Five years in the making and produced on a budget so small even a micro-budget filmmaker would be shocked, KYLGOR IN THE GRISLY ABYSS is an astonishingly ambitious throwback to the sword-and-sorcery epics of yesteryear, complete with barbarian warriors, hideous monsters, bloody dismemberments and stop-motion creatures. Oh, and every single character is a puppet.

Having slaughtered the evil King Kath and made off with his severed head, barbarian warrior Kylgor and his merry band of survivors are hightailing it out of the kingdom when the ground quite literally disappears beneath them. Plummeting into a vast underground abyss, they find themselves trapped in a subterranean nightmare populated by horrific creatures, treacherous terrain and something considerably nastier lurking in the darkness.

The feature debut of Canadian filmmaker and special make-up effects artist Mason Newton-DeRushie, KYLGOR IN THE GRISLY ABYSS is an unapologetic love letter to the sword-and-sorcery movies that peppered video store shelves in the ’80s. Funded through a $9,000 Indiegogo campaign and painstakingly produced over five years, it packs an impressive amount of puppet blood and gore into its 74-minute runtime.

Newton-DeRushie wants to prove that puppets are just as capable as humans when it comes to going on adventures.

Judging by the number of them that get horribly mutilated in KYLGOR IN THE GRISLY ABYSS, we'd say mission accomplished.