Justin Burning’s debut book, Hand-Held Hell, is a 376-page, full-color look at 44 outrageous works of underground cinematic horror created during and inspired by the technological, cultural and historical circumstances of the home-spun horror era, including in-depth interviews with 22 audacious filmmakers like Mark Polonia, Nathan Schiff, Tim Ritter, Donald Farmer, Fred Vogel, Brian Paulin and Scott Schirmer.

I had the chance to speak with Justin on the book, which you can get from Graveface Publishing and  Terror Vision.

B&S About Movies: How did you get into the world of SOV?

Justin Burning: I was aware of a lot of them (both SOV and 8mm stuff), like Splatter Farm, Video Violence, Sledgehammer and The Abomination, because some of them were on the shelves of indie video stores when I was growing up. I was fortunate to live through the entire video store boom at a pretty cognizant age (from grade school through early high school), and equally fortunate to have parents and grandparents that let me rent whatever, as often as I liked. We had a great indie video store within biking distance of my house, too, and in the age of Gen X latchkey childhoods, my parents let me go there by myself as long as I was back by dinner. Back then, I mostly just noticed the VHS covers of these flicks, rather than actually renting them, because I was a huge fan of Empire/Full Moon as a kid, so tended to rent a lot of those titles over and over instead. But in high school, I started seeking out the extreme fringes of my interests, as high schoolers often do. So, I got really into tape trading for the more transgressive films of the genre, like Nekromantik, Cannibal Holocaust, The Beyond, Faces of Death, Men Behind the Sun, Salo, etc. And through that, I stumbled across stuff like The Burning Moon, Darkness, Zombie Bloodbath, the Guinea Pig series, etc. And then I had a resurgence of interest in SOV a few years back, and really dove into that shallow pool head first.

B&S: Did the way you feel about these films change the more you explored them and met the people involved?

Justin: Yeah, somewhat. When you see these things for the first time, after being introduced to film through Hollywood and more polished productions, it’s a shock to the senses seeing what’s made when there are extremely limited creative and financial resources. Once you adjust beyond the initial, “What the fuck is this??” you start to wonder “Who the fuck made this??” and you assume it’s maybe some kind of mad genius. Occasionally it is. But usually it’s a person who really wanted to make a horror movie but didn’t know how to, or didn’t have the stuff they needed to make what was in their head. So, they improvised and they compromised. Alas, that’s not as romantic a story as someone concocting a piece of truly outsider, transgressive art that ended up exactly as weird and unique as they intended. But, one thing I’ve learned (and it’s actually a lesson I learned much earlier in life, being in an extreme metal band): Very few of them are as extreme as their movies. So many of these filmmakers are very kind and just very appreciative for the opportunity to talk about their films, and they were so helpful in providing materials for the book and participating in interviews.

B&S: Who surprised you the most when you got to speak to them?

Justin: Fred Vogel was one of them. For as harsh as the August Underground movies are, you don’t expect him to be such a warm, friendly dude. But my conversation with him was very pleasant. Also, Dean Alioto has had a pretty successful career, and he’s one of the more “Hollywood” guys in the book, but he was very accommodating and we talked for nearly three hours over Zoom. He had a lot of great stories about the making of The McPherson Tape. Meeting Nathan Schiff has been amazing. He was the filmmaker that most inspired me to write the book. I saw The Long Island Cannibal Massacre and knew it was something really special that more people really needed to know about. He’s not the most in-the-media horror filmmaker ever, and he’s not very present on social media, so I had a notion in my head he’d be hard to get in touch with and wouldn’t be interested in an interview. But he responded to my cold email, and has been very generous with his time since then. I’m hoping to write a book focused on his life and films, and we’ve been collaborating on making that a reality.

B&S: Rough question: what are the top movies you cover in the book?

I like them all for various reasons. However, I’m very partial to Nathan Schiff’s unique body of work and, as I mentioned, The Long Island Cannibal Massacre sort of inspired the whole endeavor, so that’s definitely a standout. I love Things, as well. It’s one of the most unique movies I’ve ever seen. Flesh of the Void, Video Diary of a Lost Girl and Elliot are three I had never seen prior to researching for the book, and they really made an impression on me. Headless is one of my favorite recent horror flicks. A fantastic example of how horror can be both extremely repulsive and extremely artful.

B&S: What didn’t make the cut?

Justin: It was really hard to decide on the final lineup. I knew from the start that I wasn’t going to attempt anything super comprehensive, so I roughly was going to do 50 movies, split evenly between the 80s/90s stuff and the modern day stuff. It’s hard to omit more obvious entries from a filmmaker’s oeuvre, like J.R. Bookwalter’s The Dead Next Door, Todd Sheets’ Zombie Bloodbath movies, the Polonias’ Splatter Farm, Donald Farmer’s Cannibal Hookers or Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood. But I wanted to balance discussing historically significant films with more underground cuts that have been less talked about. Dave Skowronski’s 1989 flick Halloween Party was one I really wanted to include, but I couldn’t get in touch with Dave, and part of why I wanted to include it was to uncover the bizarre story behind its production, with the stolen music and everything, so without an interview to talk about those sorts of things, it wasn’t quite as enticing. There are some flicks I really, really love and wanted to hype up — like The Soultangler — but I had decided early on that including 16mm stuff was going to open a can of worms and really start blurring the line between amateur and professional productions. Some movies got cut so I could maintain the balance between the two eras.

B&S: Outside of SOV, what movies do you love?

Justin: Well, I’m an avid horror fan in general. My horror Mount Rushmore probably includes John Carpenter, Stuart Gordon, Lucio Fulci and David Cronenberg. I love Italian horror, and have particular soft spots for Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fragasso and Michele Soavi. I watch some sci-fi and fantasy stuff, as well. And then to balance out the dark shit, feel-good stuff like rom-coms and Christmas movies are always welcome, too.

Thanks to Justin for the interview. You can learn more about him on his site Confluence of Cult.

All purchases include a free code to download a companion EP featuring six tracks composed by the author. Grab your copy via graveface.com or terror-vision.com