Movies
Mad Ron’s Prevues from Hell (V)
“Frankly, Mad Ron’s Prevues from Hell is the perfect disc to have running in the background of your next Halloween party. So then why the mediocre rating? Well, it’s worth noting that the previews vary considerably in terms of quality, both in regards to the original trailer, and the digital transfer.”
Back in the 90s I was briefly employed by The Wilshire, an old-school movie theater in northern Utah boasting an expansive 830-seat big house. The building was eventually demolished in 2000, but back in the day it was managed by a guy named Dave, a cine-phile in the truest sense of the word. Over the course of many years in the theater management business, Dave had amassed a respectable collection of 35mm movie trailers, despite the studios’ best efforts to retrieve them. Late one night after a particularly slow shift, Dave threaded a reel of horror trailers he had spliced together, and we watched it after closing in the dark, damp, nearly empty 800-seater, camped out on the carpeted aisles between the rows of seats. Over an hour’s worth of shit. It was glorious.
Mad Ron’s Prevues from Hell takes a similarly sentimental, movie-loving approach to the art of the film trailer. It’s an affectionate mix-tape of 1960-80s-era horror film previews buffered by lame ventriloquist bits that were originally shot in 1987. Nick Partlow, a hyper-nerd ventriloquist of the pre-Bill Gates variety, comes complete with dork glasses, a fierce comb-over, and an ADD-afflicted corpse puppet named Happy Goldsplatt. Together they fill the space between previews by farting out a series of agonizingly bad skits that were probably totally rad in the late eighties.
Thankfully, the puppet filler starts to wind down after the first 30 minutes, and the focus turns to the trailers. It’s an admittedly diverse and entertaining collection, with nuggets like Deep Red, Sisters, Last House on the Left, and Black Christmas (under the alias “Silent Night, Evil Night”), buried in a pile of amusingly lowbrow exploitation.
The disc features 47 previews in all. A handful stuck with me:
Wildcat Women
Flaunting 3-D titties 35 years before the Piranha remake, the Wildcat Women trailer is packed with an admirably wide assortment of naked boobies…even a pair featuring grossly inverted nipples. Check your inhibitions at the door.
Africa: Blood and Guts
Essentially a montage of clips of African wildlife being slaughtered and/or mutilated. Presumably for those animal snuff purists who dug all the possum torture in Cannibal Holocaust, but wished the animals involved had been more endangered.
The Mutations
This preview is pretty damn awesome, if only because The Mutations is one of the few movies to feature actual freaks. But if you’ve seen the film you know that much of the running time is devoted to Donald Pleasance fucking around with plants. So, whatever.
The Maniacs Are Loose
Promises “hallucinogenic Hypno-Vision” that will put you right in the “middle of the picture with bloodthirsty maniacs all around you”. All that’s missing from this trailer is a phone number for a local ‘shroom hook-up.
Three on a Meathook
Probably my favorite preview of the bunch, it’s cursed with some highly bizarre and convoluted voiceover narration, which comes across like William Shatner orally translating a book of Asian poetry:
“A picture you won’t ever forget because it touches the full spectrum of the bizarre, the forbidden, the twilight areas of a life destined to be spent in shadow and agony. The screen may never again relate to this subject matter. It will certainly never again approach this treatment…The only ones left to mourn, the last witnesses to the execution, suspended in time by a puppeteer with blood on his hands, little broken dolls that go on dancing after the music has stopped…Three on a Meathook.”
I mean, WTF?
Frankly, Mad Ron’s Prevues from Hell is the perfect disc to have running in the background of your next Halloween party. So then why the mediocre rating? Well, it’s worth noting that the previews vary considerably in terms of quality, both in regards to the original trailer, and the digital transfer. A few are letterboxed, but most are cropped. The audio warbles. Nicks and scratches abound. It’s unseemly. But still a disc worth checking out.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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