Edwards, Brad Twigg
Written by: James L. Edwards, Jonathan Moody
Produced by: James L. Edwards, Brad Twigg, Gordon Cameron
Cinematography by: Gordon Cameron, Juan Sanchez
Editing by: Brad Twigg, Gordon Cameron, George Milnes II
Music by: Michael Bastas, Matthew Sturgeon
Special Effects by: Ron George, Mathew Amos, Bethany Shana, Daniel Brooks, Darren Ricci
Cast: Drew Fortier, Geoff Burkman, Tim Hale, Kaylee Williams, James L. Edwards, Shianne Daye, Rick Jermain, Shari Rose, Sasha Graham.
Year: 2021
Country: USA
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 1h 37min
Studio: Fuzzy Monkey Films
Distributor: Buffalora Entertainment Group
