Realm of Shadows is less an anthology and more a collection of short films made my Jimmy Drain, many of which feature him as the male lead. They deal with issues like witches who are feminists (haven't seen that trope before!), women who get impregnated by warlocks (sans Mia farrow and John Cassavetes), and spells to make women have sex with guys (a little on the rape-y side post-Cosby). Around these short films we have a group of witches trying to get a dagger, and using a Ouija board to get it. Suddenly at the end, Tony Todd shows up, Vernon Wells reveals himself to be leading the witches, and Harley Wallen and Richard Tyson look like witch hunters ready to take down the dagger witches. And then the movie ends.
And that's the movie. The most interesting and most exciting stuff all comes at the end. I can't knock it though, if I were Jimmy Drain, it sounds like a great idea: package all my short films, then get some big names to do some small scenes around them, and voila you're swimming in Tubi streams. I think the problem I had with this compared to other anthologies Joe has had us look at, is those ones were collections of short films all with similar themes, and all done by different directors, so we get unique voices and performances, which is something we needed here. The other thing is I think some of the stories had issues. Again, we probably never should've done the "spell cast to make a girl like you" paradigm, because it always had overtones of foregoing consent, but post-Cosby it should be totally off the table--though to be fair to Mr. Drain, the cellphone his character has looks like something out of 2008, so maybe he made it pre-Cosby? Also, the loaded trope of the feminists who are really just man-hating witches is also both dated and probably never should've been a thing to begin with. There were a couple shorts that were done more like silent films--perhaps because the audio was bad when they recorded them?--and while I liked that idea, we needed some inter-titles to know what was going on. I'm all for people making it happen in a creative field, and Jimmy Drain's short films here are no different; but I think overall, I just could've used a bit more from the stories, and more of the great stuff at the end.
My number one performance was Tony Todd, who I love anyway. This is now 7 films for him on the site, perhaps the most memorable being his turn as a baddie in Sabotage, but even here, he's just another level in the few scenes he's in. We have two names that are hitting their 12th film on the site, Mel Novak and Vernon Wells. Novak of course is a mainstay in the films Joe asks us to review, and he's always a lot of fun, playing a priest in the bumpers between shorts, who's then later revealed to be buddies with Tony Todd. That's the movie I need, those two as priests vanquishing evil. And perhaps that evil could be in the form of baddie Vernon Wells, who in this just appears at the end when he's revealed to be the one directing the witches coven seeking the dagger. It's always great to see these guys in movies, and despite having scant roles here, it was no less great to see them.
Often when I'm reviewing a movie, I pick my favorite supporting character, and here I had a clear winner. Look at how great that guy above is. He's either a priest, or he's selling beers in the stands at a baseball game, or he's a transient short order cook who may or may not have a rap sheet and who may or may not occasionally sleep out of his Chevy Ranger as he's traveling the country, starting over in a new city after he's worn out his welcome in the last one. As a priest he's telling Jimmy Drain--who I guess in this short is a college professor, or a grad student teaching English classes?--not to succumb to temptation when one of his students wants to hook up with him. What Drain apparently cuts out is our priest asking Drain after for $20 to float him through to payday. I don't know who he is, because his picture isn't on IMDb, and with these being shorts, characters were in and out so fast it was hard to know who anyone was--and I have a hunch the no image on IMDb is by design, the last thing he needs is the landlord in Des Moines that he skipped out on finding out where he is, or that guy in Poughkeepsie that he owes $500 to. Either way, here's to you this guy, you were fantastic.
Jimmy! Jimm-May! I love that the creative force behind these films isn't James Drain or Jim Drain, but Jimmy Drain. "Who do you put your bets in with?" "Jimmy the Drain over on 2nd and Wolf. They call him 'the Drain' because all your money goes down the drain with him!" Being of part-Irish decent, I've had family members call me "Matty" before, the same way my late grandfather was a "Jimmy," so not only I can appreciate it, I like that he's embracing it. I can also appreciate that he had all these short films, and he wanted to package them into something that can make him money. The problem was, the best stuff came with his bumpers and the final denouement, which I think made the shorts look worse by comparison. I hope he makes that second movie that the end of this one teases, because I think it could be really good. While I appreciate why he packaged all his shorts into this film, I'm rooting for him to make it happen with more full-length features.
Finally, look at that phone. I think I last had one like that in 2012. After that I got my brother's iPhone 4, and have been using iPhones ever since, going from that to my wife's i6, which I broke, forcing me to get the SE I have now. My dad has never been up on technology, but he finally had to get a flip phone when my mom got rid of their landline. He was saying how he never uses it, and I tried to explain to him how much I use mine for. The obvious one is texting, but it's not just phone texting, but messaging on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter/X. I use Apple Pay to make almost all of my purchases, plus I can ride the subway or the bus here in Philadelphia with Apple Pay, along with the subways/buses in New York, Boston, and Chicago. That means in those cities, I don't need to bother with getting a subway pass or ticket. My train tickets and plane tickets are on my phone, along with any sporting events I attend. If I'm lost, I can open my phone and find out where I am so I don't need to ask strangers for help. There's also the bad, like how I have all my work apps on my phone too, so I can see off hours when someone is pinging me--but even that can also be a good thing, because I can step away from the computer during work hours and still be available if someone needs me for something. Seeing that old phone made me a bit nostalgic, and there was maybe a romantic sense hearkening back to a simpler time, but how much better was that simpler time? Needing to get tokens or have a unique card for every city I went to to ride their subway? Making sure I had my plane ticket and boarding pass, and didn't lose them? I remember my friend forgetting our tickets to Gwar and realizing it when we were three hours from our dorm at UMaine. He had to buy us all new tickets when we got to the show in Worcester. Now he'd have the tickets on his phone--unless he still has a phone like that one.
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi here in the States. While it has some moments, the thing I really want to see is the next movie that's teased at the end. By the same token, I'm always a proponent of supporting indie filmmakers, and you can support Jimmy Drain by just streaming this. It's a nice use of 90 minutes of your time, and you may find yourself enjoying some of the stories.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10619392
Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/
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