Dominion (1992)

 

Director: Todd Sheets

Screenplay: Todd Sheets and Misty Wolfe

Cast: Carol Barta as Elizabeth; Frank Dunlay as Roger Williams; Auggi Alvarez as Clarence Theopolis; Charles Monroe as Stan Lotus; Tonia Monahan as Jamalia; Jody Rovick as Gazelle; Ray C. Merrill as Asmodeus; Veronica Orr as Mistianna

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Some Todd Sheets for a quick shot-on-video fix is a pleasure for me. These "SOV" films from the USA are still a niche, least when you are English and they rarely get a release in the United Kingdom barring American Genre Film Archive titles or when they are available on line legally. These films are an acquired taste, but I admit there are within them, including the ultra low budget titles of the digital era into the 2000s, a compelling aesthetic them. With VHS shot titles themselves, with their video produced opening credits and a format, VHS haze, which I have no nostalgia for, and will not view as superior to Blu Ray or even DVD, there is yet for these productions something compelling to watch within them because of this sheen. Todd Sheets, his older films let alone new ones, are as much their own fascination in this territory.

Clearly Dominion is going to be a vampire film from the Salem's Lot (1979) reference in the first scene, of the scene from Tobe Hooper's TV adaptation of a person floating outside a window, though the police here at least consider the recent spree of blood draining killings involving at least a person who thinks they are a vampire, rather than waste time baffled by the bizarre murders, having drained thirteen people by the opening scenes. Alongside an older woman who is clearly a vampire expert, as she keeps a stake in her luggage, the police find themselves having contend with a vampire cult living underground led by her brother, a young boy where the child actor himself is gunning for scenery chewing in how he reads his lines.

As an early Todd Sheets film, those of a certain time period are separate to the others, their productions likely to be (with affection for them) ramshackle or at least silly, this not taking itself too seriously when these vampires have low targets - wishing both to dominate the world but also grocery shops, one female vampire wishes to rule the cosmetics world to fix her pale complexion. They plan to resurrect the boy's master through the Satanic power of rock, Todd Sheets' in-house band Enochian Key, not just having a score credit but onscreen as Enochian Key, playing demon worshippers who eat human flesh. It is fascinating, knowing he was ending even the goriest of films from this time with a thanks to Jesus Christ, that Todd Sheets does pastiche the Satanic Panic on rock and metal music from the eighties here, and that he has the religious zealot mother, formerly a hippy, for a brief scene as an antagonist even though her daughter's decision to go to the Enochian Key concert proved her mother right. These early films, truthfully, are lacksidasical, but they have a charm from this. An actual long form plot may be unlikely in this case to draw out, only scraping through its plot points over nearly seventy minutes, including the least expected romantic melodrama between two older supernatural experts which is barely scratched upon. But this is an aspect of all these early films, as it would not be a Sheets film from this time without a lingering scene or two with gore and animal organ meat as practical splatter effects.

It is a delight, considering they are tied to Todd Sheets into the modern day, I got to see Enochian Key performing onscreen (in character) rather than just in the score, as a homemade metal soundtrack. Soundtracks to Sheets' films, even in the rougher films from this era, are always interesting, and whilst moody at times, one or two pieces do sound like a Philips CD-I lounge track from composer Matthew Jason Walsh. That is neither a ultra obscure joke at a games console few can even emulate either as, alongside tracks which evoke Italian horror composer Fabio Frizzi, not just his pieces from Zombi 2 (1979) but the tropical cuts from that soundtrack, a banger in this case, but there are moments in Dominion which evoke Jim Andron's score for the Philips CD-I version of Tetris (1992). Made available in the modern day as a soundtrack in the streaming era in 2020, it is amusing, especially in a scene for a romance where the crew hired a horse and carriage, how similar they sound, coming from the same year, to the point I did wonder, with no accusations at either side, if any of these tracks from both accidentally blurred similar notes on their synthesizers unintentionally.

Sheets' films from this era do end up being messes as mentioned, which is a warning, as by a Clownado (2018), even with that ridiculous title premise, he fixed his cinematic style and pacing with considerable decades of work, having worked over the years baring a fallow creative period between 2005 to 2013. The early "primitives", to give them a name, have charm though. Some ambition is there - the close-up of keys being thrown to someone, with the camera behind them simulating their travel across in the air, is inventive. There is the gore and the horror fan here behind the camera too - with another least expected moment, that being the least expected chainsaw scene, with limb removal, transpiring because they wanted the scene. The sense this does not follow what is expected, by accident, of what even a low budget horror film should do is also here - it abruptly ends, not with the conclusion of the story, but randomly on two female vampires snacking on a john. This is to be expected with Todd Sheets' films from this era, and I love them now as much for this.