A Day of Judgment

Though many had told me to stay far away from this one, I persisted and gave it a shot and I wish I had listened. If you're interested in seeing a bunch of community theater actors walking around and hamming it up with very little in terms of tension or scares, maybe this will hit the right spot for you, but this is barely a horror film. If anything, it feels like an educational film with an few moments of a horror film spliced in just so it would sell.

Billed as a horror film in the midst of the slasher cycle, A Day of Judgement can't help but disappoint anyone expecting a straightforward horror flick and it's easy to understand why it's still struggling to find an audience all these years later.

It's like a silly Christian scare film crossed with A Christmas Carol about a bunch of small town sinners in the 1920's being given karmic justice in the form of a grim reaper-esque black cloaked figure who gets them pulled into hell by zombie-like hands or decapitates them.

Performances are spirited and it's not a badly made film in the technical sense, but not much is really going on and the most interesting subplot (there are many!) involves the younger wife of a town businessman carrying on an affair with one of her husband's employees.

The signs on the IMDb barometer usually never lie, right? When a horror movie has a miserable 2.3 rating out of 10, barely 50 user votes and only a handful of comments that are besides all negative … well, than you better just draw your conclusions and skip it, because more than likely this will be a bad movie. And yet, in spite of all the alarming omens and the enormous difficulties to purchase a half-decent bootleg copy of this obscure movie, I was determined to see it for myself. "Stormbringer" a.k.a. "A Day of Judgment" showed so much creepy potential and even some characteristics of being a genuine early 80's horror gem that got overlooked in the huge contemporary offer; or maybe I just wanted to see those things. Could this really be that bad? Set in the 1920's (in my humble opinion an ideal era to tell a chilling horror story), in a remote little farming community and dealing with devastating themes like retaliation, betrayal of God and the arrival of the Grim Reaper himself! This is stuff that I crave to see more in horror movies. Personally, and as objectively as I can be, I think "A Day of Judgment" is an admirable and undeservedly neglected movie. The pacing is incredibly slow and the complete lack of financial means is a gigantic restraint, but the essence of the film – the most rudimentary aim – is truly original and impressive. The story opens with the reverend of a small community leaving town, mainly because he's embarrassed of his parishioners. On the edge of town he crosses his successor, and he's none less than the Angel of Death, sent by God himself and wielding a giant scythe of justice. The most fascinating aspect of the script is that our reaper meets with "traditional" sinners. We're not talking about terrorists or drug dealers, but good old-fashioned despicable yokels! Nasty old ladies that poison the pets of innocent children, fat and greedy bank managers that put humble farmers out of business, adulterous wives and treacherous employees and snobbish adolescents disrespecting their parents. Admittedly these stories aren't always too spectacular and come across as extremely outdated by now, but especially seen in their 1920's religious context, I really found them quite unsettling and scary. I'm also the first person to admit that the character of the Grim Reaper is dreadfully underused. Here they have a genuinely scary villain, complete with powerful weapon and deformed face, and yet the makers oddly decided to only show very brief flashes of him. The murder sequences are also poorly shot, or sometimes not even shown at all, and most of the cast members clearly never did any professional acting before. But, seriously, these are all minor defaults that are directly linked to the budgetary restrictions and inexperienced director. What this movie needs is some script re-writes (particularly towards the ending… The ending downright sucked and narrowly ruined the entire movie), a couple of wealthy producers and a proper horror marketing campaign. Honestly, why is Hollywood remaking perfectly good horror classics, like "Nightmare on Elm Street" or "The Omen", while there are so many obscure and long- forgotten gems that are begging for a modern makeover?

What an oddity… although while I didn't think it entirely comes together it still stormed up an imaginatively off-kilter, if not totally realized concept within an under-produced low-cost production. I wanted to like it more than I actually did, as where it disappointed was its lame, if cop-out ending in what feels like nothing more than pushy church propaganda. In the end, it didn't make me see the light. Forgive me for my sins.

In the 1920's, reverend Cage leaves his church as the people don't attend his sermons, which sees them no longer god-fearing in their abandonment of the ten commandments as greed, jealousy, and murder finds its way in the lives of the town's folks. While leaving the secluded rural town Cage encounters a dark, forbidding figure with a scythe that moves on to the town visiting those corrupted souls.

Labelling it under horror might feel misleading, as while the moments with the Angel of Death are ominously atmospheric and daunting (like the excellent introduction, where the church organ music makes way for a bellowing, uneasy spook score filled with a grim-like intensity)… however most of the time is spent on the soapy episodic dramas (five sets) of sinful town's folks breaking the ten commandments and then during a dark, windy night getting a visit from the reaper. These moments are subtly done in a visual sense --- concentrating on imagery like shadows and angles, but upon each death it gets nastier, especially the graphic fate of the final victim. Still the reaper sees too little time, but alone his appearance (that's the few glimpses) manages a cold shiver.

Director C.D.H Reynolds static handling has some pacing issues and it can look makeshift, but there's an authentic period style created and some eerie passages are etched. The material is thoughtfully written, painting the many dark facets of the human psyche with a cautionary irony to its developments. Nonetheless the tone is all over the place, making it feel somewhat half-baked and too black and white. The performances are quite raw, but acceptable. While you could say there was room for improvement, it still delivered a fascinating pitch even with its limitations.

IMDb erroneously lists Christopher Reynolds as the director of Day of Judgment. The actual director is Charles Reynolds (C.D.H. Reynolds), no relation to Christopher Reynolds. I contacted the site some years ago about this, but they seem loathe to correct the mistake. IMDb also lists the filming location as Wilmington, NC. The film was actually one of many made at Earl Owensby's studios (E.O. Corp) in Shelby, NC, in the western part of the state, hours from Wilmington. Presumably the mistake is that Wilmington would later enjoy something of a filming boom, but this has no relation to the film or to the E.O. Corp. User reviews have consistently commented on the lousy ending. Here's the real story. The original screenplay had a different ending that avoided the horror genre, and was prompted by the recent success of a Johnny Cash film that was playing well on the church circuit. But when the shooting phase was complete, and C.D.H. Reynolds (director) had left town, the marketing department determined that the film really needed to be a horror film to be successful. Following this decision, a different director was quickly brought in to re-film a horror ending.