Into the Black

I recently acquired the excellent Arrow blu-ray of the cult classic "Deadbeat by Dawn", directed, written by and starring Jim Van Bebber. Amongst the extras are to be found four of his short films, "Into the Black" being the oldest and at 34 minutes in length the longest. In terms of story line there is very little - two young men escape from what is a very fake looking "prison", they find themselves fighting very dubious looking prison staff and gang members, plus rescuing a girl that gets kidnapped. Van Bebber plays the lead role (as he would do so in other films) and this really is a showcase for him to strip off his shirt, flex his muscles and demonstrate his impressive martial arts skills. Bizarrely the action is occasionally interrupted by him and his friend playing electric guitars! This is a silent film with only a few written words of dialogue shown, the soundtrack is good but obviously added later. Non stop action with plenty of violence and cheap but very gory effects. Good stuff!

If you've seen "Deadbeat at Dawn" or "The Manson Family" and wish to seek out more Jim Van Bebber, this short film is available on the Jim Van Bebber "Visions of Hell" boxset.

It's a no-budget home movie that's really just a showcase of how awesome JVB is, as it's mainly just action-oriented fight scenes. The fights are all clearly choreographed as if he wanted people to see he knew martial arts, but that doesn't hamper your enjoyment of it any, and there are still a few stand-out bits.

It's nothing groundbreaking at all due to the obvious lack of budget, costumes, visual effects, editing equipment, etc, but it's still a very fun, very innovative video that shows JVB has a lot of raw talent that would emerge later in his career.