Overview: Fierce, gritty and micro-budget, the films of Blake Eckard are also incredibly controlled, intensely personal and genuinely disturbing expressions of true independent cinema. Guaranteed to agitate the viewer’s soul are Bubba Moon Face (2011) and Coyotes Kill for Fun (2017), two amazing feature films in Eckard’s oeuvre.

After a newborn baby is dumped in his lap, Horton Bucks (Tyler Messner) finds himself at the center of a tangled web of familial malevolence in Bubba Moon Face. Shot in a scant five days, with Eckard’s own child at its center, the film manages to create an oppressively authentic atmosphere of rural rancidity where love and kindness are in short supply. But a sliver of hope comes with the character of Horton, leading to what might be the least-awful resolution to an impossibly bleak situation.

In Coyotes Kill for Fun, a backwoods babysitter agrees to help an abused mother of two escape her dangerous boyfriend, but his brother is headed back to the area and he has vengeance on his mind. In contrast to the swift production of this disc’s companion feature, Coyotes Kill for Fun was filmed over three years in Missouri, Montana and L.A., with a trio of cinematographers shooting various chunks (Eckard, Bubba cinematographer Cody Stokes, and indie legend Jon Jost). But despite its on-again, off-again production, the film maintains a totally consistent - and utterly nightmarish - vision.

DVD Verdict: Let’s start with Bubba Moon Face (2011), which tells the story of a down-on-his-luck drifter, stranded without money in the place of his rural Missouri upbringing, who hooks up with an old flame, and finds himself caring for his brother’s infant child.

Grimier, fiercer, and more ambiguous than a lot of films of its ilk, once we move through the opening plot, the chain-smoking, abrasive Sabetha (Sylvia Geiger) appears, resentfully lugging a baby girl she claims is Stanton’s. She is followed by the brothers’ loathsome, manipulative father, Gus (Joe Hanrahan), a meth-addled toad of a man whose very presence sets Horton’s fury simmering. Meanwhile, Horton circles a trick-turning, hollow-eyed bartender, Leslie (Misty Ballew), in a questionable effort to rekindle their prior, underage fumblings.

Bubba Moon Face hews closely to Horton’s perspective throughout its brisk 85-minute running time, but the film refuses categorization as a character study. Director Eckard shutters Messner behind a careless haircut, shaggy mustache, and child molester spectacles, effectively obscuring his performer from detailed emotional examination. The script offers scant peeks into Horton’s self-conception, which seems defined not by ambitions but rancor. He gazes with squinting pensiveness at the cold farmland and muddy streams that encircle him, betraying only a vague distaste for everything and everyone he sees.

Eckard commendably refrains from glossing Horton’s rather repulsive flaws, first suggesting and then starkly illustrating his inclination to explosive violence. The glimpses the film provides into Horton’s moral life are hazy. The stray tinglings of the man’s conscience find expression almost exclusively through his actions, which coalesce—as much to his surprise as anyone’s--around his neglected little niece, offhandedly nicknamed Bubba.

There are no lonely, good-hearted souls amid the film’s squalor. Bubba Moon Face proves to be a much more pitiless and harrowing tale, down to a conclusion that manages to be appalling and also the least awful resolution to an abominable situation. Needless to say, the film’s unremitting displays of human ugliness may repel viewers whose taste for the luridly miserable is limited.

Nonetheless, Eckard’s distinctive melding of dingy realism and florid melodrama makes Bubba Moon Face an fascinating work, and makes it easy to forgive the shoestring-budget seams in its performances, editing, and aesthetic.

Next up is Coyotes Kill for Fun (2017), which is the story of a violent crime unfolding when a backwoods babysitter agrees to help an abused mother escape her lunatic boyfriend.

This babysitter agrees to help an abused mother of two escape her lunatic boyfriend, but his psychotic brother is headed back to the area, and he has a fraught history with everyone involved. Filmed over three years in Missouri, Montana, and LA, “Coyotes” had a long gestation: Two-thirds was first shot back in March 2014, and a trio of cinematographers — Eckard, St. Louisan Cody Stokes, and American-indie legend Jon Jost — passed the baton behind the camera. Despite the prolonged production, “Coyotes” maintains a totally consistent — and utterly original — vision.

I was deeply impressed with the cinematic command of this film, but I definitely do not want to give too much away…it’s best to experience it without too much explanation—instead, I will give a few impressions, I dare not lessen the subtle impact of the film.

This film isn’t a comedy, but it isn’t a traditional horror film either. The acting is dexterous. Everyone completely inhabits their characters. I certainly don’t know how much theatrical background they have or if they are truly ‘rural’ people, but they certainly act as if they have lived grueling lives.

Easily, the women and children in the film have had the worst experiences. They live Tragic, sad lives: the men are abusive, psychotic and filled with masculine aggression. Some are simply stupid…some are evil. Children try valiantly to run and hide from the evil, but it’s futile, considering how oppressive the landscape is for anyone helpless and in need of love.

Love is in short supply in this film. Nightmares warmly saturate the film with impending death; hope is in short supply. This is an Independent film that should be experienced, but I warn you, it’s hard as hell to look away.