from JT Petty’s Blood Red Earth (2008)

A priest comes to the aid of a dominatrix when she accidentally summons a demon in the trailer for The Demonatrix.

Hannah Fierman (V/H/S) and Aurelio Voltaire (The Velocipastor) star with Doug Bradley(Hellraiser), Larry Fessenden (You’re Next), and Nivek Ogre (Repo! The Genetic Opera) as the demon.

Featuring special makeup effects by Norman Cabrera (Hellboy, The Cabin in the Woods), the indie horror film is written and directed by Voltaire and Jeff Ferrell.

It follows Lita (Fierman), a dominatrix who holds a sham seance in an attempt to make extra money. When she unwittingly summons an evil incubus (Ogre), the priest who presides over the church across the street (Voltaire) along with his demonologist mentor (Bradley) mobilize in an attempt to send the demon back to Hell.

The Demonatrix will have its US premiere in New York next month before hitting the road for festivals and conventions around the country:

• 12/5 – New York City Horror Film Festival in New York, NY
• 1/31 – Sacramento Horror Film Festival in Sacramento, CA
• 2/20 – Days of the Dead in Atlanta, GA
• 3/13-14 – Jacksonville Horror Film Festival in Jacksonville, FL
• 3/21 – Creature Feature Weekend in Gettysburg, PA
• 4/11 – Bonebat Comedy of Horrors Film Festival in Seattle, WA
• 5/2-3 – Crypticon in Seattle, WA
• 5/29-31 – Spooky Empire in Orlando, FL

The team aims to screen the film at least once a month in a different city throughout 2026.

By Hannah Hunt

#10 DEPRAVED
Larry Fessenden’s modern interpretation relocates Frankenstein to contemporary Brooklyn, grounding the story in trauma, medical experimentation, and psychological fracture. The Creature’s development is slow and methodical, and the film pays close attention to how identity forms under the influence of others. His creator, a former military medic, is driven by a cocktail of idealism, guilt, and ambition, mirroring modern anxieties about technological overreach and moral clarity. Fessenden’s choice to focus on the Creature’s fragmented memories adds a raw immediacy to his struggle for selfhood. Depraved is intimate and unsettling, proving that Shelley’s questions about responsibility and the human cost of creation remain as urgent now as they were two centuries ago.

Read about the other Nine… at Collider

Glass Eye Pix invites you to count down 25 Days till Christmas with this creepy Advent Calendar. What better way to celebrate the Holiday season than with a daily peek behind the doors and windows, nooks and crannies of this mysterious doll village assembled by artist and stop-motion animator Beck Underwood? See vintage dolls and Santas, stuffed critters and misfit toys, all to delight and tease in this merry celebration of Christmas mischief.

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Just Desserts Releases New Album ‘Curtains’

Larry Fessenden & Tom Laverack, aka Just Desserts is releasing their fourth album, ‘Curtains’ 38 years after their debut LP, Sentimental War arrived in 1987, almost to the day. Fessenden, a full-time filmmaker, producer, writer and actor, and Laverack, a singer-songwriter, co-founder of Sojourn Records, and a director of operations at a large behavioral health agency, have never stopped making music. But post-COVID, the high school pals dug back into where they left off working on songs before the pandemic. Coalescing in Fessenden’s barn upstate, the album took shape in the way one might ideally imagine a music project going – exciting reconnection after years of not playing, collaborating on the music and refining ideas, Fessenden, the king of the bridge, helping finish incomplete songs.

Enter Mark Ambrosino and his Madhouse Studio. Mark and Sojourn Records produced the last JD full length album ‘Lost in Love’, and with him behind the kit and the board, Mark helped JD enter into their fourth decade with vigor.

“I remember walking by the car wash on Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park, a strikingly ugly part of Brooklyn, when I had the idea of writing a song called ‘Curtains’. I think I wrote Larry an email and said, ‘Our next album is going to be called Curtains. I just have to write the song.’ The fact that we actually did it, thanks in large part to Larry shepherding the project forward, well it makes me very happy.”

Additionally Laverack adds, “Until we really got deep into it, I don’t think I understood how much this record is about being alive, ironically, in a positive way. Larry used to say he was a disappointed optimist, and I might add I’m a disappointed idealist. So sadness, angst, heartbreak is all there, but so are the odd moments of enlightenment you didn’t know you were capable of experiencing. Many times this occurs musically here, like a counter theme to some of the lyrics. There is a mystery and magic to being alive. As Larry sings, ‘it’s so Tender.’

And then life ends as inexplicably as it began.”

Photos: Laverack and Fessenden;
guest guitarists Jack Petruzzeli and Jack Fessenden;
Will Holshouser on accordian
Laverack is so into it

‘Curtains’ is the fourth full length album from a NYC duo that has made music since 1977.

Tom Laverack is a singer-songwriter, co-label owner and former social worker who has recorded four solo records along with albums, EPs and singles as Just Desserts. He dabbles in writing prose and poetry and is excellent at Excel.

Larry Fessenden is an acclaimed independent film director and producer, overseeing his company Glass Eye Pix since 1985, and instrumental in producing, promoting and launching the careers of a host of filmmakers. Larry’s films include No Telling, Habit, Wendigo, The Last Winter, Depraved and Blackout, all of which feature the music of Tom Laverack.

‘Curtains’ is a post-Covid reconnection of two old pals who worked out the details of this record in Larry’s barn in the Catskills. A few songs have origins in sessions dating back to 2017 and one dates back to 1989. The songs and sound of the album evoke a lived in feeling of relative oldsters that haven’t quite grown up but are feeling the cinch of time.

Recorded, produced, mixed and chaperoned by Mark Ambrosino at his storied studio The Madhouse in Queens, NY and featuring Ambrosino on drums and former Just Desserts session players Dave Richards and David Morgan on basic tracks, the album features an array of very special guests who contribute to the immersive soundscape.

Insist the creators: “While the title does refer to the imminent ‘dirt nap’ it is actually an appreciation for being alive. Welcome to our world. Come stay a while.”

Please find previous Just Desserts music available on streaming services and on CD, LP and cassette!

Dave Richards, Laverack, Fessenden, Mark Ambrosino, David Morgan Nov 20, 2023

“The Slaughtered” came about, as so many of my creations seem to come about, as a result of long conversations with Larry Fessenden about politics, philosophy and the state of humanity. In this case, we were discussing John Rawls’ “veil of ignorance,” a thought experiment where individuals must build a society and its attending laws without knowing where they stand in the social hierarchy, and so out of sheer self-interest and self-preservation they will be motivated to create laws which are fair to everyone. I started thinking about this idea and how it applies to our current American society, where so often those at the top, the wealthy, the politically aligned of all colors and stripes, operate with a breezy, carefree nonchalance, buffered from any consequences stemming from their actions and ideas by the wide, soft cushion of their exalted status. I started to imagine a scenario where the chickens come home to roost, where a smug, wealthy, “do-gooder” investor is caught unawares by the savage reverberations of a single act of moral duplicity. Thus “The Slaughtered” was born.

For the cast, I knew I wanted to work again with James Le Gros, with whom I’d made one film (“Bitter Feast” 2010) and one previous tale (“Cannibals, Season 3.) As I wrote the script I imagined James’ voice in my head – refined, intelligent, a little mischievous – in the role of William Baxter, the morally upstanding ethical investor with a dark secret. For the role of Henry Munger, the town wild man, I was unsure, but then I met Alex Hurt on the set of Larry’s film, “Blackout” (2023). Watching Alex as Charley Barrett, the tortured artist/werewolf at the center of the film, it occurred to me that he would be the perfect Henry Munger, a tortured individual who, like Charlie, is highly civilized and utterly savage at the same time, these opposing impulses ceaselessly pulling at the jagged edges of his existence.

The dialogue was recorded in bits and pieces over the course of several weeks due to scheduling conflicts, including one marathon session with James Le Gros in a studio in LA and Alex Hurt in NYC. Underground Audio’s Matt Rocker somehow managed to weave it all together. In what was easily one of the most thrilling recording sessions I’ve ever been a part of, Dave Eggar, cellist extraordinaire, composed the score on the fly, listening to the radio play and then riffing, layering and just generally blowing our minds with the virtuosity of his playing and the acuity of his creative reflexes.

I’m so thrilled to have been given the opportunity to create this Tale. There’s something so pure about audio storytelling, and as a filmmaker it’s always good to be shaken up a bit and reminded of the power of sound as a storytelling engine. So much of what William and Henry say and do and the way they say and do it is ripped straight from my being. I hope listeners enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.

—Joe Maggio, Nov 12 2025

TOP: Sketches by Trevor Denham for the poster. BELOW: Dave Eggar and Maggio discuss the score.

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TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE

Season 6 Episode 1 Release date 13 November 2025

THE SLAUGHTERED written and directed by Joe Maggio

A wealthy, “do-gooder” investor is caught unawares by the savage reverberations of a single act of moral duplicity.  Featuring the voice talents of James Le Gros, Alex Hurt, Emily Bennett, Eleanor Hutchins, Imani-Jade-Powers, Monica Wyche, Jordan Gass-Pooré and Matt Rocker. Sound design and mix by Matt Rocker at Underground Audio. Score by Dave Eggar. Produced by Glenn McQuaid & Larry Fessenden. Poster by Tevor Denham.

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