Dead Format is the second feature-length horror film by Mike Lombardo, award-winning director of I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday (Reel Splatter Productions) and one of the stars of the hit documentary The Brilliant Terror (Lonfall Films).

Set in the early 2000s, on the brink of the collapse of the video rental industry, Dead Format is the story of an obsessed collector desperately clinging to the past with his vast movie archive while grieving the death of his father.  When he finds a mysterious tape at his local VHS rental store, he discovers that sometimes nostalgia comes at a terrible price. 

Based on the fan-favorite short story of the same name from Lombardo’s collection Please Don’t Tap on the Glass and Other Tales of The Melancholy & Grotesque, the film is one of the most personal projects Mike has tackled to date. When his dad passed away several years ago, he wrote the original short story as a way of coping with the loss. The film also incorporates Mike’s childhood memories of the video store, as well as his passion for collecting movies. 

Executive produced by renowned horror author Brian Keene (The Rising, Ghoul, Earthworm Gods) and co-produced by author/filmmaker Samantha Kolesnik (Waif, True Crime) & author, filmmaker, and founder of GenreBlast Film Festival, Nathan Ludwig (The Comfy Cozy Nihilist),  Dead Format combines 90s nostalgia, horror & drama with a dash of Lombardo’s trademark humor and a touch of 80s slasher mayhem. 

What We Need & What You Get

Making an independent film is a mountain under the best of circumstances.

Working outside of the studio world, Mike directed his first feature beginning in 2014 on a micro budget. Financed almost entirely by his pizza shop salary, I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday was made for only $10,000 and went on to play film festivals all over the world. 

The scope of Dead Format is 10x the size of White Doomsday which means  we’re going to need a lot more dough (see what we did there?) to pull it off. 

That’s where YOU come in.

We need your help to bring Dead Format to life! Every contribution matters. 

We need to raise the money for cast, crew, gear, building sets, making props, and of course lots of practical fx. 

I know what you’re thinking: “Mike, being an indie film angel and helping get a totally jawsome new horror movie made is its own incredible reward, but I really like having  cool stuff, too…”

Well, you are in luck! We’ve got all sorts of custom perks for contributors, including but not limited to: 

• Personalized Video Castle Membership Card: Mike & the crew will be transforming Vortex Books & Comics, located in Columbia, PA, into Video Castle, the coolest 80s video store that never existed. Become a Video Castle member and try your luck roaming the aisles. Just be careful which tapes you rent! 
• Signed Paperback of Please Don’t Tap on the Glass: See where it all started. Read the original story the film is based on in Mike’s collection, Please Don’t Tap on the Glass and Other Tales of the Melancholy and Grotesque, which also features the original short story that I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday was adapted from.
• Signed Screen Used Video Castle Clamshell: Own a piece of the Video Castle set. These rental clamshells are all used in the film during the Video Castle scenes and signed by director Mike Lombardo. These are limited to 125 total copies. 
• Signed Limited Edition Chapbook: This limited edition paperback chapbook will contain original essays by Brian Keene, Mike Lombardo, Samantha Kolesnik, and Nathan Ludwig about their experiences and memories of the VHS era. 

Reel Splatter Productions began in 2003 in Mike’s backyard with nothing more than a VHS camcorder and a bucket of fake blood. Inspired by a lifelong obsession with cheesy horror movies, Reel Splatter’s early years were dedicated to gross-out horror comedy. As time progressed, he became more focused on introspective and melancholy explorations of the human condition, existentialism—and chainsaws. 

Under the Reel Splatter banner, Mike has written, directed, and created the special fx for nearly twenty short films, including Womb for Two, Long Pig, and The Stall.

Meet the Team

Mike Lombardo grew up on a steady diet of Goosebumps, scary story books, 90s Nickelodeon, and horror PC games. He’s an award-winning independent filmmaker, writer & FX artist who runs Reel Splatter Productions. In 2017, his first feature film, I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday, played the festival circuit around the world, taking home 7 awards, including multiple Best Picture and Best Actress wins, and over a dozen nominations. It is now available from Scream Team Releasing. 

He is one of the stars of The Brilliant Terror, a documentary which premiered at FrightFest and chronicles the world of indie horror and the lengths that low-budget filmmakers will go to get their projects made. 

He currently lives in Pennsylvania, surrounded by skeletons and old movies. You can find him online at ReelSplatter.com, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and on moonlit nights wandering the ruins of defunct video stores, mourning the death of physical media. 

Brian Keene is the author of over fifty books and three-hundred short stories, mostly in the horror, crime, fantasy, and non-fiction genres. They have been translated into over a dozen different languages and have won numerous awards. His 2003 novel, The Rising, is credited with inspiring pop culture’s recurrent interest in zombies. He has also written for such media properties as Doctor Who, Thor, Aliens, Harley Quinn, The X-Files, Doom Patrol, Justice League, Hellboy, Superman, and Masters of the Universe. He was the showrunner for Realm Media and Blackbox TV’s Silverwood: The Door.

Several of Keene’s novels and stories have been adapted for film, including Ghoul, The Naughty List, The Ties That Bind, and Fast Zombies Suck. Keene also served as Executive Producer for the feature film I’m Dreaming of a White Doomsday. Keene’s work has been praised by The New York Times, The History Channel, The Howard Stern Show, CNN, The Huffington Post, Bleeding Cool, Publisher’s Weekly, Fangoria, Bloody Disgusting, and Rue Morgue. 

Nathan Ludwig is the co-screenwriter of the film Dead Format. He is the founder and director of the GenreBlast Film Festival, an acclaimed international independent genre film fest that was recently named one of the 50 Best Genre Fests in the world by Moviemaker Magazine.

His published books include the novel Love Potion #666 and his short story collection The Comfy-Cozy Nihilist: a Handbook of Dark Fiction.

With his filmmaking partner, Chad Farmer, he has co-directed four short films.

Nathan is also a film producer, having produced Samantha Kolesnik’s short film Mama’s Boy as well as the feature film adaptation of Worst Laid Plans from Grindhouse Press. In addition to serving as a producer on Dead Format, he is co-writing the screenplay with Mike Lombardo.

Samantha Kolesnik is most known for her two books, True Crime (2020) and Waif (2021), which were originally published by Grindhouse Press. Second editions of both works are available from Off Limits Press. A Spanish language edition of True Crime is also available from La Biblioteca de Carfax.

Kolesnik also has several works of published short fiction, including a small chapbook from Tales From Between called Lonesome Haunts. Her anthology Worst Laid Plans (now out of print) originally published by Grindhouse Press, was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award, and is now a feature film from GenreBlast Films. Worst Laid Plans recently had a limited edition Blu-ray released as part of the HorrorPack subscription service.

Kolesnik’s latest release, Elogona, is a dystopian YA novella, and is out now from Weirdpunk Books. Elogona marks her first published foray into new genres.

How You Can Help

We’ve got the plan and the know how, now we just need the budget. Independent films are made possible by viewers like you!

Obviously the biggest way you can help the film is by picking one (why not two? You deserve it!) of the awesome perks and donating to the campaign. Every dollar you contribute helps get us closer to our goal. We will be adding more perks as the campaign goes on and even stretch goals if we exceed that initial amount. That extra money will allow us to pay for bigger and cooler stuff for the film and also additional days of shooting!

Having said all that, donating isn’t the only way you can support the movie. Spreading the word is a massive help to the project and it doesn’t cost a dime.

Help us defeat the icy tendrils of the algorithms by sharing the campaign on social media like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, & Instagram. The more people that share the link, the more chances of it not being strangled on every platform and people actually seeing it.

This is your chance to support cool indie film and help Mike make his 90’s childhood dreams come true!