Last year, a pair of films began making their way across the festival circuit called The Third Saturday in October and one of its sequels The Third Saturday in October Part V. This pair of films felt like a pastiche of slasher films, particularly from the 90s era of direct to VHS horror films that are now being celebrated by boutique DVD shops like Severin or Vinegar Syndrome. Something must be in the air because directors Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein bring a different kind of pastiche in the form of two companion films End Zone 2 and The Once and Future Smash.

End Zone 2 is posited as a long-lost, 1970 slasher sequel that’s been painstakingly restored as much as possible. Cheekily, the filmmakers even created an IMDb page for both End Zone 2 and the original 1965 film End Zone (neither of which actually exist), complete with a cast list of fake actors. In fact, to understand who is playing who, you’d have to watch the companion film The Once and Future Smash to determine that Nancy was played by fake actor Percy Wynne who is, in turn, played by actual actor Trista Robinson. For ease of use, I’m just going to use the fake actors names for the characters because, good lord, while I appreciate the fact the filmmakers went this hilariously hard in creating the fictional End Zone world in the real world, it makes it difficult to write about.

The gag continues in the actual film, which opens with a wall of text fans of restored films will immediately know. The text is about the transfer, noting that the film we’re going to watch consists of partial prints and partial internegatives to create “the film as close to the original presentation as possible.” It also notes that some of the film was pulled from the Italian cut of the film and that the last 30 minutes of the film have been lost to time. The film then begins with a cold open introducing us to Nancy (Percy Wynne played by Trista Robinson) who, fifteen years after she murdered Angela Smazmouth (Julie Kane) the Mrs. Voorhees-esqe mother of Smash-Mouth, has her wounds reopened with a news report annotating that it’s been fifteen years.

This then immediately goes into the opening credits which comes from the aforementioned Italian cut, complete with the Italian title La Zona Funesto. End Zone 2 then introduces the characters, who’ve decided to go on a weekend retreat with the completely mentally destroyed Nancy. We get some of the typical caricatures we’d expect, including the feminist-book-reading Deborah (Patricia Ford), Linda (Melody Riviera), Shelly (Bernadette Ryan) and Mary (Dahlia Dimont). What follows is a very condensed version of a proto-slasher film that feels like an amalgamation of the slasher genre that would follow in the late 70s and into the 80s. Even though “the last 30 minutes was destroyed,” End Zone 2 tells a complete slasher story in around 60 minutes.

Fake director August Kane (presumably The Once and Future Smash directors Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein) created a somewhat entertaining slasher film here with nods to some of the genre greats, like Friday the 13th. It plays like a satire of film restorations, with a presentation that has the look of a film that a boutique label like Vinegar Syndrome would restore. One of those films that’s been barely seen by anyone, but has a very small, but vocal, fan club. As such, people (like me) who shell out $20+ for a film barely no one has seen, there’s a number of small touches and in-jokes.

It doesn’t completely succeed as either a pastiche or a satire, unfortunately. As a pastiche, End Zone 2 feels like an appropriately sleazy 70s-era regional horror film. The acting is a little stilted, which would make sense, except that the actors have a wink-wink, nudge-nudge quality that’s a little too-on-the-nose to feel authentic. Certainly, it adds to the comedic element of the film, but the look of some of the indoor sets and the acting betrays the illusion that End Zone 2 is, ostensibly, a missing, 70s-era film. On the plus side, the gore gags are appropriately cheesy, the flourishes that homage other slasher classics and the reveal of Smash-Mouth and his cheap-looking mask (that’s supposed to be his actual deformed face) is pure regional horror bliss.

On the satire side, for a film with its tongue firmly in its cheek, End Zone 2 doesn’t go as far as I would expect as a kind of teasing joke of restoration films. After the note that opens the film, I expected more to be made about the Italian cut of the film that was interspersed throughout. But it doesn’t really lean into the restoration joke, outside of the Italian opening credits and some scenes that had digital-looking scratches in them.

It doesn’t completely come together, but what’s here is enjoyable in a “grab some very specific kinds of horror fans together and get wasted” sort of way. And at around 60 minutes, it’s a brisk feature film that somewhat captures the feel of watching a restored piece of forgotten horror history. Ultimately, though, End Zone 2 mostly feels like a setup for the joke that is the companion feature The Once and Future Smash. On its own, it just doesn’t do enough.

Read my review of the companion mockumentary The Once and Future Smash here.