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Long-lost 'cursed' film emerges 40 years on

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London After Midnight
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« on: April 15, 2019, 07:22:41 pm »

Long-lost 'cursed' film emerges 40 years on
Posted on Wednesday, 10 April, 2019 |




'Antrum' is not for the feint of heart. Image Credit: sxc.hu
An infamous cinematic project from the late 1970s has resurfaced and will soon be released to the public.
The concept of a 'cursed' movie has been explored in cinema before, most notably in 'The Ring' franchise which centers around a videotaped film that dooms anyone who watches it.

As it happens however, there exists a real-life film with a similar reputation - a cinematic work created in the late 1970s that was lost for years but that has finally resurfaced after a chance discovery.

Now a new release entitled 'Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made' aims to reveal this 'cursed' creation for the first time while also exploring the enigma surrounding its sinister reputation.

The film itself was rediscovered last year by writer/director/producer Eric Thirteen at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. According to reports, strange images and symbols had seemingly been added to the original film during the years in which it was allegedly 'lost'.

"I think about it now almost like an old book of alchemy, or Lovecraft's Necronomicon," Thirteen told Forbes. "There's notes scrawled in the margins and every time the book is lost and recovered, there's new patchwork pieces added to it. By the time you find it, it has this history."

"That's really what Antrum is."

The film itself follows the story of a brother and sister who travel through the woods and attempt to dig all the way down to hell to rescue the soul of their recently-euthanized dog.

Like the videotape in The Ring movies, Antrum is said to result in the death of anyone who watches it. Viewers are even presented with a legal disclaimer before the film starts.

It seems unlikely however that anyone has actually died from watching it.

Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made is due to be released later this year in the US and will be released worldwide in 2020.
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London After Midnight
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« Reply #1 on: April 15, 2019, 07:23:25 pm »

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« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2019, 07:24:05 pm »

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshweiss/2019/04/08/exclusive-how-a-cursed-film-circulating-hollywood-is-finally-making-its-way-to-the-public/#21bdd71658c7
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« Reply #3 on: April 15, 2019, 07:28:56 pm »

How A 'Cursed' Film Circulating Hollywood Is Finally Making Its Way To The Public
Josh Weiss
Josh Weiss
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Hollywood & Entertainment
I write about movies, TV, comic books and pop culture

Else Films

If a house or some kind of ancient relic can be haunted and capable of causing madness and/or death, why not a movie?

The Ring films are a good example of how such a concept can inspire fear in even the most resilient of individuals. Even so, that’s just fantasy for viewers, who aren’t actually being handed a VHS tape that will kill them in seven days. They’re “safe” in that regard, but not for long, because one film is looking to cut the ropes holding up that particular safety net.

Directed by David Amito and Michael Laicini, Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made is purported to be a cursed cinematic project from the late 1970s that was lost for many years and capable of killing almost anyone who claps eyes on it, particularly obstinate film festival organizers. The two directors came up with the story with Amito writing the screenplay.

Bookended by a collection of documentary-style testimonials about the strange events surrounding the film’s history (as well as the topic of the occult in general), the movie’s plot revolves around a brother (Rowan Smyth) and sister (Nicole Tompkins) traveling into the woods and trying to dig their way to Hell in order to save the soul of their recently-euthanized dog.

Still, we may never have seen Antrum, had it not been for writer/director/producer Eric Thirteen who stumbled upon the movie at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival last October. Raised on a healthy diet of cult classics like 1983’s Videodrome, he has a keen eye for game-changing cinema.

“Here I was at the fest where this movie’s playing. Normally, everyone’s hyping their projects, it’s very easy to talk to people about what’s showing - and yet, I can’t get anybody to tell me what the hell actually happened in this movie everyone’s talking about,” he said in an exclusive interview, publicly speaking about Antrum for the first time. “That’s when I had to see it, that’s when it was like, 'Ok, this is my mission now. I have to track this movie down…which is not playing anywhere else, which has no records online, which you can’t find anything about.'”

"Antrum" movie poster Else Films

In the years during which it was supposed to be “lost,” Antrum had strange pieces added to its narrative, be it strange symbols or ghostly glimpses of unspeakable things that would make Tyler Durden or Howard Phillips Lovecraft proud.

“I think about it now almost like an old book of alchemy, or Lovecraft’s Necronomicon,” adds the producer. “Originally, it was in Arabic and then it gets lost for years and it’s recovered, it’s got all these notes where somebody tried to translate it, but maybe it was an ill-fated attempt [because] they died in the process. There’s notes scrawled in the margins and every time the book is lost and recovered, there’s new patchwork pieces added to it. By the time you find it, it has this history. That’s really what Antrum is.”

Meeting with the directors at the aforementioned Brooklyn festival and finally getting to view the movie, Thirteen was convinced that it had to be brought to the masses.

“They almost have this reluctance to talk about the movie. I later found out that they weren’t even applying to these festivals. The festivals were reaching out to them. [Festival programmer] Matt Barone would hear about the movie somehow and want to show it,” continues Thirteen. “There was almost this reluctance by the directors to screen it and I had convinced them to let me watch it. And later, they were talking about distribution and getting the movie out to an audience and honestly, whether or not they even wanted to do that. Which seemed pretty nuts. So we started talking at that point about how this goes out to people, how other people see it. That’s when I came onto it.”

As Thirteen sought to find a way to bring the movie to the masses, Antrum made its rounds through the entertainment industry, becoming an exclusive viewing experience for those in the “biz.”According to the producer, Eduardo Sanchez (co-writer/director of the original Blair Witch Project) and Laurence H. Harvey (the cult actor in the Human Centipede sequels) were among those who have seen it.

Else Films

“I started to find out there were all these other people within the industry who were watching it, who had the same kind of obsession of the 'thing that should not be seen',” says Thirteen. “I sent it to David Bond [producer/co-writer of Extremity]. We’d both put out movie’s on Epic Picture’s Dread label. He became totally obsessed. Then I would hear that [Cannibal Holocaust director] Ruggero Deodato was watching it. Or weirder [still], the band Mayhem. This was something of an industry-traded movie… It’s strange in that the only way to talk about it is to find someone who’s seen it and go talk to them. There aren’t a lot of things like that that exist anymore.”

So, can Antrum really kill you? Well, it tries very hard to convince you that it can, going so far as to preface the full film with a legal disclaimer.

“Even at the heart of the movie’s narrative is this notion of storytelling. How people become immersed in fiction. The directors think about the film as a haunted house, as something that an audience grants permission to scare them. People know a haunted house isn’t haunted, it’s not about that. We know Bloody Mary won’t appear, but we get more of a chill each time we say the name. Horror is the audience’s very willing ability to forfeit rationality,” adds Thirteen.

Else Films

As for the film itself, it looks, sounds, and feels exactly like a European arthouse film from the 1970s, so much so, that you may begin to believe that it really was made during that era. It’s pretty beautiful and you’ll want to soak in the grind house vibe, but all the while, you’re wondering in the back of your mind if you’re sealing your own fate as the story progresses. That tug and pull, almost cognitive dissonant frame of mind, is what Thirteen is chasing, saying:

“It’s a movie that sort of demands counter takes on counter takes. There’s a certain level that says, ‘Ok, a haunted movie. Oh no, will I get cursed?’ And then there’s another level that says, ‘Of course you won’t be cursed by a movie, don’t be ridiculous.’ And then there is yet another level, where you’re still thinking about the film days afterwards. You want to show it to your friend, and when you show it to your friend, do you tell them it’s a cursed movie? Do you sort make a cheeky joke about it? It’s in your life now, you’re talking about it, you're making decisions about it. The way the movie follows you in the real world, that’s the real curse. I want to see how that plays out, because part of the obsession of the movie is just wanting to know… what do other people think about this? How does it infect their brains?”

Thirteen recently struck a distribution deal with Uncork'd Entertainment and brought David Bond on as executive producer to bring the film to market. After exclusively circulating the entertainment industry, Antrum will screen at the Brussels International Film Festival this month before finally becoming available to the public at the end of the year on a number of different platforms in the U.S., and throughout the world in 2020. It’s a rollout Thirteen believes recaptures the magic and mystique of the pre-Internet era.

“The biggest thing for me is that this was a movie that … because you couldn’t find the information about it and you couldn’t track it in the way that you could other movies, it was begging for discovery. I wanted everyone to be able to be part of that secretive tape-swap, mysterious VHS-find feeling,” he says. "You don’t want audiences to be spoiled. We’re simultaneously the creatures that love to immediately see the new Jordan Peele trailer and we can’t stop ourselves, and then we also complain we know too much going into a movie. I know that feeling, because that’s me.”
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« Reply #4 on: April 15, 2019, 07:43:54 pm »

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« Reply #5 on: April 15, 2019, 07:44:30 pm »

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« Reply #6 on: April 15, 2019, 07:45:21 pm »

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« Reply #7 on: April 15, 2019, 07:46:17 pm »

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« Reply #8 on: April 15, 2019, 07:46:54 pm »

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