\n\tA surreal legal battle unfolded last month in a courtroom in West Palm Beach, Fla., where a retired accountant faced off against a distributor of cult horror DVDs over ownership of a 1981 slasher film.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe distributor, David DeFalco<\/a>, goes by \u201cThe Demon\u201d and taunted the accountant in a series of unhinged livestream videos, calling him and his lawyers \u201cfucking maggots.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve got to defeat these scummy bastards,\u201d DeFalco told his fans. \u201cThey\u2019ve put huge damage to physical media.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat the case went to trial at all is unusual, and a testament to both sides\u2019 commitment to principle regardless of legal costs. For the accountant, Vlado Hreljanovic<\/a>, it was about reclaiming title to a movie he had made with his father, a Yugoslav producer who helped bring Milos Forman to the U.S. <\/p>\n \n\tHreljanovic was young man when he put together financing for \u201cJust Before Dawn<\/a>,\u201d a low-budget horror film set in the Oregon wilderness and starring George Kennedy. The film, which has grown in esteem over the years, was called \u201cone of the most underrated slasher flicks of all time\u201d by Horrornews.net and appeared on Variety\u2018s list of The 15 Scariest Films You\u2019ve Never Seen<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tThe rights have remained in the family, so Hreljanovic was startled to find, a few years ago, that the film was streaming on Shudder, the horror site, and that DVDs were selling on Amazon.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI never sold any of this to any of them,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \n\tThat discovery led to four years of litigation that culminated on Oct. 20, when a six-person jury found that DeFalco had infringed on Hreljanovic\u2019s copyright. <\/p>\n \n\tDeFalco is a former wrestler and director of \u201cChaos,\u201d a 2005 film that he calls \u201cthe most violent film ever made\u201d (and which Roger Ebert called \u201cugly, nihilistic and cruel \u2014 a film I regret having seen.\u201d) For DeFalco, the fight was about protecting the beleaguered cult DVD ecosystem from nefarious \u201ccopyright trolls.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHreljanovic, now 79, spent most of his career in other businesses and is now retired. In 2012, he was approached by Bill \u201cBanana Man\u201d Olsen, who ran Code Red DVD and wanted to license \u201cJust Before Dawn.\u201d Hreljanovic agreed to a six-year deal, but was unhappy with having to chase him down for statements and decided to let it lapse in 2018.<\/p>\n \n\tDeFalco was a partner of Olsen\u2019s, and had launched his own horror DVD business, Dark Force Entertainment. By 2022 \u2014 four years after the contract had expired \u2014 Olsen was ailing and DeFalco was trying to scrape together money to pay for Olsen\u2019s caregiver.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cHe gives me the title,\u201d DeFalco says. \u201cHe says go license it to Shudder for two years.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOlsen had hundreds of such titles.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThese things don\u2019t do huge numbers,\u201d DeFalco tells Variety, saying the \u201cJust Before Dawn\u201d deal reaped $10,000. \u201cYou have to put out tons of them. Do you think any of these old B-movies have a huge value in the marketplace?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOlsen died before the suit was filed, so Hreljanovic went after his estate and after his brother, Walt, who ran Scorpion Releasing. He also named AMC Networks, which owns Shudder, as well as Kino Lorber, Amazon, Target, Best Buy and Walmart. Walt Olsen died a few months later, and the other defendants reached out-of-court settlements \u2014 all except DeFalco.<\/p>\n \n\tDeFalco took it personally that Hreljanovic would come after him and after the Olsens, his mentors in the DVD business.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m willing to destroy myself to get at you guys,\u201d he said on a livestream. \u201cThis is going to be the war of the century.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDeFalco hyped up the dispute for his online fanbase. Wearing a white tank top and long black braids, he unleashed expletive-filled rants against Hreljanovic and his lawyers, calling them \u201cfucking maggots.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhy would you mess with the Demon?\u201d DeFalco asked in one video, brandishing a blade. \u201cI carve you to pieces with this!\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBehind him, a man in a skull mask could be seen racking a shotgun. \u201cThis dude is a killer,\u201d DeFalco said. \u201cYou want to fuck with us?! You really think that\u2019s a good idea?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDeFalco\u2019s legal argument was that Hreljanovic could not establish a chain of title to \u201cJust Before Dawn.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI don\u2019t really know who the fuck owns it at this point, but I can tell you one person that don\u2019t own it, and that\u2019s fucking Vlado,\u201d he said in a video. He also called the movie a \u201clittle shitbag, piece-of-garbage movie that his garbage-ass father made.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHreljanovic had never met DeFalco and didn\u2019t know quite what to make of it.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cHis language is very rosy,\u201d Hreljanovic says. \u201cHe threatened me that he\u2019s going to bankrupt me\u2026 He slandered my sister. I\u2019ve never known this guy. I have no idea where he came from.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDeFalco ran up bills of about $200,000 on his legal defense. By the time of the trial, he was representing himself. He was not sure he would be able to do it, but he relied heavily on AI to draft his briefs \u2014 even winning a favorable pretrial ruling.<\/p>\n \n\tHe showed up to court with his braids, black shirt, and black shoes with flames on the side. It caught the eye of the courtroom staff and of the opposing side.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt was entertaining,\u201d Hreljanovic said.<\/p>\n \n\tAt the trial, Hreljanovic\u2019s lawyers sought to introduce the videos of DeFalco taunting their client \u2014 but the judge didn\u2019t allow it.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI can\u2019t even remember doing this,\u201d DeFalco says. \u201cI was going on and on. I was calling him every name in the book. They edit it in such a way to make it look like I was threatening them. I never threatened these guys.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHreljanovic\u2019s lawyers said that a key document \u2014 purportedly assigning the rights from Olsen to DeFalco \u2014 had been forged. And they also showed documents establishing that Hreljanovic still owns the copyright.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe proved the chain of title going back 45 years,\u201d said Eric Lee, Hreljanovic\u2019s lead trial attorney. \u201cThat was the most important issue to my client.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAfter two days of testimony and a day of deliberations, the jury found in Hreljanovic\u2019s favor and awarded $46,000 \u2014 less than the maximum $150,000 \u2014 in statutory damages.<\/p>\n \n\tDeFalco has no plans to pay, and is preparing to ask for a new trial. \u201cThere\u2019s certain things the AI is putting together to file the motion,\u201d he says, adding that he still plans to beat Hreljanovic \u201cinto submission.\u201d But as he turns his attention to a new streaming venture, he is done with DVDs.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m getting rid of Dark Force,\u201d he says, saying his \u201cnice little lifestyle business\u201d had been dealt a setback by the litigation. \u201cI\u2019ve had it with physical media.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHreljanovic is happy that \u201cJust Before Dawn\u201d still has a cult following, and says he plans to bring out a 4K restoration next year. He says the trial was \u201can expensive exercise\u201d and is relieved it\u2019s over.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019ll have more time to golf.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A surreal legal battle unfolded last month in a courtroom in West Palm Beach, Fla., where a retired…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[299839,146,85,46,47311,299840],"class_list":["post-665923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-david-defalco","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-just-before-dawn","tag-vlado-hreljanovic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}