Fans of ’80s horror-comedy films are in for a treat. Today American indie horror filmmaker Lindsay Denniberg releases her debut feature-length film Video Diary of a Lost Girl to view free on Vimeo for one day to celebrate Halloween.
The eye-popping horror-romcom is hallucinogenic eye candy for slice-and-dice surrealists and an homage to all things ’80s. Taking its hues from the colour palettes of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, Video Diary revisits the low-budget production values of ’80s films from a digital perspective to combine greenscreen set miniatures, low-res video, New Wave music and hardcore DIY aesthetics, beneath a digitally-polished, neon candy-apple veneer.
The film follows titular lost girl Louise (played by Priscilla McEver channeling Beetlejuice-era Winona Ryder) who is an odd duck among a race of quasi-immortal succubi cursed to devour the souls of human men during sex. Unlike her sisters, Louise was (re)born during the 1920s completely unaware of her heritage until she inadvertently kills her lover Charlie (the film’s co-writer Chris Shields), a Tom Waits-styled lounge singer and pianist. Fans of classic German Expressionist films Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari will especially appreciate McEver’s acting in key scenes with Shields.
Louise tries to atone for her actions by limiting her kills to rapists and murderers of women until life gets complicated — several decades later — when a mysteriously reincarnated amnesiac Charlie shows up at the adult video store where she works and asks her out.
Although the film’s goth-heavy soundtrack includes some inspired tracks by Bestial Mouths (“Gulls”) and Teaadora (“Shadows Connected to the Light”), script co-writer Chris Shields’ musical alter-ego Mr. Transylvania provides one of the film’s best musical moments in Charlie’s hilarious performance of “The Cinema Song.”
Video Diary has already begun to garner awards on the indie film festival circuit and Chicago-based Denniberg’s credibility as a director is cemented by her internship at Troma Entertainment (Toxic Avenger, Tromeo and Juliet), where she edited film trailers and became that assistant to founder Lloyd Kaufman before returning to school for her MFA. She describes her cinematic aesthetic as being “glazed in neon,” and cites among her interests “Frankenstein, karaoke, and macaroni and cheese.”
Click here to view the film.