Boardinghouse began in late 1978 as a deliberately oddball comedy-horror concoction dreamed up and financed by John and Kalassu Wintergate. The filmmakers and their collaborator Elliot Van Koghbe (who also appears in records under the nom de plume Obee Ray) shot much of the picture with a comic undertow, intending to use the savings of videotape production and reserve funds for a film transfer. But once the rough cut reached the hands of the film's distributor, the tone war began: the distributor insisted the picture be reshaped into a straight horror film, ordering most of the "real comedy scenes" excised. Van Koghbe even shot extra sequences later to satisfy distributor demands, but the rewrites and trims were surgical in the worst way, leaving wild tonal seams and narrative fragments that make the finished print feel bizarrely disjointed.
Preparing the daily feature…
AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
Distributor’s Demand to Strip the Comedy Turned Boardinghouse into a Tonal Frankenstein — and a Cult Oddity
Boardinghouse (1982) — John & Kalassu Wintergate / 1980s
Boardinghouse began in late 1978 as a deliberately oddball comedy-horror concoction dreamed up and financed by John and Kalassu Wintergate. The filmmakers and their collaborator Elliot Van Koghbe (who also appears in records under the nom de plume Obee Ray) shot much of the picture with a comic undertow, intending to use the savings of videotape production and reserve funds for a film transfer. But once the rough cut reached the hands of the film's distributor, the tone war began: the distributor insisted the picture be reshaped into a straight horror film, ordering most of the "real comedy scenes" excised. Van Koghbe even shot extra sequences later to satisfy distributor demands, but the rewrites and trims were surgical in the worst way, leaving wild tonal seams and narrative fragments that make the finished print feel bizarrely disjointed.
The daily feature is taking an intermission. There’s still an entire archive to explore.