A Town Called Purgatory is a genre mashup horror Western based on Native American lore and American history. Filmmakers Ken Arnold and Dan De Luca first made a mark on the movie landscape with 2017’s horror comedy The Night Watchmen.
Their vampire tale played festivals all over the world (including Fantasia and Sitges film festivals), winning over a dozen major awards during its international run. We have your first look at an exclusive clip from the upcoming feature, but first, here’s the official synopsis.
In the bloody aftermath of the Civil War, Beau Riffen, a Yankee lawman with more scars on his soul than on his body, teams up with Cody Parnum, a haunted ex-Confederate tracker. Both are weary from the war’s carnage, yet they’re thrown together on a quest to track down the Reno Gang, a band of notorious train robbers. Their journey, filled with the ghosts of their pasts, leads them straight to a place that might as well be off the map: Purgatory, a town as eerie as its name suggests.
As darkness descends, the men tether their horses and gather around a flickering campfire seeking a moment’s respite. Their rest is interrupted by an ominous presence stealthily approaching from out of the night. The presence lurks just beyond the reach of the firelight and sends a wave of unease through the men, once the predators, now the prey.
The screenwriters took their research seriously while exploring the Skinwalker mythos. “A rule we gave ourselves was: We needed to respect the legend,” De Luca says. The search for a location to represent the American Wild West took the duo to Austria, of all places.
“Well, as we all realize, nothing is easy in the film world, and the next thing we knew we were on a plane to Austria in the middle of COVID to film an American Western,” De Luca continues. “A ‘Strudel Western,’ if you will. While the world was in limbo, we made A Town Called Purgatory.”
De Luca notes the differences between this experience and making their last feature: “The shooting experience was vastly different from our work on The Night Watchmen, with a much smaller cast, a foreign location and a bit of a language barrier. We often had to translate from the Romanian crew to the German crew and finally to the English-speaking crew. At any given time, you would hear not only those three languages, but Italian, Polish and Spanish as well.” But they pulled it off.
Now, gather around the fire and take a peek at A Town Called Purgatory.
Starring Ken Arnold, Dan De Luca, Kevin Jiggetts, Matt Servitto, Jeff Ricketts and Maria Lohn. Directed by Matt Servitto, A Town Called Purgatory will screen at Monsterpalooza happening May 31 to June 2 in Pasadena, CA.
