Episode 78: Fire City: End of Days (2015)

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Havin’ a bad day? Noisy, nosy neighbors? Drug addiction? Poor and jobless?? Not enough moo juice for your grande cafe moochaccino??? Well, mayby its not YOU, my friends, maybe, juuuust maybe, there are DEMONS living in your neighborhood, and they are thriving on your pain and misery! Cowsuming it, as it were! Well, its a theory. And its a theory explored by the latest IFC flick Fire City: End of Days, put out in 2015 by Director Todd Woodruff, Jr., an academy Award winning make up and FX guru known for his work on Aliens, The Terminator, Starship Troopers, and even the X-Files tv show! Dis is an indie scifi/noir made on a 200K budget, utilizing Kickstarter backing, and expanded from an earlier 2013 short film Fire City: King of Miseries, so it already has an established world and setting, and even utilizes a few already introduced characters. Instant cult film! So what did the Indie Film Cafe kids think about it? Well, check out our LATEST PODCAST EPISODE, and hear what Moody and special guest co-hosts MeeChee Hazen and Madeline Deering have to say! After all, the devil – errr, demon? – is in the details! ;=8)

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Vine is an ugly, broody-pants bird demon, and also a drug dealer (as you do…), but he’s not so icky that he’s going to let hulking, grotesque human Andre molest adorable, defenseless 11 year old Sarah – ok, maybe not for the right reasons, but hay, one less child rape make the day a bit brighter, right? Well, about that: soon after everything starts going right and nice for the poor folks trapped in the shitty apartment complex that Vine and his shitty neighbors live in, which is great for them but bad news for the demons – and it turns out there are dozens of them living there – because now they are deprived of their ‘natural’ food source: the pain and misery of human beings. Less calories than pizza, I suppose… Anycow, Vine, as well as Cornelia the Seer, and udder assorted weird, ugly, and fairly nasty demons, try to figure it out what’s what, and boy howdy does it lead down a straaaange rabbit hole of blood, death, betrayal, and, ummm, red bird feathers.

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This is actually a pretty good film, very dark and Hell Boyish, sort of a cross between the (very good) TV series Angel and the (rather poor) 80’s Clive Barker flick Nightbreed. The fx and variety of demons, and the world they inhibit, their strange customs, beliefs, and magic they practice, and all the internal logic, works pretty well, although it can be pretty cowfusing from time to time – the MooCow would love to see this subject matter spread out over a full series, on Netflix of HBO, to give the story and world a fuller treatment, but for a standard horror flick it is actually pretty good, and very different. You’ve seen moost of these actors before: Tobias Jelinek (Vine) has been in NCIS, Stranger Things, Arrow, and Agents of Shield, among udders; Danielle C. Ryan (Cornelia) was on the 2005 Little House on the Prairie mini-series, and was in such moovies as Snow Beast, Osombie, and SAGA: Curse of the Shadow; Kimberly Leemans ( the hot/grotesque horny cat demon Amber) was in Law & Order, the Vampire Diaries, the Walking Dead, and The Fix; Keely Aloña plays sweet Sarah/whatever the heck Sarah turns out to be – she is an up and coming child actress moost recently in a flick called Run Kai Run (2018). Everyone is pretty good!

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Well, the votes are in, and Fire City: End of Days does fairly well by IFC standards: Moody awarded the film a 5, right in the middle of the stink scale, while first-timers Meechee Hazen and Madeline Deering awarded the film 4.5 and 5 respectively. That gives Fire City: End of Days a Stink Score of 14.5, and a Stinky Average of 4.8! On the Ladder of Stink this film sits just below Santa’s Slay and It Waits, and right above the Brain from Planet Arous! Not too shabby! :=8D

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Watch the TRAILER, if you will. There is a crappy version for free on YouTube, and a decent free version on Tubi. Rent it on Vudu, or at Amazon. Finding physical media of this film is unfortunately difficult, but there are sources – Ebay has it, and something called Bonanza, but not moooch else. Highland Film Group owns the distribution rights to the film, and one day maybe they will put out a blu ray, but thus far we got bupkis. No udder Fire City merch out there either, which is a shame because the poster is pretty nifty, and it would make for a great tee shirt of mug. Youtube does have a promo video and a behind the scenes, but there isn’t mooch else out there. If you like the kewl film moosic, the end title theme is HERE. There is a Youtube channel called Fire City which has moore stuff, and a Facebook channel too, but this flick sorely needs a blu ray release – get crackin’, guys!

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So if yer looking for something a bit…different, you cud do a lot worse than Fire City: End of Days. And next time yer havin’ a bad day, blame the demons! They’re probably peckish…
;=8)