So what do you get when you put "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, Richard Tyson (from Kindergarten Cop) and Korn's Jonathan Davis in a movie together? I'm not really sure because the movie has been in development hell since 2006. Sin-Jin Smyth is a horror movie written and directed by Ethan Dettenmaier, who also did really nothing else but apparently at one point he was going to be a huge up-and-comer. The movie, which could've been something really good if the writer had been a bit more down to earth with the screenplay, features Piper and Tyson as Federal Marshals ordered to drive to Shin Bone, Kansas and pick up a prisoner during a tornado warning. Really? Shin Bone, Kansas? You couldn't choose a better name for the town than Shin Bone? That's the first thing I'd change. Hell, use Leavenworth or Lansing since they actually have prisons but if you are going to make up a town, give it an actually plausible name.
The movie is supposedly based on the Stull Cemetery legends however I feel something better could've been done because except for the movie poster where a guy is hanging from a tree, I don't see any connection to Stull at all. I've been to Stull. I've walked around the cemetery, traipsed through the old abandoned church and wandered down the county roads that make up Stull's main streets and I can think of a dozen scarier things than what I've heard this movie is about. And unfortunately, the only thing I've ever heard about it is mentioned above. The Marshals know nothing about their prisoner except that his name is Sin-Jin Smyth. Don't get me wrong, I do want to see this movie whether it's released in theaters across the country or if it's released solely to DVD because I do want to see if it is salvageable not only as a horror movie but as a movie based on Stull.
Shortly after I created the Stull Wikipedia page, this guy told me to remove a section talking about the man found hanging from the tree immediately as the image was just viral marketing for the movie. I told him the tragic event is true because it is listed in a book chronicling the communities surrounding Clinton Lake, which includes Stull. That was the first time someone ever mentioned Sin-Jin Smyth to me and I've been drawn to it ever since. I've been waiting for two years for it to come out and I think it will because people are idiots for horror movies, no matter how badly made. I've written many a thing about Stull in my life. In Harter Union, I kill of my best friend by having him get hit by a truck at Stull. I wrote a short story, Stull, a couple years ago even though that takes place in Ohio and not Kansas. My screenplay, and subsequent short story, Tank N Tummy also is based on Stull even though I put everything in nearby Big Springs instead. Before the church was torn down, Stull was an amazing place but is now just like every other unincorporated town of fewer than fifty people in Kansas.
I will keep you updated on Sin-Jin Smyth as much as I can and hopefully it will come out sooner or later because the movie also has Jenna Jameson in it which means...well, really nothing but for a movie of this caliber, she's like Anne Hathaway.