Coming Soon: TOGA PARTY MASSACRE on Blu-Ray
I'm finally making my Blu-Ray debut this year, with the release of 1988's TOGA PARTY MASSACRE from VHShitFest and Vinegar Syndrome, dropping sometime in August. This is a massive collection of shorts from the archives, going back as far as my first 8mm and Super8 experiments and culminating in the work I did in film school. Check out the specs, right!
SYNOPSIS: It is 1988. A houseful of unsupervised teenagers are terrorized by a persistent masked psycho whose modus operandi becomes increasingly predictable. Directed by Michael Heagle (“Transylvania Television,” “Go To Hell”), this lost Wisconsin slasher parody from the original "shot-on-video-horror" era features actual teenagers, and was partially shot by a pre-”Coven” Mark Borchardt ("American Movie"). and co-starring "Rock and Roll Ray" Whalen ("Go To Hell," "Vore King"). Included in this compilation is a four hour grab bag of analog-era artifacts by filmmaker Michael Heagle ranging from 8mm to video to 16mm shorts, all lovingly remastered from original camera sources and brimming with interviews, commentaries, and behind the scenes featurettes.
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Feature Runtime: 36 minutes
Total Runtime: 238 minutes (over four hours of extras)
  • “Toga Party Massacre” (1988, 36 minutes) – Digitally Remastered from SVHS camera original with new Stereo Mix
  • Audio commentary with director Michael Heagle
  • Original VHS release cut (36 min)
  • Trailer
  • “Several Sheets to the Wind: The Making of Toga Party Massacre” (30 minutes)
  • “The Metalhead Muse: Interview with Matt Kolata” (7 min)
  • “Mary the Final Girl: An Interview with Celia Farran” (7 min)
  • “The Other Side” (1989, 11 minutes) – New 4K scan from the BW 16mm camera original, with new stereo mix and optional audio commentary by stars Susan Cane and Troy La Faye
  • “Board Game Gothic: The Making of The Other Side” (18 min)
  • “Very Scary” (1989, 5 minutes) 16mm BW horror short remastered from camera original, with director commentary
  • “Night of the Not-Quite-Dead-Yet” (1987, 3 minutes) 16mm BW horror short remastered from camera original, with director commentary
  • “Turning Left on Plummer Avenue” (1990, 12 minutes) Video8, with optional commentary by stars Susan Cane and Troy La Faye
  • “Blood Harvest” (1983, 5 minutes) HD scan from the Super8 with new stereo mix and director commentary
  • “The Apocalypse Fragments” (1982-1991, 13 minutes) shorts, trailers, and false starts in Super8, VHS, and 16mm, with director commentary
  • “Behind the Scenes of Consumed” (1991, 19 minutes)
  • “The Fantasy Experiments” (1983-1984, 16 minutes)  – Super8 and VHS, with director commentary
  • “Tales of a Teenage Stuntman: an Interview with Mark Stenen” (7 minutes)
  • “Ninja: Invisible Assassins” (1983, 1 minute)  – Super8 trailer with director commentary
  • “Dolphania: Crab Attack” (1981, 2 minutes)  –  Super 8 short with director commentary
  • Trailer Reel (1999-2020, 11 min)  – director Michael Heagle’s post-Toga Party output
"Michael, this is not a movie!" This was the ultimate reprimand from my mother, when I was being the worst son I could muster. I guess you could say I have it in the blood. I think I decided what I wanted to do when I saw GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD at the tender age of 5.

I started making movies in the Super8 era, when I was in fifth grade.  I remember the thrill of bringing our first sell-through VHS title home. It was RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK -- and when I was old enough to start buying them, I did in droves, from TERMINATOR to FRIGHT NIGHT. When I went to college (for film), I worked in the video rental room at Best Buy #25, an electronics store in Greenfield Wisconsin!  ​For 25 years I've been working as a college-level instructor of all-things film. In 2000 I started by teaching a class on DVD Authoring, and since then have run the gamut from Visual Effects and Motion Graphics to Storyboarding, Digital Cinema and Animation. 
Check out some of my self-published film books below. Head to the SHOP for movies and merch that might appeal to the like-minded film fan. Or follow me on Facebook, where pretty much every post is about movies, movie fandom, and movie-making!
Big Retro Video and author Michael J Heagle bring you a wild pile of retro-video books, awash with nostalgia for the VHS-era! Synthesizers and Saxophones explores the impact of pop music and MTV on the films of the 1980s. Class of 1988 Fright Film Annual takes on one of the decade's biggest years in horror cinema and digs deep into almost 40 titles from that banner year. The Various Adventures of Dario Dare features two un-filmed screenplays that emerged from the 1999 cult movie Go To Hell. And Takeout: the Unfilmed Screenplay follows suit with Heagle's unmade follow-up to the 1988 SOV film Toga Party Massacre.
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