A 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. The distributor, David DeFalco, goes by “The Demon” and taunted the accountant in a series of unhinged livestream videos, calling him and his lawyers “fucking maggots.” “We’ve got to defeat these scummy bastards,” DeFalco told his fans. For the accountant, Vlado Hreljanovic, 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.
Hreljanovic was young man when he put together financing for “Just Before Dawn,” 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 “one of the most underrated slasher flicks of all time” by Horrornews.net and appeared on Variety‘s list of The 15 Scariest Films You’ve Never Seen. The 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.
That discovery led to four years of litigation that culminated on Oct. 20, when a six-person jury found that DeFalco had infringed on Hreljanovic’s copyright. DeFalco is a former wrestler and director of “Chaos,” a 2005 film that he calls “the most violent film ever made” (and which Roger Ebert called “ugly, nihilistic and cruel — a film I regret having seen.”) For DeFalco, the fight was about protecting the beleaguered cult DVD ecosystem from nefarious “copyright trolls.” Hreljanovic, now 79, spent most of his career in other businesses and is now retired. In 2012, he was approached by Bill “Banana Man” Olsen, who ran Code Red DVD and wanted to license “Just Before Dawn.” 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.
DeFalco was a partner of Olsen’s, and had launched his own horror DVD business, Dark Force Entertainment. By 2022 — four years after the contract had expired — Olsen was ailing and DeFalco was trying to scrape together money to pay for Olsen’s caregiver. Do you think any of these old B-movies have a huge value in the marketplace?” Olsen 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 — all except DeFalco. DeFalco took it personally that Hreljanovic would come after him and after the Olsens, his mentors in the DVD business.
Wearing a white tank top and long black braids, he unleashed expletive-filled rants against Hreljanovic and his lawyers, calling them “fucking maggots.” “Why would you mess with the Demon?” DeFalco asked in one video, brandishing a blade. You really think that’s a good idea?” DeFalco’s legal argument was that Hreljanovic could not establish a chain of title to “Just Before Dawn.” “I don’t really know who the fuck owns it at this point, but I can tell you one person that don’t own it, and that’s fucking Vlado,” he said in a video. He also called the movie a “little shitbag, piece-of-garbage movie that his garbage-ass father made.” Hreljanovic had never met DeFalco and didn’t know quite what to make of it.
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