By Travis Johnson
Since his first film, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Albert Pyun has carved out a fairly unique career as a purveyor of fine, B-grade genre efforts that, while never possessing anything near the production value or quality of their studio-funded contemporaries, nonetheless are possessed of a dogged, scrappy amiability. Pyun’s films are Fun – capital F intentional – inventive, and weird. This is the guy responsible for Van Damme vehicle Cyborg, cyberpunk series Nemesis (a clear influence on this month’s Upgrade), and the 1990 Captain America (they can’t all be gems, but it’s still worth a watch for connoisseurs of crap cinema). He’s a treasure.
Sadly, Albert Pyun is currently suffering from dementia – possibly connected with the multiple sclerosis diagnosis he announced five years ago (caveat: we are film journalists here at FilmInk, not neurologists), a condition he candidly admits has closed off his traditional production funding streams. Still, that’s not gonna keep an old soldier of cinema like Pyun down. Our man Albert is convinced he as at least one project left in him – the deliriously titled Bad Ass Angles & Demons. To that end, he’s started a GoFundMe campaign to raise the cash for proof-of-concept work that he can shop around.
“I need to promote Bad Ass Angels & Demons to the world,” he explains. “In order to do this in a manner that communicates my vision for the project, I have created a campaign which consists of a poster, character posters, post-apocalypse costumes and CG effects. A twelve minute, teaser explains the concept, the look and the quality ambitions of the project, entailing a feature pilot to a web mini-series.”
Pyun describes the plot thusly: “In the end of days comes the ultimate battle between good and evil. Led by a young hero, the Bad Ass Angels fight the demons to establish the dawn of a new generation for Planet Earth.”
Sounds like something the world needs. To chip in, shoot over to Pyun’s GoFundMe.
