Jury Awards $46,000 to Producer of 1981 Slasher 'Just Before Dawn'

A six-person jury in West Palm Beach, Fla., ruled on Oct. 20 that horror distributor David DeFalco infringed the copyright of Vlado Hreljanovic, the 79-year-old producer of the 1981 slasher film "Just Before Dawn." The award: $46,000 in statutory damages — well below the $150,000 maximum, but the end of a four-year legal fight that started when Hreljanovic found his film streaming on Shudder without his permission.

"I never sold any of this to any of them," Hreljanovic told Variety.

The case is a rare thing: a cult-film rights dispute that actually went to trial. Both sides burned money on principle. DeFalco, a former wrestler who directs under the name "The Demon," ran up roughly $200,000 in legal bills. By trial, he was representing himself, leaning heavily on AI to draft his briefs — an approach that won him at least one favorable pretrial ruling.

What was the fight actually about?

Hreljanovic financed "Just Before Dawn" as a young man. His father, a Yugoslav producer, had helped bring director Milos Forman to the U.S. The low-budget film, set in the Oregon wilderness and starring George Kennedy, has grown in stature over the decades: Horrornews.net called it "one of the most underrated slasher flicks of all time," and it appeared on Variety's list of The 15 Scariest Films You've Never Seen.

The family kept the rights. In 2012, Bill "Banana Man" Olsen of Code Red DVD licensed the film for six years. Hreljanovic let the deal lapse in 2018 after tiring of chasing Olsen for statements.

DeFalco was Olsen's partner and ran his own label, Dark Force Entertainment. By 2022, Olsen was ailing, and DeFalco says Olsen handed him the title so he could license it to Shudder for two years. "These things don't do huge numbers," DeFalco said, noting the deal brought in $10,000. "You have to put out tons of them."

The videos the jury never saw

DeFalco turned the dispute into performance. In livestreams — wearing a white tank top and long black braids — he called Hreljanovic and his lawyers "fucking maggots" and declared: "We've got to defeat these scummy bastards. They've put huge damage to physical media." In one video he brandished a blade at the camera: "Why would you mess with the Demon? I carve you to pieces with this!" Behind him, a man in a skull mask racked a shotgun.

Hreljanovic's lawyers tried to introduce the videos at trial. The judge refused. DeFalco now says, "I can't even remember doing this. I was going on and on. I was calling him every name in the book. They edit it in such a way to make it look like I was threatening them. I never threatened these guys."

For his part, Hreljanovic says he had never met DeFalco. "He threatened me that he's going to bankrupt me… He slandered my sister. I've never known this guy. I have no idea where he came from."

DeFalco also insulted the film itself, calling it a "little shitbag, piece-of-garbage movie that his garbage-ass father made," and argued in court that Hreljanovic couldn't prove a chain of title — the documented trail of ownership transfers for a film.

That argument failed. Olsen died before the suit was filed, as did his brother Walt of Scorpion Releasing a few months later. Every other defendant — AMC Networks (which owns Shudder), Kino Lorber, Amazon, Target, Best Buy and Walmart — settled out of court. Only DeFalco went to verdict.

"We proved the chain of title going back 45 years," said Eric Lee, Hreljanovic's lead trial attorney. "That was the most important issue to my client."

After two days of testimony and a day of deliberations, the jury sided with Hreljanovic. His lawyers argued the key document assigning rights from Olsen to DeFalco had been forged.

What happens now?

DeFalco says he won't pay and is preparing a motion for a new trial — drafted, he says, with AI's help — and vows to beat Hreljanovic "into submission." At the same time, he's quitting physical media entirely: "I'm getting rid of Dark Force. I've had it with physical media." He's pivoting to a streaming venture.

Hreljanovic calls the trial "an expensive exercise" and says he's relieved it's over. He plans a 4K restoration of "Just Before Dawn" next year. "I'll have more time to golf."