Doppelgänger Releasing, the genre-focused label of Music Box Films, has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Crumb Catcher, the debut feature from Chris Skotchdopole. 

Crumb Catcher debuted at Fantastic Fest, before going on to play Woodstock Film Festival and Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize for Best Ensemble and the Gold Audience Award.

The film was written and directed by Skotchdople and was produced by indie vet Larry Fessenden, alongside Brian Devine, Chadd Harbold, Bonnie Timmermann, and James W. Skotchdopole. Doppelgänger Releasing will open Crumb Catcher in theaters later this year, with a home entertainment release to follow. 

Pic is led by Rigo Garay and Ella Rae Peck, with Lorraine Farris and John Speredakos rounding out the cast. Synopsis reads: After blacking out on his wedding night, Shane (Garay) and his wife (Peck) head to a remote estate for their honeymoon. That night, there’s a knock at the door; a waiter and bartender from the reception, blackmailing Shane for something he can’t remember doing. But the blackmailers don’t just want money. They’re after business partners for their invention, an outlandish device called…the Crumb Catcher.

“I started writing Crumb Catcher in 2016 as our country was being divided by the Great Hate Magnet. What emerged was a twisted tale of home invasion, two couples on opposing ends of the American Dream- a reflection of the absurdist times that in 2024, we are all still forced to participate in,” said Skotchdople.  “My intention was to make a thrilling and suspenseful film, but my hope is that these couples have more to reveal. I’m proud to partner with Music Box Films and Doppelgänger Releasing, a company that believes in community and that the lifeforce of independent film starts in a movie theater.”

The deal was negotiated by Brian Andreotti of Doppelgänger Releasing and Joe Tufano at Submarine Entertainment on behalf of the filmmakers. Music Box Films has said it aims to revive its genre-focused label Doppelgänger Releasing with a series of new content. Doppelgänger was created in 2013. The label most recently released Raging Grace with Brainstorm Media.

DEADLINE has the scoop!

Excerpts from Adam Nayman’s review

Wolf Like Me March 19, 2024

… Blackout, the director’s most striking feature in decades… a nicely atmospheric, sturdily crafted creature feature with any number of intriguing entry points—not least of all that its story of an isolated, multicultural community with predators in its midst exists in indirect but loquacious conversation with Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Can you find the (were)wolves in these pictures?

… In more ways than one, Fessenden’s seventh feature is a shaggy-dog story; what binds it to Scorsese’s masterpiece is the way it interrogates certain all-American narratives to expose their ameliorating artifice.

… Fessenden, whose first student movie was a homemade remake of Jaws, has always worn his bleeding heart on his sleeve (in the best Romero tradition). Blackout’s political commentary isn’t subtle, but it’s so deeply woven into the fabric of the material that it feels like an artistic starting point instead of a market-savvy flourish. The theme—endemic to both werewolf stories and activist allegories—is transformation, and while Charley’s efforts to control and channel his condition don’t quite work out as planned, there’s something endearing about the image of a hairy, snarling small-town vigilante staring down the forces of late capitalism—shades, maybe, of Tom Laughlin as Billy Jack, filtered through a noble cinematic lineage of suffering, self-divided lycanthropes…

There’s more common ground between Fessenden and [John] Sayles—another filmmaker long since taken for granted—than one might think. After all, the latter made his name (and shored up his Hollywood collateral) scripting Joe Dante’s marvelous (and again, politically astute) werewolf shocker The Howling…

… Like Sayles, Fessenden is a regionalist interested in the relationship between the individual and the community, and he’s attuned to the specifics—from commercial signage to gift-store trinkets—that keep his B-movie archetypes honest. More broadly speaking, what Fessenden shares with Sayles—and while we’re at it, his frequent collaborator and one-time protege Kelly Reichardt and fellow indie eminence grise Jim Jarmusch (who cast him as a sheriff in The Dead Don’t Die)—is a bruised-and-blistered metaphysics of failure, the secret handshake of lefty directors who’ve been around long enough to not place too much stock in the future.

… The fatalism of its final sequences has its own spectral intensity—and integrity. In the final moments, a mortally wounded Charley flashes back to the night he was first attacked, and Fessenden gives us the film’s most shiver-inducing image—a carefully prepared shot-reverse-shot with the architecture of a jump scare but a very different feeling underneath. Instead of shock—or surprise—the money shot conjures up a tender, heartbreaking mix of existential resignation and recognition: the only possible response for when we all find the wolf has suddenly and inevitably come to our door.

Read full Review at Reverse Shot

Featuring songs by
Tom Laverack, Dinoboy, Still Rusty, Robert O. Leaver

Now available on Itunes, Apple Music, Spotify, amazon etc.

Limited Edition CD available from Glass Eye Pix

BLACKOUT still playing daily in NYC,
check IFC for screen times

Screens daily, check IFC Center for times!

ART OF THE MONSTERVERSE

Horror filmmaker Larry Fessenden’s Monsterverse is a series of contemporary independent films that draw from the classic Universal monster movies of the 30’s and 40’s: Dracula (Fessenden’s HABIT, 1997), Frankenstein (Fessenden’s DEPRAVED, 2019) and the wolf man (Fessenden’s BLACKOUT, 2023). Fessenden’s films blend classic horror tropes with contemporary themes. Aesthetically the films are crafted with an artisanal low budget cinematic style, employing tactile, traditional art techniques in the building of the imagery, tapping into primal childhood and folkloric memories. In promoting the films, classical techniques in portraiture and painted posters call back to cinema’s past. This exhibit celebrates the collaborators that have contributed their artistry to the Fessenden Monsterverse.

THE LOGOS
Beck Underwood who designed the Glass Eye Pix logo, also designed the iconic “Habit” logo in 1996.
THE ANIMATOR
James Siewert embarked on a seven-month journey to create 300 acrylic paintings for the animated hallucination of the werewolf for BLACKOUT.
THE PAINTER
John Mitchell, who created paintings and drawings for the BLACKOUT protagonist’s on-screen artwork, was also tasked with creating 150 pen and ink images for an animated sequence that depicts the man transforming into a werewolf.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
The classic monster portraits by Nelson Bakerman evoke the studio pictures that celebrated the work of makeup maestro Jack Pierce; not location shots or film stills, but portraits on white or black backdrops that were reproduced in monster magazines hawked to impressionable kids during he Monster Craze of the 60s and 70s. Bakerman’s work for the three films has appeared in Fangoria Magazine, The Village Voice, and inspired the posters displayed here.
THE POSTERS
Graham Humphreys is an illustrator and designer with 40 years experience. One of the few contemporary illustrators using the traditional medium of gouache to paint his images, Graham is best known for his work within the horror genre. Humphreys is the perfect illustrator to create the Retro Style Monsterverse Posters that pay tribute to the art of the original films (which the director grew up staring at).
FAN ART
Adam Markiewicz creates a delightful encounter between the Universal Monsters and their contemporary counterparts in this work of fan art encouraged by BLACKOUT vfx artist Eugene Lehnert.

On display at the IFC 2nd Floor Exhibit Space Starting March 8, 2024
Thanks to Posteritati for loaning out the space and IFC for hosting
HEY NY — SEE IT LIVE!

from DEADLINE

Universal’s monster movie Abigail helmed by Radio Silence’s Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett has been set to world premiere as the closing night film of horror fest The Overlook Film Festival, which is taking place this year at the Prytania Theatres in New Orleans from April 4 – 7.
…
Other highlights from the lineup include Larry Fessenden’s Blackout

Blackout
Director: Larry Fessenden
Cast: Alex Hurt, Addison Timlin, Motell Gyn Foster, Joseph Castillo-Midyett, John Speredakos, Michael Buscemi, Joe Swanberg, Barbara Crampton, James Le Gros, Marshall Bell

Not your typical werewolf story, Blackout follows a painter, haunted by guilt, who becomes convinced that he is transforming at night and wreaking havoc in his small town in this genre-bending and often hilarious portrait from the legendary Larry Fessenden (Habit, Wendigo).

Read full article at Deadline

Larry Fessenden joins the JUNKIES this week to talk some Indie Horror!! Larry is an Actor, Producer & Director with such projects as Blackout, Jakob’s Wife, We Are Still Here & Habit just to name a few from a resume a mile long! Join us in the chat with all your questions as we will have plenty to talk about!!