A vintage black Wolseley is the thing doing the haunting in Black Chariot. The trailer for Lawrie Brewster’s black-and-white supernatural noir went up Friday, ahead of a UK cinema run that opens October 30 at the Lumière in Romford.
The setup is a criminal scheme, three young men and one case between them, and a walk through the woods that stops being a getaway and starts being a pursuit. Laurence R. Harvey, who played Martin in The Human Centipede 2, plays the man working them. Richard Pate plays a figure the film calls the Devil. Megan Tremethick is Nell, and Brewster co-wrote the script with Sarah Daly.
Hex Studios Has Been Doing This for Thirteen Years
Brewster and Daly run Hex Studios out of Scotland, a name familiar to anyone following the crowdfunded end of the genre. Their 2013 feature Lord of Tears built a small cult around the Owlman, a silent figure in a suit with an owl’s head, and The Black Gloves brought him back in 2017. The house style is cheap in the budget sense and expensive in the composition sense, which is a workable trade when you have more time than money.
The same faces keep coming back, too. Harvey hosted the wraparound as Dr. Graves in In the Grip of Terror, the revived Amicus anthology Brewster also directed, and Tremethick, Pate, Nick Ford, Novarro Ramon and Sam Barclay are all in that one too. Brewster has quietly built himself a repertory company, which is an old-fashioned way to run a horror outfit and part of why these films hold together on the money they have.
Black Chariot is also the opening title on BHS Picture House, the company’s first run at booking its own theatrical programme rather than waiting for a distributor. A micro-budget outfit putting a black-and-white film into three cinemas on its own account is the part of this announcement with stakes attached.
The ‘Carnival of Souls’ Comparison Cuts Both Ways
The influences the film claims are Hitchcock, vintage noir, Val Lewton and Carnival of Souls, and that last one is the interesting problem. Herk Harvey’s 1962 film works because it never explains itself, and because its cheapness reads as dislocation rather than as cheapness. A noir built on vengeance and retribution is a structure that wants a solution at the end of it. Brewster is reaching for two things that pull against each other, and which one wins will decide whether this plays as an atmosphere piece or a revenge picture in a nicer coat.
BLACK CHARIOT is a passion project that channels the chilling elegance of Hitchcock and the brooding intensity of classic noir.
Director Lawrie Brewster, in comments given to Rue Morgue
Shooting in black and white on this kind of budget is a bet that framing can carry what coverage and lighting rigs would otherwise have to buy. It is also the cheapest way there is to make a small film look deliberate, which is why so many first-timers try it and so few get away with it. Brewster has thirteen years of practice at exactly that problem.
Three Cinemas, Then a Collector’s Blu-ray
The run starts at the Lumière Cinema in Romford from October 30 through November 5, moves to The Northern Light Cinema in Sale on November 13, and reaches Peckhamplex in London on November 16 at 8:30pm. More dates are expected. After that come a digital release, a standard Blu-ray and a signed collector’s edition carrying cast and director commentaries, interviews, behind-the-scenes material and the soundtrack.
No American dates have been set, which is the usual position for a UK horror film at this scale. The pattern is a British cinema run first, then a US platform deal once somebody has numbers to point at. Which means the three-cinema booking is not a victory lap. It is the argument Hex Studios has to win before anybody outside the UK gets a look at the film.