Video Home Invasion: Severin Films Goes To The Movies!

In early 2009, Severin's Evan Husney came across a very strange sight while checking out the scene at the Sundance Film Festival.  It was a mini-van adorned with numerous promotional flyers and a fake bird fake attacking from the hood.  Turns out, the driver was the creator of a film called Birdemic: Shock and Terror, which is, by any standard metric, a very bad film.  However, Evan saw something in the passion of the filmmaker and his film and convinced his partners to take a look.  This chance encounter led to several firsts for Severin Films.  Birdemic: Shock and Terror became Severin's first contemporary acquisition, it also became the first film that they decided to release theatrically.  Contrary to all logic, Birdemic has taken off, no pun intended, and the story isn't over yet.

It takes a company with big league cajones to step up to the plate with Birdemic and say: "This is how we make our mark on contemporary film".  You know what?  It fuckin' worked!  Over the last 10 months, Birdemic has exploded all over the United States and is making its way around the world.  I'm not going to bore you with details about the film's plot, because they are irrelevant.  What is very relevant, is that this film, the vision and passion of one man, 40-something auteur James Nguyen, probably would have languished in unreleased film purgatory had Severin not been there as its champion.

Birdemic has not only had a very successful, and long, midnight movie tour of the US and Canada, but it has also made it overseas with recent screenings in London.  The film has been featured on the BBC news and on major American news outlets like CBS.   This is really very unusual.  I don't think that a midnight movie has garnered attention like this since the 1970's when the concept of the cult film was born.  Everywhere Birdemic goes, crazy press follows, including reviews and articles in major newspapers like the old Gray Lady, The New York Times.  Is this entirely due to Severin's involvement?  Well, I'd hope that some of the credit can be given to James Nguyen and his dogged persistence and refusing to collapse when Sundance rejected his film in the festival.

Birdemic wasn't supposed to happen, in any case.  There should be no theatrical showing of a film like this.   It shouldn't be touring the world.  It shouldn't be getting major press.  It just shouldn't be anything that anyone has ever heard of, but, thanks in large part to Severin Films, people know.  It's fuckin' weird.  Severin Films have already announced a Blu-ray and DVD release for the first quarter of 2011, and I'm sure that anyone who saw the "Bidemic" van rolling through Park City would never have guessed that.  Although, I'll bet James Nguyen saw it coming a mile away.

That won't be the last time we see Severin Films on the big screen, though.  As we've previously reported, Severin have now dipped their collective toe into the realm of feature film production.  The Theatre Bizarre is an old-school horror anthology, the kind that is coming back into vogue with the return of films like Trick 'R Treat.  The trick with this one is that it is a confluence of some immense talents, and not just one director tackling different stories.  Rathar than attempt to rehash what's already been written, I'll let Severin do the heavy lifting on this one:

The project's six filmmakers have all made at least one modestly budgeted and internationally acclaimed movie in the horror field. The films of Douglas Buck include the 2003 Sitges sensation Family Portraits: A Trilogy Of America and the recent remake of Brian DePalma's Sisters. Buddy Giovinazzo exploded onto the genre scene with 1986's Combat Shock and went on to write and direct such features as the Tim Roth-starrer No Way Home and last year's acclaimed ensemble drama Life Is Hot In Cracktown (adapted from his novel), as well as numerous works for German television. UK native David Gregory is the industry's foremost documentarian of horror films on DVD, and his 2008 feature debut Plague Town was hailed as "a nightmare captured on celluloid" by Fangoria. In addition to writing and directing Subconscious Cruelty and La Belle Bête, Karim Hussain is also an accomplished cinematographer whose features include the upcoming Hobo With A Shotgun. Arguably horror's best-known special effects wizard for his landmark work on classics that include the original Friday The 13th and Dawn Of The Dead - as well as a popular actor in such films as From Dusk Til Dawn and Machete - Tom Savini directed the 1990 remake of Night Of The Living Dead. South African born Richard Stanley is one of the genre's most distinctive talents, whose visionary cult classics include Hardware and Dust Devil. THE THEATRE BIZARRE marks his triumphant return to horror for the first time in 18 years.

It sounds like a damned good start to me.  I'm really interested to see what many of these directors will come up with, and I'm a fan of the Grand Guinol concept, so I'll definitely be following the news on The Theatre Bizarre.

With The Theatre Bizarre in production and Birdemic coming to home video and a sequel just having been announced, it seems like everyone is getting what they want.  I think that even includes the moviegoers like you and I.  Severin Films continues to impress me the more I learn, and that includes not only their home video releases, but also their other works and future plans.  Want to know more about those future plans?  Keep the dial right here, because I plan to have that column up shortly!