Twisted Issues

Presented by Whammy! Analog Media and Saturn’s Core Audio & Video as part of SOV SEPTEMBER, an annual screening series featuring exclusively shot-on-videotape films.

After innocent, straight edge skater Paul is taunted and murdered by a carload of drunken longhairs, he is crudely resurrected by a mysterious, pot-smoking mad scientist as a masked, sword wielding psychopath with a horrifying facial skin graft and a skateboard bolted directly to his foot. Determined to enact bloodthirsty revenge on his killers and their cohorts, Paul marauds through the parking lots, warehouses, and house parties of Gainesville in a splatter fueled cacophony of homespun gore, psychedelic drugs, ‘80s skate punk culture, abrasive stock footage, and gobs of raspberry soda.

Initially envisioned as a document of the thriving underground music scene in Gainesville, Florida (as well as a cinematic adaptation of his self-published, DIY fanzine Twisted Tissues), Twisted Issues marked the SOV feature debut of visionary writer / director Charles Pinion (Red Spirit Lake, We Await) and announced the arrival of a singular and electrifying new voice within the video underground. A lo-fi explosion of raw creativity and youthful exuberance, Twisted Issues remains one of the quintessential, regional SOV masterpieces of the 1980s; an experimental, cinema verité slasher film like no other that Film Threat magazine notoriously dubbed one of the top “25 underground films you must see!”