Visual Vengeance, a Blu-ray label dedicated to vintage ‘Shot on Video’ and microbudget genre independents from the 1980s through 2000s, is set to release this November a little gem hidden for many: Heartland of Darkness (1992).
Written and directed by Eric Swelstad, the debut feature of the man behind other b-movie titles like The Curse of Lizzie Borden 2: Prom Night (2008) and Frankenstein Rising (2010), the film was shot in 1989 on 16mm film and lost in obscurity and distribution false starts for over 30 years. The special release finally arrives on home video for the very first time and is packed with bonus features that spotlight the original creators and document the film’s long history and final completion.
Also known as Blood Church, the movie is set in the small town of Copperton, Ohio, where Paul Henson, a former big-city journalist, buys a small local newspaper. He quickly falls into a wide-reaching conspiracy of ritualistic murder and cult mind control when he discovers that the entire town may be under the spell of a Satanic reverend and his flock. As the clues and corpses pile up, Henson and his family are thrust into a life-or-death struggle to expose the truth and stop the demonic cabal’s reign of evil.
Heartland of Darkness (1992) stars Linnea Quigley, Nick Baldasare, Dino Tripodis, Shanna Thomas, Sharon Klopfenstein, and John Dunleavy.
Watch the official trailer here.
