Mortal Remains (2013) Movie Script
1
- A riot
has erupted at the
Patterson Theater
in Baltimore during a midnight
screening of a horror film.
They burned that film.
There
is some speculation
that the body may be that
of local filmmaker Karl Atticus.
A weapon was
located near the body
that's capable of
producing the type
of trauma that was displayed.
I don't think
anybody liked the guy.
I'm not surprised he's dead.
He's probably rotting in hell
where he belongs.
- Do you know anything
about Karl Atticus?
- That's a name I know.
He was renowned for using
dead bodies in his films.
- You're better off not even
mentioning his name.
- That name is a death sentence
for anyone in the film industry!
- Listen, too many
people disappeared
after that movie...
Devil made that film...
Devil made that film.
- We were actually
shooting "Blair Witch"
in the fall of '97
and there was a guy on the set
that we hired and he was kind
of an expert on all kinds
of mythology of Maryland.
He was kind of helping us build
the mythology and stuff
for "Blair Witch."
And he started telling
us about "Mortal Remains"
and this guy Karl Atticus
who was this filmmaker that was
supposedly a member of a cult
and the rumor was that he was
taking bodies out of cemeteries
and then shooting his films
with these cadavers.
He did this film
and it never was released,
all the prints were destroyed.
And then he supposedly
killed himself.
Ed Sanchez mentioned
that you told him about
a Baltimore filmmaker from the
'70s, some guy named Karl...
- He told you about this?
This is not something I should
have ever told him about.
You mention this guy's name,
and bad stuff starts happening.
Karl Atticus?
- Yeah, I remember him, he was
a fairly unpleasant individual.
- Really?
- Yeah, I didn't like working
with him but I had to work,
it was a job.
Would you happen
to also know where a
print of the film is?
Nobody seems to be able to find
a copy of "Mortal Remains,"
a print of the
actual film itself.
Hopefully
it's buried somewhere.
And who knows, he might
have people buried with it.
- They were what my father
would call "butcher films."
- That movie is sick! It's sick!
- Can you tell me what was
so disturbing about it?
- Right after "Blair Witch,"
people were sending me
all kinds of things,
on VHS and e-mail and stuff.
Somebody sent me an e-mail
with a Quicktime on it,
with supposedly 30 seconds
of "Mortal Remains" on it.
Karl
Atticus, a filmmaker?
- Karl Atticus, oh boy...
He was someone that, well,
he did some films I think in
the late '60s, early '70s.
Most of them were based
on books by Vernon Blake.
He was kind of regarded,
I guess, as one of the
pioneers of splatter films.
In the early '70s, I guess
people just weren't ready
for that kind of
thing back then.
What do
you know about him?
- Well, he did a
movie I believe in the
late '60s called
"Culture Shock,"
and then, from what I
remember, there was a
little bit of controversy,
there was a film
in the early '70s
that was called
"Mortal Remains."
Does that
film still exist?
- Um... Well, in bits
and pieces I guess-
- You don't
know of any copy or
print of the film
that exists today?
- No print, I have no idea...
You know, if anybody
would be able to locate a
print of that film,
that would just be
a total goldmine.
All right, let's
check out Loch Raven.
Municipal Loch Raven.
Welcome to Main
Street. This is pretty much it.
There you have it.
Well, one
thing's for sure,
if he came from
this small a place,
I mean,
literally nowhere,
it simply means
that no one else is
going to remember this guy.
Which is good for us,
because if nobody remembers
who Karl Atticus was,
then we may actually be
sitting on a goldmine.
Nobody remembers.
There was nothing even online.
We'll unlock the
mystery of Karl Atticus.
His mystery will become
our history.
Chris and I met in
high school in the late '80s.
Since then we've always
had film in common.
- Ah, Albert.
Good to see you.
Come finish this program-
We were making
YouTube videos before
YouTube even existed.
Hey! Listen,
you're gonna need to
help me here, buddy!
I'm stuck in the TV,
somewhere In the VCR unit,
and I need to get the hell out!
You're stuck?
What do you mean stuck?
- "What do you mean
stuck?" S-T-U-C-K,
I'm stuck, for crying out loud!
Well, how the hell
did you get stuck in the VCR?
- Hey, hey! Hey-
And then
"Blair Witch" happened.
We were floored.
How did these guys manage that?
We actually
went to high school with
the director, Ed Sanchez.
He became
an instant idol to us
because he was a hometown
boy who'd made it big.
We always
thought we'd be
the ones to make it big.
- I'm sorry to
Chris's parents...
Like everybody
else, we made a parody.
- To my kindergarten
teacher, Mrs. Klinglesmith...
We sent it to
Ed. It reconnected us all.
Which led to
us making a documentary
on the how and why of the
"Blair Witch" phenomenon.
Naturally, the first thing we
wanted to do was interview Ed.
We asked him to share stories
from the set of "Blair Witch"
which perhaps no one
had ever heard before.
That
was the first time
we ever heard about
"Mortal Remains,"
or its director, Karl Atticus.
So we just got a
call from Ed Sanchez.
It's a very interesting message.
Pay attention to
what he has to say,
I think you'll find
it most enlightening.
There it
is, right there.
I don't know, I still...
- What do you mean,
you don't know?
He's talking to producers! He
said there's some interest.
Do you want to be broke forever?
This is worth looking
into, absolutely.
I still think we should
do the "Blair Witch" thing.
"Blair Witch" has a
built-in audience-
- A built-in audience?
What, we're gonna make
a couple of bucks making
a documentary about somebody
else's movie? Come on.
Well,
all I'm saying is,
if we go through
all the trouble, and
nobody's interested...
Ed's not saying,
Hey, come on out here
to Hollywood and
meet these people,
he's saying, finish the film.
What happens when we're done
with it and nobody likes it?
Why do you think
no one's gonna like it?
He already said
there's interest in it.
Nobody knows
about Karl Atticus!
They will
when we're done!
So you've lived here in
Loch Raven all your life.
All my life.
Does the name
Atticus ring a bell?
Especially Karl Atticus?
- No. No.
- I've never heard
of him before.
- Doesn't ring a bell.
No?
- No.
- Nope, never heard of him.
- Never have, no.
- That's kind of the
consensus on Karl Atticus.
- They lived in a
house down the street.
It burned down years ago.
- Right down the street,
they used to live?
- And then they moved out
to Howard County in the
country and lived
in a house there.
- Another house?
There was one guy in
particular, Karl Atticus...
A young
fellow, is that right?
Yes, he
was a filmmaker.
Oh yes, yes, he
was there, he lived there.
Karl
Atticus was born on
October 4th, 1947 in
Loch Raven, Maryland.
You grew
up with Karl Atticus,
you knew him very well?
- I guess I met him
in the late 50s,
it would have been '58, '59.
He was a couple, several
years older than I was.
Kind of a sickly kid.
I can remember
going by his house
in the neighborhood with
the quarantine signs up.
He had polio, so he was
quarantined for a year.
Because of that he started
reading a lot at an early age.
If I can remember,
he read Lovecraft,
and Poe,
and then he got into some
southern Gothic writer.
Blake, I think
that was his name.
He was very much...
almost obsessed
with this writer.
An only
child, Karl was the son of
Margaret Cordelia Cowan
and Ivan Atticus III,
a professor of
history and literature
at Johns Hopkins University.
- Professor Atticus, um...
A very creepy guy.
A very private man...
There were a lot of rumors,
stories revolving around him.
I recall one
time, we were just kids,
and we went up into the attic
and we found this old chest.
We opened the chest up,
it belonged to his father,
and there were a number of
strange things in there,
robes and knives,
and any number of
Vernon Blake novels.
Police
records indicate that
Karl witnessed the
death of his father
in an unexplained car
crash in late 1950.
It could
have been suicide.
I know for a fact that
his wife committed
suicide, many years later.
- His mother, I guess
this was in the late '60s,
wound up taking her life.
No doubt, it was very
traumatic for him.
It devastated him.
It was a wound that,
no doubt, he carried...
And he was
left all alone, I guess?
Yeah, he was pretty much alone,
and at that point he started
to really go downhill.
He became ... withdrawn.
Dark.
He was just distant.
It was like something had
really changed in him.
Now that I think about it,
a couple of weeks
before he went missing,
Karl left this cigar
box on my porch
that had some photographs
and clippings,
and some strange things.
That's not something
you still have, is it?
- Oh, yeah.
I think it's up in the attic.
I guess I've held
onto it because
he was a friend at one time,
a childhood friend, and I
feel bad about the tragedy.
Ah! That goes way back.
Is that you? My God.
- Yeah.
- Who's that?
- That's his mom.
I guess she went to
Johns Hopkins too.
I don't think this is a
high school graduation.
Her husband, Karl's dad,
was a professor there.
- Makes sense.
- And this is what, I'd
forgotten about this...
Jeez.
- Yeah, it's strange.
That must be Karl.
Unbelievable. I haven't
seen this in years.
That's incredible.
Do you mind if we borrow
and scan some of this stuff?
- No, help yourself.
Thank you so much.
There's a
tape in there too.
- Yeah, the tape...
Just before Karl died he
left a message for me.
It freaked me out.
It's a strange message.
I'd forgotten all about that.
- Well, here we are at
Black Hills Cemetery,
and it's not open
for business yet.
Whose idea
was it to show up
at 7:00 in the morning?
- I would have to say...yours.
No, no...
Let's go get some breakfast.
- Good idea.
Did you contact the
Baltimore police department?
Yes.
- Did they get back to you?
- Not yet, no.
- Did you contact-
- Shut up and let me
get the shot, will you?
How big is this place?
- Pretty big. It's
a big old cemetery.
We should go to the office.
I bet they have some
kind of a register.
The problem is,
I'm stepping on shit,
and it's like- Look at this,
there are stones here
that aren't even marked.
- Well, those are
obviously way too old.
Maybe there's a
groundskeeper or a caretaker
around here we could ask.
Tell you
what, why don't we-
- There's a
guy right over there.
We could ask him.
Sir? Excuse me, sir?
we're trying to find
a particular grave.
Did you ever hear
of a Karl Atticus?
- That crazy movie guy?
- That'll be the one, yeah.
is he around here still?
- No.
People were always trying
to get into his grave.
They moved him.
Get out.
They moved the body?
Yeah.
I have no idea where.
I know he has a family
plot around here somewhere,
his family's laid out here.
You know
where that is?
- Somewhere in that
area over there.
You'd probably have to go
to the office and find out.
- Fantastic!
Thank you very much.
- You're quite welcome.
This
should be the book.
- How do you spell that name?
A-T-T-I-C-U-S.
- Looks like that index
page isn't in here.
That's strange.
- Is that the right book?
- Yeah, this is
definitely the right book,
it's just-
The Atticus name should be on-
-there, and it's not.
Let's just try the-
There's about four
pages not here.
This is very strange.
Would somebody
maybe remove them
for a particular reason?
- Well, if somebody
needs to make copies
for any reason, they
should take them out,
but they should
immediately replace them.
Maybe
somebody was careless.
- And my boss isn't here
right now for me to ask him,
and I certainly wouldn't
want to go through his desk.
But...
Wow.
These books are very special,
and we never leave anything
out of them for very long.
The only thing I could do for
you, under the circumstances-
I'm gonna put a marker in
here so I can tell him.
This is the
end of the road, then.
There are no other sections.
- Well, this is the area she
pointed to on the map, but-
I don't know, it's 1973
we're looking for...
There's a lot of stuff
from the 1800s here.
Hey!
Hello?
- You guys were in the office?
A moment
ago, yes we were.
Can you help, actually?
- We were trying to find a plot,
a fellow who was buried here...
- Is that thing still on?
...Yeah?
- Would you mind
turning it off, please.
All right, what's- What's
your interest in Atticus?
Well, we're
a couple of filmmakers
making a documentary-
- No. This is a place
of respect and repose.
We don't make films here.
I know,
I understand that.
- No, I'm really sorry.
You don't understand.
Is that thing off?
Yeah.
It's off.
- Is it off!
It's off, sir!
- I've had enough problems,
this institution has
had enough problems
over the years, with Atticus-
Hey! Is that thing still on?!
No, sir.
Other people have
been asking about Atticus?
- Let me make this
very, abundantly clear:
All further inquiries about
Atticus cease right now.
You're not welcome,
and I want you
to pack up this camera
and get on the road.
Listen, I can call the police,
or I can take another route
which is far more
unpleasant, okay?
So get out of here right now,
and I mean it!
Come on, let's go!
Okay, all
right, we're leaving...
What the hell
is that guy's beef?
I don't
know. He's pissed.
- Christ!
Let's just get the
hell out of here.
We'll come back later, some
other time to look around.
Who the
fuck is he calling?
They were
here about Atticus...
I wonder if
he's calling the cops?
You find anything?
Let's just
come back tomorrow.
Christ, I can see barely
anything at all anyway.
We're not gonna
be able to get in here
except at night.
Karl
could be anywhere!
Karl could be anywhere,
but I say we keep looking
for his family plot.
The guy said
the body's been
moved at least once.
What is your
problem? Jesus Christ.
Mark, this
place is fucking huge.
It's pitch black.
This is a wild goose chase!
I cannot-
- It's spread out, yes,
so why don't you just
stop standing there,
and keep looking! Jeez.
- I can't even see the names on
these frigging stones...
- Would you quit your whining
and relax, for God's sakes?
- This is stupid.
Look, we haven't
been here that long.
- There's gotta be somebody
who's gonna catch us here.
- They're not gonna
be able to find us,
not in this huge
place. C'mon, Chris.
Give it a little while. I mean,
We haven't even been
here more than two hours,
we haven't even seen half
of what is out there...
Well, we're not
gonna see anything in the dark.
I can see just fine!
Pull your flashlight out,
will you for crying out loud?
What was that?
- Quit your whining!
I'm over here, man.
Jesus Christ.
Mark?
Christ! What?
- That's it, man. I'm going
back to the car in five minutes.
You wanna look in
that direction? I'm
waiting right here.
I'm gonna get
it all done tonight.
You're want to
look in that area,
I'm gonna go look over-
- I'm gonna stay right here.
Fine, you
can wait, 'cause
I'm not gonna leave till
I look and make sure
that we've got everything
we came here for.
There's only one
more section to go-
- Oh my God...
Fucking
complaining all the time.
Hey! Mark?
Whoa!
Mark, did you see that?
Mark!
What?
What?
Okay, we need to
go. We need to go right now.
We need to go! I just saw
something moving, we gotta go.
Just relax,
will you, man?
Fuck this. Oh, man...
Where the hell are you?
Let's
just keep looking.
Chris, just keep
looking, all right?
Get back
here! Come on, let's go.
Damn it, where the hell are you?
Mark?
What, are you-
Jesus, Mark!
Mark!
Where are you?
Mark!
Mark-
Holy shit!
Are you okay?
What happened?
Jesus... What happened?
- They definitely know
that I have a concussion,
and they're gonna run some
more x-rays this afternoon.
They're worried
that maybe I have
some internal bleeding now,
so we'll find out soon enough.
When are you coming by?
Soon as I can. Look,
do you wanna call the cops?
- Hell no! No, no, no, man.
Do not. Call. The police.
No matter what you do,
don't call the
police, all right?
And if you do, I wasn't there.
Don't even mention my name.
Do you want to explain what we
were doing there last night?
Come on, man! Think!
- You're gonna be able to
film this weekend, right?
- What!
- We gotta meet that
guy at the university.
- No, Chris, I'm not gonna
be filming this weekend.
I can barely see out of one eye!
Well, what the hell-
- Come on, man, be real. Now
you're just being an asshole!
Don't be such a fucking idiot!
No, I'm not gonna be in shape
to be filming this weekend!
In order to
keep the project on track,
I went out and hired
a new cameraman.
So this is Josh,
our new cameraman.
Say hi, Josh!
- Hi Josh.
I then
began investigating
the book "Mortal Remains"
and its author, Vernon Blake.
The details
of Vernon Blake's life are
shrouded in obscurity,
except to a small number of
collectors and historians.
Foremost among these is
Professor Lyle Thackeray
of Penn State University.
- Very few people
are even aware of
Vernon Blake's existence.
His fiction never
sold well nor widely.
He was rejected by numerous
reputable publishers,
so he self-published,
we suspect, out of spite.
His work was extremely
graphic and sexually explicit.
Not things that were a
big deal in the 1920s,
but he had a way of
combining the two
in a manner that was
distinctly unsettling.
- I have been collecting
Vernon Blake's work
for a number of years,
and it's not easy to find.
A very obscure writer.
Through a number of years
of research I was able to
piece together a few bits of
information about his past.
He was really left
to his own devices
from a fairly early age.
He did a fair
amount of traveling
through various
parts of the world.
For example, he spent
some time in Haiti,
where he became very
fascinated with voodoo.
He also spent some
time in Paris.
He visited
Europe frequently.
It was known that he
was a great admirer
of the Theatre du Grand Guignol.
Many of his short
stories were adapted
for the Guignol's stage.
But his choices with
regard to subject matter
clearly demonstrate a
passion for ancient history.
Much of his writing centers
around primitive societies,
sinister cults,
arcane rituals, and so forth.
It's rumored that Blake himself
was involved in an obscure cult,
and certain photographs
certainly bear this out.
There are
photographs of him wearing
ceremonial garb and holding
a Middle Eastern dagger.
It was during a
1922 interlude in Paris that
Blake began writing his longest
and most notorious novel,
an extremely gruesome tale
entitled "Mortal Remains."
- It's an exceptionally
brutal tale,
even by Vernon
Blake's standards,
with elements of torture,
ritual sacrifice,
murder, grave robbing,
even cannibalism.
One man is fed his own eyeballs.
Another has his
flesh peeled off.
One character is
drugged and then
slowly cut into several pieces.
- One of the more fascinating
elements about Vernon Blake is
that in some of his work he
was known to hide ciphers...
possible signals, possible
symbols, possible words
for his readers to follow.
- Thanks for coming in
again, I appreciate that.
Oh, you got a
haircut! Looks good.
It was
time for a change.
This is a cipher from Vernon
Blake's "Mortal Remains."
This is actually a
substitution cipher.
Now this was actually one of
the easier ciphers to solve,
because there are spaces in
between the cipher words.
Also, when you have
something like this,
a cipher letter by itself,
that's most often going to
be a letter like A or I,
letters that can
stand on their own.
So this one for example,
if you follow the
key I have here,
this one will read,
when it's finished,
"Turn to page 40 for a reward."
If you jump to page
40, what you will find
is actually another
set of ciphers lining
the left hand side of the page.
Now, this one was
tricker because there are
no spaces in between the words.
The same
set of symbols?
No, these are completely
different, aren't they?
- Well, Vernon Blake did that.
He often made cipher symbols
in different languages.
This particular cipher language,
he used the Enoch for it.
See? If you look on
the title page of
"Mortal Remains"
down at the bottom -
- a whole new set of ciphers.
Right along here.
A completely
different alphabet.
- Completely different alphabet.
The translation
for the next cipher
reads, "Proceed to page
80 in my previous work."
Now, this was a common
thing for Vernon Blake.
He would leave
clues to other clues
to other clues,
and they were not
always in his books.
Sometimes he would
give you directions to
go to a particular house,
and you might find the next
cipher underneath a table.
Sometimes he might have a cipher
carved into a tree in a park.
He would leave a wide
variety of clues and
directions as to where
to go next in order to
solve the cipher mysteries
he was leaving in his works.
What
did these lead to?
What did people
find? Other stories?
Treasure? What
would they unearth?
- Well, the rewards
were not often tangible,
and many of them
were not even found.
You have to remember,
times change.
Houses get torn down,
we have natural disasters...
so you go back to his works,
and try to find
perhaps another cipher
or another direction,
or you had to let that one go.
Wow. So there
could even now be things that
he left buried somewhere
that nobody knows about?
- There very well could be.
In 1969, Atticus
completed his first feature,
"Culture Shock," a
violent film based upon an
early Vernon Blake novella.
"Culture Shock"
kind of reminds me of
"Cannibal Holocaust,"
kind of a mondo cinema
pseudo-documentary about
these jungle women who
basically go and murder
some people in the jungle.
If you could find a
copy, that would be awesome.
- A copy that we would be able
to get would probably be a
bootleg or an Asian copy,
something like that...
That's fine.
- Again, it's possible.
We could ask one of
the collectors we know.
I think it's not out of the
question that we could get one.
What stands out in
your mind about the shoot?
- The special effects.
Really?
- Yeah, there was
one scene where a
guy gets his hand chopped
off with a machete.
I've never seen
anything so realistic.
- It made me queasy,
and I've been around
zombies and all
that shit for years.
- For the amount of money
that was in the film,
I couldn't understand
how they could afford an
effect like that,
especially when I
had to chase the
guy around for my paycheck.
- Usually, the lower the
budget, the cornier it looks,
there's ketchup packets
squirting in the air.
This... I was pretty
convinced that something had
really happened there.
- We should almost be there.
- Yeah, you said
that an hour ago.
- Ramirez said it wouldn't
be that easy to find.
- Holy shit!
- Wait!
This all seems damned peculiar.
Fuck!
"Culture
Shock" attracted the
scrutiny of Damien Long,
the eccentric New York-based
producer and impresario.
Long screened the film at
midnight for several months at
his popular West Side
venue, the Omicron Theater.
- It used to play up
and down the East coast
at some midnight shows.
I heard a story, I don't
know how true it is,
that somebody got stabbed
at one of the movies,
or there was people
getting attacked...
- Yes, there were
reports of problems,
incidents involving
this guy's movies.
They wound up closing
a couple of theaters down
because of that movie,
the riots were so bad.
- Two people were killed
actually while the
film was running in the theater.
It wasn't a full house but
there was enough people there...
I never figured out how these
people had their lives taken
violently in the
theater with people
sitting all around them.
No one saw a thing. The bodies
weren't discovered until the
lights went up after
the film was over.
The man who was
murdered was stabbed
at the base of the skull,
and the woman had
her throat slit.
Also, as I recall, there were
pieces of the bodies taken...
and that's the part I had
a hard time swallowing.
If you're gonna kill
somebody, kill them.
But this business
of mutilation...
There was something
more going on here.
There seemed to be some
connection between this director
and the material he was
making, the screening of it,
and bad stuff going down.
And I think that ties into
what I found out later,
that he was into black magic,
this Lovecraft stuff...
That messes with your head.
And the movies he was making
was messing with
other people's heads.
The same thing
apparently happened in
some other theaters
showing his movies.
So there was really
something going on with this
guy and his films.
- Mark, hey, it's me.
Call me back, all right?
I gotta show you something,
you've got to see
what's on this video.
Call me! Bye.
Quick,
just keep looking, all right?
Okay, now watch.
- Go back, go back.
Stop! Play it back.
Freeze.
What the hell is
that guy wearing?
- He's wearing a cloak.
That's what I
wanted to show you,
this guy is wearing
some kind of an outfit,
some kind of a getup.
Nobody gets
dressed up like that and
attacks somebody unless
they've got a reason.
Obviously! That's
my point, that's what
I wanted to show you.
That's every
reason to stop this project.
Are you kidding?
Go back to the
"Blair Witch" project.
I don't care what Ed
says about what producers
he says are interested...
The "Blair Witch"
thing is definitely...
You didn't
get your ass kicked!
You try getting your
ass kicked and then
decide whether you want
to go back to this.
No, I absolutely refuse...
We've uncovered
some big mystery here...
I don't even
want to talk about this
project any more.
You wanna drop this?
Yeah, I
wanna drop this!
Because I'm not gonna go
back into that situation
and get my ass kicked again,
in a cemetery or anywhere.
We'll go back
and kick this kid's ass!
I'll tell you what, why don't
you two go kick his ass?
If it's not "Blair
Witch" I'm out.
"Blair Witch"
is done, it's over...
- So you're telling me
you're not going to do
the "Blair Witch" project?
Not at all, no.
- You're gonna do this
whether or not I'm in or out?
Yeah!
- Then fine, you guys can
do it yourselves. I'm done.
Come on, man!
- I'm done.
I'm not gonna do it.
That's not
quite what I had in mind.
Impressed
by the young filmmaker's
dedication and singular vision,
Damien Long agreed to fund
Atticus's next feature project,
a faithful adaptation of Vernon
Blake's "Mortal Remains."
- He decided that he wanted
to shoot it in Louisiana.
He wanted this Creole vibe
that went with the whole story.
- A lot of strange shit
happened on that movie too.
What happened there?
- Something happened either
between Karl and the law,
or Karl and the locals,
but for some reason it
was like, Okay, we're
packing up and
we're leaving town.
So he said we'll go
back and finish it at
my place in Maryland.
- We were shooting a
lot at his property,
at Atticus's property,
and he had some kind of a
South American cameraman
Carlos Bene... something,
I can't remember his last name.
This guy was really strange.
He was right up
there with Atticus,
he was like his twin brother.
They were into some weird
shit, it seemed like,
the two of them.
- Seemed like he was
just a squirrely guy,
didn't seem like
you could trust him.
I didn't trust him.
- He was a very strange guy, and
he had a lot of
really weird demands,
he would ask for strange
stuff on the set...
How do you mean?
- We would find the location,
set it up, light it,
and then everyone would
have to leave the set,
except Karl and the
cameraman and the actors.
- We would have to leave
and we weren't allowed to come
back till the next morning,
which didn't make any sense to
me, I didn't understand that.
- But then, the next day
the actors never came back.
So it was like Gee,
I guess we're doing this all
in one take, or one night...
- Every time. Set up, leave.
You know, all the years
I've been doing it,
it's the first time
that ever happened.
- I never knew why the
actors never came back...
and I wasn't about to ask,
because I thought then
I might not come back.
So, it sort of scared me.
There were lots of
rumors about Karl and
his methods for making
movies and stuff.
At one point this big
rumor started that Karl was
using dead bodies in his films.
- I heard about it.
I worked with him in the
daytime, not at night.
- The whole situation
was completely bizarre.
Ed mentioned
that this guy was using
dead bodies in his
movies, is that true?
- Yeah, it was actually
worse than that.
- Right after that
whole rumor about using
cadavers and stuff in
his films came out,
then there was a
series of crimes of
vandalism in cemeteries.
- There was some incident of
cemetery vandalism or something?
- There were rumors about it,
rumors around the set,
but nothing that I
knew for certain, no.
Wouldn't surprise me, though.
- Something about
cemeteries, or...
- He was accused of doing
some grave robbing and stuff.
We couldn't prove it,
so he was never charged.
- Everyone just sort
of looked toward Karl,
you know? The usual suspects.
- Really disturbing guy,
it's like bad stuff
followed him around,
bad people, bad everything.
Creeped you
out a little bit?
Yeah, creeped me out a lot.
- We'd go to the movies
together when we were just kids,
and he always wanted to,
I would say let's
go see a western,
no, no, no, let's go see
this latest horror film,
and we'd go to that,
and the strange thing was I
was just a kid at the time,
I'd be freaked out and scared,
and he was laughing
the whole way through.
- Scream!
- A lot of strange
people in the '60s
and he was one of them.
- These people used
to come around,
they were,
I don't know how
to describe them,
they were just very
strange people.
They didn't help on
the crew or anything,
but these people
would just sit around
on the sets and sit
in the background,
sit in the corner and watch us,
and I always thought
that was very weird.
- He started associating with
different kinds of people,
I don't want to say strange,
but...unusual characters.
- Because any time you were
involved too closely with Karl,
or any people that he knew,
you never knew what was
going to happen next.
The premiere
screening was interrupted by
violence when several
members of the audience,
shocked and enraged by the
film's horrific content
stormed the projection booth
and demolished the 35mm print.
- They decided they were going
to have this big premiere,
and I didn't go.
Did you go to that?
- Oh, hell no. I wanted
nothing to do with it.
- Everything about Karl,
the movie, everything,
was just a little too
strange for me, but...
During the movie,
a riot broke out.
- A riot has erupted at
the Patterson theater
during a midnight
screening of a horror film.
- They're going crazy in there!
- That movie is sick! It's sick!
- I'm out of here!
- Hey, get that
out of here! Now!
- It takes a strong stomach
just to get through the book,
so I find it rather astonishing
that this Atticus fellow
feels it's suitable
meat for a movie.
- Again, extremely
violent and graphic.
Extremely graphic.
In fact, that's part
of its mythology.
So "Mortal Remains"
was never seen, right?
That was it?
- It was never shown
all the way through.
They destroyed it at the theater
the first time it was shown.
But the
film was shown...
- The film was shown, but
it was shown one time.
That was it.
I've never heard of any prints
of it being distributed,
I think the last...
from what I understand,
either the film disappeared
or was destroyed.
- I just gotta say good luck,
because I don't
think anybody's...
I never heard of anyone
seeing any kind of copy.
I think one gentleman
who came in said he
had heard of a bit or
a clip or something,
like a little
piece of the film...
Bits and
pieces of it, yeah.
- Let's just say if
you were actually to
have a full copy of it,
that would be like the
complete "Metropolis."
There might be
other prints out there...?
- There might be. Knowing
Karl, anything's possible.
- Mark, listen, it's me.
Seriously, call me back.
I just had a phone call from
one of Ed's producer friends,
and there is some real
money coming our way
if we finish this thing.
If you want back
in, now is the time.
So really, call me
back, all right?
This is no joke. Bye.
That might get him on the horn.
Maybe,
I don't know man.
he looked pretty mad last time.
- All right, guess who
just called me back?
Hey Chris, it's
Mark, I just got your message.
How come you're not picking up?
Listen, if something's
going down,
I want to know about it,
especially if there's
money involved.
I got medical bills
I gotta pay, man.
So call me back and
let me know when we can
get together to talk
about this, all right?
I'll talk to you
then, man. Ciao.
- Well, that didn't take long.
Told you he was gonna call back.
Come on, come on in.
- What's up, man?
- Go get him, Millie.
There's Uncle Marky.
- How are you doing, man?
- You feel better?
- Yeah, much better.
- You look like a million bucks.
- Thank you.
- There's Josh.
- Hey Josh, how you doing?
Hey sweetie, what's up?
So tell me about this
phone call you had.
They're talking money?
- This guy suggested that
there was a big payday at
the end of this thing.
He said there was a
lot of money involved.
He didn't mention a number,
but he said there
is "potential for
serious remuneration," he said.
- What's your next step?
- My next step is to
jump in with both feet.
Start contacting people
who were working in the
area when Atticus
was alive and active.
- Like who?
- John Waters was making
movies in Baltimore in 1972.
- He wasn't a
horror filmmaker...
- Doesn't matter.
He was buying stock,
he was having film processed,
I'm sure he want to a
lot of the same places.
- Do you know how
to get hold of him?
- I've got the number for
his office, Dreamland.
We'll give him a call right now.
- Yeah, that sounds awesome.
- I've got a lot of
stuff to show you, man,
I've got articles and
clippings, photographs,
a bunch of stuff.
- I just wanted to ask a
couple of quick questions.
We're doing a documentary.
- John?
Yeah?
- There's a couple of guys
here want to talk to you.
- Hey, Mister Waters!
Hi. My name is Mark,
I'm a documentary filmmaker,
and I just wanted to
ask you a couple of
quick questions about a
guy who was making movies
about 30 years ago in Baltimore,
his name was Karl Atticus...
Susan, can you
pick up the phone, please?
- Yeah...
Turn off the camera, please.
- Hey, just a couple of quick
questions, for God's sake...
Forget it, you know what...
Hey, Mister Waters...
No! Hey, hey, hey, hey!
Come on, man! I
just wanna ask you a
couple of quick questions!
What's the big deal?
What is the big deal?
- Please, just go!
Just get out of here!
Just leave now, get out!
I'm going!
Jesus Christ, what
the hell are you thinking, man?
You chase the guy down a
hallway and pound on his door?
- I'm sorry, all right?
- He could call the police,
he could make trouble for us!
- He's not gonna
make any trouble.
Look, I'm sorry, but don't
yell at me because he
won't answer your questions.
- It's not a matter of
answering questions,
you chased the
guy down the hall!
You're getting carried away.
Are you trying to
screw up this project?
Are you trying to sabotage us?
- I'm not trying to
sabotage anything!
Don't even accuse
me of that, man!
- Well, we could have found
out some useful information if
we'd approached him correctly.
- What are you talking
about, approaching him?
He slammed the door
in my face before I
even got back to him.
I don't know man,
you're screaming, freaking out...
- Hello?
Hello!
Fucking A, man.
Who is it?
- Third time they called today.
They hang up every
time I fucking pick up.
Here he is.
Hi Roland.
Hey, Roland.
We'd just
like to ask a few more
question about Karl if we could.
- I've had some strange
phone calls so you'll
have to excuse me.
I'm not in the mood
for talking now.
Strange phone calls?
- That's all right.
That's enough. Goodbye,
take care of yourself.
Thanks.
- Are you the guys
who've been calling me?
The phone calls have got to
stop and they gotta stop now!
Get off my property
or I call the cops!
- Hey, listen, we have
not called... We haven't
made any phone calls, man!
All we want to do is ask you
a couple of quick questions...
Would you please just...
- No, bloody hell no.
This has gone too far. I'm
getting fucking phone calls now.
Enough is enough,
this has to stop.
- Hey, hey, hey, man!
What the fuck? Knock again.
The American
Film Institute denied my
request for an interview,
but I did receive an
anonymous call from one of
their staff members.
The only
reason I'm talking to
you is to warn you.
A lot of people in
Hollywood don't want this
story to come out,
ever.
A lot of people who
saw Karl's movies when
they came out in the '70s,
let's just say they
"borrowed" from them.
They made their reputations
on things Karl came up with.
They're powerful people,
they're connected people,
and they will make
life miserable for you.
I've seen how they can do it.
You guys need to drop this.
There's a good reason
that Karl is dead.
What happened
to Karl? He just kind of...
- He sort of dropped
out of the picture.
No one had seen or heard
from him for a while, and
then I heard that he was
down at his place, at
his old house and he
went out in the woods,
took a shotgun and
blew his head off.
He died like
around '73 I think. '73?
- Yeah, I read that
he killed himself.
Might give you some
insight on his character.
- Good riddance, I'm glad
he's off this planet.
I feel a lot safer
with him not around.
- I don't think
anybody liked the guy.
He's probably rotting in
hell where he belongs.
Today, in
this shady grove near
Jessup, Maryland,
a local sportsman made
a gruesome discovery.
Andrew Gresh was enjoying an
afternoon of squirrel hunting
when he spotted a human
hand protruding from
the undergrowth.
- I was about to light my pipe,
blew out the match and
went to toss it away,
when I saw a hand sticking
out of the bushes.
It was the most horrible
thing I've seen in my life.
Though the
condition of the body precludes
any immediate identification,
there's some speculation
that the body may be that of
local filmmaker Karl
Atticus, who was reported
missing six weeks ago amid
wild rumors of occult activity.
- Well, we found a body that
had been in the woods for an
extensive amount of time. There
was an extensive amount of
decomposition and we'll
have to determine later
exactly how long and
exactly what happened,
but at this time
we're considering
this to be a suicide.
A weapon was located near
the body that was capable of
producing the type of
trauma that was displayed.
While it is
known that some unusual
discoveries were made by
federal investigators at
his Loch Raven residence,
no details have yet
been made public
regarding those discoveries.
- Supposedly it was him.
The reason why we definitely
couldn't say it was him
is that his head was blown off.
They found a shotgun
nearby, but it wasn't
close enough where he
could have done it himself.
- What I heard was that the
only way they could identify his
body was by that
strange tattoo he had.
I wanted to ask him about
it, but I was afraid.
I didn't know what it
signified or what it meant,
so I'd just check it
out once in a while
when he wasn't looking.
Now, this is weird, because
the people who used to
come and hang
around on the set...
one of those guys, he had
the same tattoo as Karl,
and I thought, "Well,
that's very strange,"
because it was a really
weird, unique tattoo.
I just thought... I didn't
know if it was a club,
or I couldn't figure
out why two guys would
have the same exact tattoo.
- Who knows, with him?
He could do anything.
I wouldn't put it past him
to stage his own death.
- It concerned our department,
so we started looking into it.
- We all knew Karl, and we
knew how strange he was,
so anything that happened
was not beyond the realm of
belief. Anything was
possible with Karl.
There was rumors
that he was in a cult,
did you find any
evidence of that?
- Well, um...
- You know, your
imagination makes you crazy,
so I was imagining
all kinds of things,
and I think everyone was.
Because Karl was just
that kind of guy.
- We got a warrant
to go into his house.
What we found in that house
was pretty disturbing.
Really strange,
really bone chilling.
How do I say this?
He had a collection that
no human should ever have.
I don't wanna get
into the details,
because it scares
the shit out of me.
It was so crazy that the FBI
came in and took over the
investigation and threw us out.
I was happy about that,
because what I saw...
It creeped me out,
knowing that he might
still be out there.
What do you think?
Do you think it
was him they found?
- I don't think so.
There's things that
just don't add up.
The tattoo, where they
found the weapon...
What if he
is still out there?
All right, well, it's
not over here either.
We've pretty much
exhausted all the main
branches of the cemetery here.
The caretaker did say he thought
it was in this direction,
but... I don't know,
this is pretty much the
end of the road over here.
Looks like it, anyway.
Are you sure?
What about down there?
No, Mark and
I have already checked
out stuff down there,
unless...maybe past that,
if that's another old wing...
- Hey!
- Oh shit, it's that
cemetery guy again.
What cemetery guy?
So is Josh
not coming at all?
No, not
tonight. Just me and you.
Is that working or what?
I mean,
it's functional...
I can record with it, if
that's what you're asking.
It's just... he's got it locked
on some sort of user setting,
so I can't figure out. I'm
not going to be able to
get into it until he gives
me whatever code he's set.
It's like it's... I don't know.
But it's in focus?
Yes, it'll work.
You can
shoot with the thing?
Yes, I can film
and I can record, if
that's what you're asking.
When is this guy
supposed to call?
Any time. He
didn't say when, he just
said, "I'll call tonight."
You film it,
I gotta take a leak.
Jesus, hold on, I'm
getting a piece of paper...
I understand. I know
where that is. Yes, I do.
What time?
Okay. And... No cameras. Got it.
Okay, we'll...
Hello?
Hello? Okay, he's gone.
What did he...
- He insisted that
there're no cameras,
and he said he's got some
very crucial information about
Karl Atticus and he wants us
to meet him at a parking lot.
Parking lot? Why?
- A parking garage, actually.
He's not gonna see that, is he?
I hope he doesn't.
It's gonna
freak this guy out.
He might have something
important to say.
Well, I know,
but I feel like we
should at least
document it somehow.
All right,
as long as he doesn't...
Is that him? Is that him?
There he is, gotta be.
Let's go,
let's go, let's go.
Thank you. Thanks a lot, sir.
Just a couple of
quick questions.
Just one more question,
two more questions...
- You'll have to talk
to somebody else.
- Hey, Mister Tallo, all
I want to do is ask...
Fuck.
So we just got a police report...
- File.
- A file from the Baltimore
Police Department,
and this is the file on Karl
Atticus's apparent suicide.
It's in the public domain
because the case is closed.
- Here he is!
- And there we have it! Karl
Atticus, ladies and gentlemen.
Look at this shit! Unbelievable.
- There's the body, look.
- It's says "unidentified
corpse," too.
We finally got it. We
requested this months ago.
Anyway, the case is closed,
so the information is
in the public domain.
- Wait... We've got an address!
I don't see any houses
at all out here.
There hasn't been
a house for like four miles.
Yeah, I think
we should turn back.
There's nothing down here.
Are you sure you got
the address right?
Yeah. I mean,
any farther and we're
gonna end up being off the map.
This road is supposed to have
ended like half a mile ago.
We're like,
out in the country here.
Whoa, slow down,
slow down, slow down!
To the left, go to the left.
What?
To the left!
Yeah, keep going straight.
What, what, what?
- Right there!
Can't you see it?
Look up!
Holy shit!
That's it, behind
all them damn trees!
This place
is creepy as shit.
Where are you going?
- There's a back door, and
there's a window next to it.
The front door's all boarded up.
Here...
Hey, we left the flashlight.
It's still in the car.
You got a screwdriver?
Are we breaking
into a house? For real?
Just watch
where you're going.
Jesus.
Mark, check out this...
There's another room.
Let's go upstairs.
Let's go upstairs.
Check this out.
Man, this place is a shithole.
Look at this crap. The
wall's falling apart, Jesus.
This looks like somebody's
been here recently.
Like, homeless
people or something?
Shhh!
What?
- Did you hear that?
No, man.
- You didn't hear that?
No.
Stay close.
Locked.
It's locked. It's
got a deadbolt on it.
Whoa...
Shit, yeah.
What's in there?
- Check this shit
out, it's a staircase.
It's some sort of attic.
Are you going up there?
- Hell no!
Here, give me the camera.
Hey Chris! Where did he go?
I think
he's in the basement.
The stairs
don't look too stable.
I'm not going up there.
Chris?
Where the hell did he go?
I think
he's downstairs.
- How did he get down there?
There's a floor below us?
Yeah. It's in
the hall, I'm pretty sure.
- Chris!
Chris?
Hey! Hurry up, I gotta
show you something!
Jesus
Christ, what is it?
Josh, man, watch your step.
Got it.
- What?
This house is huge.
Watch your step, man.
- Look at this! It's a cipher...
It's a Vernon Blake
cipher, like in the book!
Remember the book that
Peter Flood showed us?
In "Mortal Remains," these
were the kind of ciphers
that Vernon Blake was using.
- What the hell are
you talking about?
He wasn't there, Chris.
- Oh shit. Here, hold this, I
gotta get a picture of that.
Vernon Blake used ciphers
like these in his books.
- Well, what the hell
is it doing here?
- I don't know, but I'm
taking a goddamn picture,
that's for sure.
- Shit, what was that?
Did you hear that?
There's someone here.
- Go, go, go, get out of here.
- Go, go.
- That's the only way out.
- Jesus Christ. Let's go, now!
Don't fucking move.
There's more than one of them.
There's two sets of footsteps.
What the fuck are
they doing up there?
What's that?
Shhh!
Oh shit...
Go, go! Now, go!
Look! The door's open!
I don't give a shit...
Did you leave it open?
Come on!
Who has the
key, do you have the key?
No, I don't
have the fucking key!
Go, go, go,
let's get out of here!
What was that?
Go, go, go! Let's
get out of here, now!
Go!
Roll the
camera! All the time,
just keep rolling! That's
what I pay you for!
Is somebody following us?
No, not that I can see.
All right, we're fine,
we're going back to the house.
What the hell was that?
I don't know,
homeless people maybe.
Didn't you hear
that person screaming?
Homeless people screaming
like that? Come on...
That's not
homeless people.
Don't worry
about it. We're fine,
we're safe, we're going
back to the house,
we're gonna figure out
that fucking cipher.
I think somebody
was in the glove compartment.
Hurry up, would you?
Chill out, man.
Perhaps the cops
are coming after us now!
Look, not now, but that
doesn't mean that the
people that were there
might not call them...
Oh my God...
Don't "Oh
my God" me, Chris!
There are no cops...
There were people
there. Josh, tell him!
Did you see
anyone following us?
Whoever that
was, winos, derelicts,
they're homeless, they're
not calling the cops.
Derelicts
wearing cloaks,
what are you talking about?
No!
Remember the guy that
attacked me in the cemetery?
He was wearing a cloak. These
people were wearing cloaks.
You don't see a connection?
Blankets
or trench coats...
Did you see people
wearing cloaks?
I don't know if
they were wearing cloaks...
They were
homeless people, trust me.
Chris, we need to
talk about this, all right?
We need to stop...
All right,
just calm down.
No I'm not gonna
calm down! It stops here!
- I'm gonna go upstairs...
We found a valuable clue,
I'm gonna go upstairs
and print this thing out.
You're
talking about clues,
I'm talking about the cops!
There's no
cops out there! Relax!
I wanna print this thing out.
We're gonna sit
down and solve this.
Who's calling
me again? Hello?
Hello?
Hello!
All right, I've
decoded the cipher into English,
and it's definitely
the same symbols
Vernon Blake used
that Peter showed us.
I have 16 English letters
now, in no discernible order,
and four Roman numerals.
What are you doing?
- Just keeping an eye on
things, making sure that
nobody is messing
with the fucking car,
just worry about your
pictography thingy there.
- All right, anyway, I have 16
letters, four Roman numerals,
I'm not sure how they relate,
but maybe this decodes
into a sentence or
a word or something...
That could
be a grille cipher.
- A grill cipher?
What do you mean?
It's a kind of
cipher where you have to
put the numbers at
the top of the grid...
It's hard to explain.
- Show me.
Give me some scissors.
All right, so what I
did is, I cut out the
Roman numerals like that,
so they match up, and
you put this over the
top of the cipher, and
that's how you decipher it.
A...
T...
M...
And then, usually what you
do is, you turn it clockwise,
and then you do the same
thing over and over again.
So,
F...
A...
Look at
this! Come on, this is
amazing stuff he's doing here.
H...
That's what it's
called, a grille cipher?
A grill cipher, yeah.
Jesus Christ.
E...
R...
S...
G...
Then one more.
R...
A...
V...
E.
There we go.
Oh my Christ, look.
"At my father's grave."
I'd say
we've solved this one.
Holy shit. we gotta go
back to the cemetery!
We gotta go back to
the cemetery, buddy.
Wait, isn't that
where he got beat up?
Gotta be something
here, I wanna find it.
Did you hear that?
Yeah, it's nothing.
Possums, a raccoon,
I don't give a shit.
Walking around in a cemetery
at two o'clock in the morning.
We're fucking
lost is what we are.
- We're not lost.
You've been filming
this whole time, right?
No, I
just turned it on.
- Just now?
- Will you stop talking
to him and listen to me?
- What?
- We're lost.
- We're not lost!
This is the cemetery,
it's an older wing
of the cemetery.
- No, we left the cemetery
about a half hour ago, Chris.
We're not in the cemetery.
He said
it was over here-
- No, you're gonna get us more
lost is what you're gonna do!
Fucking A.
I'm leaving, all right?
I'm done with this shit.
We can't leave him.
- I don't fucking care! we're
gonna go in this direction,
the way we came,
we're just gonna keep
walking until we get
back to the cemetery.
- Hey, hey!
This is it! Come on!
What are
you talking about?
Let's just
get this over with.
See?
Whoa!
I told you. Son
of a bitch, right there.
They moved him out to the
perimeter of the cemetery.
Great, we found
something. Now can we go?
No. Look around,
see if there's any
symbols, any markings on
the back of the stone,
look for any other...
Nothing
on the back side.
There's nothing, all right?
- All right.
Any other graves around?
No, there's
nothing around. Can we go?
You found it-
- Back to the car.
We've gotta get the shovels,
we're gonna dig the
son of a bitch up.
What? You
aren't digging anything...
Are you
fucking kidding me? No...
I'm telling
you, we're on the
verge of finding something...
You're kidding.
Are you rolling?
No! This is
a stupid idea. No!
We're not digging
up graves, Chris!
Why the fuck
do we have shovels?
I'm gonna break
your ass. Take the shovel,
we're gonna go dig
this sucker up.
- Seriously?
Mark, seriously?
Okay, for the record,
this is not my idea.
- You are rolling now,
though, yes? Right?
Yes, I'm
shooting you guys
committing a crime,
which is asinine.
- That's fine. Keep
rolling, whatever happens.
- Oh shit, I hit something.
- Hit what?
- I don't know what it is.
- All right, hold on, hold on.
It's a...
- Aw, man, that's sick,
you're touching that shit.
Shouldn't it be in a
casket or something like that?
Yeah, I didn't
even dig down that far.
What's this?
We've got a skull.
Shit!
what's that over there?
That looks like...
hold on...
There's two of them!
Two skulls?
No, I'm done! No, no,
I'm out of here! I quit.
What are
you talking about?
Josh, no, wait!
Hold on, dude, whoa!
What are you talking about?
You can't leave now...
I'm done!
There's a
lot more here, guys.
You guys are digging
up graves, you're crazy!
Chris, it's time to
go, all right? He's right...
- Hold on. There's a lot
more going on here...
Josh, don't leave!
Jesus Christ.
Josh!
We've only got one car, man!
It's not like you'll be
able to get anywhere...
I'll hitch a ride,
I don't care. I'm done.
Josh!
Hold on! I
got something here...
Chris, he's gone.
I think he's gonna
call the cops...
- I got something down
here that's made of metal.
What?
- Look right there,
what is that?
- Help me get this
thing out of here.
This could be it.
It's clear. What
the hell is this?
- It's heavy as
hell, whatever it is.
- Jesus Christ!
What the fuck is that?
See
that? You see that?
It's a fucking film can.
What the hell
is that doing here?
Oh shit,
you hear that?
It's time to go!
Let's get
the hell out of here!
Get the camera! Get
the camera! Come on!
Has Josh
called you back?
No.
Jesus Christ, I think...
I think this is it, man.
I seriously think this is it.
I think we fucking found it.
Fucking A. What did
he have it buried there for?
We gotta
call that guy back,
that guy Dave, we
gotta call him.
Call
from unknown caller.
Who's that?
Maybe we should call the cops.
Though there's
almost certainly evidence of
criminal activity...
Criminal!
Now we're
fucking grave robbers.
- While cemetery
officials have declined to
make any public statement,
local and state police
were notified immediately,
and an investigation
is currently underway.
An FBI Behavioral Science unit...
Fucking FBI is now involved!
- All right.
It's okay. Nobody...
- ...has stepped in
to assist with the
identification of the
remains. Forensic testing...
Nobody
knows we were there,
nobody knows we
were there, okay?
- It's the fucking FBI!
How are
they gonna find us?
- Who the fuck is
calling me, goddammit?
Hello?
Who?
Hello?
Oh shit. Hey, Burian! Dave!
Yeah, yeah, yeah...
No, no, no, listen,
we've been waiting for
your call all weekend.
Here, talk to Chris.
Put the fucking camera down.
Here, listen.
- Listen, okay Dave?
Yeah, what's going on, man?
We wanted to ask you again
about "Mortal Remains"...
Uh, yeah, we could meet you...
What?
how about, like...
What time is it?
How about an hour?
An hour from now?
We'll meet you there.
I got something I
want to show you too,
we're gonna...
No, no, no, you don't
want to show him anything!
Yeah, it's dynamite.
No, no, no, what
are you talking about,
I don't want to
transport that thing,
I don't want anybody
to see evidence.
I don't wanna be walking
around with that thing!
He's the one that
said it's worth a goldmine.
That's exactly
right, it's our meal ticket,
so the last thing we
should be doing is
moving this fucker
around and all.
Just leave it here.
No, we gotta
bring it, we gotta bring it.
Let's go meet the guy.
And then
the next thing you
know we're fucking tailed.
The FBI knows
nothing about us, okay?
I don't want
that thing leaving here.
It's fragile, it
needs to be preserved,
I don't...
We're gonna
show this to Dave.
He'll know what it's worth.
Let's go.
No, no, no.
- Holy shit, guys.
What do you think?
- This could be it, guys.
Seriously?
- I'm totally serious.
Oh my God. So what
do we do, what do you suggest?
- Well, we've got to get this
out of the elements, I think.
Let's pack it back up.
- Yeah, does somebody
have some gloves?
Yeah, we've
got some in the car.
- Hey, seriously...
How did you guys come
across this thing?
It's a long story...
Goddamn, I have
no idea what Josh did,
but he has it locked on
some user setting and
I can't get it unlocked.
What are you
filming for anyway?
I'm filming
everything from now on.
Let me tell you something,
I don't trust anybody
at this point.
I don't blame you,
but we're still gonna have to
turn this thing over to
somebody to get it restored.
What are
you talking about...
- A riot
has erupted at the
Patterson Theater
in Baltimore during a midnight
screening of a horror film.
They burned that film.
There
is some speculation
that the body may be that
of local filmmaker Karl Atticus.
A weapon was
located near the body
that's capable of
producing the type
of trauma that was displayed.
I don't think
anybody liked the guy.
I'm not surprised he's dead.
He's probably rotting in hell
where he belongs.
- Do you know anything
about Karl Atticus?
- That's a name I know.
He was renowned for using
dead bodies in his films.
- You're better off not even
mentioning his name.
- That name is a death sentence
for anyone in the film industry!
- Listen, too many
people disappeared
after that movie...
Devil made that film...
Devil made that film.
- We were actually
shooting "Blair Witch"
in the fall of '97
and there was a guy on the set
that we hired and he was kind
of an expert on all kinds
of mythology of Maryland.
He was kind of helping us build
the mythology and stuff
for "Blair Witch."
And he started telling
us about "Mortal Remains"
and this guy Karl Atticus
who was this filmmaker that was
supposedly a member of a cult
and the rumor was that he was
taking bodies out of cemeteries
and then shooting his films
with these cadavers.
He did this film
and it never was released,
all the prints were destroyed.
And then he supposedly
killed himself.
Ed Sanchez mentioned
that you told him about
a Baltimore filmmaker from the
'70s, some guy named Karl...
- He told you about this?
This is not something I should
have ever told him about.
You mention this guy's name,
and bad stuff starts happening.
Karl Atticus?
- Yeah, I remember him, he was
a fairly unpleasant individual.
- Really?
- Yeah, I didn't like working
with him but I had to work,
it was a job.
Would you happen
to also know where a
print of the film is?
Nobody seems to be able to find
a copy of "Mortal Remains,"
a print of the
actual film itself.
Hopefully
it's buried somewhere.
And who knows, he might
have people buried with it.
- They were what my father
would call "butcher films."
- That movie is sick! It's sick!
- Can you tell me what was
so disturbing about it?
- Right after "Blair Witch,"
people were sending me
all kinds of things,
on VHS and e-mail and stuff.
Somebody sent me an e-mail
with a Quicktime on it,
with supposedly 30 seconds
of "Mortal Remains" on it.
Karl
Atticus, a filmmaker?
- Karl Atticus, oh boy...
He was someone that, well,
he did some films I think in
the late '60s, early '70s.
Most of them were based
on books by Vernon Blake.
He was kind of regarded,
I guess, as one of the
pioneers of splatter films.
In the early '70s, I guess
people just weren't ready
for that kind of
thing back then.
What do
you know about him?
- Well, he did a
movie I believe in the
late '60s called
"Culture Shock,"
and then, from what I
remember, there was a
little bit of controversy,
there was a film
in the early '70s
that was called
"Mortal Remains."
Does that
film still exist?
- Um... Well, in bits
and pieces I guess-
- You don't
know of any copy or
print of the film
that exists today?
- No print, I have no idea...
You know, if anybody
would be able to locate a
print of that film,
that would just be
a total goldmine.
All right, let's
check out Loch Raven.
Municipal Loch Raven.
Welcome to Main
Street. This is pretty much it.
There you have it.
Well, one
thing's for sure,
if he came from
this small a place,
I mean,
literally nowhere,
it simply means
that no one else is
going to remember this guy.
Which is good for us,
because if nobody remembers
who Karl Atticus was,
then we may actually be
sitting on a goldmine.
Nobody remembers.
There was nothing even online.
We'll unlock the
mystery of Karl Atticus.
His mystery will become
our history.
Chris and I met in
high school in the late '80s.
Since then we've always
had film in common.
- Ah, Albert.
Good to see you.
Come finish this program-
We were making
YouTube videos before
YouTube even existed.
Hey! Listen,
you're gonna need to
help me here, buddy!
I'm stuck in the TV,
somewhere In the VCR unit,
and I need to get the hell out!
You're stuck?
What do you mean stuck?
- "What do you mean
stuck?" S-T-U-C-K,
I'm stuck, for crying out loud!
Well, how the hell
did you get stuck in the VCR?
- Hey, hey! Hey-
And then
"Blair Witch" happened.
We were floored.
How did these guys manage that?
We actually
went to high school with
the director, Ed Sanchez.
He became
an instant idol to us
because he was a hometown
boy who'd made it big.
We always
thought we'd be
the ones to make it big.
- I'm sorry to
Chris's parents...
Like everybody
else, we made a parody.
- To my kindergarten
teacher, Mrs. Klinglesmith...
We sent it to
Ed. It reconnected us all.
Which led to
us making a documentary
on the how and why of the
"Blair Witch" phenomenon.
Naturally, the first thing we
wanted to do was interview Ed.
We asked him to share stories
from the set of "Blair Witch"
which perhaps no one
had ever heard before.
That
was the first time
we ever heard about
"Mortal Remains,"
or its director, Karl Atticus.
So we just got a
call from Ed Sanchez.
It's a very interesting message.
Pay attention to
what he has to say,
I think you'll find
it most enlightening.
There it
is, right there.
I don't know, I still...
- What do you mean,
you don't know?
He's talking to producers! He
said there's some interest.
Do you want to be broke forever?
This is worth looking
into, absolutely.
I still think we should
do the "Blair Witch" thing.
"Blair Witch" has a
built-in audience-
- A built-in audience?
What, we're gonna make
a couple of bucks making
a documentary about somebody
else's movie? Come on.
Well,
all I'm saying is,
if we go through
all the trouble, and
nobody's interested...
Ed's not saying,
Hey, come on out here
to Hollywood and
meet these people,
he's saying, finish the film.
What happens when we're done
with it and nobody likes it?
Why do you think
no one's gonna like it?
He already said
there's interest in it.
Nobody knows
about Karl Atticus!
They will
when we're done!
So you've lived here in
Loch Raven all your life.
All my life.
Does the name
Atticus ring a bell?
Especially Karl Atticus?
- No. No.
- I've never heard
of him before.
- Doesn't ring a bell.
No?
- No.
- Nope, never heard of him.
- Never have, no.
- That's kind of the
consensus on Karl Atticus.
- They lived in a
house down the street.
It burned down years ago.
- Right down the street,
they used to live?
- And then they moved out
to Howard County in the
country and lived
in a house there.
- Another house?
There was one guy in
particular, Karl Atticus...
A young
fellow, is that right?
Yes, he
was a filmmaker.
Oh yes, yes, he
was there, he lived there.
Karl
Atticus was born on
October 4th, 1947 in
Loch Raven, Maryland.
You grew
up with Karl Atticus,
you knew him very well?
- I guess I met him
in the late 50s,
it would have been '58, '59.
He was a couple, several
years older than I was.
Kind of a sickly kid.
I can remember
going by his house
in the neighborhood with
the quarantine signs up.
He had polio, so he was
quarantined for a year.
Because of that he started
reading a lot at an early age.
If I can remember,
he read Lovecraft,
and Poe,
and then he got into some
southern Gothic writer.
Blake, I think
that was his name.
He was very much...
almost obsessed
with this writer.
An only
child, Karl was the son of
Margaret Cordelia Cowan
and Ivan Atticus III,
a professor of
history and literature
at Johns Hopkins University.
- Professor Atticus, um...
A very creepy guy.
A very private man...
There were a lot of rumors,
stories revolving around him.
I recall one
time, we were just kids,
and we went up into the attic
and we found this old chest.
We opened the chest up,
it belonged to his father,
and there were a number of
strange things in there,
robes and knives,
and any number of
Vernon Blake novels.
Police
records indicate that
Karl witnessed the
death of his father
in an unexplained car
crash in late 1950.
It could
have been suicide.
I know for a fact that
his wife committed
suicide, many years later.
- His mother, I guess
this was in the late '60s,
wound up taking her life.
No doubt, it was very
traumatic for him.
It devastated him.
It was a wound that,
no doubt, he carried...
And he was
left all alone, I guess?
Yeah, he was pretty much alone,
and at that point he started
to really go downhill.
He became ... withdrawn.
Dark.
He was just distant.
It was like something had
really changed in him.
Now that I think about it,
a couple of weeks
before he went missing,
Karl left this cigar
box on my porch
that had some photographs
and clippings,
and some strange things.
That's not something
you still have, is it?
- Oh, yeah.
I think it's up in the attic.
I guess I've held
onto it because
he was a friend at one time,
a childhood friend, and I
feel bad about the tragedy.
Ah! That goes way back.
Is that you? My God.
- Yeah.
- Who's that?
- That's his mom.
I guess she went to
Johns Hopkins too.
I don't think this is a
high school graduation.
Her husband, Karl's dad,
was a professor there.
- Makes sense.
- And this is what, I'd
forgotten about this...
Jeez.
- Yeah, it's strange.
That must be Karl.
Unbelievable. I haven't
seen this in years.
That's incredible.
Do you mind if we borrow
and scan some of this stuff?
- No, help yourself.
Thank you so much.
There's a
tape in there too.
- Yeah, the tape...
Just before Karl died he
left a message for me.
It freaked me out.
It's a strange message.
I'd forgotten all about that.
- Well, here we are at
Black Hills Cemetery,
and it's not open
for business yet.
Whose idea
was it to show up
at 7:00 in the morning?
- I would have to say...yours.
No, no...
Let's go get some breakfast.
- Good idea.
Did you contact the
Baltimore police department?
Yes.
- Did they get back to you?
- Not yet, no.
- Did you contact-
- Shut up and let me
get the shot, will you?
How big is this place?
- Pretty big. It's
a big old cemetery.
We should go to the office.
I bet they have some
kind of a register.
The problem is,
I'm stepping on shit,
and it's like- Look at this,
there are stones here
that aren't even marked.
- Well, those are
obviously way too old.
Maybe there's a
groundskeeper or a caretaker
around here we could ask.
Tell you
what, why don't we-
- There's a
guy right over there.
We could ask him.
Sir? Excuse me, sir?
we're trying to find
a particular grave.
Did you ever hear
of a Karl Atticus?
- That crazy movie guy?
- That'll be the one, yeah.
is he around here still?
- No.
People were always trying
to get into his grave.
They moved him.
Get out.
They moved the body?
Yeah.
I have no idea where.
I know he has a family
plot around here somewhere,
his family's laid out here.
You know
where that is?
- Somewhere in that
area over there.
You'd probably have to go
to the office and find out.
- Fantastic!
Thank you very much.
- You're quite welcome.
This
should be the book.
- How do you spell that name?
A-T-T-I-C-U-S.
- Looks like that index
page isn't in here.
That's strange.
- Is that the right book?
- Yeah, this is
definitely the right book,
it's just-
The Atticus name should be on-
-there, and it's not.
Let's just try the-
There's about four
pages not here.
This is very strange.
Would somebody
maybe remove them
for a particular reason?
- Well, if somebody
needs to make copies
for any reason, they
should take them out,
but they should
immediately replace them.
Maybe
somebody was careless.
- And my boss isn't here
right now for me to ask him,
and I certainly wouldn't
want to go through his desk.
But...
Wow.
These books are very special,
and we never leave anything
out of them for very long.
The only thing I could do for
you, under the circumstances-
I'm gonna put a marker in
here so I can tell him.
This is the
end of the road, then.
There are no other sections.
- Well, this is the area she
pointed to on the map, but-
I don't know, it's 1973
we're looking for...
There's a lot of stuff
from the 1800s here.
Hey!
Hello?
- You guys were in the office?
A moment
ago, yes we were.
Can you help, actually?
- We were trying to find a plot,
a fellow who was buried here...
- Is that thing still on?
...Yeah?
- Would you mind
turning it off, please.
All right, what's- What's
your interest in Atticus?
Well, we're
a couple of filmmakers
making a documentary-
- No. This is a place
of respect and repose.
We don't make films here.
I know,
I understand that.
- No, I'm really sorry.
You don't understand.
Is that thing off?
Yeah.
It's off.
- Is it off!
It's off, sir!
- I've had enough problems,
this institution has
had enough problems
over the years, with Atticus-
Hey! Is that thing still on?!
No, sir.
Other people have
been asking about Atticus?
- Let me make this
very, abundantly clear:
All further inquiries about
Atticus cease right now.
You're not welcome,
and I want you
to pack up this camera
and get on the road.
Listen, I can call the police,
or I can take another route
which is far more
unpleasant, okay?
So get out of here right now,
and I mean it!
Come on, let's go!
Okay, all
right, we're leaving...
What the hell
is that guy's beef?
I don't
know. He's pissed.
- Christ!
Let's just get the
hell out of here.
We'll come back later, some
other time to look around.
Who the
fuck is he calling?
They were
here about Atticus...
I wonder if
he's calling the cops?
You find anything?
Let's just
come back tomorrow.
Christ, I can see barely
anything at all anyway.
We're not gonna
be able to get in here
except at night.
Karl
could be anywhere!
Karl could be anywhere,
but I say we keep looking
for his family plot.
The guy said
the body's been
moved at least once.
What is your
problem? Jesus Christ.
Mark, this
place is fucking huge.
It's pitch black.
This is a wild goose chase!
I cannot-
- It's spread out, yes,
so why don't you just
stop standing there,
and keep looking! Jeez.
- I can't even see the names on
these frigging stones...
- Would you quit your whining
and relax, for God's sakes?
- This is stupid.
Look, we haven't
been here that long.
- There's gotta be somebody
who's gonna catch us here.
- They're not gonna
be able to find us,
not in this huge
place. C'mon, Chris.
Give it a little while. I mean,
We haven't even been
here more than two hours,
we haven't even seen half
of what is out there...
Well, we're not
gonna see anything in the dark.
I can see just fine!
Pull your flashlight out,
will you for crying out loud?
What was that?
- Quit your whining!
I'm over here, man.
Jesus Christ.
Mark?
Christ! What?
- That's it, man. I'm going
back to the car in five minutes.
You wanna look in
that direction? I'm
waiting right here.
I'm gonna get
it all done tonight.
You're want to
look in that area,
I'm gonna go look over-
- I'm gonna stay right here.
Fine, you
can wait, 'cause
I'm not gonna leave till
I look and make sure
that we've got everything
we came here for.
There's only one
more section to go-
- Oh my God...
Fucking
complaining all the time.
Hey! Mark?
Whoa!
Mark, did you see that?
Mark!
What?
What?
Okay, we need to
go. We need to go right now.
We need to go! I just saw
something moving, we gotta go.
Just relax,
will you, man?
Fuck this. Oh, man...
Where the hell are you?
Let's
just keep looking.
Chris, just keep
looking, all right?
Get back
here! Come on, let's go.
Damn it, where the hell are you?
Mark?
What, are you-
Jesus, Mark!
Mark!
Where are you?
Mark!
Mark-
Holy shit!
Are you okay?
What happened?
Jesus... What happened?
- They definitely know
that I have a concussion,
and they're gonna run some
more x-rays this afternoon.
They're worried
that maybe I have
some internal bleeding now,
so we'll find out soon enough.
When are you coming by?
Soon as I can. Look,
do you wanna call the cops?
- Hell no! No, no, no, man.
Do not. Call. The police.
No matter what you do,
don't call the
police, all right?
And if you do, I wasn't there.
Don't even mention my name.
Do you want to explain what we
were doing there last night?
Come on, man! Think!
- You're gonna be able to
film this weekend, right?
- What!
- We gotta meet that
guy at the university.
- No, Chris, I'm not gonna
be filming this weekend.
I can barely see out of one eye!
Well, what the hell-
- Come on, man, be real. Now
you're just being an asshole!
Don't be such a fucking idiot!
No, I'm not gonna be in shape
to be filming this weekend!
In order to
keep the project on track,
I went out and hired
a new cameraman.
So this is Josh,
our new cameraman.
Say hi, Josh!
- Hi Josh.
I then
began investigating
the book "Mortal Remains"
and its author, Vernon Blake.
The details
of Vernon Blake's life are
shrouded in obscurity,
except to a small number of
collectors and historians.
Foremost among these is
Professor Lyle Thackeray
of Penn State University.
- Very few people
are even aware of
Vernon Blake's existence.
His fiction never
sold well nor widely.
He was rejected by numerous
reputable publishers,
so he self-published,
we suspect, out of spite.
His work was extremely
graphic and sexually explicit.
Not things that were a
big deal in the 1920s,
but he had a way of
combining the two
in a manner that was
distinctly unsettling.
- I have been collecting
Vernon Blake's work
for a number of years,
and it's not easy to find.
A very obscure writer.
Through a number of years
of research I was able to
piece together a few bits of
information about his past.
He was really left
to his own devices
from a fairly early age.
He did a fair
amount of traveling
through various
parts of the world.
For example, he spent
some time in Haiti,
where he became very
fascinated with voodoo.
He also spent some
time in Paris.
He visited
Europe frequently.
It was known that he
was a great admirer
of the Theatre du Grand Guignol.
Many of his short
stories were adapted
for the Guignol's stage.
But his choices with
regard to subject matter
clearly demonstrate a
passion for ancient history.
Much of his writing centers
around primitive societies,
sinister cults,
arcane rituals, and so forth.
It's rumored that Blake himself
was involved in an obscure cult,
and certain photographs
certainly bear this out.
There are
photographs of him wearing
ceremonial garb and holding
a Middle Eastern dagger.
It was during a
1922 interlude in Paris that
Blake began writing his longest
and most notorious novel,
an extremely gruesome tale
entitled "Mortal Remains."
- It's an exceptionally
brutal tale,
even by Vernon
Blake's standards,
with elements of torture,
ritual sacrifice,
murder, grave robbing,
even cannibalism.
One man is fed his own eyeballs.
Another has his
flesh peeled off.
One character is
drugged and then
slowly cut into several pieces.
- One of the more fascinating
elements about Vernon Blake is
that in some of his work he
was known to hide ciphers...
possible signals, possible
symbols, possible words
for his readers to follow.
- Thanks for coming in
again, I appreciate that.
Oh, you got a
haircut! Looks good.
It was
time for a change.
This is a cipher from Vernon
Blake's "Mortal Remains."
This is actually a
substitution cipher.
Now this was actually one of
the easier ciphers to solve,
because there are spaces in
between the cipher words.
Also, when you have
something like this,
a cipher letter by itself,
that's most often going to
be a letter like A or I,
letters that can
stand on their own.
So this one for example,
if you follow the
key I have here,
this one will read,
when it's finished,
"Turn to page 40 for a reward."
If you jump to page
40, what you will find
is actually another
set of ciphers lining
the left hand side of the page.
Now, this one was
tricker because there are
no spaces in between the words.
The same
set of symbols?
No, these are completely
different, aren't they?
- Well, Vernon Blake did that.
He often made cipher symbols
in different languages.
This particular cipher language,
he used the Enoch for it.
See? If you look on
the title page of
"Mortal Remains"
down at the bottom -
- a whole new set of ciphers.
Right along here.
A completely
different alphabet.
- Completely different alphabet.
The translation
for the next cipher
reads, "Proceed to page
80 in my previous work."
Now, this was a common
thing for Vernon Blake.
He would leave
clues to other clues
to other clues,
and they were not
always in his books.
Sometimes he would
give you directions to
go to a particular house,
and you might find the next
cipher underneath a table.
Sometimes he might have a cipher
carved into a tree in a park.
He would leave a wide
variety of clues and
directions as to where
to go next in order to
solve the cipher mysteries
he was leaving in his works.
What
did these lead to?
What did people
find? Other stories?
Treasure? What
would they unearth?
- Well, the rewards
were not often tangible,
and many of them
were not even found.
You have to remember,
times change.
Houses get torn down,
we have natural disasters...
so you go back to his works,
and try to find
perhaps another cipher
or another direction,
or you had to let that one go.
Wow. So there
could even now be things that
he left buried somewhere
that nobody knows about?
- There very well could be.
In 1969, Atticus
completed his first feature,
"Culture Shock," a
violent film based upon an
early Vernon Blake novella.
"Culture Shock"
kind of reminds me of
"Cannibal Holocaust,"
kind of a mondo cinema
pseudo-documentary about
these jungle women who
basically go and murder
some people in the jungle.
If you could find a
copy, that would be awesome.
- A copy that we would be able
to get would probably be a
bootleg or an Asian copy,
something like that...
That's fine.
- Again, it's possible.
We could ask one of
the collectors we know.
I think it's not out of the
question that we could get one.
What stands out in
your mind about the shoot?
- The special effects.
Really?
- Yeah, there was
one scene where a
guy gets his hand chopped
off with a machete.
I've never seen
anything so realistic.
- It made me queasy,
and I've been around
zombies and all
that shit for years.
- For the amount of money
that was in the film,
I couldn't understand
how they could afford an
effect like that,
especially when I
had to chase the
guy around for my paycheck.
- Usually, the lower the
budget, the cornier it looks,
there's ketchup packets
squirting in the air.
This... I was pretty
convinced that something had
really happened there.
- We should almost be there.
- Yeah, you said
that an hour ago.
- Ramirez said it wouldn't
be that easy to find.
- Holy shit!
- Wait!
This all seems damned peculiar.
Fuck!
"Culture
Shock" attracted the
scrutiny of Damien Long,
the eccentric New York-based
producer and impresario.
Long screened the film at
midnight for several months at
his popular West Side
venue, the Omicron Theater.
- It used to play up
and down the East coast
at some midnight shows.
I heard a story, I don't
know how true it is,
that somebody got stabbed
at one of the movies,
or there was people
getting attacked...
- Yes, there were
reports of problems,
incidents involving
this guy's movies.
They wound up closing
a couple of theaters down
because of that movie,
the riots were so bad.
- Two people were killed
actually while the
film was running in the theater.
It wasn't a full house but
there was enough people there...
I never figured out how these
people had their lives taken
violently in the
theater with people
sitting all around them.
No one saw a thing. The bodies
weren't discovered until the
lights went up after
the film was over.
The man who was
murdered was stabbed
at the base of the skull,
and the woman had
her throat slit.
Also, as I recall, there were
pieces of the bodies taken...
and that's the part I had
a hard time swallowing.
If you're gonna kill
somebody, kill them.
But this business
of mutilation...
There was something
more going on here.
There seemed to be some
connection between this director
and the material he was
making, the screening of it,
and bad stuff going down.
And I think that ties into
what I found out later,
that he was into black magic,
this Lovecraft stuff...
That messes with your head.
And the movies he was making
was messing with
other people's heads.
The same thing
apparently happened in
some other theaters
showing his movies.
So there was really
something going on with this
guy and his films.
- Mark, hey, it's me.
Call me back, all right?
I gotta show you something,
you've got to see
what's on this video.
Call me! Bye.
Quick,
just keep looking, all right?
Okay, now watch.
- Go back, go back.
Stop! Play it back.
Freeze.
What the hell is
that guy wearing?
- He's wearing a cloak.
That's what I
wanted to show you,
this guy is wearing
some kind of an outfit,
some kind of a getup.
Nobody gets
dressed up like that and
attacks somebody unless
they've got a reason.
Obviously! That's
my point, that's what
I wanted to show you.
That's every
reason to stop this project.
Are you kidding?
Go back to the
"Blair Witch" project.
I don't care what Ed
says about what producers
he says are interested...
The "Blair Witch"
thing is definitely...
You didn't
get your ass kicked!
You try getting your
ass kicked and then
decide whether you want
to go back to this.
No, I absolutely refuse...
We've uncovered
some big mystery here...
I don't even
want to talk about this
project any more.
You wanna drop this?
Yeah, I
wanna drop this!
Because I'm not gonna go
back into that situation
and get my ass kicked again,
in a cemetery or anywhere.
We'll go back
and kick this kid's ass!
I'll tell you what, why don't
you two go kick his ass?
If it's not "Blair
Witch" I'm out.
"Blair Witch"
is done, it's over...
- So you're telling me
you're not going to do
the "Blair Witch" project?
Not at all, no.
- You're gonna do this
whether or not I'm in or out?
Yeah!
- Then fine, you guys can
do it yourselves. I'm done.
Come on, man!
- I'm done.
I'm not gonna do it.
That's not
quite what I had in mind.
Impressed
by the young filmmaker's
dedication and singular vision,
Damien Long agreed to fund
Atticus's next feature project,
a faithful adaptation of Vernon
Blake's "Mortal Remains."
- He decided that he wanted
to shoot it in Louisiana.
He wanted this Creole vibe
that went with the whole story.
- A lot of strange shit
happened on that movie too.
What happened there?
- Something happened either
between Karl and the law,
or Karl and the locals,
but for some reason it
was like, Okay, we're
packing up and
we're leaving town.
So he said we'll go
back and finish it at
my place in Maryland.
- We were shooting a
lot at his property,
at Atticus's property,
and he had some kind of a
South American cameraman
Carlos Bene... something,
I can't remember his last name.
This guy was really strange.
He was right up
there with Atticus,
he was like his twin brother.
They were into some weird
shit, it seemed like,
the two of them.
- Seemed like he was
just a squirrely guy,
didn't seem like
you could trust him.
I didn't trust him.
- He was a very strange guy, and
he had a lot of
really weird demands,
he would ask for strange
stuff on the set...
How do you mean?
- We would find the location,
set it up, light it,
and then everyone would
have to leave the set,
except Karl and the
cameraman and the actors.
- We would have to leave
and we weren't allowed to come
back till the next morning,
which didn't make any sense to
me, I didn't understand that.
- But then, the next day
the actors never came back.
So it was like Gee,
I guess we're doing this all
in one take, or one night...
- Every time. Set up, leave.
You know, all the years
I've been doing it,
it's the first time
that ever happened.
- I never knew why the
actors never came back...
and I wasn't about to ask,
because I thought then
I might not come back.
So, it sort of scared me.
There were lots of
rumors about Karl and
his methods for making
movies and stuff.
At one point this big
rumor started that Karl was
using dead bodies in his films.
- I heard about it.
I worked with him in the
daytime, not at night.
- The whole situation
was completely bizarre.
Ed mentioned
that this guy was using
dead bodies in his
movies, is that true?
- Yeah, it was actually
worse than that.
- Right after that
whole rumor about using
cadavers and stuff in
his films came out,
then there was a
series of crimes of
vandalism in cemeteries.
- There was some incident of
cemetery vandalism or something?
- There were rumors about it,
rumors around the set,
but nothing that I
knew for certain, no.
Wouldn't surprise me, though.
- Something about
cemeteries, or...
- He was accused of doing
some grave robbing and stuff.
We couldn't prove it,
so he was never charged.
- Everyone just sort
of looked toward Karl,
you know? The usual suspects.
- Really disturbing guy,
it's like bad stuff
followed him around,
bad people, bad everything.
Creeped you
out a little bit?
Yeah, creeped me out a lot.
- We'd go to the movies
together when we were just kids,
and he always wanted to,
I would say let's
go see a western,
no, no, no, let's go see
this latest horror film,
and we'd go to that,
and the strange thing was I
was just a kid at the time,
I'd be freaked out and scared,
and he was laughing
the whole way through.
- Scream!
- A lot of strange
people in the '60s
and he was one of them.
- These people used
to come around,
they were,
I don't know how
to describe them,
they were just very
strange people.
They didn't help on
the crew or anything,
but these people
would just sit around
on the sets and sit
in the background,
sit in the corner and watch us,
and I always thought
that was very weird.
- He started associating with
different kinds of people,
I don't want to say strange,
but...unusual characters.
- Because any time you were
involved too closely with Karl,
or any people that he knew,
you never knew what was
going to happen next.
The premiere
screening was interrupted by
violence when several
members of the audience,
shocked and enraged by the
film's horrific content
stormed the projection booth
and demolished the 35mm print.
- They decided they were going
to have this big premiere,
and I didn't go.
Did you go to that?
- Oh, hell no. I wanted
nothing to do with it.
- Everything about Karl,
the movie, everything,
was just a little too
strange for me, but...
During the movie,
a riot broke out.
- A riot has erupted at
the Patterson theater
during a midnight
screening of a horror film.
- They're going crazy in there!
- That movie is sick! It's sick!
- I'm out of here!
- Hey, get that
out of here! Now!
- It takes a strong stomach
just to get through the book,
so I find it rather astonishing
that this Atticus fellow
feels it's suitable
meat for a movie.
- Again, extremely
violent and graphic.
Extremely graphic.
In fact, that's part
of its mythology.
So "Mortal Remains"
was never seen, right?
That was it?
- It was never shown
all the way through.
They destroyed it at the theater
the first time it was shown.
But the
film was shown...
- The film was shown, but
it was shown one time.
That was it.
I've never heard of any prints
of it being distributed,
I think the last...
from what I understand,
either the film disappeared
or was destroyed.
- I just gotta say good luck,
because I don't
think anybody's...
I never heard of anyone
seeing any kind of copy.
I think one gentleman
who came in said he
had heard of a bit or
a clip or something,
like a little
piece of the film...
Bits and
pieces of it, yeah.
- Let's just say if
you were actually to
have a full copy of it,
that would be like the
complete "Metropolis."
There might be
other prints out there...?
- There might be. Knowing
Karl, anything's possible.
- Mark, listen, it's me.
Seriously, call me back.
I just had a phone call from
one of Ed's producer friends,
and there is some real
money coming our way
if we finish this thing.
If you want back
in, now is the time.
So really, call me
back, all right?
This is no joke. Bye.
That might get him on the horn.
Maybe,
I don't know man.
he looked pretty mad last time.
- All right, guess who
just called me back?
Hey Chris, it's
Mark, I just got your message.
How come you're not picking up?
Listen, if something's
going down,
I want to know about it,
especially if there's
money involved.
I got medical bills
I gotta pay, man.
So call me back and
let me know when we can
get together to talk
about this, all right?
I'll talk to you
then, man. Ciao.
- Well, that didn't take long.
Told you he was gonna call back.
Come on, come on in.
- What's up, man?
- Go get him, Millie.
There's Uncle Marky.
- How are you doing, man?
- You feel better?
- Yeah, much better.
- You look like a million bucks.
- Thank you.
- There's Josh.
- Hey Josh, how you doing?
Hey sweetie, what's up?
So tell me about this
phone call you had.
They're talking money?
- This guy suggested that
there was a big payday at
the end of this thing.
He said there was a
lot of money involved.
He didn't mention a number,
but he said there
is "potential for
serious remuneration," he said.
- What's your next step?
- My next step is to
jump in with both feet.
Start contacting people
who were working in the
area when Atticus
was alive and active.
- Like who?
- John Waters was making
movies in Baltimore in 1972.
- He wasn't a
horror filmmaker...
- Doesn't matter.
He was buying stock,
he was having film processed,
I'm sure he want to a
lot of the same places.
- Do you know how
to get hold of him?
- I've got the number for
his office, Dreamland.
We'll give him a call right now.
- Yeah, that sounds awesome.
- I've got a lot of
stuff to show you, man,
I've got articles and
clippings, photographs,
a bunch of stuff.
- I just wanted to ask a
couple of quick questions.
We're doing a documentary.
- John?
Yeah?
- There's a couple of guys
here want to talk to you.
- Hey, Mister Waters!
Hi. My name is Mark,
I'm a documentary filmmaker,
and I just wanted to
ask you a couple of
quick questions about a
guy who was making movies
about 30 years ago in Baltimore,
his name was Karl Atticus...
Susan, can you
pick up the phone, please?
- Yeah...
Turn off the camera, please.
- Hey, just a couple of quick
questions, for God's sake...
Forget it, you know what...
Hey, Mister Waters...
No! Hey, hey, hey, hey!
Come on, man! I
just wanna ask you a
couple of quick questions!
What's the big deal?
What is the big deal?
- Please, just go!
Just get out of here!
Just leave now, get out!
I'm going!
Jesus Christ, what
the hell are you thinking, man?
You chase the guy down a
hallway and pound on his door?
- I'm sorry, all right?
- He could call the police,
he could make trouble for us!
- He's not gonna
make any trouble.
Look, I'm sorry, but don't
yell at me because he
won't answer your questions.
- It's not a matter of
answering questions,
you chased the
guy down the hall!
You're getting carried away.
Are you trying to
screw up this project?
Are you trying to sabotage us?
- I'm not trying to
sabotage anything!
Don't even accuse
me of that, man!
- Well, we could have found
out some useful information if
we'd approached him correctly.
- What are you talking
about, approaching him?
He slammed the door
in my face before I
even got back to him.
I don't know man,
you're screaming, freaking out...
- Hello?
Hello!
Fucking A, man.
Who is it?
- Third time they called today.
They hang up every
time I fucking pick up.
Here he is.
Hi Roland.
Hey, Roland.
We'd just
like to ask a few more
question about Karl if we could.
- I've had some strange
phone calls so you'll
have to excuse me.
I'm not in the mood
for talking now.
Strange phone calls?
- That's all right.
That's enough. Goodbye,
take care of yourself.
Thanks.
- Are you the guys
who've been calling me?
The phone calls have got to
stop and they gotta stop now!
Get off my property
or I call the cops!
- Hey, listen, we have
not called... We haven't
made any phone calls, man!
All we want to do is ask you
a couple of quick questions...
Would you please just...
- No, bloody hell no.
This has gone too far. I'm
getting fucking phone calls now.
Enough is enough,
this has to stop.
- Hey, hey, hey, man!
What the fuck? Knock again.
The American
Film Institute denied my
request for an interview,
but I did receive an
anonymous call from one of
their staff members.
The only
reason I'm talking to
you is to warn you.
A lot of people in
Hollywood don't want this
story to come out,
ever.
A lot of people who
saw Karl's movies when
they came out in the '70s,
let's just say they
"borrowed" from them.
They made their reputations
on things Karl came up with.
They're powerful people,
they're connected people,
and they will make
life miserable for you.
I've seen how they can do it.
You guys need to drop this.
There's a good reason
that Karl is dead.
What happened
to Karl? He just kind of...
- He sort of dropped
out of the picture.
No one had seen or heard
from him for a while, and
then I heard that he was
down at his place, at
his old house and he
went out in the woods,
took a shotgun and
blew his head off.
He died like
around '73 I think. '73?
- Yeah, I read that
he killed himself.
Might give you some
insight on his character.
- Good riddance, I'm glad
he's off this planet.
I feel a lot safer
with him not around.
- I don't think
anybody liked the guy.
He's probably rotting in
hell where he belongs.
Today, in
this shady grove near
Jessup, Maryland,
a local sportsman made
a gruesome discovery.
Andrew Gresh was enjoying an
afternoon of squirrel hunting
when he spotted a human
hand protruding from
the undergrowth.
- I was about to light my pipe,
blew out the match and
went to toss it away,
when I saw a hand sticking
out of the bushes.
It was the most horrible
thing I've seen in my life.
Though the
condition of the body precludes
any immediate identification,
there's some speculation
that the body may be that of
local filmmaker Karl
Atticus, who was reported
missing six weeks ago amid
wild rumors of occult activity.
- Well, we found a body that
had been in the woods for an
extensive amount of time. There
was an extensive amount of
decomposition and we'll
have to determine later
exactly how long and
exactly what happened,
but at this time
we're considering
this to be a suicide.
A weapon was located near
the body that was capable of
producing the type of
trauma that was displayed.
While it is
known that some unusual
discoveries were made by
federal investigators at
his Loch Raven residence,
no details have yet
been made public
regarding those discoveries.
- Supposedly it was him.
The reason why we definitely
couldn't say it was him
is that his head was blown off.
They found a shotgun
nearby, but it wasn't
close enough where he
could have done it himself.
- What I heard was that the
only way they could identify his
body was by that
strange tattoo he had.
I wanted to ask him about
it, but I was afraid.
I didn't know what it
signified or what it meant,
so I'd just check it
out once in a while
when he wasn't looking.
Now, this is weird, because
the people who used to
come and hang
around on the set...
one of those guys, he had
the same tattoo as Karl,
and I thought, "Well,
that's very strange,"
because it was a really
weird, unique tattoo.
I just thought... I didn't
know if it was a club,
or I couldn't figure
out why two guys would
have the same exact tattoo.
- Who knows, with him?
He could do anything.
I wouldn't put it past him
to stage his own death.
- It concerned our department,
so we started looking into it.
- We all knew Karl, and we
knew how strange he was,
so anything that happened
was not beyond the realm of
belief. Anything was
possible with Karl.
There was rumors
that he was in a cult,
did you find any
evidence of that?
- Well, um...
- You know, your
imagination makes you crazy,
so I was imagining
all kinds of things,
and I think everyone was.
Because Karl was just
that kind of guy.
- We got a warrant
to go into his house.
What we found in that house
was pretty disturbing.
Really strange,
really bone chilling.
How do I say this?
He had a collection that
no human should ever have.
I don't wanna get
into the details,
because it scares
the shit out of me.
It was so crazy that the FBI
came in and took over the
investigation and threw us out.
I was happy about that,
because what I saw...
It creeped me out,
knowing that he might
still be out there.
What do you think?
Do you think it
was him they found?
- I don't think so.
There's things that
just don't add up.
The tattoo, where they
found the weapon...
What if he
is still out there?
All right, well, it's
not over here either.
We've pretty much
exhausted all the main
branches of the cemetery here.
The caretaker did say he thought
it was in this direction,
but... I don't know,
this is pretty much the
end of the road over here.
Looks like it, anyway.
Are you sure?
What about down there?
No, Mark and
I have already checked
out stuff down there,
unless...maybe past that,
if that's another old wing...
- Hey!
- Oh shit, it's that
cemetery guy again.
What cemetery guy?
So is Josh
not coming at all?
No, not
tonight. Just me and you.
Is that working or what?
I mean,
it's functional...
I can record with it, if
that's what you're asking.
It's just... he's got it locked
on some sort of user setting,
so I can't figure out. I'm
not going to be able to
get into it until he gives
me whatever code he's set.
It's like it's... I don't know.
But it's in focus?
Yes, it'll work.
You can
shoot with the thing?
Yes, I can film
and I can record, if
that's what you're asking.
When is this guy
supposed to call?
Any time. He
didn't say when, he just
said, "I'll call tonight."
You film it,
I gotta take a leak.
Jesus, hold on, I'm
getting a piece of paper...
I understand. I know
where that is. Yes, I do.
What time?
Okay. And... No cameras. Got it.
Okay, we'll...
Hello?
Hello? Okay, he's gone.
What did he...
- He insisted that
there're no cameras,
and he said he's got some
very crucial information about
Karl Atticus and he wants us
to meet him at a parking lot.
Parking lot? Why?
- A parking garage, actually.
He's not gonna see that, is he?
I hope he doesn't.
It's gonna
freak this guy out.
He might have something
important to say.
Well, I know,
but I feel like we
should at least
document it somehow.
All right,
as long as he doesn't...
Is that him? Is that him?
There he is, gotta be.
Let's go,
let's go, let's go.
Thank you. Thanks a lot, sir.
Just a couple of
quick questions.
Just one more question,
two more questions...
- You'll have to talk
to somebody else.
- Hey, Mister Tallo, all
I want to do is ask...
Fuck.
So we just got a police report...
- File.
- A file from the Baltimore
Police Department,
and this is the file on Karl
Atticus's apparent suicide.
It's in the public domain
because the case is closed.
- Here he is!
- And there we have it! Karl
Atticus, ladies and gentlemen.
Look at this shit! Unbelievable.
- There's the body, look.
- It's says "unidentified
corpse," too.
We finally got it. We
requested this months ago.
Anyway, the case is closed,
so the information is
in the public domain.
- Wait... We've got an address!
I don't see any houses
at all out here.
There hasn't been
a house for like four miles.
Yeah, I think
we should turn back.
There's nothing down here.
Are you sure you got
the address right?
Yeah. I mean,
any farther and we're
gonna end up being off the map.
This road is supposed to have
ended like half a mile ago.
We're like,
out in the country here.
Whoa, slow down,
slow down, slow down!
To the left, go to the left.
What?
To the left!
Yeah, keep going straight.
What, what, what?
- Right there!
Can't you see it?
Look up!
Holy shit!
That's it, behind
all them damn trees!
This place
is creepy as shit.
Where are you going?
- There's a back door, and
there's a window next to it.
The front door's all boarded up.
Here...
Hey, we left the flashlight.
It's still in the car.
You got a screwdriver?
Are we breaking
into a house? For real?
Just watch
where you're going.
Jesus.
Mark, check out this...
There's another room.
Let's go upstairs.
Let's go upstairs.
Check this out.
Man, this place is a shithole.
Look at this crap. The
wall's falling apart, Jesus.
This looks like somebody's
been here recently.
Like, homeless
people or something?
Shhh!
What?
- Did you hear that?
No, man.
- You didn't hear that?
No.
Stay close.
Locked.
It's locked. It's
got a deadbolt on it.
Whoa...
Shit, yeah.
What's in there?
- Check this shit
out, it's a staircase.
It's some sort of attic.
Are you going up there?
- Hell no!
Here, give me the camera.
Hey Chris! Where did he go?
I think
he's in the basement.
The stairs
don't look too stable.
I'm not going up there.
Chris?
Where the hell did he go?
I think
he's downstairs.
- How did he get down there?
There's a floor below us?
Yeah. It's in
the hall, I'm pretty sure.
- Chris!
Chris?
Hey! Hurry up, I gotta
show you something!
Jesus
Christ, what is it?
Josh, man, watch your step.
Got it.
- What?
This house is huge.
Watch your step, man.
- Look at this! It's a cipher...
It's a Vernon Blake
cipher, like in the book!
Remember the book that
Peter Flood showed us?
In "Mortal Remains," these
were the kind of ciphers
that Vernon Blake was using.
- What the hell are
you talking about?
He wasn't there, Chris.
- Oh shit. Here, hold this, I
gotta get a picture of that.
Vernon Blake used ciphers
like these in his books.
- Well, what the hell
is it doing here?
- I don't know, but I'm
taking a goddamn picture,
that's for sure.
- Shit, what was that?
Did you hear that?
There's someone here.
- Go, go, go, get out of here.
- Go, go.
- That's the only way out.
- Jesus Christ. Let's go, now!
Don't fucking move.
There's more than one of them.
There's two sets of footsteps.
What the fuck are
they doing up there?
What's that?
Shhh!
Oh shit...
Go, go! Now, go!
Look! The door's open!
I don't give a shit...
Did you leave it open?
Come on!
Who has the
key, do you have the key?
No, I don't
have the fucking key!
Go, go, go,
let's get out of here!
What was that?
Go, go, go! Let's
get out of here, now!
Go!
Roll the
camera! All the time,
just keep rolling! That's
what I pay you for!
Is somebody following us?
No, not that I can see.
All right, we're fine,
we're going back to the house.
What the hell was that?
I don't know,
homeless people maybe.
Didn't you hear
that person screaming?
Homeless people screaming
like that? Come on...
That's not
homeless people.
Don't worry
about it. We're fine,
we're safe, we're going
back to the house,
we're gonna figure out
that fucking cipher.
I think somebody
was in the glove compartment.
Hurry up, would you?
Chill out, man.
Perhaps the cops
are coming after us now!
Look, not now, but that
doesn't mean that the
people that were there
might not call them...
Oh my God...
Don't "Oh
my God" me, Chris!
There are no cops...
There were people
there. Josh, tell him!
Did you see
anyone following us?
Whoever that
was, winos, derelicts,
they're homeless, they're
not calling the cops.
Derelicts
wearing cloaks,
what are you talking about?
No!
Remember the guy that
attacked me in the cemetery?
He was wearing a cloak. These
people were wearing cloaks.
You don't see a connection?
Blankets
or trench coats...
Did you see people
wearing cloaks?
I don't know if
they were wearing cloaks...
They were
homeless people, trust me.
Chris, we need to
talk about this, all right?
We need to stop...
All right,
just calm down.
No I'm not gonna
calm down! It stops here!
- I'm gonna go upstairs...
We found a valuable clue,
I'm gonna go upstairs
and print this thing out.
You're
talking about clues,
I'm talking about the cops!
There's no
cops out there! Relax!
I wanna print this thing out.
We're gonna sit
down and solve this.
Who's calling
me again? Hello?
Hello?
Hello!
All right, I've
decoded the cipher into English,
and it's definitely
the same symbols
Vernon Blake used
that Peter showed us.
I have 16 English letters
now, in no discernible order,
and four Roman numerals.
What are you doing?
- Just keeping an eye on
things, making sure that
nobody is messing
with the fucking car,
just worry about your
pictography thingy there.
- All right, anyway, I have 16
letters, four Roman numerals,
I'm not sure how they relate,
but maybe this decodes
into a sentence or
a word or something...
That could
be a grille cipher.
- A grill cipher?
What do you mean?
It's a kind of
cipher where you have to
put the numbers at
the top of the grid...
It's hard to explain.
- Show me.
Give me some scissors.
All right, so what I
did is, I cut out the
Roman numerals like that,
so they match up, and
you put this over the
top of the cipher, and
that's how you decipher it.
A...
T...
M...
And then, usually what you
do is, you turn it clockwise,
and then you do the same
thing over and over again.
So,
F...
A...
Look at
this! Come on, this is
amazing stuff he's doing here.
H...
That's what it's
called, a grille cipher?
A grill cipher, yeah.
Jesus Christ.
E...
R...
S...
G...
Then one more.
R...
A...
V...
E.
There we go.
Oh my Christ, look.
"At my father's grave."
I'd say
we've solved this one.
Holy shit. we gotta go
back to the cemetery!
We gotta go back to
the cemetery, buddy.
Wait, isn't that
where he got beat up?
Gotta be something
here, I wanna find it.
Did you hear that?
Yeah, it's nothing.
Possums, a raccoon,
I don't give a shit.
Walking around in a cemetery
at two o'clock in the morning.
We're fucking
lost is what we are.
- We're not lost.
You've been filming
this whole time, right?
No, I
just turned it on.
- Just now?
- Will you stop talking
to him and listen to me?
- What?
- We're lost.
- We're not lost!
This is the cemetery,
it's an older wing
of the cemetery.
- No, we left the cemetery
about a half hour ago, Chris.
We're not in the cemetery.
He said
it was over here-
- No, you're gonna get us more
lost is what you're gonna do!
Fucking A.
I'm leaving, all right?
I'm done with this shit.
We can't leave him.
- I don't fucking care! we're
gonna go in this direction,
the way we came,
we're just gonna keep
walking until we get
back to the cemetery.
- Hey, hey!
This is it! Come on!
What are
you talking about?
Let's just
get this over with.
See?
Whoa!
I told you. Son
of a bitch, right there.
They moved him out to the
perimeter of the cemetery.
Great, we found
something. Now can we go?
No. Look around,
see if there's any
symbols, any markings on
the back of the stone,
look for any other...
Nothing
on the back side.
There's nothing, all right?
- All right.
Any other graves around?
No, there's
nothing around. Can we go?
You found it-
- Back to the car.
We've gotta get the shovels,
we're gonna dig the
son of a bitch up.
What? You
aren't digging anything...
Are you
fucking kidding me? No...
I'm telling
you, we're on the
verge of finding something...
You're kidding.
Are you rolling?
No! This is
a stupid idea. No!
We're not digging
up graves, Chris!
Why the fuck
do we have shovels?
I'm gonna break
your ass. Take the shovel,
we're gonna go dig
this sucker up.
- Seriously?
Mark, seriously?
Okay, for the record,
this is not my idea.
- You are rolling now,
though, yes? Right?
Yes, I'm
shooting you guys
committing a crime,
which is asinine.
- That's fine. Keep
rolling, whatever happens.
- Oh shit, I hit something.
- Hit what?
- I don't know what it is.
- All right, hold on, hold on.
It's a...
- Aw, man, that's sick,
you're touching that shit.
Shouldn't it be in a
casket or something like that?
Yeah, I didn't
even dig down that far.
What's this?
We've got a skull.
Shit!
what's that over there?
That looks like...
hold on...
There's two of them!
Two skulls?
No, I'm done! No, no,
I'm out of here! I quit.
What are
you talking about?
Josh, no, wait!
Hold on, dude, whoa!
What are you talking about?
You can't leave now...
I'm done!
There's a
lot more here, guys.
You guys are digging
up graves, you're crazy!
Chris, it's time to
go, all right? He's right...
- Hold on. There's a lot
more going on here...
Josh, don't leave!
Jesus Christ.
Josh!
We've only got one car, man!
It's not like you'll be
able to get anywhere...
I'll hitch a ride,
I don't care. I'm done.
Josh!
Hold on! I
got something here...
Chris, he's gone.
I think he's gonna
call the cops...
- I got something down
here that's made of metal.
What?
- Look right there,
what is that?
- Help me get this
thing out of here.
This could be it.
It's clear. What
the hell is this?
- It's heavy as
hell, whatever it is.
- Jesus Christ!
What the fuck is that?
See
that? You see that?
It's a fucking film can.
What the hell
is that doing here?
Oh shit,
you hear that?
It's time to go!
Let's get
the hell out of here!
Get the camera! Get
the camera! Come on!
Has Josh
called you back?
No.
Jesus Christ, I think...
I think this is it, man.
I seriously think this is it.
I think we fucking found it.
Fucking A. What did
he have it buried there for?
We gotta
call that guy back,
that guy Dave, we
gotta call him.
Call
from unknown caller.
Who's that?
Maybe we should call the cops.
Though there's
almost certainly evidence of
criminal activity...
Criminal!
Now we're
fucking grave robbers.
- While cemetery
officials have declined to
make any public statement,
local and state police
were notified immediately,
and an investigation
is currently underway.
An FBI Behavioral Science unit...
Fucking FBI is now involved!
- All right.
It's okay. Nobody...
- ...has stepped in
to assist with the
identification of the
remains. Forensic testing...
Nobody
knows we were there,
nobody knows we
were there, okay?
- It's the fucking FBI!
How are
they gonna find us?
- Who the fuck is
calling me, goddammit?
Hello?
Who?
Hello?
Oh shit. Hey, Burian! Dave!
Yeah, yeah, yeah...
No, no, no, listen,
we've been waiting for
your call all weekend.
Here, talk to Chris.
Put the fucking camera down.
Here, listen.
- Listen, okay Dave?
Yeah, what's going on, man?
We wanted to ask you again
about "Mortal Remains"...
Uh, yeah, we could meet you...
What?
how about, like...
What time is it?
How about an hour?
An hour from now?
We'll meet you there.
I got something I
want to show you too,
we're gonna...
No, no, no, you don't
want to show him anything!
Yeah, it's dynamite.
No, no, no, what
are you talking about,
I don't want to
transport that thing,
I don't want anybody
to see evidence.
I don't wanna be walking
around with that thing!
He's the one that
said it's worth a goldmine.
That's exactly
right, it's our meal ticket,
so the last thing we
should be doing is
moving this fucker
around and all.
Just leave it here.
No, we gotta
bring it, we gotta bring it.
Let's go meet the guy.
And then
the next thing you
know we're fucking tailed.
The FBI knows
nothing about us, okay?
I don't want
that thing leaving here.
It's fragile, it
needs to be preserved,
I don't...
We're gonna
show this to Dave.
He'll know what it's worth.
Let's go.
No, no, no.
- Holy shit, guys.
What do you think?
- This could be it, guys.
Seriously?
- I'm totally serious.
Oh my God. So what
do we do, what do you suggest?
- Well, we've got to get this
out of the elements, I think.
Let's pack it back up.
- Yeah, does somebody
have some gloves?
Yeah, we've
got some in the car.
- Hey, seriously...
How did you guys come
across this thing?
It's a long story...
Goddamn, I have
no idea what Josh did,
but he has it locked on
some user setting and
I can't get it unlocked.
What are you
filming for anyway?
I'm filming
everything from now on.
Let me tell you something,
I don't trust anybody
at this point.
I don't blame you,
but we're still gonna have to
turn this thing over to
somebody to get it restored.
What are
you talking about...