August Underground
Short description
August Underground is a 2001 American horror film presented as found footage. Two young men film themselves carrying out sadistic acts in a suburban setting, including keeping a mutilated woman captive in a cellar. One of them handles the violence while the other operates the camera, and his face stays hidden until late in the footage. The recording becomes a prolonged depiction of torture, degradation and murder, with brief glimpses of how the pair behave toward each other and their victims.
Fred Vogel directed and produced the film, and wrote the screenplay with Allen Peters. It was his first feature, followed two years later by August Underground's Mordum. Vogel also plays Peter Mountain, with Kyle Dealman as himself, Allen Peters as the man behind the camera, Casey Eganey as a girl in a supermarket, Dan Friedman as himself and AnnMarie Reveruzzi as Laura, the captive in the cellar. The film runs 70 minutes and was made by Toetag Pictures.
Audience response has been strongly negative: on IMDb it holds a rating of 3.5 out of 10 from roughly 4,400 votes, and on TMDB it sits at 4 out of 10 from about 124 votes. The low scores reflect how the film's unrelenting content and low-budget, deliberately raw presentation have landed with viewers.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film was shot on a Hi8 camcorder. During post-production, it was artificially aged to create a sense of realism for the events on screen. The camera was borrowed from director, screenwriter, and producer Fred Vogel.
- The film's budget was so modest that all the actors involved had to chip in to film some of the scenes.
- The idea for the film was born from director, screenwriter, and producer Fred Vogel's general disappointment with the serial killer genre, which he felt failed to show the audience everything happening in the script. Drawing inspiration from John McNaughton's crime thriller 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer' (1986), Vogel intended to make a terrifying and maximally realistic film.
- Initially, they wanted to create the entire film, record it onto blank videotapes, and leave them in public places so that people would take them home and watch them. However, this idea had to be abandoned after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
- The film was shot exclusively on weekends, as all the cast members worked their regular jobs during the week.
- Fred Fogel was detained at the Canadian border while traveling to attend the Toronto International Film Festival after copies of the film 'Underground' and its sequel were found in his luggage (he was accused of intending to bring offensive material into the country). Fogel was released from customs detention after approximately 10 hours.
- Some scenes in the film were not even written in the script. They were improvised on the fly and filmed to increase the movie's runtime.
- The film was shot on the personal Hi8 video camera of director, screenwriter, and producer Fred Vogel. During editing, the recorded footage was artificially aged to create a sense of realism for the events unfolding on screen.
- The idea for the film stemmed from director, screenwriter, and producer Fred Vogel's general disappointment with the serial killer movie genre. Vogel felt that these films failed to show the audience what actually happens in reality. Inspired by the crime thriller 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer,' he sought to make a repulsive and maximally realistic film.
- Fred Vogel initially wanted to launch a viral marketing campaign in which videotapes of the film would be left in public places across various parts of the United States. This idea had to be abandoned following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the anthrax spore mailings.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
