It’s the spooky season, and Milwaukee Film is currently neck-deep in its vampire-tastic “Bite Club” series. On Saturday, October 26 at the Oriental Theatre, that series will go local with a screening of the 1994 Milwaukee-made cult classic Aswang.
Written and directed by Wrye Martin and Barry Poltermann, and starring a host of familiar Milwaukee theater faces (Victor DeLorenzo and Norman Moses among them), the tongue-in-cheek, shot-on-16-mm film tells the story of a family of Filipino vampires who feast on the unborn. Yikes! Aswang premiered at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival in the Midnight Movie section; thirty years later, it will come home to the Oriental, digitally restored and as gnarly as ever.
But enough talk! Check out the trailer for the film, which co-director Poltermann (accurately) describes as “too gross to run before movies” at the theater!
“Restoring Aswang has been a labor of love,” Poltermann says. “We thought the film was lost for good, but thanks to this restoration, we’re thrilled to bring it back to its hometown and to share it with both old fans and new audiences.”
About that restoration: A press release explains that “Aswang has achieved cult status over the years, but its original film print was tragically lost forever when WRS Labs, the facility where it was stored, went out of business. Thanks to an extensive restoration effort of the original 16mm print that was projected at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, Aswang has been painstakingly recovered, allowing new audiences to experience it as it was originally seen.”
The October 26 screening begins at 7 p.m. It will be introduced by none other than Mark Borchardt, and will be followed by a Q&A with Poltermann and select cast members. “This movie is nasty,” says Joe Bob Briggs. Five stars! Joe Bob (and Milwaukee Record) say: CHECK IT OUT.
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