Product Description

From Fred Vogel (AUGUST UNDERGROUND, AUGUST UNDERGROUND'S MORDUM) comes the latest and greatest Toetag Pictures' movie! Nothing seems to be going Kim's way. After recently being dumped, her heartbroken ex-boyfriend has become obsessed with trying to win back her love. Now the party she was supposed to attend with her best friend just got raided. After teaming up with four friends who are not ready to call it a night, the group decides to continue the festivities at the sight of the town's most notorious urban legend. With the ex-boyfriend seeking vengeance on Kim, and anyone else that gets in his way, the group of friends make the wrong choice when they decide to party at THE REDSIN TOWER.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #116768 in DVD
• Published on: 2207
• Released on: 2007-10-04
• Rating: Unrated
• Format: NTSC
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 87 minutes

Features

• Uncut Anamorphic (16:9) Widescreen Version
• English 5.1 Audio
• Audio Commentary by Toetag: Fred Vogel, Shelby Lyn Vogel, Jerami Cruise, and Cristie Whiles
• Butchering Becky with Commentary by Jerami Cruise
• Trailers

Customer Reviews

Special Effects in the Dark
Fred Vogel is obviously growing as a filmmaker.
He's transcended from the simulated snuff series "August Underground"
(for which he will always be remembered)
and is now tackling actual storytelling with real cinematography.
The story can essentailly be divided into two halves,
The first half accounts the events leading to the party at 'Redsin Tower'
And the second half depicts the surrealistic madness that ensues once inside.

The former half is where Vogel starts to shine as a budding filmaker.
(though he still has a long way to go in terms of lighting & dialogue)
The story follows two main characters:
The reluctant girl who just broke up with her long-time boyfriend, just before the night of a party,
and the broken-hearted, obsessive nerd out for vengeance.
Vogel keeps things from getting too stale, in the scenes following the ex-girl and her slutty, goth-friend, with his unabashedly raunchy dialogue.
And actually manages some poignant, emotional scenes surrounding euro-nerd.

The latter half of the movie is where things start to fall apart.
Once inside the Redsin Tower, you lose all sense of direction.
The setting is so dark, I was struggling to make out pretty much anything.
This is all the more upsetting, because this is where all the carnage takes place. (Revenge of the nerd, the blinding spirit rape, the unholy transformation & birth, the worm vomit, the writhing torso, the dance of the spastic corpses etc.)
(Honestly, the only brutal scenes that were visible, were the ones occuring in flashbacks, which just so happened to be the best scenes in the film)
If you're 'ace in the hole' is your gore-effects, why would you hide them in the darkest setting possible??
That's like going to see your favorite band perform, while wearing ear-plugs.
Totally senseless.
Gore is what people know Fred Vogel for. Why not flaunt it???
The fact that I was always asking "what's happening??" during any-given death scene became increasingly frustrating.

It wasn't until I let go of all sense of coherence, that I started to enjoy the surrealistic descent into madness taking place onscreen.
I'll eventually have to give it a second viewing, with the brightness turned all the way up.
All in all, I really enjoyed it and will gladly display it in my horrific collection.
It should have been better. (And would've been, if the brutality was visible) I would have given it 4 stars, had the lighting been better.
But I can't complain.
It could have been alot worse.
I hope to see alot more from Toetags (both literally and figuratively)
Their take on horror is disturbingly refreshing.

MORAL OF THE STORY:
IF you've got it, flaunt it.

Not quite
August Underground series- genius. The idea, the format, the execution. The videotaped scenario smartly abetted its authentic feel, as well as exonerated it from script/acting criticism (to me, anyway). That, and by the time i viewed Penance, I actually kind of dug Fred Vogel's character. I hadn't seen anything like those films, and they definitely affected me (particularly Mordum). The Redsin Tower, though containing a few splashes of AU's intense gore effects, falters a bit because of the shoddy acting and character choices (seriously, I've never seen a more simpering ex, and after enduring him for the movie I was annoyed by his fate). The true horror in AU was consistently trying to fathom how someone human could have the mindset required to torture and butcher people methodically. The Redsin Tower kind of reverts back to a few Hollywood staples- band of kids (who smoke, drink, and fool around) that you don't really care about, scary setting with an evil past, eventual possessions, and shadowy kills without any real sense of savagery (the simpering ex's hatchet job on one of the characters notwithstanding). The movie has its moments and it's not bad, I just kind of wished Fred Vogel had stayed unique in his approach to horror/gore- how i'm not sure, but he's already done it once and to great effect.

Tower of Blood
I want to start by saying that I absolutely love Fred's August Underground series and I was definitely not expecting this to be like that.

What this movie showed is that Fred does have some talent, beyond the gore and he is getting better (along with his crew of regulars) at developing a story and actually putting together a full horror movie experience. Is this a Dario Argento flick, no, but it shows a lot of creativity and camera angles that the other flicks really couldn't explore in that format, it's nice to see him branch out.

The plot is pretty simple, a girl dumps a guy and he gets angry, really angry, then he finds out that they are going to the Redsin Tower to party so he follows them up there and that's when the mayhem takes over. This becomes a non-stop bloodletting.

This reminded me a lot of Night of the Demons, a great horror flick that has people trapped and horrible things happen to them when they can't get out of a building.

This film is very similar but not so much that it takes away from this picture.

The only reason I didn't give this a higher rating was that the pacing slows down a bit once they get into the tower. It's not boring but the pacing is strange, maybe it was supposed to be that way.

Overall though this film delivers what it's supposed to, great gore! If you love blood and guts, this is the film for you! If you want a great story and acting, this probably won't fit the bill but it's a fun time if your a fan of blood.

I'm excited to see Fred's new work that came out this month, April 09 as it looks like he may have gone back to the August Underground era again and maybe he's incorporated some of his new style in that one as well. I'll review that one once I have it in my hands.