You have to admire the individuals who operate within the no-budget horror realm. Here are people with little to no means but hearts filled with desire and creativity, yearning to reach out to the rabid horror fan within all of us. Most of the time, these no-budget pioneers of gore spend their time crafting short films and occasionally the low-budget feature
but Jason Patfield and his crew at Bublenutz productions have chosen to go in an entirely fresh and different direction
the realm of the horror series. I can count on one hand the amount of horror series that I've seen over the years
I can count on no hands the amount of times these series have been good. Yeah episodic shows like Tales from the Darkside, Monsters, and The Twilight Zone have entertained
but they were all made for TV and completely devoid of anything but the occasional clever twist. In Bublenutz Productions' Welcome to Dreadville series we have a group of people willing to cross the line
fill their series with gore, profanity, and the occasional pimp stereotype. While Welcome to Dreadville is still a project in a deep amount of flux, the growth in skill and quality from the first episode, filmed back in 2006, to the latest episode is heartening. The show comes with many of the problems that you'll find in no-budget horror; bad acting, poor picture quality, and an inconsistency of tone that threatens to keep this series from finding its perfect audience. Still, as the most recently shot episode shows, the folks at Bublenutz are learning. The sound design gets progressively better, the picture stops looking like it was filmed in the middle of a windstorm, and the acting and lighting all improve drastically. Of course, this is the process of learning, something that most low-budget indie directors have to learn on the fly. The good news is that they are learning. However, if Welcome to Dreadville is going to become a successful series, there are a few things that need to be addressed. First off, the series is all over the map. You've got a comical and exploitation-like telling of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, an escaped criminal story, a psychological horror piece, a body horror junkie tale, and a torture set piece. Variety is nice
but the series' success depends on there being a unifying theme, or for a lack of a better word gimmick. I thought that the use of detectives as recurring characters was a nice way to move from episode to episode and tie the series together, but it disappears during a few episodes, leaving a few loose ends. For me, when the DVD was over, I didn't feel like I had watched a series, but a group of disconnected short films with the words Dreadville slapped on it. The other major thing that needs to happen with the series is that the pace of the episodes needs to be ramped up a bit. If you're struggling to fill a thirty minute episode with wall to wall horror goodness, the story probably doesn't need to be told. There are way too many moments of quietness and lulls in the action. A thirty minute episode needs to hit like a hammer, fast and hard, if you want to drive your point into the mind of the viewer. Any lingering around or undue character development is bound to cause viewers to lose their attention. Ramping up the carnage within the series is definitely an attainable goal, because the special effects in the films, from beginning to end are solid enough to attract gore fans. One prosthetic on a junkie's arm in the episode entitled Addict was painful to look at and there were a variety of nice kills. This is good news, because we all know if a horror movie is great in every department, but the gore still sucks, then the entire product will suck. Another area that I loved, but saw far too little of, is the presence of humor. The first episode, while the rawest and least technically proficient, was my favorite of the bunch. In the episode, a pimp sees a bumptious babe in red and follows her to her grandfather's house
where he pretends to be the woman's grandfather (aka that Little Red Riding Hood thing I mentioned earlier). This episode is hilarious, and not in the "I'm making fun of this" type of way. It actually has some laugh out loud moments in it
moments that were sorely lacking in a few episodes. Working on a no to low-budget, you can be assured of two things: 1. A shipload of people aren't going to like what you make simply because it doesn't look like the latest Hollywood blockbuster. 2. People are going to laugh at your shat no matter what, so you might as well give them something that they are supposed to laugh at. Look at all the no-budget success stories over the years; they've all been quirky as funk, covered in blood, and just as funny
from Evil Dead to Dead Alive. It takes near perfection to do serious horror and create tension
perfection that the lack of money frequently inhibits. But with the right tweaks here and there and a little philosophical pinning down of what Welcome to Dreadville is supposed to be, it just might be possible. Keep an eye on this one and maybe one day it will attain the level that the folks at Bublenutz Productions are striving for. Dreadville 5/10
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