FUNGICIDE
dir. Dave Wascavage, 2002
United States. 84 min.
In English.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – MIDNIGHT
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25 – MIDNIGHT
“You don’t pick them… They pick YOU!”
Silas is a mad scientist with a terrible work-life balance. When his concerned parents send him on a retreat to a remote bed & breakfast in the woods, Silas accidentally unleashes his latest biological experiment on a small batch of mushrooms, causing them to mutate into giant feral fungi with a taste for human flesh.
Dave Wascavage’s debut feature pushes all the right buttons for a late-SOV horror classic, packed to the gills with irreverent humor, low-poly CGI, blood-soaked appendages, and even bloodier puppets. Acting as a one-man film crew (in the roles of director, co-writer, producer, DP, editor, (de)composer, and self-taught VFX artist), Wascavage spored no expense of his $142 budget, assembling a cast of mainly family and friends, and shooting the entire feature on a single portobello camcorder over the course of a weekend.
The film also contains some strong satirical undertones, poking fun at the self-absorbed, single-minded lifestyles embraced by the B&B’s other over-the-top residents: The hippie owner who champignons the benefits of natural living to a fault, the testosterone-addled pro wrestler who she suspects may be involved in some cremini-al drug activity, and the shady real estate agent who’s there to put his own morel-ly questionable schemes into play. It’s the type of no-budget schlock masterpiece that grows on you with each viewing.
SUBURBAN SASQUATCH
dir. Dave Wascavage, 2004
United States. 97 min.
In English.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25 – 10 PM
“He’s out of the woods… And into your neighborhood!”
When a giant, bloodthirsty Bigfoot goes on a killing spree through a sprawling suburban neighborhood, it’s up to a couple of park rangers and mystical Native American warrior to put an end to the ‘Squatch’s limb-ripping rampage.
Dave Wascavage pulled out all the stops for his follow-up to FUNGICIDE, upping his production budget from $142 to, we suspect, something in the ballpark of $200. Before you go accusing him of selling out, though, bear in mind that every penny of that shows up on screen in the form of upgraded effects, countless ripped limbs, and its titular character (voiced by Wascavage, himself) in all its hairy humanoid splendor. The embodiment of nature’s fight back against uncontrolled suburban sprawl.
TARTARUS
dir. Dave Wascavage, 2005
United States. 77 min.
In English.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4 – MIDNIGHT
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10 – 5 PM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15 – 10 PM
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29 – 10 PM
“Where madness and death live.”
While FUNGICIDE is an unabashedly good-bad SOV horror flick, Wascavage proves he’s more than a master of schlock with his follow up TARTARUS.
It loosely follows one man’s slow descent into madness (or journey through hell) but to summarize this film would not do it justice. A largely one-man show, Tartarus toggles back and forth between gonzo torture at the hands of an alien (or demon?) on a ramshackle spaceship, and John’s evil escapades in life prior to endless torture.
Tartarus is a singular experience, hard to describe and wholly immersive in ways feature films with infinitely higher budgets can only dream of achieving – as one Spectacle volunteer put it, “look past the no-fi aesthetics and dogshit cgi and what you’re left with is just some genuinely excellent visual storytelling. This vortex of an anti-narrative, dragging you down deeper and deeper into its oneiric alien hellscape before spitting you out at the same place you started, now rendered entirely unfamiliar. Truly don’t even know if there’s anything I can reasonably compare it to. Maybe BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL by way of EVENT HORIZON? De sade by way of Heaven’s Gate? Felt like an unholy act just watching it. Already dying to revisit it.”