"Surprisingly Decent Retro-Style Vampire Flick"
Yes the shed of the title turns out to be harbouring a vampire in THE SHED, a film which had its UK premiere at Grimmfest last year and is now the latest Digital HD release from Signature Entertainment.
Teenager Stan (Jay Jay Warren) lives with his abusive grandfather (Timothy Bottoms,) in a rundown house out in the country. He's on probation from his juvenile detention centre, at risk of suspension from school, and gets into trouble with bullies and teachers, but his life is about to change.
Next door neighbour Bane (Frank Whaley), out hunting rabbits in the prologue, has instead encountered a vampire, who bites him. His assailant is destroyed by the sun's rays but Bane, now a vampire himself, takes refuge in Stan's shed, where it's not long before his presence is discovered.
The premise for THE SHED sounds like a pitch for a terrible sitcom (or possibly an episode of a really good one like The Young Ones). Instead, Frank Sabatella's directorial debut plays its subject matter straight and is all the better for it, culminating in a vampire-filled climax reminiscent of a Bob Kelljan Count Yorga or Blacula movie from the 1970s.
Add in a clip from Roger Corman et al's 1963 THE TERROR playing on Stan's TV, with Dick Miller overdubbed to explain how vampires are destroyed, and THE SHED is all rather pleasingly retro, paying homage to its antecedents while being an entertaining low budget picture in its own right. Not bad at all.
Frank Sabatella's THE SHED is out on Digital HD from Signature Entertainment on Monday 11th May 2020
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