Tulsa Terrors — Tulsa Terrors( Blu Ray)

Tulsa Terrors is a 2024 documentary, looking at the birth of straight-to-video/ SOV in Tulsa, Oklahoma, following through into more recent times, where the city's low-budget filmmakers are still creating cheap horror genre films. Here from  VCI Entertainment – either as a Blu-ray or DVD- here’s a release of the film, taking in a few extras.

Tulsa Terrors was directed by  Bryan Crain, who has seemingly just two other director credits- craft short Woodturning with Tim Yoder (2014), and documentary Oil Capital Underground: The Genesis & Evolution of Punk Rock in Tulsa-Late 70s to Mid 90s (2018).

The documentary runs at around the one hour and twenty mark. The releases cover artwork of old VHS, and mentions in its description had me believing it was going to purely focusing on SOV, but in reality this element of the film only takes up around twenty minutes or so- where the focus is on 1985’s Blood Cult( which is often quoted on been the first SOV film), The Ripper (1985) SOV slasher featuring Tom Savini as Jack The Ripper, and Blood Cult sequel Revenge(1986).

The lion's share of the film is taken up by looking at general horror and cult films made in Tulsa, between the 80s and early 2000s. With interviews with a host of directors, crew, journalists, and  Bob Blair, the current president of VCI Entertainment, who was key in the development of the direct-to-video films made in  Tulsa.

Aside from the above-mentioned three films, most of the pictures discussed here I’ve never heard of, and there were certainly a few I want to track down, like 1986’s Mutilations, which regarded cattle mutilations/ aliens- mixing in stop motion effects with standard low-budget gore.

As a look at low-budget film making, and to a lesser extent, straight-to-video film making in Tulsa, this is fine. Though, as mentioned earlier, I was expecting more of an SOV focus- hell, we get key titles like Blood Cult, The Ripper, and Terror at Tenkiller on the front cover( the latter is oddly not covered in the film, though it does get mentioned in the extras film). So really it’s down to what you're after, on how much you’ll enjoy this doc.

On the extra side, we get a blend of short new & archive interviews. We have Rewinding Terror( 3.37). Archive interviews with both Bill Blair( 11.33), and Christopher Lewis( 12.03)- both the subjects of Blood Cult. The History Of United Films( 4.02).  Robert Blair on Terror At Tenkiller.

In the end, Tulsa Terrors is fine for what it is, a documentary about low-budget/straight-to-video genre filmmaking in Tulsa between the 80s and 2000s. I just personally think there had been more focus on the early SOV films.