Beyond Horror: The History and Sub-Culture of Red Films

Directed by Jessie Seitz and Marcus Koch

Produced by 93/93 Pictures





Premiering at the Nightmares Film Festival in October, Beyond Horror delves into the history of the most extreme and shocking films ever made. The new documentary from special FX artists Jessie Seitz and Marcus Koch chronicles the timeline of Red Films: those films that are too extreme for the mainstream and historically have been circulated via the bootleg circuit. Since conceiving the idea in mid-2018, the pair has compiled hours of interviews from filmmakers and fans to discover the appeal of this form of cinema. After the film’s premier, Seitz and Koch were awarded the Best Director award from the festival.



The genre’s modern roots begin with the Grand Guignol Theater that operated in Paris from 1887 to 1962. The theater specialized in live plays that depicted naturalistic horror for upper class citizens who wanted to be thrilled but in a safe environment. From here, the inception of extreme horror in of cinema progressed with semi-mainstream titles such as Blood Feast, Cannibal Holocaust, I Spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left, and the Faces of Death series. With the home video market burgeoning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, underground films began to circulate that showed brutality that made viewers question if they were witnessing actual bodily harm. These bootleg films were often recorded repeatedly, so the low quality of unmarked VHS tapes paired with a lack of public knowledge of the filmmakers or actors added to the appeal and demand of these shocking videos.