Originally pitched to Playboy as an episodic late-night horror anthology, the network deemed it too bloody. So directors Patricia Miller and the late Mark Shepard did what any true guerrilla filmmakers would do: they edited three hours and twenty-eight minutes of camcorder madness and unleashed it straight to tape via Film Threat Video. What you get is an ultra-ambitious, camcorder-bound Grand Guignol fever dream, drenched in primary-gel lighting and analog synth pulse.
Segment 1: “The Black Veil”
Set in the winter of 1888 inside the Charenton Asylum for the Insane just outside Paris, a madwoman hoards an ominous black box that can release ultimate evil. Before anyone can take it, she recounts the sprawling tale inside. Clocking in at 75 minutes—practically a standalone feature—Meg Hexley (Elizabeth Morehead) travels to Paris to settle the estate of her late husband, a psychiatrist mentored by Sigmund Freud. She meets up with her old college friend Justine (Julie Carlson), now an actress at the famed Théâtre du Grand Guignol.
Justine is a mess—hooked on a cocktail of opium and booze, suffering from blinding migraines and cohabiting with a bizarre acting troupe that includes a sinister mime named Demetrius (Robert Rothman), a mysterious beauty named Diana (Brinke Stevens) and a female pinhead who happily stirs pots of fake blood.
Meg attempts to cure Justine using her husband’s hypnotic spinning-wheel device to peel back the black veil of her mind. What follows is a dive into severe psychosexual trauma: Justine recalls seeing a singer skinned alive (and loving it), a father who forged money and sold children, a predatory brother and a murderous mother hauled off in a straightjacket.
Naturally, therapy backfires. Justine slashes Demetrius’ throat live on stage, drugs Meg with opium and gets dragged into a blood ceremony run by Brinke Stevens. Hands are sliced over a lump of Play-Doh disguised as an organ, lightning bolts flash, green smoke pours across the frame and a slimy puppet monster manifests while Brinke sports vampire fangs to capture Justine’s essence in a tiny jar.
It makes almost zero logical sense, but visually, it’s impressive. Shot with an outrageous amount of red, blue and purple gel lighting, it attempts a true period aesthetic on magnetic tape. The low-key lighting on consumer video stock results in murky blacks, blurry close-ups and music-video flash cuts, but the ambition is undeniable.
Segment 2: “Listen to Midnight”
Opening with a quote from JFK’s diary, we jump to late-80s Los Angeles. Tod (Ron Roleck) is a bitter, alcoholic, insect-obsessed photographer who narrates his own downward spiral.
After a surreal nightmare where he is taunted by a model (Brinke Stevens again, not a complaint) and a guy in sunglasses (Michael Sonye) who crushes him with a car, Tod wakes up to a furious girlfriend, fails a suicide attempt with an empty gun and roams the streets looking for bullets.
Along the way, he encounters a mysterious woman in a black veil eating Twinkies and Bubble Yum while quoting Goya, an angry ex (Dawn Wildsmith), and a new-wave, multi-pierced girl named Ginger (Anita Coleito), who goes home with him for an encounter that ends up far messier than expected.
While “The Black Veil” reaches for gothic artifice, “Listen to Midnight” founders in late-80s video-art sleaze. Its 30-minute runtime feels twice as long thanks to grating voiceover, a thoroughly unlikable protagonist and hyperactive frame-flashing that wants to test your patience.
Dark Romances Vol. 1 is a time capsule of low-budget tape culture. Complete with rave box-art blurbs from Clive Barker, Stephen King, and Forrest J Ackerman, it represents a period when video art, theater, and underground horror collided head-on. “The Black Veil” alone makes this worth hunting down for SOV completists.
You can get both this and Vol. 2 on a set from Culture Shock Releasing.
