A DAY OF JUDGMENT (1981) Blu-ray
Director: C.D.H. Reynolds
Severin Films

Severin Films reaps what it sows with their Blu-ray of the "Christian slasher" A DAY OF JUDGMENT.

Despairing that he has failed his flock who have turned their backs on the church and given themselves over to sin and selfishness, Reverend Cage (director C.D.H. Reynolds) wants to take all of their sins upon himself; however, as he sees the Grim Reaper himself passing by on his own way out of town, he knows that they must all pay. There's usurious banker Sharpe (William T. Hicks, DEATH SCREAMS) who drives farmer Morgan (Hanns Manship, AUDREY ROSE) to desperation when he forecloses on his farm, old lady Fitch (Helene Tryon, DOGS OF HELL) who makes false accusations against a group of children who she thinks will destroy her rose bushes, gas station attendant George Clay (Toby Wallace, LIVING LEGEND) who tricks his parents into signing over their power of attorney to gain control of their finances, trophy wife Ruby (Careyanne Sutton) and her department store lover Kenny (Larry Sprinkle, FIRESTARTER) who are caught by her wealthy husband (Carlton Bortell), and alcoholic Charlie (Brownlee Davis, HYPERSPACE) whose bitterness about his failed marriage and lost job lead to him waging a campaign of harassment against former friend Sid (Harris Bloodworth) that leads to murder. As night falls and a torrential storm sweeps across the land, the Grim Reaper comes to collect the souls of the soon-to-be-damned.

In spite of the tagline "the night HE came to collect his own," A DAY OF JUDGMENT is not the "Christian slasher" promised by the blurb on the back cover, although something like that certainly seemed possible when it came to the Christian scare films that were popular in the South during the previous decade. Produced and shot at Earl Owensby's North Carolina studios, the film is an atypical period piece set after the first "war to end all wars" in which the morality tale angle is far more pronounced than the horror for much of the running time in spite of a seeming nod to BLACK SUNDAY with the Grim Reaper's slow motion buggy crossing the border into town, a possible borrowing from John Carpenter's THE FOG, a late in the film scythe decapitation contributed by fellow Earl Owensby studio director Worth Keeter (WOLFMAN) – who also handled make-up effects on the studio's slasher DEATH SCREAMS – and a climax that brings to mind the ends of the various Amicus horror anthologies. Viewers sufficiently chilled by meager horror elements will either vibe with the A CHRISTMAS CAROL-type or feel ripped off.

Unreleased theatrically, A DAY OF JUDGMENT did get wide video distribution courtesy of Thorn/EMI with the very familiar video box artwork gathering dust on the video shelves, as readily mistaken for a slasher as a gothic horror film. While the studio's DEATH SCREAMS came to Arrow Video Blu-ray from a surviving archival print, the negative-sourced 2K scan of A DAY OF JUDGMENT shows just how slick and professional the studio's output could look with the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen transfer looking crisp with vibrant colors in the location work and the period décor with some definite pop from the blue and red gels and infrequent bloodshed. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is clean with crisply recorded dialogue and a score whose sprightly main theme actually quotes a hymn, the vocal of which is heard over the end credits. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided.


Extras are spare but informative, starting with "The Atheist's Sin" (17:47), an interview with NIGHTMARE USA author Stephen Thrower, drawing from his own interview with Reynolds who moved from teaching English in college to making TV commercials to crewing some Owensby productions before getting his chance to direct with A DAY OF JUDGMENT. Thrower discusses the film's Christian scare contemporaries, the influence of the slasher boom, the film's horror borrowings, and how Owensby being caught between the limitations of self-distribution or the low returns of small distributors lead to his production company output tapering off in the eighties. The very short "Tales of Judgment" (3:57) is actually a short extract from a longer project – could Owensby's WOLFMAN or some of his 3D productions be next from Severin? – but it features soundbites from Keeter and writer Thom McIntyre in which Keeter both notes that he never liked the script which had been kicking around the studio for a couple years, and that he was brought in to spice up the film in post-production. He describes his additions to the death scenes where once there were just expressionistic shots of the Grim Reaper's silhouette, but one wonders if he was also responsible for the reveals of the Grim Reaper's face which seem disruptively inserted rather than shock reveals.
(Eric Cotenas)

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