Revelation Trail (2013) poster

Revelation Trail (2013)

Rating:


USA. 2013.

Crew

Director – John Gibson, Screenplay – John Gibson & Daniel Van Thomas, Producers – Josh Alperin, Ben Bradwell, Kathy Christian, John Gibson, Jeremy McKeel, Steven Oder, Lydia Anne Parrish & Kip Piper, Photography – Bryan Houston & Chas Pangborn, Music – Paul Wurth, Makeup Effects – B.A.M. FX (Supervisor – Bud Stross). Production Company – Living End Productions/Extra Life Media.

Cast

Daniel Van Thomas (The Preacher), Daniel Britt (Marshal Edwards), Robert Valentine (Samuel Beard), Jordan Elizabeth Goettling (Isabelle), Christopher Vanderschmidt (James), Lee Vervoort (Dr Adlai Benjamin Morris), Paul Morris (Isiah Bannon), Donald Fleming (Jakob Bannon)


Plot

The small town of Bethany on the Western frontier in 1882. The local preacher gives shelter to local no-goods the Bannon brothers. In the night, the brothers argue and one shoots the other and dumps their body in the river. The next morning the murdered body rises and attacks the preacher’s wife and young son, devouring their flesh. The preacher follows the undead brother into town and shoots him in the main street. The sheriff Marshal Edwards arrests the preacher only to then find the town being overrun by the rapidly spreading zombie threat. He releases the preacher and together the two of them eliminate the massed undead. They then abandon the town and travel across the wilderness, eliminating the risen dead wherever they see them.


The horror film and the Western have had a series of interestingly odd crosshatches ever since the Western was mixed up with the vampire film in Curse of the Undead (1959) and Billy the Kid Vs Dracula (1965). I have a detailed essay on the subject here with Weird Westerns. The zombie Western came along a few years later with the likes of Fistful of Brains (2006), The Quick and the Undead (2006), Undead or Alive (2007), The Dead and the Damned (2010) and sequels, Gallowwalkers (2012) and Dead 7 (2016). Revelation Trail is another of these Zombie Westerns. I originally overlooked it, mistaking it for one of the series of Christian End Times films that came out around the same time, beginning with Revelation Road: The Beginning of the End (2014).

As one among several other Westerns combined with the Zombie Film, you search for any touches that make this film distinctive. Eventually. Revelation Trail emerges as quite a reasonable entry in this genre niche. Daniel Van Thomas’s preacher (he is never given any other name) is given some quite evocative voiceover dialogue. Everything builds to a grim apocalyptic siege at the fort. It certainly emerges as better than The Quick and the Dead and The Dead and the Damned, although not quite up with Exit Humanity (2011), which it often resembles.

Zombie hunters - Preacher (Daniel Van Thomas) and Marshal Edwards (Daniel Britt) in Revelation Trail (2013)
Zombie hunters – (l to r) Preacher (Daniel Van Thomas) and Marshal Edwards (Daniel Britt)

Revelation Trail was made on low-budget resources where all involved seem to be putting in effort above and beyond to make it work. The film was built on reconstructed sets in Kentucky with modern clothing reconditioned to get a period feel. It is a surprise that Daniel Van Thomas, who co-writes the script with director John Gibson, never went on to do much else besides this, as he has strong physical features and definite leading man potential.

This is the only film directed by John Gibson. He appears to have also overseen an early web series Revelation Trail: Lilith’s Story (2010), which consists of six very brief episodes that consist of drawings with narration and tell the story that immediately precedes the events here.


Trailer here


Director:
Actors: ,
Category:
Themes: , , ,