Presented as a double-bill at this year’s Arrow Video FrightFest, The Once & Future Smash and End Zone 2, are films that definitely need to be seen together. The first, The Once & Future Smash, explores the phenomenon of the 1970 film End Zone 2. The second, is what remains today of the horror film that birthed a cult thanks to its missing final act.
If you’re scratching your head thinking, “I’ve never heard of End Zone, let alone a sequel”, fret not, the film does not exist. It’s a fake film, clocking in at around the hour mark. A riff on early slashers, End Zone 2 features many of what have become tropes of the genre. Painstaking work has been done to believably retrofit and pass the film off as being the real ‘first slasher film’. The opening text really sells the product as genuine. Before the film begins, a wall of text explains the history of the film, how reels were destroyed and the work that has been undertaken to stitch together the most complete version in existence. It’s a clever touch, and one that demonstrates how easy fake news and information can be fabricated. To further create the impression that it’s a real film, the picture is scratchy in places. It believably points to neglect of the print and highlights how it has suffered.There is static on some of the soundtrack to trick the viewer too. The filmmakers have even gone so far as to manufacture IMDB and Letterboxd pages for it, complete with bogus trivia.
Its ability to successfully slightly bamboozle the audience is strong work; however, in the context of the FrightFest screening, the audience will know that it’s a fake before settling in to watch it. The decision to screen The Once and Future Smash first strips End Zone 2 of its tricky mystique. This other film purports to be a documentary on the popularity of End Zone 2, but in reality, is a mockumentary. It might take some viewers a while to work this out, but once the penny drops, it casts End Zone 2 in a very different light. The mockumentary itself starts well, looking and running as any documentary of a cult movie does. Directors Sophia Gacciola and Michael J. Epstein have collected some well-known talking heads to sell the idea. The likes of Adam Marcus and Mark Patton wax lyrical about End Zone 2 as if it were Halloween or The Exorcist. As the film progresses though, more emphasis is placed on the two men that portrayed the film’s killer American Footballer, Smashmouth. Once the focus shifts, anything interesting about The Once and Future Smash quickly dissipates.
The film gets trapped in the arena of slapstick and silly. With a couple of exchanges that are unexpectedly honest about how some fan conventions are run being the only saving grace, the rest of the mockumentary is an awful mess. It tries to be funny, but forces the laughs too much and comes across as a little tacky. Character interactions and motivations start to make less and less sense, and it becomes a slog to sit through. Its worst offence though is that, after having sat through The Once and Future Smash, the prospect of then watching the film that inspired all this fuss, sounds excruciating.
Two halves of the same idea told in different ways, The Once & Future Smash and End Zone 2 serve to cancel each other out. End Zone 2 is an intriguing and passable, albeit slightly silly, slasher to sit down with. The Once and Future Smash however, eclipses End Zone 2’s good intentions with a mockumentary that goes hard, and in doing so ends up back at ground zero.
The Once & Future Smash and End Zone 2
Summary
The enjoyment of this double-feature could be raised by a simple switch around of their running order. Too much silliness and not a lick of sense make The Once & Future Smash a truly tedious viewing experience. End Zone 2 fares better, but after having sat through the mockumentary first, it is likely to still ruffle some feathers.
The Once & Future Smash and End Zone 2 were both reviewed at Arrow Video FrightFest 2022.
