The Glasshead (1998) (USA)

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Two couples, taking a break from school, head out for a camping trip in the middle of the woods. The boys come across two weirdos in the same patch of nature and invite them over for some beers by the campfire. One of the weirdos tells a story which takes up most of the runtime. In the 1860s, Jebediah Decker, a poor dirt farmer with a sick and pregnant

wife heads out to spend his savings on some medicine. While he’s gone, three whisky-drunk hillbillies stop by and rape her to death. Sensing something is wrong, Jebediah runs back but is assaulted by the trio of awful bumpkins. He gets his head kicked in and is left for dead. Dr Swan, a sawbones of the mad variety, comes across the nearly dead man and brings him to the prison camp where he has free range to get his experimentation on. Swan crafts the farmer a new skull from the ground bones of dead soldiers and a glass dome to keep it all in place. The mental anguish of the dead soldiers drives poor Jebediah insane and causes physical pain. For some reason blood calms the pain but the murderous rage is still pretty damn prevalent. Jebediah kills the doctor, one of the doctor’s twin babies and then gets revenge on the rapist/murderers that caused all this awfulness. Jebediah, now an immortal man-killer, roams around through the decades killing at random. The surviving twin brother grows up and is hunting old Glasshead, fearing that he’ll eventually come for him and trying to end the evil his father helped bring into the world. He obviously fails and meets the business end of a pitchfork. The storyteller presents a severed head and then everything goes to hell because the tale of the Glasshead is real and the foursome are about to find out just how deadly Jebediah is. Student film vibes run rampant but luckily for the viewer it lacks any of the pretension that usually comes with the territory. The effects work is minimal (almost nonexistent) but the black and white photography is atmospheric and the score is surprisingly unnerving. The violence is kept offscreen but craftily pulled off. A damn fine low-budget fix for folks who enjoy a good backyard nightmare.