Austin Powers had good reasons for being scared of carny folk: “Nomads, you know. Smell like
cabbage. Little hands.” This traveling fair is even worse. It is downright evil,
in a smells-like-Sulphur kind of way. However, Daisy will try to scheme her way
out of the supernatural sideshow that bears her name in the web-series Welcome to Daisyland, directed and
co-written by Tony E. Valenzuela, which premieres on BlackBoxTV’s YouTube channel
this Thursday (Valentine’s Day).
The
first thing you will notice about Welcome
is the unsubtly blaring hard rock soundtrack provided by the Dead Daisies
(co-founded by series co-executive producer David Lowy). It is so pervasive, it
the web-series could almost be dismissed as a collection of music videos for
the band, but there is a legit reason for all the swamp rock. Daisy agreed to
serve as the “Ringmaster” of the infernal carnival as part of a Faustian
bargain she struck with a mysterious demon to bring back her rocker lover after
he died from a drug overdose. Now she travels through the forgotten backwaters
of flyover country, along Route 666, picking up souls for her master.
The
first four episodes introduce some of Daisy’s sinister colleagues and their signature
killing styles, but the promised conflict between Daisy and her Mephistophelean
puppet master are far more intriguing. Each episode is about five to seven
minutes, including the opening and closing credits, so it is not a huge
investment of time. Nevertheless, it is not as grabby right out of the gate as
the first two episodes of Ravenwolf Towers,
which Full Moon seems to have converted from a web series into a feature
release.
Nevertheless,
Pippa Sonuga has a nice vampy screen presence and maintains the character’s
mysteriously ambiguous nature, at least thus far. There seems to be a good deal
of improvement over the course of the first episode to the fourth, but it still
probably isn’t essential viewing. For fans of the Dead Daisies and carnival-circus-themed
horror, Welcome to Daisyland premieres
this Thursday (2/14), via BlackBoxTV.
