The Films of Larry Fessenden: Volume 2 - Wendigo & The Last Winter

For forty years, Glass Eye Pix and its founder, Larry Fessenden, have been leaving their bloody mark on independent genre filmmaking in America. To celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Glass Eye Pix, Vinegar Syndrome is proud to present brand new 4K restorations of Larry Fessenden’s shot-on-film features, continuing with WENDIGO (2001) and THE LAST WINTER (2006).

WENDIGO

George (Jake Weber, Dawn of the Dead [2004]), his wife Kim (Patricia Clarkson, High Art and TV's Six Feet Under), and their son Miles (Erik Per Sullivan, TV’s Malcolm In the Middle) leave their home in Manhattan for a winter respite in Upstate New York, looking for some much-needed rest and relaxation. On their drive north, the family is involved in a sudden accident when George hits a deer that runs across an icy road, setting the stage for a snowbound supernatural showdown between them and the titular Wendigo, a grotesque legendary beast from Native American folklore.

Larry Fessenden’s long-awaited follow-up to his breakout feature, Habit (1995), WENDIGO is a distinctly American folk horror film shot entirely on location in New York's Catskills, on Super 16mm film by director of photography Terry Stacey (American Splendor). Vinegar Syndrome is proud to present Fessenden’s icy, DIY monster movie in a brand new director-approved 4K restoration of its original 16mm negatives.

THE LAST WINTER

At the remote Alaskan base of an oil company, hard-headed base leader Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman, Hellboy) faces off with eco-scientist James Hoffman (James Le Gros, Living In Oblivion), who has raised concerns about the environmental impact of the drilling in the area due to the abnormally warm temperatures in the region. When one of Pollack’s crew is found dead on the ice, and members of his team start experiencing hallucinations, Hoffman turns to a scientific explanation despite signs pointing towards something more supernatural at play.

Larry Fessenden followed up the winter folk horror of Wendigo with a similarly chilly ghost story set near the Arctic Circle. Shot on location in both Alaska and Iceland, marking Fessenden’s first film to be shot outside of the United States and New York, THE LAST WINTER is a remarkably cold and claustrophobic piece of folk horror that shares a few notable similarities with John Carpenter’s The Thing and is, to this date, Fessenden’s final movie shot on film and the only one to be shot entirely on 35mm. Vinegar Syndrome is proud to present Larry Fessenden’s wildly ambitious eco-horror thriller in a brand new director-approved 4K restoration from its 35mm negative.