Despiser
Director: Philip Cook Run Time: 105 min. Format: DCP Rating: NR Release Year: 2003
Starring: Mark Redfield, Gage Sheridan, Doug Brown, Frank Smith, Mark Hyde
After losing his job and his wife, Gordon crashes his car and lands in Purgatory, where he’s attacked by fanatics and enslaved souls. He’s soon saved by a quirky band of freedom fighters from different historical eras, all of whom died in noble sacrifice. Reluctantly joining their cause, Gordon embarks on a wild adventure through surreal, hellish landscapes to battle the Despiser, the malevolent ruler of the realm. Facing shifting realities, monstrous creatures, and intense car chases over lava oceans, their journey leads to the ultimate showdown to save all of humanity.
Philip Cook’s eccentric, non-stop menagerie of machine gun battles, early CGI masterwork and endless array of monsters makes it one of the most unique direct to video features of the VHS and early DVD era. Cook painstakingly crafts a green screen netherworld steeped in brutal violence, religious mythology and action movie tropes, all filtered through a dream-like, hallucinogenic lens that never once takes its foot off the gas and manages to outdo itself at every turn.