Red Christmas
Blu-ray
Written and Directed by Craig Anderson
Starring Dee Wallace, Sam Campbell, Gerard O’Dwyer, Janis McGavin, Sarah Bishop, David Collins
Artsploitation Films
Unrated | 82 Minutes
Release Date: October 17, 2017

If you were scrolling through Amazon Prime’s horror lists and passed off Red Christmas as yet another generic holiday slasher, I implore you to turn back and give it a shot. Written and directed by Australian filmmaker Craig Anderson and starring genre icon Dee Wallace (Cujo, ET), Red Christmas is much more original and unique then its title may imply. Yes, there is a masked killer stalking a family celebrating the holidays, but there is much more than meets the eye here. Anderson’s film dives right into socio-political themes slasher films rarely explore, and uses them as a catalyst for the action within. And while it would be easy to choose a side of the debate, Anderson leaves viewers with a lot to think about. I was so tremendously impressed and surprised by this film, and now, right in time for Halloween, Red Christmas is on Blu-ray and available on Amazon Prime.

More below.

Toad Road
DVD | Amazon Instant
Directed by Jason Banker
Written by Jason Banker
Starring James Davidson, Sara Anne Jones, Whitleigh Higuera, Jamie Siebold, Scott Rader
Artsploitation Films
Release Date: December 17, 2013

Urban legend has it that on a long winding trail in the woods outside York, PA there are seven gates that will lead you to the doorway to Hell. As you pass through each gate, you hallucinate more and more, and time and reality supposedly become meaningless. The only problem is that no one has ever made it past the fifth gate.

For new-to-town Sara, who has fallen in with a rambunctious and directionless band of twenty-somethings focused only on the next drug high, this legend becomes all-consuming. Though her boyfriend James tries to get her mind off it, Sara becomes singularly focused on discovered just what happens on Toad Road. And with a dropper of acid at the ready, Sara begins her fateful trip down the road.

Meeting somewhere between a pseudo-documentary due to how the film is shot and student art film that desperately wants to look between-the-lines of reality and fantasy, Toad Road is a meandering journey through a group of kids’ lives as they try to have a good time and enjoy each others’ company as they bake their brain.