Driven Mad with Revenge, The Doctor’s Wife has Wanton, EVIL plans for Those Responsible for his Death! “She Killed in Ecstasy” reviewed! (Severin Films / 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Dr. Johnson is determined to save countless lives from diseases, including cancer, by experimenting his research on human embryos with great results.  However, the more conversative medical board deems his actions too inhumane and unethical for science, rejecting his research, expelling him from the medical board, and revoking his license to practice medicine.  Unable to cope with the loss, Dr. Johnson slowly slips into insanity with his former colleagues’ condemnations rolling through his thoughts to the point where he ultimately takes his own life with one slice of the wrist.  His beloving and dedicated wife reels over his death and swears to avenge him by luring each of the four into a seductive death trap.  Mrs. Johnson entices the respectable professionals one-by-one with her desirable femininity into sordid circumstances that leaves them vulnerable for vengeance but at what cost to her own sanity and the police hot on her trail.

Jesús Franco, aka Jess Franco, writes and directs, under the pseudonym of the Americanized Frank Hollman, a tit-for-tat revenger of European sleaze under the contextual themes of controversial medical research, revenge, and hypocritical moralities with a femme fatale kicker.  The film is called “She Killed in Ecstasy” and was released the same year as Franco’s auteur homoerotic “Vampyros Lesbo” of 1971 and as a pair, the two films see a 4K caliber upgrade from the established genre boutique label Severin with UHD Blu-rays that star sultry actress Soledad Miranda.  Filmed in Spain, more specifically in the Valenciana providence, and like his “Vampyros Lesbos,” “She Killed in Ecstasy” is also a German production produced under Artur Brauner (“The Devil Came from Akasava”) and Arturo Marcos (“Count Dracula”), both of whom worked with Franco on “Vampyros Lesbos,” with Karl Heinz Mannchen returning as well to serve as executive producer under the production banner of Tele-Cine Film und Fernesehproduktion in collaboration with Fénix Cooperativa Cinematográfica. 

If you thought Spanish actress sizzled as a sapphic bloodsucker in “Vampyros Lesbos,” seeing her manipulate those who’ve done her and her husband (“Fred Williams, “The Red Nights of the Gestapo”) wrong with weaponized sex is the naked, full-bodied zenith of her career as the vehemently vindictive Mrs. Johnson.  “She Killed in Ecstasy” offers Miranda more range of arc that takes her happiness, squashes it, and forces her to sex her way through destroying the lives of those who’ve destroyed her own relationship but with each kill slowly piecing away her soul and sanity.  It takes a woman’s touch to evoke the sordid true selves of the husband-damning medical board who are riddled with their own vices that stray not too far from Mr. Johnson’s unethical research.  Masochism, lesbianism, perversion – these are the sexualized traits of the medical board who fall into Mrs. Johnson’s snare to be snuffed out in the summit throes of sexual foreplay, distracted by her iconic figure, lush bush, and deep brown hair and eyes.  Primarily Swiss and Swedish actors makeup the medical board with Paul Muller (“Lady Frankenstein,” “Eugenie de Sade”) as the Dr. Franklin Houston, Howard Vernon (“Angel of Death,” “Zombie Lake”) as Prof. Johnathan Walker, and Ewa Strömberg (“The College Girl Murders”) returning to costar alongside Miranda from “Vampyros Lesbos” as the only woman in the group as Dr. Crawford while Jess Franco himself takes the last spot as Dr. Donen, integrating himself into the madness.  The last principal cast member is “The Horror of Blackwood Castle’s” Horst Tappert and the German actor plays the generic role of a police Inspector monitoring and tracking a killer unleashing knife-edge fury on specific medical professionals.  The Inspector is essentially a throwaway role with no real contribution to the narrative other than to be an aimless cat chasing it’s own tail with no real sleuth work; instead, the Inspector has the persona attributes and gaited grace of a cool, calm, and collected know-it-all except the killer’s identity and motive. 

Now, the premise itself is promising, like most revenge thriller that exploits sexual provocatively for a death strike, but Franco’s narrative is hindered on being formulaic without any kind of deviation from one kill to the next as Mrs. Johnson spins the same trap of being the promiscuous spider enticing the fly to its bed of web.  Mrs. Johnson does disguise herself differently for every scenario and opportunity to lure, attract, and feast upon her targeted prey, using mostly a melee knife from her garter to slit their throats and castrate them as if to say, you killed my husband, now I take your manhood!   Pure spite drives her until the unhinge of insanity takes the helm with each kill taking a little bit of her soul with each murder.  “She Killed in Ecstasy” fits into Franco’s framing and depth of shots by shooting with wide landscapes and incorporating actors as longshots to engulf them in the environment without it feeling isolating or an immense sense of doom.  Franco can also get intimate with closeups as the actors get intimate themselves, it’s as if Mrs. Johnsons is reeling in the unsuspecting lustful and condemning medical board from the wide, long shots through class panes and door frames to between the sheets that is tightly shot on faces, body parts, and the eventual fatal act. 

The second act on a two part Jess Franco and Soledad Miranda film 4K UHD and Blu-ray release from Severin Films, “She Killed in Ecstasy” comes dual formatted with a HVEC encoded BD100 and a AVC ended BD50 and with their respective resolutions of 2160p ultra high-definition and 1080p high-definition.  The work Severin has done is impeccable with a well diffused, well saturated image containing natural and balanced film stock grain and has immersive details.  There’s not a ton of notable differences between the two formats with more of the darker shades or tenebrous areas on the UHD having a richer control in the decoding that has spot yet minor banding on the standard Blu-ray.  Skin tones and textures never break from normal tones and into splotchy territory; it’s quite an achievement to make the newly scanned 4K image from the original camera negative appear like a fresh film right off the digital scan.  The audio is not as complex with just a simple German language mono track with optional English subtitles that’s about as good as it would be sound on any system setup with coequal layers between dialogue, ambience, and soundtrack.  With an international cast, not all the cast speak German with the film’s dialogue, and ambient, layer produced through ADR with German voice actors.  The produced result is overall clean with minor interference static from the used equipment but does not impede verbal progression and dynamics between characters.  English subtitles appeared accurate and well-placed.  The UHD disc has little-to-no special features in what is essentially a feature-only disc that has an accompany German trailer for the film.  The Blu-ray has all the extra glory with a Jess Franco novel author Stephen Thrower interview Ecstasy in Rage,” a location visit In the Land of Franco Part 13, an archived interview with Jess Franco before his death Jess Killed in Ecstasy, an archive interview with actress Soledad Miranda Sublime Soledad, and an archive interview with actor Paul Muller.  The German trailer is also on the Blu-ray disc.  Much like ‘Vampyros Lesbos,” “She Killed in Ecstasy “ has a O-ring slipcover with commissioned graphic art that resembles the original poster art and the Shriek Show DVD cover with Soledad Miranda in one of her rememberable scenes of her character’s sanity crumbling in a upright fetal on a couch moment.  The backside of the slipcover offers up some of her character’s rage which is intense amongst the eyes and fascial expressions.  The black UHD Amaray case comes with a single sided sleeve with original film artwork and no tangible materials inserted inside.    The region free release for both formats provides all Franco and genre fans with a not rated film clocking in at 80 minutes. 

Last Rites: A must-see Jess Franco film for exploitational revenge and a must have physical release for Jess Franco fans, “She Kills in Ecstasy” is an alluring revenge-thriller that exposes thin morality hypocrisy as well as a deepening madness over grief and death.

EVIL’s Duality May Be More Than What Meets the Eye. “The Ugly” reviewed! (Unearthed Classics / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Ugly” Limited Edition Blu-ray Now Available!

A famed female psychologist is requested to work the possible acquittal case of a serial killer named Simon Cartwright and understand his possible motive for slashing his victim’s throats at seemingly random.  Unscrupulously tormented by a pair of odd orderlies, Simon Cartwright calmly carries himself as a humble, articulate, and friendly conversationalist and confessed killer with a darker side, an ugly side that drives him to kill at will.  Cartwright gives her the anecdotal trappings of his kills that prove to be unprovoked and unsystematic from a side of him he can’t ignore.  Confounded by this, the psychologist pushes him to brink for an exact reason, one Cartwright keeps buried deep inside his subconscious that may or may not be supernaturally driven.  As Cartwright’s past continues to haunt him and with the psychologist assertive herself into his psyche, the dangerous method of analyzing criminal behavior won’t stop a plagued killer from killing again as his next victim might just be sitting across from him in the cross-examination room.  

Themes of split personality, past abuse and trauma, and the limited authority of control course through “The Ugly’s” veins like acid, sweltering with tension and ready to burn a hole through the safety of custody and storytelling once the twisted truth is told.  New Zealand filmmaker Scott Reynolds debuted with his feature length film back in 1997. Reynolds also wrote the script that kept an intimate approach between killer and doctor, kept audiences guessing the supernatural aspect, and made taut the lead-up moments filled with human tenderness that went into subsequent violence that painted a portrait of a conflicted killer afflicted by derangement that might not be his own.  Shot in Auckland, New Zealand, “The Ugly” is a production of Essential Films with funds from the New Zealand Film Commission and is produced by “Jack be Nimble” producer Jonathan Dowling.

In a vague mirroring of Dr. Hannibal Lector and FBI Clarice Starling from “Silence of the Lambs,” there’s still the intention to understand the mind of a serial killer.  In the Clarice-like role is a civilian, a psychologist to be more precise, one that has received recognition to get the most dangerous criminals released from incarceration, is Dr. Karen Schumaker, played by Rebecca Hobbs (“Lost Souls”) that would be her biggest lead role in the New Zealand film market.  Opposite her, across the table mostly and chained to a chair, is Paolo Rotondo with a cold stare and a handsome face that doesn’t exactly say I’m a serial killer.  When graced with a prosthetic that makes half his face appear melted or scared in fleeting glimmers or reflections, scenes that often felt needed more attention or a longer say, that’s when Rotondo could exact his intimidation upon the viewer as the true monster, as Cartwright has referred to himself in more words.  Instead, Cartwright’s a clean shaven, well-dressed, and respectable Patrick Batman type without the three-piece suit and the Huey Lewis and the News obsession and not as King’s British and as quirky in his demeanor as Anthony Hopkins as Lector.  Both characters fall and fail hard to the supporting case of the two orderlies and their employing resident psychologist.  Sporting dreads and walking with confidence like a WWE wrestling being introduced, Paul Glover (“The Locals”) has more flavor in his mostly stoic intimidating orderly performance alongside his more animated and ragdoll movement buddy in Chris Graham (“Moby Dick”) as the two mistreat the Cartwright with disdain.  Their employer, Dr. Marlowe, has a snooty creepiness about him that’s akin to being a mad scientist-type that’s fits into the goon orderly dynamic with Roy Ward (“Perfect Creature”) at the helm.  Darien Takle and Vanessa Byrnes costar as chief supports. 

‘The Ugly” is certainly a child of the 1990s with that glossy gleam without it a lens flare spark of digital anamorphic.  The aesthetic matches the subject matter with dreary, cold, and gloomy nu metal nuisances, teetering on the edge of being also grungy.  Editor Wayne Cook’s transitions and cuts are indicative of the era in filmmaking with whooshing transitions and flashes of disorienting cuts, such as white outs or seamless segues.  This techniques also translates into Simon Cartwright’s headspace with acute and fleeting glimpses of his mental state visualized into the real word, or it’s the real world sheathed by a layer from beyond the grave, but either way his perspective quickly provides a glimpse into his reason for killing, his duplicitous degradation into insanity, and that it can be projected to others outside the exclusive rights of his person.  Most of the story is told anecdotally through Cartwright’s perspective and as storyteller, his events are muddled by his own struggle with killing that becomes more evident as the story progresses.  What’s most interesting about Reynold’s film is it’s reality bending to keep the audience engaged as he puts the psychologist character, Dr. Karen Schumaker for those who forgot, right into the frame of his story as a third party speaking directly to Cartwright and only Cartwright can see and hear, but she’s implemented naturally as if sitting at the table with the storied characters or being a part of a three-way conversation that but not truly.  Between these style characteristics and the narrative’s odd macabre, along with the deep black, sour crude oil shaded blood, “The Ugly” is grimly beautiful with visuals and stimulating to watch. 

Unearthed Films, under their Unearthed Classics sublabel, provide a new Collector’s Edition Blu-ray release to the table.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, BD50 has stored on it a 4K restoration from the film’s original 35mm interpositive and looks neat as a pin presented in it’s 1.77:1 widescreen aspect ratio, rendered with a well-diffused color palette of a lighter blues and grays that contrast starkly with the deeper black blood in a semblance of a dystopian or alternate reality in circa late 90s to early 2000s films.  Saturation is copious with all colors and the details are sharp mostly in the peripheral setting with the focal objects having be defined nicely but there is some textural loss on the skin and clothing under its higher contrast.  The audio formats within are an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 Stereo of the original theatrical audio and a relatively uncommon 4.0 DTS-HD MA that caters to the side and back channels rather than a central output and a LFE subwoofer, so the track is not as deep and resonating and it discerns as such with more range and less punchy impact that encompasses at the dialogue, ambience, Foley, and soundtrack excellently considering.  Dialogue is clean and clear without obstruction or touchups to the original audio files.  English SHD and Subtitles are available for selection.  The collector’s edition contents include an isolated score from composer Victoria Kelly (“Black Sheep,” “The Locals”), a 1997 radio interview from New Zealand with writer-director Scott Reynolds, an audio commentary with chief principal actors Paolo Rotondo and Rebecca Hobbs, Reynolds’ early 90’s short films “A Game With No Rules” and “The M1nute,” “The Ugly Visual Essay” compares “The Ugly” to true crime serial killers of reality, a photo gallery, and the original theatrical trailer.  The physical presence of “The Ugly” is anything but with it’s beautiful packaged design, beginning with the commissioned Slipcover cover art that wholly embodies the essence of the story, rather than being an exploitative mislead, by Scott Jackson of Monsterman Graphic.  The clear Blu-ray Amaray case has a reversible sleeve with the same Jackson art with the reverse containing the film’s original one-sheet artwork.  Inside is a 6-page booklet a pair of essays by Jason Jenkins along with monochrome and colored stills.  The disc is also pressed with a tense hunting scene as well.  The 18th Blu-ray title for the Unearthed Films’ sublabel is region A locked, not rated, and has a runtime of 93 minutes.

Last Rites: As far as understanding the mind of a New Zealand serial killer, Scott Reynold’s “The Ugly” depth charges reality with not only a promising supernatural layer but also a strange world these characters live and act against that invigorates a rather talkative and anecdotal story with eccentric and uncomfortable personalities that rival the killer himself.

“The Ugly” Limited Edition Blu-ray Now Available!

C-Cups, D-Cups, and EVIL-Cups All Must Pay! “Big Boobs Buster” reviewed! (Whole Grain Pictures / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own “Big Boobs Buster” on Blu-ray Home Video!

Masako is well-liked amongst her high school peers, has an above average grades, and is a cyclist athlete with a killer body.  The one thing Masako doesn’t have but desperate wants is the popular boy Bando to be her boyfriend.  When Masako asks Bando to be his girlfriend, Bando rejects her requests on the account of her washboard chest.  Assigning blame to all her well-endowed classmates beyond a B-cup, Masako transforms into the chesty vigilante, Big Boobs Buster, by subduing targets from a pervert’s stolen list of girls with large breasts and making spray casts of their chests to blackmail them with exposure if they ever date Bando or any other boys on campus.  When she’s finally caught and discovered by a track and field competitor with big boobs, one who also might like girls more than boys, Masako is ironically herself blackmailed into being a substitute in a sprint competition her competitive blackmailer can’t compete in due to injury. During vigorous train, Masako begins to develop friendship feelings and questions the reasons for her body image crusade.

For all you flat chested women out there, don’t fear!  “Big Boobs Buster” is here!  Hailing from Japan, the adult-oriented comedic has a superhero Marvel has yet to call to the frontline!  Director Hisashi Watanabe embraces his debut directorial with burlesque eroticism that touches upon the breast of society’s biggest problems – body shaming and body positivity.  Watanabe pens the script based off a Manga by Kôichirô Yasunaga of the same title with the film adaptation and its sequel, “Big Boobs Buster 2,” released the same year, 1990 directly onto home video, or what’s called in Japan, V-Cinema.  Released by the Tohokushinsha Film Corporation, the company behind the anime-turned-live-action film “Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl” and produced a feature film out of the Android Kikaider series with  Mechanical Violator Hakaider, as well as being a part of video game series, such as Sonic and Final Fantasy, the producing team consists of “Appleseed’s” Tarô Maki and “Wild Zero’s” Katsuaki Takemoto.

The live-action OAV, aka Live Action Original Animated Video, has a game cast of lesser-known actor and Japanese AV idols that really perk up the story.  Harumi Kai leads the charge as the titular character, and the “Oona Rambo” actresses pulls off the sugar-and-spice Masako by being an all-around good schoolgirl scorned by a superficial boy named Bando (Masakazu Arai, “Shigatsu kaidan”) who moonlights is in a tight outfit and disguise being a shakedown artist against girls a C-cup or larger.  In the process of snaring them and spray casting a mold of their chest, she inadvertently turns them on denoting a bit of homoeroticism between the women that continues when she meets field and track star Kyoko Mitoizumi who calls her bluff and becomes uncomfortably touchy-feely with Masako.  Played by Uran Hirosaki, Kyoto is a form of positivity and no fear that puts Masako in a corner of uncertainty but the two eventually become friends with quid pro quo arrangements both will benefit from.  The rest of the case, which in this case are the big-chested highschoolers Masako seeks to humiliate because of her own insecurities, are comprised of Japanese AV idols with Mariko Itsuki (“Groper Train:  Push It Deep!”), Marina Matsumoto (“Stepmother Slave”), and Natsuko Kayama (“Big Boobs Sisters:  The Yellow Panties of Happiness”) as well as a few AV actors in the sought after and large breast-loving role with Masakazu Arai and Tôru Minegishi (“Godzilla vs. Biollante”) and Aya Katsuragi (“Evil Dead Trap”) as Masako’s parents who have this unexplained odd relationship in the peripheral that doesn’t contribute much, or anything at all, to the core elements. 

With a title like “Big Boobs Buster,” audiences can expect an outrageous comedy that lives up to live-action anime standards with an off-the-cuff superheroine on a crusade against one of the most arbitrary and non-threatening to society foci that only affects a flat-chested girl’s ego – big boobs.  Having never read Kôichirô Yasunaga’s manga and with only director Hisashi Watanabe’s film to provide my Johnny-Five Alive input data center, “Big Boobs Buster” is intoxicated with Masako’s character arc of self-deprivation toward body positivity through a minefield of scorn-driven retribution against the wrong and innocently lot of larger than C-cups.  Through this zany premise, that’s about as innocently wanton as cold be, director Watanabe and cinematographer Jun Abe spruce and polish this knob with mood abstracting backlighting and vivify scenes with power poses and interesting framing to closely resemble manga panel moments and the editing by Shigeru Okuhara (“Orgasm:  Mariko”) is multifaceted to tell a quick action narrative with ease of scene cuts and transitions that make “Big Boobs Buster” a breeze to digest it’s melon-sized mania.  The story doesn’t glide through with a single flightpath of the superheroine picking off well-endowed girls one-at-a-time only to be discovered to enact a plot point problem with the antagonist; instead, the story takes a 180 degree turn toward a whole new level of thematic dilemma in trying to win a sprint race for an enemy-turned-friend.  Summarized with a montage of tough exercises that culminate toward Masako being a beast at sprinting strength, the “Big Boobs Buster”  campaign goes into hibernation until the race is done, a subplot that insidiously takes over as the main plot, cleaving the already less than a full-length feature film in half. 

Catalogued at number four on the Whole Grain Pictures label, “Big Boobs Buster” is one large cup size of comedic body positivity done in the style of live action anime.  The new 4K remaster is pulled stems from the original camera 5mm negative and AVC encoded on a single-layered BD25, decoding at approx. 30Mbps.  Presented in high-definition, 1080ps, and in an European aspect ratio of 1.77:1 widescreen, “Big Boobs Hunter” is like being motorboated from your television screen with the rich look of a converted celluloid transfer that elevates Jun Abe’s luminous fogged night scenes, a glowing arura around the titular titillating heroine, and a contrasting shots of day time that offer warmer, slightly yellowis-tan tinted tones.  Skin textures and tones are reflected within the same softer glow but the rigid-contouring, around what can be delineated when shooting close up on a pair of breasts, do define a nice bulging image.  There are scenes, mostly a result of the cinematographer, that look flat between the foreground and background, suggesting possibly an aspherical lens that provides less curvature and less compressed, stretched image.  The release comes with two lossless DTS-HD 2.0 tracks with the original Japan mix and an English dub.  Clarity and a solid amount of punchiness come through nicely enough on the Japanese track that’s review covered but there’s not a ton of depth here with mostly frontloaded dialogue and action and nothing to note in the background or any environmental ambience.  Special features include a blooper reel that doubles as a behind-the-scenes featurette done in a traditional pop culture Japanese style with a gameshow announcer overlay track and translucent title cards in Japanese.  Also included are the original Japanese DVD trailers.  What catches the eye is the very pinku film and retro stylized cover with an in-your-face panty-covered butt overtop thigh high boots set in the foreground framing a scared schoolgirl between the legs.  Who wouldn’t want to watch this based solely off the cover!?  The reverse side of the sleeve contains an enlarged image still of another character and the backside acts humorously like “nutritional facts guide” superimposed onto the back cover.  The release comes in a standard Blu-ray Amaray.  With a runtime of 45 minutes, “Big Boobs Buster” is a breezy microfeature for a region free encoded Blu-ray that is not rated. 

Last Rites: Busting out with body positivity and sexual orientation themes, “Big Boobs Buster” brings out the big guns on a new Blu-ray release, animating manga to life on the big screen to experience Japan’s wildest cinema at its finest.

Own “Big Boobs Buster” on Blu-ray Home Video!

EVIL Seduces the Woman of her Dreams. “Vampyros Lesbos” reviewed! (Severin Films / 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Men Beware of the “Vampyros Lesbos” now on 4K UHD and Blu-ray

Linda’s dreams vividly disturb her with imagery of an idyllic island where blood rivulets watercourse down curtains while being in the romantic embrace of a swarthy beautiful woman.  These dreams are so powerful she must see a therapist about them.  When attending an nude performance art show with husband Omar, she’s shocked to see the woman on stage is the same woman from her dreams.   The coincidence lingers with Linda on her business trip to a Turkish island where she meets Countess Nadine Carody to discuss a large inheritance from a Count Dracula.  Come to her surprise, Countess Carody is the same woman from on stage.  Immediately, Linda’s under Countess Carody’s suggestive sexual influence of a lesbian vampire.  When Carody falls deeply for Linda, she will stop at nothing to have her whole, as one of her, to pass along the tradition of inherence as Dracula has done for her, but Omar, the psychiatrist Dr. Seward who’s familiar with vampirism, and a Memmet, a hotel clerk moonlighting as a rogue and vindictive vampire hunter, aim to help Linda from Carody’s grasp one way or another. 

The director behind some of Europe’s sleaziest erotic-horrors, such as “The Sadist of Notre Dame,” “Ilsa, the Wicked Warden,” and “A Virgin Among the Living Dead,” Jesús Franco, aka Jess Franco, was a prolific cult icon of the past, the present, and will still be in the future.  The Spanish born filmmaker grew up in the Francisco Franco dictatorship for over 30 years but that didn’t stop him from expressing his artistic freedom with the 1971 released “Vampyros Lesbos, “ a German production set in Turkey that mirrors the classic Bram Stoker tale but with teaks of character, scenery, and sexual orientation albeit “Dracula” is too thought to be a homoerotic tale to some filmic scholars.  Compositely filmed in Turkey, Spain, and Germany, “Vampyros Lesbos” is a production of Tele-Cine Film und Fernsehproduktion, Central Cinema Company, and the Fénix Cooperativa Cinematográfica with Karl Heinz Mannchen as executive producer and Artur Brauner as producer, both of whom worked on Franco’s “The Vengeance of Doctor Mabuse,” and the story, based loosely off of Stoker’s tale, is penned by Franco. 

Like other Franco productions of this caliber, the cast is comprised of internationals, ranging from Spain to Sweden, from Britian to Switzerland, and to finally Germany without a single Turkish thespian in sight despite the story’s setting locale of Istanbul.  As mentioned briefly above, “Vampyros Lesbos” follows a threadbare version of Bram Stoker’s iconic Gothic tale that trades the grotesque Gothicisms for sunnier skies and idyllic island houses.  The basic principal characters are present from Stoker’s story but have been tweaked to fit Franco’s feverous surreal aesthetic that has a really sink its teeth into the homoerotic indulgencies.  Swedish actress Ewa Strömberg (“The Devil Came from Akasava,” “She Killed in Ecstasy”) resembles something along the lines of a Jonathan Harker-type but instead of being in real estate, like Harker, her character Linda Westinghouse is an inheritance lawyer dispatched to Countess Carody’s island home where she is bewitched by Carody’s infatuation and lust for her lifeforce.  Countess Carody is the obvious counterpart to Count Dracula but spun in a way that makes Bram Stoker’s story more like a tangent rather than remake as it’s Count Dracula’s fortune Countess Carody is inheriting.  Spanish actress Soledad Miranda (who also costarred with Strömberg in “The Devil Came from Akasava” and “She Killed in Ecstasy”) is the sultriest creature on the screen in Carody’s nude and neck biting pastimes and coupled with the easy-going Linda, Strömberg and Miranda sizzle as lesbian lovers very comfortable with each other’s performances and bodies.  Van Helsing is embodied by Dr. Seward but with reverse tendencies that do not require the doctor to be the stake to stop vampirism but rather entertain an unexpected twist trait that’s quite opposite.  Seward is played by British actor Dennis Price (“Tower of Evil”) and is a comparable Van Helsing amongst the previous lot but definitely less harrowing and dramatic than most.  Seward’s deranged patient Agra is the final piece to the Stoker narrative semblance as the story’s Renfield.  German actress Heidrun Kussin (“The Swingin’ Pussycats”) does not eat or feign eat bugs and other nightcrawlers to aspire being a vampire but retains Renfield’s psychic connection while going hysteria topless as she squirms in bed for her master’s return to whisk her away into the night.  “Vampyros Lesbos” rounds out the cast with new cast not familiar to Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” with Andrea Montchal (“Eugenie de Sade”) as Linda’s husband Omar, José Martínez Blanco as Countess Carody’s loyal bodyguard Morpho, Paul Muller (“Lady Frankenstein”) as Dr. Seward’s assistant Dr. Steiner, and Jesús Franco in the role of Memmet, a hotel clerk with a visceral vendetta against vampires. 

Arguably the most notable film out of the prolific Jesús Franco filmography, as I believe it to rival another outstanding piece of work from Franco, “Eugenie… The Story of Her Journey into Perversion, starring Christopher Lee and Maria Rohm based off the Marquis de Sade novel, “Vampyros Lesbos” is perhaps Franco’s most recognized piece film that has a sliver of notoriety while also spurring a remake years later in a 20-minute short film in 2008 by Matthew Saliba.  Most of Franco’s repitoire can be said as messy, a mash up of other films recut to make a new film, hackeneyed, and a complete dull, but “Vampyros Lesbos” is different.  It’s also not the same Eurosleaze one might be familiar with in regard to his catalogue; in fact, “Vampyros Lesbos,” despite the name, doesn’t even feel like sleaze.  There’s a naturality about it underneat it’s Bram Stoker-homoericism message sans the gratuitous nudity that’s more of a playful exploration of sexuality.  The only resemblance of sex is through the vampiric rite of seductive foreplay and subsequential drinking of the blood and with only Linda and Countess Nadine in scenes of embrace.  Not even poor Linda’s husband, Omar, has conjugal interactions and that plays into the whole theme of the story that Oman and Linda have this sexless relationship and here comes along Countess Nadine and her oozing sexpot of Linda’s fantasies inside a one-side power dynamic.  There’s no degenerate-filled debasement in this sexploitation, one the story’s traits that actually separates itself from “Eugenie,” and Franco, like with “Eugenie” on this element, actually helms an artistic aesthetic with good editing, crafty angles, and a varied cinematography blend of natural and stylized imaging. 

Provocative European sexploitation that isn’t busk European sleaze, “Vampyros Lesbos” is zenith Jess Franco, a social-political rebel and artist unafraid to tell a story that won’t tickle everyone’s interest but definitely be an archetype of the director’s caliber.  Severin Films proudly presents “Vampyros Lesbo” onto a new 4K UHD and Blu-ray dual-format set with a 4K presentation scanned from the original 35mm negative.  The 4K UHD is compressed with HVEC encoding onto a BD100 and the standard Blu-ray is AVC encoded onto a BD50 with respective resolutions of 2160p and 1080p.  The European 1.66:1 widescreen is the aspect ratio on both formats, but the UHD uses DolbyVision to expand upon the already lush color pallet with a richer complexity within the color scheme even though Franco loves his most muted black dressings on characters and on sets.  The extra pixels offer deeper textural, mostly auspiciously perceived in the club scenes that present a room of textures and in often brightly lit captures that don’t washout the details but rather define them more accurately.   The standard Blu-ray offers the same approach but brought back a step or two due to format limitations on the color scale and pixel count but a lesser keen eye won’t take much notice.  The original negative print shows no egregious mishandling damage or degrading emulsion wear.  The only audio track available is the German Mono ADR track with optional English subtitles.  This release does not contain the English dub that’s lost out there in physical media land.  The mono track has a flat tone with no depth to speak of and is full of desynch between dialogue movements and audio overlay but never hides behind the other single output layers. German Manfred Hübler and Sigfried Schwab eclectic score is a fun listen with brass, piano, sentur, light drums, and bass compiled to an era swanky main score that’s quoted being a sexadelic dance party, and rightfully so.  There’s even a distorted vocals on a slow beat jazz track that provides the unsettling and sultry notes for the underplayed horror side of this sexploitation.  Special features on the UHD includes audio commentaries by Kat Ellinger, author of Daughter of Darkness, and a collab between film academic Aaron AuBuchon and Oscarbate Film Collective’s John Dickson and Will Morris.  The UHD concludes with the German theatrical trailer.  The standard Blu-ray has more wiggle room for bons features with all the above from UHD, plus an interview with Jess Franc just prior to his death Interlude in Lesbos, an interview with Stephen Trower, author of Murderous Passions:  The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco, a Jess Franco career appreciation by “Anora” director Sean Baker The Red Scarf Diaries, the Stephen Thrower hosted In the Land of Franco, Part 12 looks at iconic locales from Franco’s films with a primary focus on “The Sadist of Notre Dame” which his set in Paris, France, an interview with Soledad Miranda historian Amy Brown Sublime Soledad, a 3-minute mini interview with Jess Franco labeled Jess is Yoda that provides some comedic flair and “Star Wars” references, and the German opening title sequence.  Physically, Severin’s release has a stark, hard contrast cardboard O-ring slipcover with Soledad Miranda in a seductive position starring right aback at you in front of black background.  The backside of the slipcover contains no technical information but does have review quotes, credit acknowledgments, and lingering stare between Countess Carody and Linda Westinghouse.  Inside you’ll find the classic 4K UHD Amaray with Severin’s original Blu-ray art from 2015, commissioned by graphic artist Ben Benscoter.  There is no reverse image on the sleeve.  The discs are held separately with one each side of the interior.  The 89-minute film is not rated and is region free for global enjoyment.

Last Rites: Jess Franco’s “Vampyros Lesbos” is on the select short list of how the Spanish director should be judged by existing and new fans of his work and remembered in his long career and legacy as a truly psychedelic, auteur driven, lesbian vampire film with plenty of women-centric allure and flesh.

Men Beware of the “Vampyros Lesbos” now on 4K UHD and Blu-ray

Keep an Eye on EVIL Unloved Ones with a Camera in the Coffin! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Watch Me Sleep” Now Available on DVD!

After the death of his abusive mother, recovering alcoholic Sean returns to his hometown with ulterior motives other than attend her funeral.  He hires a webcam company service to install a camera inside her coffin to ensure that his mother, who would repeated micro-stab him in the back with knives, is, in fact, dead.  As he struggles with his addiction and plagued by nightmares of random occult images involving his mother, Sean can barely hold it together to watch the video fee but when he does, what he sees often horrifies him – a rotting skeletal corpse with maggots, brief movements caught in a glimpse, and even her staring right back at him.  He implores a town friend to check his sanity, but all seems normal as normal can be with a coffin-cam facing directly at a corpse.  As the nightmares intensify, a presence takes hold of Sean, a familiar presence that hasn’t terrified him since he was a child. 

“Watch Me Sleep” might sound like a ploy phrase your kids would say to get you to stay with them at night or during nap time but for John Williams – the director of the 2023 film and not the “Jaws” and “Star Wars” composer – the lingering effect of trauma can be a powerful, often adjacent to being supernaturally scary, and is nowhere near being child’s play.  The director of 2015’s “The Slayers” and “Creatures of the Night” writes and directs the British voyeuristic graveside thriller that concentrates on the lasting aftermath effects of trauma despite our past being buried six feet underground.  Filmed in Staffordshire England, “Watch Me Sleep” is an independent production with Williams and Claire Ward as their third production together since 2021, behind “Creatures of the Night” and “There Something in the Shadows,” and executive producer Volker Plassmann, producer behind “Next Door” and “The Beast of Riverside Hallow.” 

Small production equals small cast but that doesn’t equate to poor performance as “Watch Me Sleep’s” cast is brilliant within the oversimplification explanation of the plotline which is more or less a traumatized man obsessed with watching his dead mother on camera to ensure she stays dead.  That doesn’t sound too exciting but with the actors’ performances and with Williams evolving of the plot to keep Sean’s sanity teetering on edge, “Watch Me Sleep” is more fleshed out with richer than expected character backstory and development of Sean, played intently and without hesitation by William’s go-to actor Darren McAree, and his problems with alcohol, a tormented childhood, and his blinding spite for his mother.  Mum is played by Sarah Wynne Kordas in a dialogue-free peripheral of psychological spookiness as a lifeless head on a webcam for most of the picture but is able to shine in the shadows of Sean’s vivid imagination and be diabolically on point when that lifeless head moves unexpectedly in a not-so-subtle manner for the chill and thrill triggered moments.  While the mum is certainly a presence, Sean is basically a one-man show of bopping between his struggles with drinking, his affliction of nightmares, his hesitation of webcam voyeurism, and trying to blow off steam and showcase his questionable sanity to townie friend Tom (James Whitehurst, “Creature of the Night”) who humors his friend’s hysteria with rather tranquil patience that is unusual.  The rest of the characters support where needed with brief interactions surrounding Sean’s cam setup and AA meetings with  Zane Hopkins (“The Beast of Riverside Hollow”), Steve Wood (“Cannibals and Carpet Fitters’), Charles O’Neill (“The Jack in the Box Rises”), Katie Elliff, and David Tunstall (“Beyond the Witching Hour”) as a mysterious man once friend to Sean’s mother. 

Despite the budget and some unpolished areas, there’s surprisingly more bang for your buck in “Watch Me Sleep” with a thrilling storyline that houses competent performances, editing, and one hell of a movie magic accomplishment in its special effects.  The black and white dream sequences of randomized occult and supernatural imagery are reminiscent of “Ringu’s” the contents of VHS tape with more visceral sound design to give it a lasting, haunting discord and the editing done an all accounts of these dreams are spliced perfectly into Sean’s sleeping and waking nightmares.  Between this reoccurring onslaught of mixt pernicious phantasmagoria and the out of left field special effects that reap the success for “Watch Me Sleep,” John Williams’ little English film is a bit a sleeper itself we should watch in a statement that’s ironically punned.  Keeping it mysteriously ambiguous, Williams doesn’t define the context that is kept open to be obscure and confusing for Sean who’s trying to pieces his dreams, evidence, and his mother’s curious connections together, a puzzle that could be an explanation why she tortured him with a knife, but the gist of the story delves into the occult as his mother dabbled in ritual and paganistic indoctrinations in the layer much more satanists or demonology driven.  Yet, those details are never verbal explained and that keeps you guessing whether his mum had dark dealings with the Devil or is the trauma, stress, and alcohol withdraw doing a number on his fractured psyche.  

You never know what kind of film you’re going to unearth at Wild Eye Releasing with its mysterious grab bag of horror schlock and independent ambition.  There have been titles of questionable taste that not even the sleaziest or gorehound fans would touch with a ten foot pole, but titles like the now out-of-print first-person-shooter occult-actioner “Hotel Inferno” and the satirical crude-humor of “Race Wars:  The Remake” are absolute low-budget gold held in high esteem.  “Watch Me Sleep” ranks up in that small layered stratosphere for the company who releases it on DVD.  The MPEG2 encoded DVD5 leaves much on the table technically with fuzzy detail on its standard 720p definition.  There’s no intricate picture quality nor does it have textural achievement but what you see is what you get, a picture constant and watchable B-horror you may catch on USA’s Up All Night hosted by Rhonda Shear and guest starring Gilbert Godfrey on cable television, broadcasting in analog through a tube set.  I will say the special effects are damn good for money and with no signs of how they’re achieved, such as wires, CGI, nor other.  The UK English language PCM Stereo 2.0 has its problems as well with a boxy, depth-less dual channel output that has a subtle layer of interference static, likely due to inexperience or poor equipment, but the dialogue track remains front and center with prominence and the sound design, the jarring clicks and pops along with the discord sounds of Sean’s nightmares and the overall brooding score, shoulders a lot of the weight by carrying the film’s technical problems.  There are no available subtitles.  Bonus features include only an image gallery, the trailer, and other Wild Eye Releasing previews.  The clear DVD Amaray comes with Wild Eye Releasing’s on brand exaggerated artistic rendition of an intense and scary old woman emerging from her coffin.  It’s a bit hyperbolic but eye-catching.  The reversible sleep has a sheet spanning, bloody depicted still from the film and no other bonus inserts.  The region free DVD is not rated and has encoded a 91-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Definitely one Wild Eye Releasing titles to pick up and enjoy, “Watch Me Sleep” has mother issues, alcoholic issues, trust issues, relationship issues, paranoia issues, and supernatural issues in what is a sleeper hit from the writer-director John Williams.

“Watch Me Sleep” Now Available on DVD!