Synopsis
The Night HE Came to Collect His Own
In a 1930s small town rife with lust, corruption and sin, a mysterious figure wielding a scythe arrives to cut an unholy swath of murder, madness, and moralizing that may lead straight to Hell.
1981 Directed by Charles Reynolds
In a 1930s small town rife with lust, corruption and sin, a mysterious figure wielding a scythe arrives to cut an unholy swath of murder, madness, and moralizing that may lead straight to Hell.
William T. Hicks Harris Bloodworth Brownlee Davis Careyanne Sutton Toby Wallace Helene Tryon Carlton Bortell Larry Sprinkle Richard Dedmon Elijah Christopher Perry Charles Reynolds Denise Myers William Gillespie Ann Powers Hanns Manship Clara Lowry Bart Heavner Susan Bloodworth Deborah Bloodworth Inga Dennis Pat Hall Leonora Forrister Jonas Bridges Greg Carswell Stan Hardin Mary McNeil Terri McCoy Darley Putnam Sid Rancer Show All…
Stormbringer, La guadaña, Судный день, 死亡使者
I appreciate what this was going for and that poster aces but oof… what a total snoozer.
A town full of shitty people being shitty to each other, set at a snail's pace of storytelling as it meanders to a pro-god message at the end. The Hellish visuals of the climax were fun but damn if it wasn't a struggle to get there. Not one of the better weird Severin releases.
Also, did they really kill the goat???
“You’d do that? You’d put me and your mother out to pasture in the county home? You’d do that just to become a lounge lizard?”
Another nostalgic video store title I remember seeing on the shelf. Before the internet, magazines and books were the only source of reference one had, and curiously enough A Day of Judgment was never listed anywhere. That was highly suspect since I had most of the reputable underground literature that covered pretty much every title around to some extent. I remember the white bordered clamshell (may have been Thorn/EMI). Picking up the box and putting it back and eventually renting something else to drop my hard earned allowance money on. Life went on, and I…
***This was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of writers and actors like those currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn't exist.***
"Take this.... try to get some sleep" - Charlie,
- ADG: boxd.it/mbHtc
Interesting ideas and an aesthetic that I appreciate but unfortunately most of this was just too slow and boring for me.
This one's really odd. Severin describes this as a slasher but what I've just seen is a slow and talky religious morality tale with very little slashing. It starts off promising, but the vast majority of it doesn’t interest me as much as I wanted. It's headache-inducing by how horribly edited and tonally inconsistent it is. It feels like two separate ideas merged into one, but they don't quite merge seamlessly and the line between the two is very obvious, though I really appreciate the attempt to shake things up. I really dig the reaper parts though, but feel it could’ve been more morbid. The ending is unexpectedly cheesy and I honestly quite like it. Overall, it's not exactly good but probably worth a watch if only once just for its oddities.
A town of people do dastardly things and pay for it.
Most interesting when you consider this was originally meant to be a Christian-centric production before turning into a slasher and was made by the legendary regional producer Earl Owensby. The final result feels like an adaptation of a paperback from hell with random chunks ripped out. It's an episodic series of people doing light EC COMICS style villain stuff and then a guy with a scythe shows up for ten seconds and they go "ARGHHHHH! NOOOOO!" as coloured lights flash. The period setting is neat, but that's about it.
"I bet you look real good in black"
"Christian propaganda slasher" sounds so cool but we all know it's going to suck and it does. Charles Reynolds tried to disguise a period piece as a slasher fiasco and failed tremendously. He also seemed to think the horror community wanted to sit around and watch a 1930s town discuss banking issues and lame moral dilemmas for 97 minutes? Fucking miserable as hell. Makes Scream (1981) look like a masterpiece.
A religious lecture disguised as a slasher movie. It's even more of a slog to get through than it sounds as we follow a collection of down on their luck characters being miserable to each other in the 1920s with a heavy emphasis on the ins and outs of their banking and loan situations. Occasionally, a man in black will appear to take out one of the sinners. I won't spoil the terrible twist ending (please don't watch this movie though) but the moral of the story is to go to church and you won't get murdered (or something like that). The End. Cue text scrawl of the ten commandments. No, seriously, this thing literally ends with the ten commandments on screen prior to the credits.
Sinners, repent! As the day of boredom hath cometh!
A film originally meant to play at churches, spiced-up just a little to become more of an EC comics style high horse moral tale of "horror", produced by Earl Owensby who had to be talked into using swear words in his movies as it's a sin to depict strong levels of cursing, nudity and violence.
So yeah, there's a skeleton idea in here that has the potential to be interesting. An almost empty church on sundays has the pastor quitting the congregation and with him leaving, a grim reaper-style figure rides into town by carriage to reap the souls of the many sinners who have lost their ways. It's almost a…
A slasher-esque horror flick set in the 1920’s is so unique a premise that I was instantly hooked when Severin announced this movie among their September releases. What you get is more than just a slasher though, which is both a good and a bad thing. Stephen Thrower compares the film favorably with EC Comics, and I think it’s spot-on. The morality lesson and ironic twists that occasionally crop up do feel rather like Creepshow, even more so when scenes are bathed in red and blue light. This came out a year before Creepshow though, so points for being ahead of the curve.
Where the movie struggles, however, is in its structuring. It’s like an anthology, with many different plots going…
I like the idea behind this film, but the low budget and bad acting really take its toll.