There’s a scene in Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer with Henry and Otis attacking their victims and using the family’s camcorder to capture their sadistic and homicidal ways. It’s a disturbing moment in a film that’s overflows with them. Sometimes I wonder what happened to that videotape. Back in the mid-90s, my film school had inherited a guy’s VHS collection. He taped a lot of movies off TV, but there were a few unmarked tapes in the collection. My job was to catalog what was on the tapes. Every time I’d toss one of those tapes in the VCR and hit play, I’d brace myself for a close up of Otis and another victim. Luckily nothing that gruesome showed up since he didn’t make “home movies.” I was not have been the only person thinking about the Henry and Otis VHS tape during the ’90s. Except instead of being anxious about stumbling across such a tape, Fred Vogel decided to make his own VHS tape in 2000. August Underground is a mixture of the disturbing and the mundane that shocked the unsuspecting viewer after they pressed play.
The movie opens with what seems to be a guy working on a farm late at night. He’s hauling a bucket from a nearby barn. But when he enters the house, he goes downstairs to the basement where a woman is strapped to a chair with extreme injuries. He’s ready to add to the torture of his victim. Peter (director Fred Vogel) plays a sadistic psychopath with an equally disturbing and unseen pal behind the camcorder. The two of them document picking up victims on the tape. They give a ride to a female hitchhiker that turns nasty after they goad her to undress in the car. The film isn’t just one torture scene after the next. This is a mix tape of the duo’s adventures during this time. There’s video of a live concert where the sweet kids jump into a mosh pit. We get a tour of a slaughterhouse. After they get rather nasty with a convenience store clerk and customers, they head off to Roadside America in Shartlesville, Pennsylvania to see a model railroad exhibit. They act like any other goofy tourists looking at the tiny houses. They even go comic book shopping. We get a sense that these two psychopaths are just into videotaping so much of their life. This is why you want to see how the tape ends.
Nearly 22 years since the original VHS tapes of August Underground were passed around. It’s still a horrific experience. You do have to fight the instinct to press stop on the Blu-ray player and contact the local authorities. You might want to call the friend who encouraged you to watch the film to seek psychiatric help. Fred Vogel and Allen Peters figured out a way to make this VHS production feel right and not stagey like a first-year film student’s movie. The gore special effects still are gross. Since the video wasn’t shot in HD, the seams on the wounds don’t get exposed as phony on the Blu-ray. The video blurriness adds to the impact. It kind of reminds me of the fuzziness in some shots of Stan Brakhage’s The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes. Vogel and the special effects crew sell the grotesque. The actors also sell the fear when Vogel and his cameraman attack. There’s genuine sense that August Underground is like a Girls Gone Wild tape that’s warped into a snuff film.
The Video is 1.33:1 full frame. The movie was shot on standard definition video so it’s a bit fuzzy which adds to the repulsive nature of the special effects. Audio is LPCM 2.0 Stereo. You’ll hear everything that will make you feel queasy on the screen. There are no subtitles.
DVD has the movie and most of the bonus features.
Audio Commentary Tracks included Fred Vogel with Ultra Violent Magazine’s Art Ettinger, Fred Vogel solo, Fred with actors Aaron and Ben LaBonte and finally The Killer.
Original Screener Version (69:59) was the version originally passed around while looking for a distributor.
Original Introduction by Director Fred Vogel (1:20) has him talking by a CRT monitor. This was from a fifth anniversary special edition.
10 Questions with Fred Vogel (12:30) has him answer the questions he most frequently gets about the production. He explains the title of the film. There’s discussion of how his grandmother ended up in the film.
Toetag Masterclass: From Storyboard To Screen (6:43) shows Vogel and his crew planned out the shots and didn’t just wing the violence.
Dave Parker Interview Fred Vogel & Mike Watt (67:11) gets into how the film was released back in 2001 and got a bigger cult following in 2003 thanks to Watt’s article. The writer didn’t normally like the sadistic films, but found touches in this indie film that made him praise August Underground. Watt wanted to know that Vogel didn’t really harm the actors in the film. Should be noted Dave Parker is not the baseball great and Mike Watt isn’t the bassist from The Minutemen.
Dave Parker Interviews Fred Vogel (46:32) is about the upcoming Blu-ray. He had originally distributed it on VHS. They talk about how ever few years the film gets rediscovered or plugged by other horror directors. This was a true underground film that you weren’t renting at Blockbuster. His camera guy quit the film because people thought the tape was real.
Revisiting Infamy: Severed Cinema Interviews Fred Vogel (38:30) gets into how Fred was in a special effects makeup school. He wanted to make a zombie, but the budget would be too much. Fred came up with this idea. He teamed up with a pal he’d met at an adult bookstore to make the film. But after the screener cut, the pal dropped out since he had a family and didn’t want to be known for August Underground. People who watched the film were wanting to go to the authorities thinking it was real.
Hammer to the Head: A Closer Look at August Underground (66:50) has Vogel go deeper indepth to putting together this no budget skeleton crew movie. He wanted to make a film that felt way too real. We visit the location of the farmhouse. Behind the Brutality exposes a few of the special effects in outtake footage.
August Underground “Too Real For Comfort” An Outsiders Perspective (101:45) has Shelby Jackson relate her experiences as she worked on the film in PR. We meet Crusty Whiles, the art director who discusses meeting up with Fred Vogel.
Photo Gallery (12:31) has behind the scenes shots and special effects snaps,
Web Promo (0:58) has Fred talk about the re-release.
Trailers are included for August Underground (2:01), Mordum (1:09) and Penance (1:24).
Unearthed Films present August Underground. Directed by Fred Vogel. Screenplay by Fred Vogel and Allen Peters. Starring Fred Vogel, Allen Peters, Kyle Dealman, Dan Friedman, Alexa Iris, Victoria Jones, Aaron LaBonte and Ben LaBonte. Running Time: 71 minutes. Rating: Not Rated. Release Date: August 15, 2023.
