Spookfield

Spookfield is the debut of West Springfield, Massachusetts, filmmaker Alexis Gonzales. He was sharing his trials and tribulations of creating Spookfield on Facebook. I think it was a group we both belonged to at the time was how I discovered Alexis’ debut and I saw promise! Naturally we got to talking and in time he offered me a chance to experience his baby once it was ready.

Seeds of what is to become this anthology grew from a short around ten years ago. This is when Alexis penned opening vignette, Tears of Trauma. Actual filming started with zombie-inhabited vignette It Isn’t Easy.

Spookfield consists of four vignettes…

Tears of Trauma: Abuse vibrates into the memories of a mentally disturbed man.

Being a victim of abuse from his own mother as a child a man listens on as his neighbour abuses his own son. Not being able to hold the internal torment any longer he decides to take drastic action and teach the father a lesson.

The Town Ghoul: An ancient relic is stolen from an ex archaeologist who also has a penchant for voodoo.

It Isn’t Easy: A brutal pimp is paid a visit by the zombies of four dead hookers and suffers a terrible fate!

Wishful Thinking: A woman reads the diary of her missing siste,r who is a prostitute. Along with the diary was found a strange relic that she pockets. Calling the Police she soon finds out she called one of the people involved with her sister and hangs up. Unfortunately for her the line is traced and she is soon paid a visit!

Alexis Gonzalez’s Spookfield is a love affair towards Italian cinema! Especially Giallo and the Italian Zombie Cycle. Tears of Trauma’s revenger with his garb of black mask, overcoat, fedora and naturally gloves. Then The Town Ghoul and It Isn’t Easy with its Lucio Fulci feel with the ghouls. As for the relic it appears to be influenced to a point by the demonic mask in Lamberto Bava’s Demons.

There is no surrounding story loop with this anthology. What Alexis Gonzalez has given us instead is a relationship with the people within each vignette instead that builds up to the final showdown!

A criminal father making plans on a hit!

An associate steals an ancient relic with supernatural powers that can either curse or save.

Brutal pimps who have the power of life and death over their working girls!

One of these prostitutes sister’s discovering information along with the before mentioned relic.

To put it simply the binding of Spookfield is Revenge within different guises.

~ Gore. Sickness. Insanity. Filth. Depravity. ~

There is enough gore and insanity here to cap off each vignette nicely. Keep in mind this is a SOV very low budget outing by a first timer so don’t go in looking for Ittenbach level gore debauchery! But what we get here shows a lot of promise, does the job and I personally feel that Mr Gonzalez has the potential to share some nice work in future horror outings.

This is Alexis Gonzalez baby! It shows a lot of heart!

Low budget underground cinema!

Built with heart and passion for the films that Mr Gonzalez loves! Italian horror cinema!

Don’t come into this expecting high-level acting ability or earth shattering special effects!

What we get is of a man working on a low budget making the most of it. Some of the editing could have been done a bit better. But, I feel this was a learning experience. Also, I felt it would have been better to have the title for each vignette when they begun. I got a little thrown at times. But to be honest it was no biggie. With all this said and done I was never once bored or reaching for the fast forward button. I was held to the screen to see what was going to happen next.

In the end Spookfield for me was a very enjoyable ride!

My favourite aspect of Spookfield was the Lucio Fulci inspired ghouls. I also dug the outfit of our revenger of sorts in Tears of Trauma that was very Giallo inspired! But all up each segment had something to offer to the whole.

Alexis Gonzales made a wise decision in going with an anthology as his debut. Of working on short films and combining the together with a binding tie to create this feature.

Love SOV films? Of features where there is heart and passion behind it. Go check out Alex Gonzalez’s Spookfield when the time comes!

Thanks for filming Spookfield and sharing it with me Alexis! If you, the reader, are interested in obtaining a copy of Spookfield please contact Alexis Gonzalez through Facebook. For farther details please check out the thread in Extreme Horror Cinema‘s Underground Horror Films forum.

Criminal dealings, violence, murder and…zombies!