PURGATORY ROAD (2018)

Co-writer/director: Mark Savage

Mark Savage is Australia's most prolific but unknown feature filmmaker. Thankfully that's not the case at MUFF where we have a long record of presenting his latest work. You may even still be admonishing yourself for not attending the previous MUFF screening of his lensed in Florida Bill Oberst Jr./Amand Assante action dramady STRESSED TO KILL? Don't make the same mistake with PURGATORY ROAD that was produced in the US state of Louisiana and ably and excitingly demonstrates all the skills and thematic concerns Savage has been working with for the past 30 years.

PURGATORY ROAD spins the tale of two brothers, the older who is a Catholic priest

(the excellent Gary Cairns) and the younger his long time assistant (Luke Albright). Together they patrol a backwater Southern world like the one depicted in the second

series of TRUE DETECTIVE where fearful subsistence farmers place all their faith and spare dollars into religious tent shows as run by Father Vincent. The two brothers who once witnessed their father's gun assisted suicide carry added value with them in the form of a mobile confessional built into their dilapidated Chevy van. They soon encounter Mary Francis (Trista Robinson) who happens to be a serial killer when she's not calling a local live to air confessional radio show. Together they form an unholy alliance. Southern mayhem ensues.

Sometimes lit like a 70s Argento film with a dramatic and sweeping score by Glen

Gabriel and presenting an original narrative involving the last minute appearance of a surprise character PURGATORY ROAD has few current precedents and even less modern influences making it even more vital that you make plans to catch it at MUFF now!