Ted Farrell’s night takes a turn for the worse when he peers into his rearview mirror and discovers the dead body of a girl he had met earlier. Ted’s love of mysteries and thrillers is palpable, particularly when he is immersed in his job of sound design on films. But getting pulled into his own terror-filled night of murder, twists and turns is much different than listening to an audio drama on cassette in his car. Will Ted discover what happened with this body in his car? And more importantly, will he survive this ordeal at all?

Visual Vengeance once again rummages through the trash and extracts a low-budget super 8mm regional thriller gem for us choice cinephiles to consume and enjoy. To be quite honest, I can’t say I was really looking forward to this one. Having subjected myself to so many extremely low budget, incompetent direct-to-video horror and thriller films from the ’80s and ’90s, I was steeling myself for the poor blocking, stilted acting, bad writing and overall terrible quality that many of these kinds of films tend to end up with. But lo and behold! This little flick is actually pretty darn nifty. Yes, the budget is extremely low (somewhere between $10k and $25k according to different people in the extras) and a couple of the actors are a little wooden. But on the whole, this movie is actually pretty well shot and pretty well-acted as well. The filmmakers professed their interest in making something Hitchcockian and it does have a bit of that feel. Even more so, it feels like if Brian De Palma had made a student film in the late ’80s, it may have come out something like this, particularly with the film’s interest in sound editing drawing parallels to Blow Out. Having said that, the sound design element doesn’t play quite as integral a role in the film as in De Palma’s excellent film, but it does tie in beyond just as a character quirk. And speaking of sound design, the film is almost entirely overdubbed, and it actually takes advantage of that by embedding lots of foley effects into the sound track for more immersion. I can certainly appreciate the blood, sweat and tears that went into making what is essentially a glorified student film. These guys wanted to make a legitimately good film that engages the audience, and it really does show on the screen.

If you’ve come across other Visual Vengeance releases, then you know they don’t half-ass it with the extras. We have first two commentaries, one by two of the directors and one by a third director and a producer. Yes, this movie had three credited directors. Although really, it sounds like one of the directors was more of an editor and one of them was director of photography. Probably the best extra included here is a 50-minute documentary on the making of the film, “Men Make Movie, If Not Million$”, and it covers pretty much every aspect of the production from the casting to filming to editing and distribution and includes interviews from cast and crew. This extra alone will give you lots of info on the making of the film. In addition, the disc includes the full unedited interviews with several of the people interviewed for the doc including all three directors and lead actor Matt Femlee as well as Chris Gore of Film Threat who was a big fan of the film and helped to get it distributed. There is some overlap between these and the doc since the doc actually uses clips from them, but they do contain quite a bit additional info if you really want to dig into the nuts ‘n’ bolts of the production. The disc also includes an alternate director’s cut of the film as well as several early Super 8 shorts and other projects made by the filmmakers prior to The Wrong Door. None of these shorts are super essential but I’m always interested in seeing the seeds of future filmmakers in these things. It also includes digital ephemera such as an image gallery, storyboards gallery and a Film Threat review as well as a bunch of trailers for stuff like Ozone: Attack of the Redneck Mutants (which was distributed on the same video label as The Wrong Door). Plus, in keeping with Visual Vengeance tradition, we also get some neat physical extras including a fold-out poster, vintage-looking movie rental stickers and, unique to this release, a Wrong Door-themed Do Not Disturb sign you can hang on your door when you’re decked out in a jester costume being chased by murderers.

The Wrong Door is a classic example of a film rising above its limitations, delivering a Hitchcockian thriller on next to no budget that offers a fun thrill ride. This is an easy recommendation for fans of lean thrillers and is certainly worth checking out.