Our Feature Presentation.

Edit: Fixd the lighting on some characters

Or

“Get our new cheese popcorn with nachos and a large kool aid combo down at the lobby!”

Or.

Something, something, cult film. 

Well, Ian knew about this one. There is some word around about a mysterious lost director’s cut for La Notte Dentata. An obscure 80s Italian horror film considered by the many who have actually seen it to be, and I quote, “fine, I guess…” 

On the other hand, the mysterious director's cut is said to be one of the scariest horror films ever made. “Legend says the original director, Ivano Rizzo, was separated from the project after many complaints from the cast and crew of his bizarre behaviors on set. 

The producers replaced him with director Alan Smithee but not before Rizzo's version had a test screening that is said to have left half of the audience in a catatonic state out of fear for a couple of hours. 

Unfortunately, Alan Smithee went and had about 80% of the movie reshoot. He had no choice though. Rizzo found out about his firing right before he was officially notified and broke into the studio that night and took as much film as he could with him. 

Legend says he then took his movie, hopped into a boat sailing to Argentina and disappeared forever. 

Of course, in this day and age it is hard to know how much of a legend is actually true.

What is true though, is that the producers then took the opportunity to rewrite the script to fix some of the “incomprehensible” parts of it. Apparently no copies of the original script survived. There's some supposed leaked one's going around the internet but they have been proven to be fakes, or at least most of them.

The movie finally premiered, and the rest is history. After all, Alan is named like that here for a reason. 

On the other hand, legend says that Rizzo, wherever he ended up at, spent every last cent he had working on his movie until the day he died. An enigmatic film that never got to see the light of a projector, completely lost to time, and would you look at that, they found it!

Whoever found it likes their theatrics cause they're keeping info very cryptic, but from what I can tell it was found among a bunch of other weird stuff at a police auction and then it stayed at a warehouse for another couple of years until they actually found it and they're gonna play it at the old city theater downtown this weekend, you wanna go?”

Ian waited almost no time for an answer, Nicole was in immediately, she's not really that into horror films but man, what a story! And for Ignacio who also heard the story was pretty much the same. He doesn’t find horror films really fun, but as a photographer, cinematography is one of his interests. The doll who was also in the room was hooked by how evil the whole thing sounds and Vero, well she was going to go just to hang out with the gang but shortly before the function she realized that “you” is not always plural and remember Ignacio of “that really important thing he had to help her with” she had told him about before and the doll is coming too. So in the end it was only Ian and Nicole. And the rest of the audience of course. 

At first everything was pretty normal. They went in and chatted for a while until the lights went down. The house was packed. Nicole wouldn't know it as she hadn't seen it but the movie started pretty similar to the original one minus some small stuff here and there, but then it changed.

Suddenly the movie had this very intense atmosphere that with time started manifesting even out of the screen. The air was different. Drier, heavier. Iad was surprised home much it was living up to the hype until the movie started becoming actually incomprehensible, and not only because the subtitles went crazy out of nowhere, suddenly appearing at moments of silence with a more and more broken English until the point where they became complete gibberish and then finally stopping from appearing. The pictures on the screen became more and more surrealist, thus the story became more and more hard to follow. The editing became more erratic. The music, while increasingly macabre, being the only thing that still felt like it came from our world. 

That is when Nicole pointed Ian's attention to the audience surrounding them. Neither he nor she realized when they put them in but they all were wearing masks, looking at the screen with black expressions behind them. Not a single reaction. Nicole and Ian tried to shake the people next to them out of their trance. But nothing worked. And as the air became even more heavy and the sounds became deafening. They knew it was time to get out of there.

They ran to the Lobby and tried to contact Vero and the others. But by the time the others arrived and they all went into the screen room, not only was the movie over, but there was no one there. 

The place was completely clean. 

Shortly after an ambulance arrived at the theater, they took the projectionist to the hospital as he had fallen into a catatonic state. He’d be better a couple of hours later and would declare that he couldn't remember anything from the last 3 hours. 

Nicole and the gang broke into the projector room. The movie had also disappeared.

…

Now, I may have put a little bit too much effort into that story but that's just because I've been working on it in my mind for a while now. I've been busy lately so finishing this piece took me a good while of squeezing some of it between work and other stuff. 

It is technically not finished yet actually, as I'm working on “adjacent” pieces to this one that visually expand the story a bit. But the main one, the one that I initially wanted to make is here and I wanted to share it.

The concept is somewhat based on the first episode of the second season of the anime “Sayonara Zetsubō Sensei” which is the anime I used to watch to give myself brain damage in highschool.

This episode kind of gives a supposed summary of the story so far from last season but instead retells a completely new, different and absurd story, completely unrelated to the normal plot (the show does this often) where the main character, now turned pyramid scheme genius, Nozomu Itoshiki, has to escape the religious organization Hamasho. A mysterious cult devoted to realizing diverse activities at the beach while covered with urine (I love this show).

In the episode, the cult wore masks that inspired the ones the audience is wearing. (Only picture I could find already online)

I originally wanted to draw the whole gang on the seats but it would have made it harder to give the sense of being surrounded, I would have to draw even more people. So I had to choose two. 

Also while the red one or the original one and the way to see this picture as intended, I included a black and white version cause let's face it. “It's feel more cinema”

The concept also is based on the idea of a cult film being for an actual cult.

I've always had a little bit of a fascination with cults. Maybe that's why Nicole and the gang have been having problems with cults lately. Which reminds me, I don't wanna spoil anything but today's clue is: Dying is for losers