My first exposure to Ozone director J.R. Bookwalter came from an old issue of Fangoria Magazine. I can’t remember the issue number but this had to be back in the early to mid 1980s. Featured in the issue was a full-color spread about a film called The Dead Next Door. I was immediately captivated by the bloody images of zombies reaching out for chunks of raw flesh. But the thing that really caught my attention was that the film was being shot on Super-8 by some seventeen year old geek with glasses and a mullet. Although it took me years to finally get my hands on a copy of the film, the Fangoria article planted a seed in my fevered movie-obsessed brain: If this geek in Ohio was making his own movies… so could I.

By this time I finally saw The Dead Next Door, it had already developed quite a cult following. Honestly, I was a little disappointed in the film. It had a raw energy, some cool efffects and a unique visual style, but it definitely wasn’t going to give George Romero a run for his money. But it did make me curious about what else J.R. Bookwalter had been up to. I found out he had directly an embarrassing 16mm flick called Robot Ninja, followed by a succession of even more embarrassing shot-on-video flicks.

But then I heard about a soon to be released movie called Ozone. Supposedly, Bookwalter had gathered all his resources had set out to push the envelope of what could be done with a shot-on-video feature. This was his last ditch effort to return to his roots and atone for his previous shot-on-video sins.

When Ozone was finally released by Bookwalter’s Suburban Tempe Home video company, it was like a bomb had been dropped on the low-budget filmmaking scene. On the surface, Ozone was nothing more than an effective little horror film about a designer drug that turns people into liquified corpses. A cop named Eddie Boone (nicely played by James Black) is investigating the death of his partner when he becomes entwined in a plotline that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But who cares about plot when the movie is chock-full of zombies, subterranean gladiator fights, spooky hallucinations and disgusting back-alley birthing scenes. Basically, it contains plenty of all the elements that fans of low-budget horror look for in a movie.

But if you were an aspiring filmmaker at the time, there was an added element of excitement. The really exciting news was that Bookwalter had somehow pulled off a feature length film shot on Super-VHS for a budget of $3,500 and it WORKED. Not only did it work, it was full of cool special effects and even had “morphing”! This is the movie that finally showed aspiring filmmakers that it was POSSIBLE to make a decent movie with their consumer video equipment. And with that realization, the shot-on-video filmmaking movement truly began.

Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, Bookwalter has revisited the film for its DVD release. He has taken advantage of his new state-of-the-art production facilities to completely remaster the video and audio as well as recreating a lot of the special effects. Ozone has never looked or sounded better. However, the latest digital technology can’t help the paper-thin plot, nor can it erase the mullets or some of the extremely dated clothes. But maybe that’s a good thing. After all, too much tinkering around with this underground “classic” would obscure the films original accomplishment. Even with the somewhat hokey special effects of the original version, there was no denying Bookwalter’s visual talent behind the camera. 

As with all Tempe DVDs, the film is supplemented with a slew of great special features including a 30-minute documentary and a commentary track by Bookwalter and lead actor James Black. If you’re an aspiring filmmaker you have no excuse for not buying this film right now. I would consider it an essential.

If on the other hand, you don’t want to make a movie, but just want to see melting junkies and chicks crapping out mutant babies in dirty alleys, give Ozone a spin. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Reviewed by Christopher Sharpe.

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