Garagehouse Pictures exhumes a lost regional horror-comedy unseen for over fifty years!
Some nutty gangsters thought they pulled off the crime of the century… but it’s going to cost them an arm and a leg!
After a daring jewel heist, a trio of thieves hold up in an old dark house inhabited by a motley bunch of restless ghosts that only want to dispatch their new guests in the most horrible manner possible – that is if they can get to them before the spirits of an unruly group of dismembered corpses from the nearby cemetery!
Shot in Philadelphia in 1962, THE DISMEMBERED claws its way out of the grave of cinematic obscurity to debut on home video for the very first time courtesy of a new HD Blu-ray from Garagehouse Pictures. THE DISMEMBERED is a film so forgotten that at the time of this writing it doesn’t even have a listing on the Internet Movie Database. Directed by Ralph S. Hirshorn, THE DISMEMBERED is an offbeat ghosts-and-gangsters satire that plays like a cross between Roger Corman and Casper the Friendly Ghost, and the evokes the spirit of American International Pictures and the drive-in B movie. Featuring homicidal ghosts, creeping severed limbs, cobwebbed sets, graveyard atmosphere and weird musical improvisations by the Main Street Ghouls, THE DISMEMBERED is one strange little movie with lots of ghoulish charm.
THE DISMEMBERED will be available April 25th from Garagehouse Pictures.
Specs for THE DISMEMBERED are as follows:
• Transferred & digitally mastered in 4K from the director’s only 16mm film print
• Sound digitally remastered from the original optical tracks
• Audio commentary with director Ralph S. Hirshorn and Andrew Repasky McElhinney (CHRONICLE OF CORPSES)
• THE END OF SUMMER (1959) – 11 minute short film by Ralph S. Hirshorn
• Liners notes by Dan Buskirk (Phawker.com film critic and host of the Fun 2 Know podcast)
•Trailers for Garagehouse Pictures releases
• Art by Stephen Romano
• All regions
1962 / 65 mins. / B&W / Mono / 1.66:1 / Not Rated
Saw this around 10 years ago in Philadelphia when the director showed the print he owned. It's...OK. Nothing to get too excited about and made by novice filmmakers. It has some funny moments, but a lot of the humor falls flat. Had they pushed things a little bit further the film would've turned into SPIDER BABY, but it never happened. Still, see it if you get the chance. One of the things the director mentioned in his introduction was the technical problems they encountered. I believe his first words were: "There are treasures to be found, but not every one is a 'Surprise Symphony'".
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