Montauk Chronicles Director Explains Latest Delays

Promises were made and pre-orders taken, but Montauk Chronicles‘ scheduled January 14, 2014 release was not to be…again. Could anyone have really been surprised at this point? Christopher Garetano’s long anticipated film about Camp Hero and the legendary Montauk Project conspiracy has followed a long succession of starts and stops since the original version screened here in 2012. That cut was never widely released, and the director said he would create a new, improved version of the film, but it has never seen the full light of day.

Of course, Garetano began accepting money for limited pre-orders back in November, 2013, so his most recent failure to launch comes with a bit more pressure to get the job done. In response, the director released a post-production schedule last month and a video explaining this new set of delays. In it, Garetano recalls the events that led to him reworking the film after the 2011-12 screenings, and he describes an encounter with a mysterious man whose story had to be added, even if it took delaying Montauk Chronicles January release.

The 2011 cut of Montauk Chronicles was a “totally different film,” Garetano says in the video, though both explore legends of secret government experiments, mind control, extraterrestrial contact and time travel that many claim occurred at Camp Hero. “It was a good film, but there were some things that I feel I was only scratching the surface of this conspiracy,” he adds, noting that changes in available technology also motivated him to change it.

A great deal of work followed, and by December, 2013, Garetano says he was ready for the January 14, 2014 release of what he thought was the final cut of the movie. “Until late December, a man contacted me who claimed that he was one of the original Montauk boys in the late stages,” the director explains. “The things he said were quite incredible,” Garetano recalls, noting that he interviewed the man and he described being brought to Camp Hero and led under false pretenses to a hatch and a secret room, where he was likely subject to all sorts of cruel experimentation and indignities, like all the alleged “boys of Montauk.”

“I challenged him to show me where this was,” Garetano says. “And you’ll see in the film ultimately there is a structure similar, almost exactly the way he explained it, in the exact location.”

With this new information, Garetano decided to delay the release and add the man’s story to Montauk Chronicles. “Adding these things to an already finished movie wasn’t an easy task,” he says, adding, “To incorporate it properly, you have to make adjustments throughout.”

While he’d hoped to finish it sooner, Garetano said his latest version of the film is really good. He points out that Montauk Chronicles DVD or Blu-ray also takes viewers far beyond his two-hour feature. “Anybody who has the slightest interest in the Montauk Project or the Montauk conspiracy, so to speak, is going to have a field day with the extras on this disc,” he says, noting that the movie comes with “several documentaries outside the main feature” and extended interviews with all the major players, including The Montauk Project author Preston Nichols, those who claim involvement on both sides of the conspiracy—victims and victimizers—such as Al Bielek and Stewart Swerdlow, as well as parapsychologist Dr. Barry Taff and paranormal journalist Lee Spiegel.
“I’m confident this is the ultimate Montauk movie,” Garetano says, promising the film will be released soon and, perhaps to make up for the delay, all pre-orders will now come with a signed special edition Montauk Chronicles poster.

See the video, which includes visuals from the film, below.

To learn more about Montauk Chronicles, visit mtkchronicles.com.