Glass Eye Pix

Collectible WENDIGO Figures from Glass Eye Toyz and Monsterpants Studios

Oh, The Humanity! The Films of Larry Fessenden and Glass Eye Pix at MoMA

How Jesus Took America Hostage — “American Jesus” the Movie

New Doc BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD Explores the Impact of the Ground-Breaking Horror Film NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

SUDDEN STORM: A Wendigo Reader, paperbound book curated by Larry Fessenden

Today at MoMA: NO TELLING and AUTOMATONS

5:00
NO TELLING (1991, Larry fessenden, 93 mins. Miriam Healy-Louie, Stephen Ramsey, David Van Tieghem) When Lillian Gaines moves to the country with her husband for a quiet summer retreat, she never suspects that meeting activist Alex Vine will force her to confront her deepest fears about the man she married, and the bizarre experiments under way in his lab.

7:30
AUTOMATONS (2006, James Felix McKenney, 83 min. Christine Spencer, Angus Scrimm, Brenda Cooney) Somewhere in the distant future, The Girl is alone. She is the last of her people, the others having died in a generations-long war that the girl continues to fight with the assistance of a group of antiquated robot helpers and soldiers.

More info on the Museum of Modern Art Larry Fessenden & Glass Eye Pix retrospective

Just Announced: Ti West to host Easter Screening of THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL at MoMA

Glass Eye Pix alumn Ti West
(THE ROOST, TRIGGER MAN, THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, THE INKEEPERS)
and director of THE SACRAMENT, IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE and X,
will be on hand for a Q&A
after the April 17 2:00 PM screening of THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL
part of the GEP Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art

He Has Risen Dept:
Also Unspooling at MoMA on Easter at 4:30,
Larry Fessenden’s modern Frankenstein film DEPRAVED.

And Join our already scheduled Guests all week long at MoMA:

Tuesday: James Felix McKenney hosts AUTOMATONS at 7:30
Wednesday: Robert Mockler hosts LIKE ME at 7:30
Friday: Ilya Chaiken hosts LIBERTY KID at 7:30
Saturday: Rick Alverson hosts THE COMEDY at 6:30

For more info, visit
Oh The Humanity! The films of Larry Fessenden and Glass Eye Pix at MoMA

Today at MoMA: THE INNKEEPERS and STAKE LAND

4:00
THE INNKEEPERS (2010 Ti West, 101 min, Sara Paxton, Pat Healy) After over one hundred years of service, The Yankee Pedlar Inn is shutting its doors for good. The last remaining employees—Claire and Luke—are determined to uncover proof of what many believe to be one of New England’s most haunted hotels.

6:30
ORIGINS (2010, Larry Fessenden, 9 min. John Speredakos, Jack Fessenden, Eleanor Hutchinson)
STAKE LAND (2010, Jim Mickle, 98 min. Conor Paolo, Nick Damici, and Kelly McGillis) Martin was a normal teenage boy before the country collapsed in an empty pit of economic and political disaster. A vampire epidemic has swept across what is left of the nation’s abandoned towns and cities, and it’s up to Mister, a death dealing, rogue vampire hunter, to get Martin safely north to Canada, the continent’s New Eden.

More info on the Museum of Modern Art Larry Fessenden & Glass Eye Pix retrospective

Today at MoMA: BENEATH and THE RANGER

2:00
BENEATH (2013, Larry Fessenden, 90 mins. Daniel Zovatto, Bonnie Dennison, Chris Conroy, Jonny Orsini, Griffin Newman, with Mackenzie Rosman and Mark Magolis) When a group of young friends commemorating their high school graduation take a trip to the remote Black Lake, their celebration turns into a nightmare with the sudden appearance of a relentless menace from beneath. Stuck in a leaking boat with no oars, the teens face the ultimate tests of friendship and sacrifice during a terror-stricken fight for survival.

4:00
THE RANGER (2018, Jenn Wexler, 80 mins. Chloë Levine, Jeremy Holm, Granit Lahu, Jeremy Pope, Larry Fessenden) Teen punks, on the run from the cops and hiding out in the woods, come up against the local authority – an unhinged park ranger with an axe to grind.

More info on the Museum of Modern Art Larry Fessenden & Glass Eye Pix retrospective

WENDIGO review on Screen Slate

Like all great independent filmmakers, Larry Fessenden is resourceful. He wrings every teaspoon of juice from his concepts and locations. You get the sense his shooting ratio was 1:1, without an inch of celluloid hitting the floor. This is obviously not the case, but the plausibility of the scenario comes as a hit of pure oxygen at a time when afternoon-devouring IP extravaganzas nonetheless feel like they’re missing a half-dozen scenes. Lurking behind every blockbuster is a miniseries biding time until its studio’s parent company’s streaming service needs to goose subscriptions. The gluttony of media production becomes less and less defensible on a burning planet, especially as the end product is often merely a spoke in a giant wheel that turns out plastic shit and infantilizing “experiences.” One solution has provided consistent results: get smaller. Like statistics that transmute individual tragedy into reams of commodified data, nine-figure production budgets don’t operate on the scale of human lives. Thankfully, Larry Fessenden has never had that problem.

His 2001 gem Wendigo puts a small cast in the Catskills for a tense psychodrama involving strained family ties, class anxieties, and superstition. The film has several entryways, each as intriguing as the others. Most prominently, there is the marriage between George (Jake Weber) and Kim (Patricia Clarkson), two archetypal New York professionals (advertising photographer and psychotherapist, respectively) decamping to the mountains for a weekend away with their young son, Miles (Erik Per Sulivan). Fessenden makes no grand gestures in his script, which observantly captures the affections and tensions that animate any long union. Kim thinks George is too distant from Miles, who she suspects is retreating into a world of fantasy in a bid for paternal attention. Their scenes are idyllic, talky, and warm, bringing to mind a pared-down Nicole Holofcener than the more symbolic horror family units that keep things neat and tidy with telegraphed psyches. Intentionally or not, George’s problematic jokes echo white American family life more authentically than most screen dads.

Miles is swept up in the lore of the Wendigo, explained to him by a mysterious Indigenous man as an insatiable monster locked in a never-ending cycle of growth and hunger. Magical minorities and pilfered mythos are troublesome ground, but Fessenden threads the needle with dialogue acknowledging stolen land and by filtering the legend through a child’s perspective. In fantastic bursts of montage featuring historical illustrations of vague provenance, Fessenden captures perfectly the way a child’s imagination runs with the baton offered by arcane imagery. Miles begins to feel the presence of the Wendigo, a shapeshifter, who might arrive as wind, or a horned monster, or a human.

While George tries falteringly to connect with Miles by clarifying the separation between myth and reality, the family is stalked by Otto (John Speredakos), a hunter deeply resentful of city folks who buy up local property for frivolous getaways. They find bullet holes in the walls of their rental and endure random, odd encounters with the man, but—being upstanding urban liberals—can’t pinpoint where mutual class animosities end and a true capacity for violence begins. To this gradual escalation of paranoia Fessenden adds inexpensive visual flourishes far more impressive than the efforts of any blue-chip VFX house: timelapse, keen-eyed documentary footage exploding with detail, machine gun edits, dim lighting. The cumulative effect is a dream in which the quotidian and the fantastic wrestle for control.

Wendigo screens this evening, April 9, at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the series “Oh, the Humanity! The Films of Larry Fessenden and Glass Eye Pix.”

Screen Slate also reviews River of Grass and The Innkeepers. Subscribe today!

Today at MoMA: HABIT, THE LAST WINTER and WENDIGO

1:30 PM
FEVER (2020, Larry Fessenden, 8 minutes. Larry Fessenden, Jack Fessenden, Beck Underwood) A short film created during the COVID lockdown of May 2020.
HABIT (1995, Larry Fessenden 112 mins. Larry Fessenden, Meredith Snaider, Aaron Beall, Patricia Coleman, Heather Woodbury, Jesse Hartman) Autumn in New York. Sam has broken up with his girlfriend and his father has recently died. World-weary and sloppy drunk, he finds temporary solace in the arms of Anna, a mysterious woman who draws him away from his friends and into a web of addiction and madness.

4:00
THE LAST WINTER (2006, Larry Fessenden, 101 mins) Ron Perlman, James Le Gros, Connie Britton, Zach Gilford, Kevin Corrigan, Jamie Harrold, Pato Hoffmann, Joann Shenandoah and Larry Fessenden) In Arctic Alaska, a team of oil explorers succumb to an unknowable fear….

6:30
WENDIGO (2001, Larry Fessenden, 91 mins. Patricia Clarkson, Jake Weber, John Speredakos and Eric Per Sullivan) A blue Volvo makes its way through the fading light this chilly winter evening in Upstate New York. Kim, George and their eight-year old son, Miles, are city dwellers stealing a weekend away at a friend’s country farmhouse. But a fluke accident sets off a chain of events that alters their lives forever and conjures up the ferocious spirit of the Wendigo, a Native American Myth made manifest in Miles’ imagination.

More info on the Museum of Modern Art Larry Fessenden & Glass Eye Pix retrospective

Rue-Morgue exclusive: Fessenden on GEP’s Past, Present and Future, Part Two

From Rue Morgue: We continue our interview with filmmaker/independent horror mogul Larry Fessenden (which began here), currently enjoying an expansive retrospective at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. All of his directorial ventures and many more movies he’s produced through his Glass Eye Pix company are screening in this series; go here for the full schedule and details. Fessenden also works frequently as an actor, and he reveals that he recently wrapped a small role for one of the true greats…

Read Interview HERE

Tagged with: Fessenden, interview, MOMA

Today at MoMA: STAKE LAND and I SELL THE DEAD

4:00
ORIGINS (2010, Larry Fessenden, 9 min. John Speredakos, Jack Fessenden, Eleanor Hutchinson)
STAKE LAND (2010, Jim Mickle, 98 min. Connor Paolo, Nick Damici, and Kelly McGillis) Martin was a normal teenage boy before the country collapsed in an empty pit of economic and political disaster. A vampire epidemic has swept across what is left of the nation’s abandoned towns and cities, and it’s up to Mister, a death dealing, rogue vampire hunter, to get Martin safely north to Canada, the continent’s New Eden.

6:30
I SELL THE DEAD (2008, Glenn McQuaid. Dominic Monaghan, Larry Fessenden, Ron Perlman, Angus Scrimm) 19th century justice has finally caught up to grave robbers Arthur Blake and Willie Grimes. With the specter of the guillotine looming over him, young Blake confides in visiting clergyman Father Duffy, recounting fifteen years of adventure in the resurrection trade. The colorful and peculiar history of Grimes and Blake is one filled with adventure, horror, and vicious rivalries that threaten to put all involved in the very graves they’re trying to pilfer. Never Trust A Corpse.

More info on the Museum of Modern Art Larry Fessenden & Glass Eye Pix retrospective

Rue Morgue Exclusive: Poster / News on James Felix McKenney’s WRACK

Rue Morgue: The DIY postapocalyptic thriller is the latest from the filmmaker whose credits also include SATAN HATES YOU, HYPOTHERMIA and THE OFF SEASON.

Writer/director James Felix McKenney gave us the scoop that he’ll be releasing his latest feature WRACK through his Channel Midnight Releasing label this summer, making it available on both streaming and Blu-ray. Produced by McKenney and indie genre veteran J. Christian Ingvordsen (BLUE VENGEANCE, BOG CREATURES), it stars Carol Ames, John Christian, Braxton Sohns, Emma Sugler, and Jennifer Boutell and was shot in Delaware County, New York for less than $1,500. McKenney recycled wardrobe and props from AUTOMATONS and Glenn McQuaid’s I SELL THE DEAD, and created a fictional language for his masked characters, who are subtitled in English. The synopsis: “WRACK takes place in the distant future, centuries after nearly all life has been wiped out by war, disease, and environmental collapse, and focuses on the planet’s four remaining survivors who struggle to get along with each other even more than they do to survive.”

“Spending more money on festival entries, traveling to film markets, and the various expenses that pile up while delivering to a distributor than we did on making the actual movie seems like a betrayal of what we set out to do with this project,” McKenney says. “It makes more sense to me to continue with the same DIY spirit that WRACK was conceived and release it ourselves.” McKenney first founded Channel Midnight in 2010 and released Nathan Wrann’s BURNING INSIDE, and now plans to issue a remastered edition of his debut feature CANNIBALLISTIC! later this year.

GEP classic AUTOMATONS is now playing at MoMA as part of the Fessenden / Glass Eye Pix retrospective. Director James Felix McKenney to attend 4/12.

READ HERE

Today at MoMA: AUTOMATONS and I CAN SEE YOU

4:00
AUTOMATONS (2006, James Felix McKenney, 83 min. Christine Spencer, Angus Scrimm, Brenda Cooney) Somewhere in the distant future, The Girl is alone. She is the last of her people, the others having died in a generations-long war that the girl continues to fight with the assistance of a group of antiquated robot helpers and soldiers.

6:30
I CAN SEE YOU (2008, Graham Reznick, 97 mins. Ben Dickinson, Duncan Skiles, Christopher Paul Ford, Heather Robb, Olivia Villanti, Larry Fessenden) Three aspiring ad-men take a weekend in the wilderness, brainstorming for their first assignment: to overhaul the image of a once popular cleaning product, Claractix. While in the woods, a girlfriend’s mysterious disappearance sparks a harrowing descent into unreality. Personalities contort into extremes and visits are made by a specter from Claractix campaigns of the past as the film careens towards it’s startling climax.

More info on the Museum of Modern Art Larry Fessenden & Glass Eye Pix retrospective

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