Short films are like Hi-Chews — bite-size flavor explosions that should be savored before moving onto the next one, and the one after that. Given the bottomless well of compelling shorts that exist, we decided to carve out a space where we could gush about our favorite discoveries. Shorts That Tore Our Heads Off is an ongoing series of articles exploring underseen short films from all centuries. The only criteria for inclusion is that each one has to . . . well, tear our heads off. Every volume will cover five shorts in chronological order that deserve to be appreciated and re-watched anywhere from three to fourteen times before you die.
Hold onto your head!
Night Crew (Scott Spiegel, 1979, Synapse Blu-ray)
As it turns out, Sam Raimi and friends are just as skilled at destroying a grocery store as they are a cabin in the woods. A Super 8 short from Scott Spiegel and Raimi that followed Within the Woods and inspired the later Intruder (and appears as an extra on that film’s Blu-ray release), Night Crew was assembled from outtakes to form a “representation” of a lost movie. But it works just fine by itself, as a killer wearing a rubber vampire mask terrorizes a Meijer and uses a powersaw to split Raimi’s head in two. All of the slasher touchpoints are here—eerie synths, cheap gore, and tight Levi’s jeans. If that was all there was, I’d still be smiling. But Night Crew also has a surreal aura, thanks to the inherent dreaminess of Super 8 photography. A smeary, blue-green color palette joins the camera’s audible motor in establishing a mood that’s more entrancing than the full-length feature this short would later inspire. Night Crew is every late-70s slasher vibe you’ll ever need, distilled into six minutes.
Haunted Indiana (Michael White & Frank Haney, 1981, Internet Archive)
This is the only thing that has ever made me want to set foot in Indiana. A five-story anthology that was broadcast once on central Indiana’s WTTV Channel 4, Haunted Indiana is twenty minutes of total joy. A narrator guides us on a trip through the Indiana University Folklore Archives, where we witness re-enactments of local urban legends. The ghost of a serial killer haunts a forest! The Cable Line Monster (aka Bigfoot) attacks a motorist! A neon-green phantasm with a bloody mouth spooks sleeping kids! Filled with rad vector graphics, lots of tube socks, and stolen music cues from Psycho, Haunted Indiana combines the nostalgic vibe of a classroom scare film with early 1980s shot-on-video textures to create a miraculous snapshot of regional history. It also includes a story about a woman named Elvira, who, because of her Catholic upbringing, can’t allow herself to get a divorce. Instead, Elvira burns the house down while her husband sleeps. This is the most Midwest urban legend ever.
Evil of Dracula (Martha Colburn, 1997, Internet Archive)
Prolific artist and filmmaker Martha Colburn describes this short as a “Super 8mm stop motion animated film with painted collages of vampires throughout 1960s and ‘70s advertising.” This is just another way of saying that Evil of Dracula is the most aesthetically inspiring 2-minute film that you’ll see this week. Never released on home video and only viewable via a home-taped broadcast of Baltimore’s Atomic TV from 1999, this is a hyperactive, hypercolored pop-art collage that transmutates vintage magazine ads into a Transylvanian wonderland. The indie-noise soundtrack sounds like Big Black jamming with Pavement on a boombox while singing songs about Dracula. The camera zooms and twirls from edge to edge, never allowing us to catch our breath. The message might be obvious. Or it might mean nothing. Regardless, this short is everything.
The School is Watching (Jane Schoenbrun, 2015, Vimeo)
The title says it all. An early short from Jane Schoenbrun (We’re All Going to the World’s Fair), The School is Watching is a found footage exercise that’s entirely composed of high school morning announcement broadcasts from the 1990s. At first, the hot mics, green screen disasters, and wild asides (“That’s one serial killer we won’t have to worry about!”) deliver the laughs we expect. But as we continue down the path, the inherently weird and sinister subtexts behind “everyday” high school occurrences are revealed. And that’s the brilliance of this piece. From a casual mention of assault to a scene where two kids interview someone in Saddam Hussein drag (“You would save us a lot of trouble if you would just commit suicide”), Schoenbrun manipulates the content to shine a spotlight on the absurdity, pageantry, and mortification of the high school experience. It’s like an accidental Analog Horror project that engulfs your brain with nostalgia and mystery. Seven minutes isn’t enough.
You’ve Never Been Completely Honest (Joey Izzo, 2022, Vimeo)
This one shook me. Feeling like a segment from MTV’s Liquid Television as realized by Charles Manson, You’ve Never Been Completely Honest shares the story of a true crime incident using an unreleased audio recording, reenactments shot on Super 8, and electric animated sequences. And it’s flawless. The first thing we hear is an interviewer’s voice: “This is the story of a group of people that pay $1000 for a 4-day encounter group, which is absolutely the most lurid thing I’ve ever heard. Even if it was only half true, it would be horrifying.” He’s right. The cartoonish animation style only heightens the anxiety, because we don’t typically associate something that looks like this with such a depraved subject matter. Beautifully executed, this is the kind of creative filmmaking that gives me hope for the future—even if it haunts me for the rest of my days.
Read Shorts That Tore Our Heads Off: Volume 1!
Read Shorts That Tore Our Heads Off: Volume 2!
Read Shorts That Tore Our Heads Off: Volume 3!
Read Shorts That Tore Our Heads Off: Volume 4!
Read Shorts That Tore Our Heads Off: Volume 5!
Read Shorts That Tore Our Heads Off: Volume 7!
Read Shorts That Tore Our Heads Off: Volume 8!
