There’s something wonderful happening in Texas… well, more than thirty years ago there was. Opening credits set to a true toe-tapping masterpiece ease ya in to a Tales From the Crypt yarn shot through the lens of cheap beer and good vibes. Some frat pledges are in a local cemetery desecrating a grave. The most nervous (and mullet’d) of the pledges shares the fraternity history with his cohorts and it’s sketchy as all fuck. Mr. Mullet (Donny Wahlberg… not the actor, that’s the characters name) heard from the wonderfully named Detective Tommy Stompanado that the Beta Phi house has a history of death and murder. We are then blessed with a black and white flashback to witness the sinister shenanigans of the fraternity founder. Harnessing the powers of darkness drove the man to extreme lengths (well, backyard budget extreme lengths) and contact with a great evil has the cocky man dooming his own future and the future of his fraternity. Tricking supernatural evil never really works in anyone’s favor. Fraternity president, suitably named Lance, sends the pledges to a forgotten cemetery to grab the founder’s gravestone and that catches us up to the present. The drunkest of the pledges gets left behind to stumble, vomit and pass out. This also gets him grabbed by the skeletal corpse of the fraternity founder who has a shitty sense of humor and a murderous streak thanks to the theft of his property. Lance (pledge master with the golden mullet) is proud of his pledges for leaving the deadweight behind. The Beta Phi Delta are also putting on a haunted house attraction and the shambling zombie shows up to raise some hell. Detective Stompanado arrives looking exactly as I had hoped and rocking his own signature score (also of the toe-tapping variety). He’s a very grumpy man and holds a grudge against the Beta Phi. He use to be one and knows they are no good. People die by the rotted hands of the zombie who can’t seem to help himself from making dad jokes at any opportunity and claims the pieces he rips from his victims as his own. Analogue bliss feels like a narrative feature pieced together as a history for a local spook show that a whole town participated in and put together by some very enthusiastic Famous Monsters of Filmland fans with the previous decade’s perversions seeping in. Local thespians and maybe a couple librarians with an acting bug fill out a cast that endears and the violence fits exactly in line with the limited resources not getting in the way on the filmmakers insistence on being as over the top as they can even if it’s not that much. Charmingly corny, slightly annoying but well-worth digging up.
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