This Sunday on the HorrorMovieFans.com Radio Network’s Sunday Night Horror my guest will be Steve Persall. Recently, Persall panned “Black Devil Doll” without seeing the film. Basing his criticisms solely on the trailer it raised a stir with the makers of “Black Devil Doll” and horror fans. HorrorMovieFans reported on it on May 14th and since then the blog has culminated 86 comments — a blog that appears to rarely reach double digits in comments. The comments for the most part weren’t very nice on either side but Persall and myself plan to have a respectful, interesting and thought provoking discussion.

black devil doll

When informing people about his appearance on the upcoming show in a recent blog entry, Persall referenced the “Evil Dead” series and in another recent entry praised “Drag Me to Hell”. This would indicates that he might be a horror fan. That makes it an even bigger disappointment that he’s not supporting “Black Devil Doll”.  For the longest time critics have piled up on horror movies. Often times in the most unfair matter mainstream film critics will trash even the genre’s best. One needs to only remember Siskel and Ebert curious act of giving out Betsy Palmer’s address on Television and encouraging viewer’s to harass her for involvement in “Friday the 13th”. This was on the heels of Adrienne King’s stalker incident only making the act even more distasteful. The terms “torture porn”, “exploitation”, and “slasher” have all been negative labels attatched to horror films. The latter two terms horror fans have now embraced.

steve persall

Most horror fans seem very apathetic toward mainstream media film critics. If Persall is a horror fan then writing for a legitmate publication seems to be a golden opportunity for him to be one of horror’s ambassador’s to swing the pendulum to the horror genre’s side.

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A couple major issues that will come up are “freedom of expression” and the issue of “racism” in “Black Devil Doll”. Persall wrote “I believe that the freedom of expression that so many BDD supporters cited doesn’t necessarily mean freedom of exhibition, especially in a community like St. Pete where racial division simmers each day.” And Persall also wrote “An independently produced movie is playing in St. Petersburg tonight. I won’t tell you where because that would just send more people to see or protest it, and that might lead to trouble that, honestly, the city doesn’t need, in light of its history of racial unease. ”

I’ll hit on the fact that direct to dvd market with limited theatrical showings is perfect for “Black Devil Doll” since the film doesn’t hit the mainstream audience that would find this film objectionable. Also of note is that warning people of a film and disallowing it to play in venues is censorship. The danger of racial unease really boils down to the importance to cater to the average person rather than catering to racist, backward thinking folk.

st pete tampa

Persall is a film critic, a blogger and a film enthusaist. Persall writes for a local Florida newspaper, The St. Petersberg Times.  His “Reeling in the Years” blog is on TampBay.com. Persall is featured on the Local CBS TV Channel for a movie segment on the Evening News every Thursday.

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Sunday Night Horror can be listened to on the HorrorMovieFans.com Radio Network at 10pm EST / 7pm PST. There’s a chat room to interact with me and other listeners and also a call in number to join the fun,  (646) 716-7438.

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