French composer/ provocateur Serge Gainsbourg once said, “Love is like a box of chocolates – constant gluttony makes you sick.” With that in mind, you have the relationship-seeking hero of sorts who goes through years of life, loves, and suffers pangs of regret and death all due to supernatural intervention in an oddly cobbled-together series of relationship stories in the film Realm of Shadows by Writer/Director Jimmy Drain.
The picture opens with an ominous crawl credit explaining the significance of the Dagger of Destiny. Next, we find a ladies’ cult called the “Sisters of the Moon’. The group is ruled by Nalum (Erika Monet), who are battling Christian priests to possess a powerful “Dagger.” The cult invokes spells in its quest, such as stealing a potential victim’s hair to be used in an enchantment. The battle tools are for mortal ordinary men’s souls, used in a series of stories or ‘visions.’
The first “vision” concerns Malick (Jimmy Drain), who finds himself attracted to three different women. The first is Donna (Leah Saxon), who succumbs to the vocal charms of Malick’s friend Hicks (Tony Tucci). The second is the lady bartender who has a real adoration for Malick to build a life.
The third and most accomplished sequence is Malick, now known as teacher Daniel Kimmer. Taken from the Jimmy Drain short film using the same title, The Initiation of Professor Kimmer. His wife Jamie (Emily Absher) is hiding a secret. Kimmer has a student named Starr (Luba Bocian) who lures him to a party and tries to seduce him so that his blood can be stopped by an unexpected source.
“…relationship-seeking hero of sorts who goes through years of life, loves, and suffers pangs of regret and death…”
The fourth vision has Peggy (Ashe Medina,) whom the witches teach how to dance so she can use her feminine wiles on a choreographer named Jon Beedham (Caustic Scifidelic).
What follows is a young mother (Lauren Mayhew) troubled by noises during the night, which her little girl (Mara Davala) claims is a man tackling the Boogie Man sitting on the house roof. This ‘vision’ features Horror icon Tony Todd as an intrepid priest battling encounters with a masked man.
Add to this Ouija boards, voodoo, human hair theft, and shadowy people all packed in this odd blender of a film. Is this like David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive with the work of Ed Wood, with exploitation Directors Russ Meyer and Dwayne Esper tossed in? It could be a confusing point of view as Jimmy Drain plays the main role with different names and occupations, which does not change his appearance or speech pattern in the best ‘Ed Wood’ tradition.
The absurdity of the situations with people popping in and out makes this film cantankerously fun viewing. Even moments of ‘silent cinema’ with just images and music telling the story, including a dance sequence in which one female pulls a muscle. A musical interlude bordering on absurdity is Robby (Jimmy Drain) hiking in the rural hills looking thoughtfully into the sun to electronic strings after a relationship ends.
Realm of Shadows is a challenge to keep straight in your mind. The work is the purest form of Exploitation film with a capital ‘E ‘except for some of today’s work of Charles Band’s Full Moon Features. Chewing gum for the mind.
"…Add to this Ouija boards, voodoo, human hair theft, and shadowy people all packed in this odd blender of a film."
