Label: Unearthed Films
Region Code: A
Duration: 99 Minutes
Rating: Unrated
Audio: English LPCM Stereo 2.0 - No Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Mark Savage
Cast: Gary Cairns, Luke Albright, Trista Robinson, Geoff Falk
Purgatory Road (2017) is a Southern fried slice of exploitation that opens with a young boy named Vincent unable to stop a thief from making off with his family's life savings, an act that pushes his father and mother to the desperate act of double-suicide, a traumatic act witnessed by both Vincent and his younger brother Michael. As you might imagine witnessing the suicide of their parents ends up being the defining moment in the kid's lives. We move ahead a few years and the kids have now grown into men, Vincent (Gary Cairns, Daylight's End) is a Catholic priest who travels the rural south lands of Mississippi in a creepy spray-painted RV camper offering "absolution on wheels" to all sinners. His kid brother Michael (Luke Albright, Devil's Pass) joins him on his journeys, keeping the operation afloat while his brother delivers the sermons and takes in confessionals.
Much like how the killer-Santa scarred five-year-old Billy Chapman in Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) the thief in the night that destroyed his family has had a long-lasting and perverting effect on Vincent's sense of spiritual morality, with the priest handing out hail-Mary's to low-level sinners while saving the souls of the worst offenders by offering them absolution by death.
The younger brother Michael is a bit more reticent about these righteous murders, but he stays true to his brother's path of demented salvation, but you can sense a growing division between them. This division is widened by the introduction of love interests for both men, with Michael flirting with a cute waitress in town, and Vincent becoming involved with the baby-talking babe Mary Francis (Tristan Robinson), who turns out to be a stone-cold killer, her influence increasing the priest's thirst for the blood of sinners.
As the plays along we get a pretty cool tale of morality gone wrong, a pair of kids forever changed by a tragic event in their lives, one a bit more so than the other, but even the younger brother is complicit in the crimes. A kinder light is shown on the younger brother, wisely giving viewers a character to empathize with to a small degree. The introduction of psycho-babe Mary Francis is definitely where things begin to go even more wrong for the siblings, leaving Father Vincent to stray from even his own twisted path of righteous morality, setting the stage for betrayal and more violence.
All these sinners that the are absolved of their sins through death are being dismembered and fed to a ghoul that the brothers keep down in their basement, so you can be sure this film has some gruesome FX work, courtesy of Marcus Koch and Cat Bernier of Oddtopsy FX. Their work here is realistic and delightfully gross, with multiple stabbings, shootings, various scenes of dismemberment and all the sick stuff you gore hounds crave, this is not a film that will disappoint the lovers of the red stuff, but it also doesn't go overboard to the point of overkill and desensitization.
On a purely gore and grittiness level the film is successful, it establishes a grim tone and keeps it up, but I don't think the psychological underpinnings of the brothers is not fleshed out to it's full potential, which I think would have made the whole film more impactful. Then there's Tristan Robinson as the baby-talkin' psychopath Mary Francis, a character which sort of brought to mind
Sheri Moon Zombie's turn as Baby from House of 1000 Corpses (2003), her shrill voice was at times like nails on chalk board, but it works for the character I guess. She turns in a fine performance as the wedge that divides the brothers, but there are flashbacks to her back story that for me brought the film to a bit of a crawl, it feels extraneous, but it's not ruinous.
Audio/Video: Purgatory Road (2018) arrives on Blu-ray from Unearthed Films in 1080p HD and framed in 1.85:1 widescreen. The film was shot digital and looks crisp and sharp, shadow detail is strong and colors resonate with a good warmth, there's some striking purple and red lighting throughout that gives the indie film a dramatic and stylish look. Audio comes by way of English LPCM 2.0 stereo - even though the back cover advertises Dolby Digital, everything is clean and well-balanced, no issues detected. .
Extras include an audio commentary with the director Mark Savage, a 5-min slide show of the gruesome F/X work from the film, 29-min of interviews with actors Gary Cairns, Luke Albright, and Trista Robinson. All the actors are interviewed separately, speaking about their coming onto the film, their characters, experiences on set and a bit of their acting processes.
Actor/co-screenwriter Tom Parnell shows up for a 9-min interview who describes meeting director Mark Savage, creating the story, digging into the characters and story of the film. The last of the extras is a 20-min Q&A after a screening of the film involving director Mark Savage and actor Gary Cairns, plus a selection of trailers for Purgatory Road and other Unearthed films, including The Dark Side of The Moon (1990), which I am so looking forward to, coming to Blu-ray June 2019!
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary with Director Mark Savage
- The Grisly Art of Marcus Koch and Cat Bernier (5 min)
- The Actors Speak (29 min)
- Tom Parnell: Beyond The Day Job (9 min)
- Purgatory Road Q&A
- Trailers: Brutal (1 min), Dark Side of the Moon (2 min), Purgatory Road (2 min), The Song of Solomon (1 min)
Overall Purgatory Road is a film that worked for me with only a few minor quibbles along the way, but nothing that ruined it for me, it's still a brutal slice of southern exploitation with plenty of grit and grue.
