The main character, let’s call him 'Detina', operates in his basement for a couple with a friend. Guys are typical American loboshaks, do nothing, hang out, and drink beer. Only one ' but'- of the entertainment spectrum is based on sadism and mutilation, and all because Detina and his buddy are serial killers. Welcome to the VHS Mecca of rabid sadism.
Fred Vogel is a very kind man. Don't you? Check out his Instagram and immediately catch the contrast. Fred has a peculiar view of the taboo of violence in cinema. Now he is 46, and his main earnings he draws from the teaching field (creation of special effects), and various video distribution.
Fred is also close friends with Phil Anselmo (Pantera), and was even more spiritually connected with Killjo-em from VIA Necrophagia. But that's a different story.
So, our Detenna is mocking the victims in every way during the film, while his friend captures the whole case on film. The main character was played by Fred himself, it turned out a typical fan of Drowning pool, hello zero. Every step of Dekina is a series of dirty jokes, acts of violence, and stupid humor in the style of jackass on bloody minimals. In addition to the nude nature, it is enough, Detina exploits violence against male guests, and generally does not revere the soul in any victim of his basement.
Whatever. Debut, debut (?), Freda with all the minuses worked on the principle, - So bad, even good, this is what I can explain the growth of the August Underground franchise to a trilogy, and the presence of the film, suddenly, completely insane fan base. What's positive is that it proves that no matter how much a dream is imbued with disgusting ways of realizing it, it has a right to be. Fred Vogel is proof of that.
Intestines, severed limbs, feces and blood. A whitish puree emerges from the crushed eye, and the nerve is so long that you can make a loop from it. The rotten female torso next to me has a very nice loose flesh. There's a forearm in the corner. On the table are laid carved from the hearts of the aorta. My friend hid her spine in her nightstand. In the middle lies the corpse of an old woman, which we turn into bloody porridge for the third day to pour into a canister. It's about midnight. When there's total darkness in town, we'll get out of the ground and punch the first cashier we see from a convenience store, or we'll knock out our teeth and slit the skin on the cheeks of some vagrant, or we'll just go to a rock concert. And in the morning we will break into someone’s house: we will cut everyone out, write something philosophical on the walls with blood, and in the dressing room we will remove clothes from the hangers and instead hang the intestines of former residents.
It was a description of the entire August trilogy. I love the horror genre, but my relationship with pseudo-snuff never worked out. I don't like it when evil goes unpunished. I do not like it when the purpose of violence is to cause no feelings or emotions other than disgust. And I don't like it when there's no plot and heroes to experience.
I watched the trilogy at the age of 16, in the summer of 13. I tried to feel the atmosphere and come to terms with the disgusting shooting (even in Mexico or Brazil, gangsters of executions and torture of competitors record quality), but it did not work. I don’t understand the purpose of all this chaotic set of scenes in which people are tortured, and poor shooting is designed to hide cheap makeup. Any movie is a movement from point A to point B, not necessarily literally. When there is context, we understand why actors should go to point B. In Fred Vogel’s trilogy, none of this is in sight, let alone high-quality scenes of torture and murder. Please don’t talk about a small budget. I can give you dozens of examples where for less than a thousand dollars talented directors could make quality urine. But in this case we are not dealing not only with a lack of talent, but even with a minimal effort to be something.
What is the August Trilogy trying to be? Satire on the realities of one-story America? A study of violence in society? A story about the flip side of the most civilized country on the planet? No, the August underground is just a cheap provocation that did not open new horizons, set new standards, raised a new generation of horror makers and did not even become a pioneer in any genre. Yes, there is an opinion that all three films are a story about how a couple of scumbags from film to film understand all their sins and repent; yes, there is a legend that in the First Underground one of the actors went missing after filming, they say he was killed in the film. But this is all a filler in the context of cinema, both technical and substantive. Garbage. Nothing and nothing.
After reading Fred Vogel’s cinematic work, I wondered why such a film was allowed to exist. Why give such a status of a genre, rank as a movie in general? This is just the purest fantasy of the director, and, absolutely senselessly sick. When a person undertakes to make a movie, he wants to convey to the viewer some idea, meaning. This is just an example for the mentally ill with sadistic tendencies.
Horror genres about meat and other things take place, but when there is nothing in the "picture" besides this at all, does it not make you wonder why all this was shot?
If you make a film just to cause a strong reaction in a person and hook him even with his incredible bloodlust, showing how ugly the violence is, then do not forget that all this can successfully get into the head, not quite healthy, and will be embodied in action. People get used to and adapt very quickly. If you slip on red a couple of times, it will not be so unexplored-frightening for you, you already treat it calmly. Does it make sense to get used to this kind of violence?
I remember after the publication of the book by J. Fowles “The Collector”, crimes began to happen around the world, exactly similar to the plot of this work. Hence the thought: is it not forbidden to remove such a thrash? After all, the film will absolutely find the Togo-most-viewer.
I do not deny that in every person there is a feeling of bloodthirsty, everyone in the soul wants to open Pandora's box, secretly look like this at least in the film, but thank God, most of this feeling is dominated by love for humanity (a person is born happy - this is a proven fact), pity for other people's suffering, and other moral qualities. Otherwise, the world would have collapsed long ago. And when the director gives his inflamed consciousness “masterpiece” for “masterpiece”, then it would be time to put the restriction “From never +”.
In the end, it is necessary to note the quality of the shooting. Here is 100% of the special effects work done. I think it is also a work and the ability to shoot so realistic, but unfortunately, this fact only adds fuel to the fire.
Two ferocious young men of inconspicuous appearance go hunting daily and nightly on the streets of their hometown - cozy Pittsburgh, melting under the scorching sun during the day and melting finally in the gray glow of a drunken nakocaine moon at night. They have no names, real murderers who are genuinely committed to their cause, and there can be no linking them to a dishonored reality from which they flee to nowhere and out of nowhere, fleeing, not for their own salvation, but on the contrary in the name of degradation and dehumanization, in the name of dehumanization, in the name of the Angels of Death, whom they have served faithfully and faithfully since their birth and degeneration. They do not flee to Paradise, but to their own Hell, where everything is allowed to them as demiurges. To invade other people’s homes, to ruin someone else’s comfort, to rape and kill, enjoying with the sincere nihilistic frenzy of the pain and death they cause, which is voyeuristically captured by a video camera. She sees everything and everyone, sees too much.
In 2001, the ambitious Pittsburgh film company Toe Tag released the film “Underground”, shot under the leadership of the then little-known independent American director Fred Vogel, who, under the wing of the company, gathered his closest associates in further filmmaking – Michael Todd Schneider, Nick Palumbo, Killjoy and others, who formed the main creative backbone of the new studio, who set a goal in the “Underground” to thoroughly shake, or even destroy the usual norms and frameworks in horror, even marginally-andologue of the new Blair style after a new stage. And, like all revolutionaries, Fred Vogel and Co., as well as their longtime collaborators in the Seventies Grindhouse, in particular Hershell Gordon Lewis and Michael Feindley, Roger Michael Watkins and Lee Frost, who anticipated in essence pseudo-snuff as such in their paintings of that time, were radical and bold, openly laughing in the face with their “Underground”, rather quickly called “the sickest film ever created”, imposed from the outside of a two-faced public morality, because “the monster of such brutality, living in its anti-humanity, unavoidable, with all its anti-humanity, is unavoidable, and cruelty.” In the film, both the victims and their maniacs are equal in their insignificance, but Fred Vogel prefers to put the audience in the place of the executioners themselves, since the audience itself is fiercely hungry for blood. You got it! The audience will literally be plunged into rivers of blood, and other people’s pain, groans, screams, in which only despair already sounds, will become the sweetest music in the world. An act of sadistic complicity, but why not? Why not become a bloody demon from the underground for a moment, because it is so nice to take someone else’s life, not for the first time having multiple orgasms of total impunity.
The 70-minute film in the style of an unedited home video was an American response to the Japanese pseudo-snuff and, first of all, the TV series Experimental Pig. In fact, it was the “Underground” that created a kind of American pseudo-snuff, which, unlike the same Japanese, wrought with a perverted, but peculiar philosophy of the Eastern world order, is undermined only by naked hypernaturalistic torture, bullying and violence, almost without a plot, completely without meaning - the edge of pathology in the American pseudo-snuff is crossed without regret. And Fred Vogel with the “August underground” was the first, and only then his research was picked up by the PKF company headed by John Marshall, who has already surpassed Fred Vogel in ruthlessness and uncompromisingness. Having neither an explicit plot nor a special directorial style, "Underground" only shows the viewer scenes of extreme ultraviolence, in which the victims are only meat, and the Killers have the right to everything.
The path of degradation and dehumanization is complete. All we have to do is wait for the final. Go and see if you're not afraid to become like the main characters of "Underground" under the hot sun of Pittsburgh.
In the pseudo-snuff genre, I started digging relatively recently. It all began with the magnificent "Diplomatic work" by Amenabara, and recently I managed to get acquainted only with "Snuff 102" by Mariano Peralta, "Nico Daruma" by Tamakichi Anaru, and "Missing Megan" by Michael Goy. I did not start with the famous trilogies of Valentine and Vogel, because I wanted several different points of view on this topic, several directorial views. And the movies, of course, liked each in their own way. This one is not very good.
In the “Underground” from the very first frames, we, accustomed, rest on the “unsurpassed quality” of amateur VHS-film from 2001, perhaps even in one of its worst manifestations. The twisted sharpness, noises, overlights and other charms from the category "A director himself" - all this in the absence of the proper genre of oppressive colors gives the film a rather sarcastic shade. The cameraman, wooing a hyena in the background, complements the humor created on the screen fecal-blood thrash. However, perhaps, Vogel did not want to scare anyone at all, but just tried to convey to us something of his own, his own.
Fat prostitutes, fights at hardcore rock concerts, hooliganism in supermarkets, humiliating abuse of people - the main characters, on behalf of whom the story is being told, undoubtedly know a lot about entertainment, while skillfully combining them with abductions, torture and spontaneous murders without any problems. As a result, we see the film not through the eyes of a stunned viewer, but through the eyes of the two themselves, frostbitten guys, the only outlet for whom is cruelty.
The film is not heavy at all, it is funny, you laugh at it with a psychopathic killer and his camera friend. There is no sense of presence, but there is a feeling of complete immorality: pity for the victims disappears and almost imbued with sadistic euphoria. Those who are afraid to change their moral qualities, I do not advise to watch this.
“Underground” can hardly be called bad or good even among his likes, because only in the nominal plot it can be attributed to the genre of “pseudo-snuff”, the original purpose of which is to scare the viewer with the realism of human brutality and physical suffering. There is no such question here, and I would not be able to assume with a degree of certainty what Vogel meant by this, or whether he wanted anything at all. I'm just looking forward to seeing the rest of the pieces.
Separately, I wanted to highlight the soundtrack, or rather some music that plays in the background, including in the last story with girls of easy behavior. Finding the names of tracks is hardly possible, but very much would like.
Loyalty to the above can be regarded as a recommendation for viewing.
And I saw that the Lamb had removed the first of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four animals saying in a thunderous voice, Go and see. . .
... And it was Monday morning, the thirteenth-zero-thirteenth, anno domini, and the stuffy Pittsburgh night was replaced by the hellish heat of the day, and the timidity of the midday sun awoke the Killer, whose name is unknown, from a thick nap on the dirty sheets, and the furious bells still rang in his ears, and his mouth opened and his throat filled with heat. . .
And when he opened the second seal, I heard the second animal saying, Go and see. . .
... And he began his way, wrestling through the darkness of heavy sleep, to another rock concert, and there will be blood and cheap sour alcohol throbbing to the sounds of grincore and thrash metal, and the camera will inadvertently grab twisted faces in the elusive darkness, faces distorted by catharsis and ecstasy, close to the wildest and brightest orgasm, and there will be a great snuff. . .
And when he opened the third seal, I heard the third animal saying, Go and see. And I looked, and behold, a horse of a crow, and on it is a rider with measure in his hand. . .
... And who will be his first victim? Maybe a salesman with a brazenly idiotic look, whose face you want to crush on a shiny floor, smelling of cleaning products. Or a girl guarding another client, loose, with vulgar mascara smeared over her big eyes and a red glow of lipstick. And he has decided, and will be prepared for those who have caught him in the net, Hell in a small chamber, with blood-stained walls and a cement floor in vomit. . .
And when he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth animal saying, Go and see. And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and on it is a rider, whose name is death, and hell followed him.
And there was LSD and molly and the flavor of marijuana mixed with disgusting vomiting, and the victims trembled at the sight of it, and were powerless, and the flesh was weak. Rigor mortis and the last stage, and there are no more people, and the victims are weak and impersonal, nothing remains of the bodies, only a video documenting their agony in the minutes and hours of torment, so sweet to him. And again there was oblivion, and the day of the first hunt was over, and there was darkness around. . .
From the author. In 2001, the little-known Pittsburgh film company Toe Tag released the film “Underground”, shot under the direction of director Fred Vogel. The 70-minute film in the style of an unedited home video was an American response to the Japanese pseudo-snuff and, first of all, the TV series guinea pig. Having neither an explicit plot nor a special directorial style, "Underground" only shows the viewer scenes of extreme ultraviolence, in which the victims are only meat, and the Killers have the right to everything. The path of degradation and dehumanization is complete. All we have to do is wait for the final. Go and see if you are not afraid to become like the main characters of the "Underground" under the hot sun of Pittsburgh.
4 out of 10
The first part of the "August underground" was for me the second film in the series, but I will still try to make it the first, June impressions.
So, the start of the "August trilogy", begins in late May. In fact, the picture itself will definitely be a kind of June. This is the first month of summer, which fills the soul with the aroma of numerous opportunities and provides time for their realization. June, starting with a gentle warmth and pleasant, caressing breeze gradually lights the fire of aggression, which moves on things inaccessible in the colder and passive months.
The first part of "Underground" is a pen sample for Fred Vogel and his ToeTag Pictures. There is no idea - the plot, just cutting a kind of home video. But the plot is present in this picture. Otherwise, it would be really hard to look at the endless scenes of violence that you can ring and watch before the roof goes down. But Fred and his company were just children of Pittsburgh hot July and just beginning to manifest themselves in cinematic vomit, not going far from the accepted standards of film art, perverting them (of course) in their own way.
And here we have a couple of so real cynics and misanthropes that not just murder, but brutal violence against the victim, both physical and moral – banal fun for these June messengers of hell. The main thing is to have time to fix everything so that the victim in the next world can watch the wildest excitement.
The color scheme here fully corresponds to summer time. Paints are not just warm, they are hot. And they are so hot that just looking at them makes them sick. And this June heats up the emotions and instincts of the main characters to white. These moments, as their world expands, will force them to embrace their worldview and others who will later join the monsters in July, series two. In the meantime, they acquire a peculiar taste for crazy and dirty intercourse with the virgin brains of spectators who were able to see this orgy. And the first part of the trilogy is really alive and full, because everything here has just begun and did not have time to sit down, did not become ordinary, something monotonous. This will then be the search for new sensations, ways of killing, distrust and hatred for each other for selected pieces of live summer, and now they are just trying to share what they found this bloody, all-soothing stream of horror.
But, no matter how I paint all the advantages of this picture, which, nevertheless, feels the style and imitation of snuff, there are drawbacks in it that spoiled the impression of viewing. A little detached from the leitmotif of the tape, I want to note some ugly moments. First of all, I was horribly infuriated by a sentence Fred had thrown at one of his victims. The main character, he is a director, etc. says in one of the scenes: "Wow, we have a plump one here." Your thinness, Fred! Are you, a hundred-two-cologram piece of meat, telling a girl who's three times smaller than you that she's "puffy"? Have mercy, Fred, you're not a model of beauty. Although, on the other hand, without noticing his problems, he tries to hurt his victim and then he just reaches the point. I'm still annoyed, though. Secondly, Fred, as a director and lead actor, made himself a real ruler of his movie nightmare. A heavy and heavy man comes out victorious from the fights with more skillful opponents in martial arts. And he only takes weight. It turns out to be a blob that sucks into itself. Those moments were very stupid.
Well, in general, the August underground turned out to be quite decent to shock, and although the film does not reveal such taboo topics that are being marched in the third part - the true August of Vogel's work - this somewhat smoothed, but still wild utilization of human resources shows a certain potential of the creator, who is unlikely to survive at least October of his career, so that in March the first rays of the sun gave hope for something truly unique. In the meantime...
WARNING: Run away from this creature if you have a weak nervous system, stomach, you are pregnant, or if you simply do not want to cripple your psyche. Regarding my review, I am not a fan of this genre, although at one time I was well acquainted with it. In this movie, I only had 15 minutes. That, believe me, was enough.
The plot revolves around the actions of two men who torture and kill several people for more than an hour. The scenes of ultraviolence are shown so realistically that sometimes you want to pause the film and say to yourself: it’s not real, it’s just special effects.
Regarding the actions of the film crew, one thing can be said: Fred Vogel and his team are real professionals in their field. The shooting style is presented in an amateur form to enhance the already nauseating reality of what is happening on the screen.
After this film, there can be no positive emotions or emotions at all. The violence here is truly beyond measure. And if we compare it with other similar works of European and Asian "masters of meat", we can say that this is the bloodiest and stupidest film of all such (however, this can be said about the entire trilogy of "August underground"). If, for example, in “Flower of flesh and blood” violence is shown more or less aesthetically, in “Men behind the sun” you can involuntarily imbue with compassion for the characters, then this film is like a slap in the underground cinema and as a kind of middle finger to the whole cinema in general. You want violence and violence? Get it!
Talking about acting is silly. She's just not here. The genre is not what they say.
Some will say that you can’t show it. This someone will be right, but still, as a shock therapy, such a movie can be recommended for a one-time viewing for fans of various kinds of bloody franchises like Saw, Hostel and the like, because murder should not be like entertainment (and such films, and modern action films that go on TV, present it this way), but as something nightmarish, terrifying and beyond normality. And this is how it shows the American independent and headstrong director Fred Vogel.
Conclusion: Viewing is not recommended.