Watch: Rodney Ascher’s “S FROM HELL”; a strange, short precursor to “ROOM 237″

While it now personifies little more than bland teen thrillers, Screen Gems apparently took the mid-60s by storm with their “S From Hell,” a red, occultish logo burnt into the brain of impressionable children and distorted into something entirely evil by their imagination. Prior to his upcoming chronicle of the many interpretations of Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING, director Rodney Ascher explored this other avenue of cinematic strange in similar, exceptional style. 

Much like the must-see ROOM 237, Ascher defies the tradition of talking heads and through a series of familiar, and hypnotically repeated, cinematic images and dramatizations, opens the audience to a state that could be just as impressionable or accepting of the absurdity on display. With THE SHINING-focused doc out in select theaters and On Demand in just over a week (March 29), the Sundance Film Festival’s YouTube channel saw fit to reintroduce THE S FROM HELL It’s a wild, weird watch that, while funny, certainly touches on the frightening hold branding has in our world.

For more on Rodney Ascher and ROOM 237, visit the director’s official site and keep an eye on Fango over the next week.