The Bloody Nightmares Project was an attempt by Doug Tilley to review the entirety of Mill Creek Entertainment's 100-film Bloody Nightmares box set of films released in August, 2008. The reviews were originally posted on Doug's Movie Feast blog. 39 reviews were completed before the project eventually evolved into the No-Budget Nightmares column on Daily Grindhouse. Since then, a number of the films have been featured both in the column and on the No-Budget Nightmares podcast.
This is the original text that prefaced The Bloody Nightmares Project on the Movie Feast blog:
I have a great respect and sympathy for the zero-budget filmmaker. I'm not talking about Fred Olen Ray or Charles Band low-budget schlock (though I like that, too), but instead the high schoolers who put on a show, or the college buddies who spend a summer putting together a movie. Making a film is a tiring, frustrating, time-consuming process, and we're lucky enough to live in a time when the ability to make semi-professional low-budget cinema is in the hands of almost anyone. You no longer have to be a film school wunderkind like Kevin Smith or Robert Rodriguez to make an entertaining movie on the cheap, and thanks to the internet there's literally hundreds of new distribution channels to get your film out to the public.
Which brings us to the 24 Disc 100 film collection Bloody Nightmares from Mill Creek Entertainment (under their subsidiary Pendulum Pictures). Mill Creek is best known for their collections of public domain genre films and television (including the Martial Arts 50-pack i've been reviewing recently), but what differentiates the films in the Bloody Nightmares set are that they are almost entirely amateur shot-on-video horror productions made on nearly non-existent budgets. While some might see such a collection as exploiting young filmmakers, I commend the concept and hope we get more collections like this in the future.
For the near future, I will be reviewing the films in this collection in the order in which they appear. Readers should understand that I am keeping my expectations low in approaching them, and will be more forgiving of flaws than I may be on higher budget productions. I have had my own experience making zero-budget films, and recognize the difficulties involved, but I also will remain critical when the creators choose to cut corners or leave in glaring errors.