EVIL Dances Naked the Night Away! “Orgy of the Dead 2” reviewed! (MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get in on the “Orgy of the Dead 2” on Blu-ray!

The Emperor of the dead and his Princess of the Night return from the dead to behold entertainment from the beyond.  As the Emperor sits on his graveside throne, his lap-seated Princess announces the lineup of dancing deceased, half naked women in a seduction of debauchery and death.  If the Emperor is not entertained, nor turned on, he damns their souls to Hell forever!  Four teens, on their way to the graveyard for sex and drugs amongst the dead, crash their car after some distracting roadhead, killing one of them in absent of a seatbelt.  As they search the graveyard for a living soul for help, they stumble upon the Emperor’s variety of groovy vixen and are captured to witness their dance of the dead.  As the show becomes more and more sordid, not all of the prisoners feel turned off by the show that creeps closer to their doom and their dawn.  

If you’re deeply knowledgeable of cult movies, have a familiarity with Ed Wood Jr. films, and have a genuine affinity for really schlocky horror and eroticism, you may have once in your life experienced the 1965 nudie-cuties erotic horror “Orgy of the Dead” that danced the graveside night away with topless stripteases challenged to entertain the Emperor of the Dead to avoid eternal damnation.  “Plan 9 from Outer Space” and “Jail Bait” filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr. penned the then controversial and provocative script with Stephen C. Apostolof debuting his directorial effort, who then went on to do a number of exploitation pictures, such as “College Girls,” “The Snow Bunnies,” and “Five Loose Women.” The film’s rights were obtained from the Apostolof family by Andrew J. Chambers, who’s credentials followed a similar subgenre to his 1965 predecessors with “Babezilla vs the Zombie Whorde” and “Lust, Magic, and the Witches’ Sabbath.”  Chambers’s goal was to create a sequel, simply entitled “Orgy of the Dead 2” that brought back the Emperor, Princess of the Night, and a slew of scantily cladded undead women to burlesque the night away.  Chambers writes, directs, and produces the 2026 release alongside co-producer Stephen Apostolof’s son, Chrisotpher, under Chambers independent production company, HojBob Productions, and was partially crowdfunded under Indigogo.com, achieving an approx. $3,700 in pledges.

Obviously, the 60-year span between the two films doesn’t see the return of Jeron Criswell back as the Emperor (died 1982), Fawn Silver as the Black Ghoul (long retired and left pictures altogether), or Pat Barrington and William Bates as the stumbling lost couple Shirley and Bob.  Instead, the sequel features new talent in the principal parts as Mike Fantastik dons the undead ruler of darkness as the Emperor who sits on his throne to judge the decaying dancers.  Fantastik is no Criswell but the indie rapper from Nebraska brings his own licentious flair to the character by blatantly reading from cue cards just off screen.  Princess of the Night is played by pinup model Penny Aphrodite (“Pigshit”) that does resemble a bit of Fawn Silver’s Gothicism in looks and mannerisms.  The duo of Bob and Shirley are replaced with a quartette, or a pair of couples, who wreck their car after roadhead sends their car careening into the bushes near a graveyard.  Nick Somers, Adam Peltier, Jaymie Schroeder (“The Devil’s Dancers”), and Jessa Flux (“Debbie Does Demons”) are the new captured and witnesses to the Emperor’s sordid dance space of judgement.  Flux has established herself as a rising scream queen by integrating herself into any and all-types of horror films in a very unselective manner and with “Orgy of the Dead 2,” her character closely recalls other Flux’s roles of a sexed-up hot chick, making her Cindy performance not that stand out, but in contrasts, there’s an omission of emotional guilt and anger compared to the others tied to a staked crosses as they watch the perversion and death unfold.  The dancers a motley of alternate women and unabashed topless stripteasers between Stephanie Love, Bobbi Jo, Mercy Andersen, Tina Mazing, Katie Kadaver, Maia Thomas, Naomi Webb, Kaisa Neal, and Mae Devour with Michael E. Ross, Clint Beaver, Tony Kimball, Zdenek Voprada, and Morgan Molck as the Emperor’s creatures of the night. 

If any of you readers have ever seen the 1965 “Orgy of the Dead,” you’ll find the modern-day sequel to be not really a sequel in the traditional sense but more like a remake.  There’s no firm connection to the original production with Chambers bringing new nudie-cuties to the dance on the graves, a mixed soundtrack, and a totally different perverted vibe that’s cruder than it is implied to accommodate the time period in which the film is made.  Apostolof’s “Orgy of the Dead” had no plot in the traditional sense in what was more of an erotic, burlesque shindig in the middle of ghoulish-driven cemetery and, to be frank, the whole concept didn’t exactly leave an ecstatic and an aesthetic taste in my mouth with its boring static evolution further into the runtime.  I get it.  Times change, movies change, and taste change and Apostolof’s “Orgy of the Dead” might have been the hot ticket punched for some sleazy gawkers but in the early 2000s, when “Orgy of the Dead” made it to VHS, the novel idea just fell hard like a rock sinking to the bottom of a lake.  Chamber’s sequel, following the same design as the original, produces the same effect with its timeless homage to Apostolof’s original and, while that’s honorable, Chambers didn’t reinvent the wheel, he just bedazzled it with different kinks and coarser content.  Product looks even cheaper than the original on its measly $5-$7,000 budget that can only afford cardboard structures and tombstones, a glue on prosthetics, and simple in-laid practical effects.  Plenty of heart with really no soul, “Orgy of the Dead 2” is about as lifeless as the undressing undead. 

From Hojbob Productions and MVD Visual, “Orgy of the Dead 2” is a blast form the past done in contemporary times now on Blu-ray home video.  The unrated, region free release doesn’t have a lot of technical disclosure, but the release is AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, onto a 25GB BD-R with the bruised colored disc underbelly, suggesting a commercial writeable disc and muted colored, textured DVD label on top.  Presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, the indie production isn’t at the summit of quality and, in fact, is rather low with poor visibility (aka lighting), compression blights such as banding and splotches, and an anemic color saturation.  The former of the three can be accepted to work in the sequel’s advantageous favor that keeps the hazy graveyard cemetery dim as possible and not be evident of key lighting that’ll throw off whatever authenticity “Orgy of the Dead 2” may possess.  The audio is an English Stereo 2.0, uncompressed but not reigned in with it’s noise static when volume levels overload with intense decibels.  Dialogue is clear but varies in strength in part to recording mic placement that can’t capture more than one person standing adjacent to the person next to the mic. The soundtrack by Aaron Gum is perhaps the best with a variety of musical genres from carnivalesque to rhapsody that loosely fits the dance number.  Special features include a making-of featurette with Andrew J. Chambers, a behind-the-scenes featurette with raw footage of takes and setups, actor Adam Peltier’s ramblings, a director and actor feature length commentary track, and the original trailer.  Released in a standard Blu-ray Amray case, “Orgy of the Dead 2” homages its predecessor with a slapped together package design of a blown up still from the actual movie and used as the front cover face.  The sleeve art is also one-sided.  Inside in the insert section, there’s a slick and nicely illustrated retroesque comic book front cover insert of the main characters.  It’s unfortunately uncredited.  The narrowly hour film, coming in at 65 minutes, is the perfect size for the BD-R capabilities.

Last Rites: If a fan of the original “Orgy of the Dead,” the sequel doesn’t stray into new territory with dancing corpses and a killer soundtrack, but don’t expect a novel sequel in this ready-made remake.

Get in on the “Orgy of the Dead 2” on Blu-ray!

A Trio of EVIL of Italian-Inspired Violence. “Gialli, Guns, and Gore!: The Brutal Films of Darren Ward” reviewed! (Treasured Films / 3-Disc Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The Brutal Films of Darren Ward Are a Must See! Buy the Set Here!

Walker, a former SAS turned hitman mercenary, accepts a job by a white-collar narcotics kingpin to snuff out a rival organization for control over cocaine distribution territories only to be betrayed by his employee, targeted himself for elimination.  Going into hiding to recover after narrowly escape with injuries, Walker’s best and only friend is caught, tortured, and slaughtered to draw him out.  There’s nothing left for Walker to do other than to mercilessly wipe them off the face of the Earth.  In another thrilling tale, low-level hoodlum Mitchell steals 100K from another low-level hoodlum holding the money for a mob boss.  Planning to use the money to fund his daughter’s return from a comatose state, Mitchell must first outrun and outsmart the mob who are hunting him down, but nothing will get in the way of saving his little girl.  Lastly, Walker returns to the fold having retired permanently from the mercenary life and is now living the married life with a child on the way.  When a group of lowlife henchmen decide to joyride murder and posthumously rape his wife and leave him for dead, all Walker wants is thoughtless vengeance and he must go through an entire crime syndicate to get to those responsible for destroying all that he loves.  Unfortunately, the underlings of a ruthless Russian mob boss, who is trying to tie up loose ends before the police and investigators come after him, are protected by a small arsenal.

From 1997 to 2019, British filmmaker Darren Ward produced the Fury Trilogy, a 3-film series of violent crime thrillers that harked back to the days of the Italian poliziotteschi subgenre, a brutally violent series of crime thrillers released between 1960 and 1980 that saw themes of cruel hearted antagonists, a justifiable hero hellbent on revenge, and the up-close-and-personal violence and, often times, gore.  “Sudden Fury” (1997), “A Day of Violence” (2010), and “Beyond Fury” (2019) are the titles and while not all three wholeheartedly connect in the series and in story, they share the cruel characteristics and the visceral animosity that has lurked in the Italian shadows for way too long.  From Italy to the United Kingdom, Ward resurrects the short-lived classic exploitation subgenre having written-and-directed all three years over the course of 20 years, and maybe even before that as Ward wrote-and-directed the 1994 short film “Bitter Vengeance” that preluded the Fury Trilogy with a foundational base concept for subsequent feature films.  Ward produces the films under his company Giallo Films.

The 1997 “Sudden Fury” is a showcase of mid-90’s nostalgia propped up by vast, electric, and eccentric cast and characters that spin a web of complexity between two gangs, one hitman, and a whole lot of vengeful vendettas.  Nick Rendell plays the sought after former SAS soldier turned mercenary hitman Walker with full zeal for the 80’s action star by carrying a reputation that proceeds the character.  Rendell’s portrayal is often aloof as Walker stands in between two gangs and their lack of integrity as they squabble over the cocaine dominion, but when the last standing gang tries to hunt him down, killing his one and only friend in the process, Walker takes the fight to them guns blazing.  Rendell also carries over his performance to the 2010 film, the unconnected “A Day of Violence,” but in different shoes as Mitchell, a father, husband, and hoodlum in desperation mode and doing whatever he can to live and breathe inside the context of mob land complexity for a large sum of money.  Rendell goes form lone wolf to a man with dependent in a totally different side of character in Mitchell when compared to Walker when considering how the compassion attribute.  Now, Walker returns for “Beyond Fury” but Nick Rendell does not return to the role as the 2019 film sees Nick Roberts filling the mercenary shoes.  Also, this time around, Walker is given compassion, compassion for revenge!  In his retirement, his family is murdered arbitrarily – as if ill-fated living a previous life of violence and death – and vows revenge at his own expense to harm taking on an entire organized criminal organization, ran by the unforgiving “City of the Living Dead” and “Cannibal Ferox” actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice.  Radice is also one of the only other connective tissues between the last two films but in different roles with opposing significance with more prominence as the chief villain in “Beyond Fury” as well as Victor D. Thorn in various capacities in each three films.  Other notable cast members from across all three films include David Warbeck (“The Beyond”) in “Sudden Fury” and Dani Thompson (“Axe to Grind”) with Andy Ranger, Paul Murphy, Christopher Fosh, Steve Humprhies, Tina Barnes, Helena Martin, Tina Barnes, Joanna Finata, Harold Gasnier, Gary Baxter, Dan van Husen, Glenn Salvage.

Darren Ward’s Fury Trilogy is roughly the same model copied over one another at roughly a decade and half apart, yet each individual storyline evokes a different impression as each has unique attributes.  “Sudden Fury” surrounds itself in sociopathy, drug trade, and gang war.  “A Day of Violence” has themes of devotion, parenthood, and blinding greed.  “Beyond Fury” spores retribution, justice, and loyalty.  Other than the reprisal of the Walker character in the first 1997 and last 2019 film, the real only aspects that connect the series together is the unflinching and visceral violence fueled one major motif in all of Ward’s movies, organized crime syndicates versus the single willed warrior.  Ward has no qualms with showing violence front and center in the most graphic way possible and without it being overly gratuitous or at least blending the excessive blood and gore action into the moment that it hides in plain sight.  The effects on all three films go hard under Alastair Vardy who did the SFX work on all three films.  Vardy is a major effects artist as of today, having worked on such films as “World War Z,” “Kick-Ass 2,” and last years “28 Years Later” and that speaks volumes to his dedication toward director Darren Ward and his three films produced on a lesser budget with mostly genre and cult actors.  Ward’s scripts are heavily dynamic and can become complex with betrayals, twists, and a fair amount of unpredictability in the grand schemes of either drug wars, money disputes, and damage control.  “Sudden Fury” and “Beyond Fury” has an easy, 2-part character arc for Walker but there often feels like a missing piece to his character backstory, especially when his stories are over 20 years apart and Ward doesn’t profoundly piece those missing years together with much effort.  Yet, through Ward’s camera cleverness and storytelling, there is plenty to like and easily digest through multiple camera angles of a scene, interesting shot setups, and the close and personal nature of strong violence.

UK distributor Treasured Films rolls out the bloody red carpet for Darren Ward’s Fury Trilogy with a brand new 3-Disc Blu-ray set entitled the “Gialli, Guns and Gore” set that is region free for all to enjoy the carnage.  The limited-edition boxset comes with newly remastered and graded scans for its grand worldwide Blu-ray debut on “Sudden Fury” and UK Blu-ray debut for “A Day of Violence” and “Beyond Fury.”  “Sudden Fury” is scanned from the original SOV material and into a 720HD, leaving a lot of room for unfortunate and unable improvement but this transfer is pretty damn good that retains that shot-on-video, interlacing aesthetic and muted colors.  There are no evident issues of overly heated color tones or tracking lines from magnetic tape deterioration and presents the best possible image with soft details in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, though the back cover states all features are in a widescreen.  “A Day of Violence” and “Beyond Fury,” having been digitally filmed over 13-years later, are in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio with cleaner image resolution that looks neat a pin with granular details surrounding skin and textures, a slight slate color grading with hues being diffused and saturated in balance, and offers a focal depth to enhance quality.  The English language audio format is an uncompressed DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 that packs a wallop front and center.  The Fury Trilogy has immense range of gunfire, fisticuffs, explosions, and car races that run the onomatopoeia length of an action bundle with clear dialogue that’s more vital in the last two films with isolating features and more muted in the first with more integration around surrounding elements and electronic interference from the implemented equipment.  There’s not a ton of depth in either film that relies heavily on making an impact with the ultraviolence and caffeinated action in the front role of a dual channel that does have a decent separation and isolation of dialogue and action.  English subtitles are available on all three releases.  “Sudden Fury” special features include an audio commentary by Darren Ward and star Nick Rendell, a retrospective documentary Sudden Fury:  12 years On, a retrospective making-of interview with Darren Ward The Crime Trilogy:  Part 1:  Sudden Fury, deleted scenes and outtakes, a BTS special effects make-up reel, Ward’s 1994 precursing short films “Bitter Vengeance,” 1993’s “Blue Fear,” and 1992’s “Paura Il Diavolo,” an image gallery, and archived trailers.  On “A Day of Violence,” a feature length documentary of Making-Of a Day of Violence, an interview with actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice, an audio commentary with Ward and star Nick Rendell, the second Darren ward retrospective documentary on the making-of The Crime Trilogy Part 2:  A Day of Violence, The Crime Trilogy:  The In-Between Years looks at Darren Ward’s short film “Nightmares” from 2004, deleted scenes and outtakes, the hardcore trailer, a no-so-hardcore soft trailer, a Soprano trailer, short film “Nightmares,” an audio commentary for ”Nightmares” with Ward, and an image gallery fill out the special features for the second feature.  The third feature’s special features conclude with another audio commentary with Darren Ward and Nick Rendell, The Crime Trilogy Part 3:  Beyond Fury retrospective documentary of the making-of the film, Chainsaw Fun featurette, the Gasworks Visual Effects reel, The Crime Trilogy props used in the film tour, the Ward 2025 short film “Passion,” an audio commentary for “Passion,” trailers, and an image gallery for that short film.  While the encoded special features are impressive, the physical presence of the Treasured Films release is equally as eye-catching with a rigid slipbox containing frontal artwork by Uncle Frank Productions, three clear Blu-ray Amaray cases, each with new, reversible sleeve art for all three titles, and snug inside the slipbox with them is a 31-page booklet with color stills, release acknowledgements, and essay by Tom Lee Rutter – Furious:  The Story of the John Woo of Southampton..  All films are UK certified 18 for strong bloody violence, gore, sexual violence, very strong language, and strong sex.  The runs are as followed:  “Sudden Fury” 103 minutes, “A Day of Violence” 116 minutes, and “Beyond Fury” 117 minutes. 

Last Rites: The “Gialli, Guns, and Gore” set is Darren Ward’s unflinching frenetic violence now glorified in a beautifully curated Treasured Films package!

The Brutal Films of Darren Ward Are a Must See! Buy the Set Here!

EVIL Never Expected to Fall For Another EVIL! “Date With a Vampire” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Date With a Vampire” Now Available on a Collector’s Edition Blu-ray!

Chuck and Violet end their official date with them at Violet’s ancestral New York City home for a little alone time and conversational foreplay.  Enamored with other ever since meeting in the bar weeks ago, the sexual tension between them in palpable and dripping with anticipation.  Their love making deep into the night is peak erotic sensuality that goes on for hours between multiple sessions.  During one of their sessions, Violet bites Chuck on the neck, puncturing his veins, and draws out blood to taste it.  Upset, Chuck tries to leave her only to fall down the stairs, slumping over from being weak by her neck nibble.  When Chuck awakes, he’s tied to Violet’s bed but unphased about her being a vampire.  There’s something about Chuck that disturbs Violet, but she can’t find resist him and continues to make love to him.  Also – what ‘s that creature moaning in Violet’s basement? 

“Date with a Vampire” is the Jeffrey Arsenault picture of erotic submersion but with fangs.  Released in 2000, the “Night Owl” director continues the train of infatuation of a vampire film quest that began in 1993 with the John Leguizamo starring thriller but ever since the release of “Date wit a Vampire,” Arsenault’s evolution slid heavily into eroticism as he become the forerunning directing for sultry nightcrawlers like “Crimson Nights,” “Crimson Kisses,” “Crimson Desires,” and “Vampire Playmates” with softcore scream queens Misty Mundae, Vera VanGuard, and  Cynthia Polakovich.  Like for the director’s aforementioned films, Arsenault helms “Date with a Vampire” under the pseudonym of Gregory Cabot, presumably for the highly erotic nature content, and the film is penned by B-movie scenarist and director Kevin J. Lindermuth, writer-director of “Vampires and Other Stereotypes.”  Produced by Arsenault, the shoot was filmed on location in Brooklyn, New York under the vampire-fittingly named production banner of After Midnight Entertainment. 

“Date with a Vampire” is centrally focused on Violet and Chuck who are quickly moving toward a love-struck romance that would usually take weeks to build with normal couples.  There is tenderness and passion between them, placing hearts onto sleeves for the forlorn thoughts of long finding a different kind of lover as well as offering affectionate compliments toward each other to build that strong amorous connection.  Lori Thomas and Robin Macklin do a fine job leading up the lovers towards laughs, longings, and a lustful lay, multiple in fact of the latter, with an organic dynamic that doesn’t feel soap opera-y nor forced and jagged as the conversation, though sappy at times,  never cringed upon egregious kitschy pillow talk.  Thomas, who went on to costar alongside Mundae in Arsenault’s “Crimson Nights,” brings a softness, almost too delicate, to Violet’s comportment as a vampire looking for love rather than a next meal, but one of the real reasons Thomas’s in this role, or rather two real reasons, is her hefty top-figure that’s deep with cleavage and copiously exposed for the softcore scenes with a fit Eli Roth-lookalike in Macklin.  Violet and Chuck go at it quite a bit and when I say it I mean the double entrendre it of a love and hate relationship with slowed down sexual foreplay to visceral dream of sucking blood and eating hearts.  There are also two other characters in this story – a wandering woman (Cynthia Polakovich, “Vampire Playmates,” “Daddy”) who squats and takes a shower in Violet’s house and a chained-up basement vampire (Joe Zaso, “The Bloody Ape,” “Evil Streets”) with horrible acne.  Neither one of these characters ever interact with Violet and Chuck in what is likely filler scenes with it’s only little substory to flesh out a full-length feature and provide more T&A with a shower scene and another vampire in a vampire film but adds more unnecessary questions to an already stale plot. 

If looking for a bloodsucking bloodbath of Gothicism, “Date with a Vampire” will not scratch the itch at all.  If you hear the title out loud and understand that it infers more toward the ideas of romance and vampirism that’s akin to the likes of Twilight except these vampires don’t sparkle and or have gel stiff hair overtop pasty-pale skin.  Arsenault leans a deep tissue elbow into the eroticism rather than the bloodthirst, which like a deep tissue massage can often be painful.  The crux of the film is also it’s pitfall with too frequent slow-motion scenes of the same two bodies getting it on in the same house and bed, resulting in a lack of vital story substance to glue these sexualized highlights into place where it can be peppered appropriately.  I would be so bold to say the vampire element is abstemiously light on the intake with a couple of scenes with fangs, a cheaply edited sunlight death scenes, and even the bite marks on the neck are in the wrong place compared to the bite scene.  There’s more horror in the added in the brief basement scene with the chained up and xeroderma vamp and his hapless house-squatting victim without a spoken word other than a moan, groan, and scream being said between the two in a seemingly unconnected scenes to the core tale.  The soundtrack adds additional detrimental value as the sex scenes are so long that the generic stock score breaks for a moment and starts over and there are a handful of these extended eroticisms that, and I’m surprised to say this myself, dull the sharp blade’s edge.  “Date with a Vampire” ends without a climatic point and just fizzles down to a sojourn between Violet and Chuck that one will ultimately question to themselves, is that it?  Yes. Yes, it is. 

A narrow and threadbare vamp-erotic line won’t stop genre boutique label Visual Vengeance from releasing a brand-new collector’s Blu-ray pulled from the standard definition master of the original tape elements with the usual precursing warning message in front of each title of the standard and commercial quality you’re about to behold.  The AVC encoded BD50 reflects the SOV image in an upscale from 480p to 720p with softer details but generally clear yet flat image.  Skin tones are warmer, leaning toward a dull orange, and that’s usually associated with magnetic tape degradation from the analog compression of VHS.  Textures too are affected by color distortion but not to the extreme as with skin tones, leaving textures mostly with a slight variance, and the low pixel count has already put a dampening on the definition levels.  Again, Visual Vengeance had warned us, preshow.  “Date with a Vampire” is presented in full screen, a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, and has optional English subtitles available.  The innate audio track is an English LPCM 2.0 stereo that has subtle electronic interference but on the whole is clear for exhibition.  “Date with a Vampire” is mostly verbose and guttural add-ins with little-to-no operationalized sounds of action and those action sounds that did make it into the final product are post-production implemented, which entails an exaggerated volume and some desynchronized and outlandish effect to the visual.  The rough and ready soundtrack is a slow, bottom end, rhythm composed for erotic scenes through, and I assume this, a simple beat and music editing software and, aforementioned, the scenes are too long for the audio tracks that have to pause and repeat once the track runtime lapses.  Special features are typically abundant with any Visual Vengeance release and “Date with a Vampire” is not exception with an in tandem with feature audio commentary by director Jeffrey Arsenault, an interview with Arsenault, interview with screenwriter Kevin J. Lindenmuth, an interview with silent-squatter actress Cynthia Polakovich, interview with the Basement Vampire actor Joe Zaso, Date With a Vampire Memories interviews location manager Nathan Thompson in the Brooklyn location, a video interview with the Buckingham Manor Location manager Nathan Thompson, an Arsenault bonus film “Blood Cravings” from 2002, an Arsenault commentary, interview, image gallery, and original first draft trailers for “Blood Cravings,” an image gallery for feature presentation, the original trailer and bonus trailers from Visual Vengeance, and an After Midnight Entertainment trailer reel.  Lastly, like all other catalogue releases from the company, a very cool animated menu hypes up the energy and makes the prospected feature potentially entertaining.  Visual Vengeance always supplies a great physical release and “Date with a Vampire” continues the trend beginning with another gorgeously commissioned slipcover artwork by Rick Melton that’s sells sex as well as being horrific.  The clear Blu-ray Amaray case also has new artwork as the primary cover by Brother Belial.  The sleeve is reversible with another original Rick Melton artwork for Jeffrey Arsenault’s bonus feature “Blood Cravings” on the special features.  Tucked in the interior insert is a mini-folded poster of the Basement Vampire and his victim as well as a retro VHS sticker sheet.  The region free, unrated, 88-minute Blu-ray is certainly fetching for the eyes. 

Last Rites: More melodramatic than sucking blood, “Date with a Vampire” is much more a power struggle between the sexes as it is between the sheets as it is between good versus evil. Plenty of long, drawn out softcore scenes offer up skin and erotic invitation but there’s plenty about the Jeffrey Arsenault’s feature that’s more filler and less traditional and that can be hurtful.

“Date With a Vampire” Now Available on a Collector’s Edition Blu-ray!

Two Van Damme’s Take on Twice the EVIL! “Double Impact” reviewed! (MVD Rewind Collection / 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Double Impact” 4K UHD and Blu-ray Will Having You Seeing Double the Damme!

The assassination of their parents separates infant twins Chad and Alex from Hong Kong to different parts of the world, living very different lives.  Chad trains Karate and stretching while living the high, comfortable life in Los Angeles with this uncle while Alex, abandoned at a covenant orphanage, grows up to be a street-savvy importer of illegal and luxury goods.  They’re reunited in Hong Kong by Chad’s uncle, who’s not their uncle at all but their father’s former bodyguard and close friend, to bring down a criminal organization collaborating with their parent’s killer who orchestrated the hit with the Chinese triad.  Outmanned, outgunned, and at odds with each other’s different persona, Alex and Chad must find common ground to stand on to fix the wrong done them, to inflict payback for their murdered parents, and claim his stolen legacy, an underwater passage way between Hong Kong and mainland China, as their own in observance of their birthright from what they’re engineer father had built.

If one Jean-Claude Van Damme wasn’t enough to handle, try your hand at double the Van Damme!  “Double Impact” is the first film Van Damme gets to show his range inside the context of martial arts action film and to break, ever so delicately, the typecast he’s been filled repeatedly to perform by taking on converse brothers.  The 1991 action-thriller with comedic morsels was shot in Hong Kong, one of a handful of films the now 65-year Belgium native did in country, coming in between “Bloodsport” and “Knock Off,”  with years in between, and is written-and-directed by Sheldon Lettich with cowritten credits by Van Damme as well.  “Double Impact” is the sophomore collaboration between Lettich and Van Damme and the two have worked on a number of project since the film’s release, such as “Perfect Target” and “The Order.”  Van Damme also produces the film alongside Paul Michael Glaser, Ashok Amritraj, and the one and only Michael Douglas under his co-founded company Stone Group Pictures (“Flatliners”) in association with Vision International. 

“Bloodsport” Van Damme pulls double duty with ying-yang characters Chad and Alex.  Chad’s an easy-going, well-dressed, expensive-taste, slightly naïve, student of Karate who’s living comfortably in L.A. while brother Alex with slick back hair, leather attire, greasier-appearance and cynical attitude has him pegged as more Hong Kong street smart in his transgressor affairs as a illegal importer.  As far as exhibiting the desired range goal, Van Damme does provide the persona separation to make Chad and Alex individuals but he’s still playing characters he’s been in previous films and the only difference between Chad and Alex is their hair styles.  To ensure their differences, the story is woven for them to compete each other a little bit with evoking some jealous around Alex with the fear Chad may still his woman, Danielle, played by the tall and beautifully blonde “King of New York” actress Alonna Shaw.  Fueled by alcohol and a wild imagination, a wedge drives Alex to view his brother as more feminine than him and shows it with pejorative name calling and brotherly spat violence while in an intoxicated schoolyard tiff.  I will say that one the many glaring plot holes between the two characters is both have the same fighting style, which is Van Damme’s kick heavy Shotokan karate, and while that fits Chad’s backstory, it does not fit Alex who was too busy selling stolen cars rather than learning Karata in a studio.  Geoffrey Lewis (“Night of the Comet,” “The Devil’s Rejects”) dons the forced parental role as Chad and Alex’s former friend and bodyguard Frank who must reunite and rekindle the twins’ harmony with shared, common foe.  That foe, or rather foes, being corrupt businessman and British socialite Nigel Grifith (Alan Scarfe, “Murder by Phone”) and Hong Kong triad boss Raymond Zhang (Philip Chan, “Bloodsport”).  However, the real villains of the story are more interesting and standout with Bolo Yueng (“Bloodsport”) as the scarred face hitman and brute enforcer Moon and six-time Ms. Olympia Corinna Everson as a muscular henchwoman. 

Though Van Damme essentially plays the same person, I wouldn’t necessary dub “Double Impact” a replica of his previous work as it does mix up the narrative formula with dual roles with a one-half antihero theme and the scenes themselves where both Chad and Alex are in together, face unobstructed, present, and forward, are done exceptionally well for a late 90’s production with little-to-no seam and coloring imbalance or weird facing angles from Chad or Alex looking at one another – often times it’ll appear one character is looking at something totally offscreen instead of the appearance of looking at themselves.  The action is also palpable and fun to watch Van Damme go through the motions of making the opposition look foolish with his grunted elbows and roundhouse jumpkicks but there’s really no decent opposition for him in the choreographed mix.  Aside from Bolo Yeung, all the other major playing villains are no real equal match against Van Damme, not even Corinna Everson, who’s a physical and perceived threat, doesn’t provide the satisfactory fight in her brief combat interaction with the Muscles from Brussels.  The fight and action are also more grounded in reality unlike Van Damme’s last Hong Kong venture earlier in the decade in “Knock Off” that had an implausible cartoony design to it’s nonstop physicality.  There are no high-flying rope acts or escaping the inescapable devastation case by nano-explosives; instead, “Double Impact” is truly a fair 1v1 with gunplay and martial arts doing most of the heavy lifting and anything else that’s outrageous is left at the door. 

MVDVisual releases “Double Impact” on a new 4K and Blu-ray dual formatted release on their Rewind Collection sublabel.  As a part of the 4K LaserVision Collection, that emulates the mock trimmings of the antiquated but still celebrated LaserDisc video format, the MVD release 4K is HVEC encoded with 2160p ultra-high definition HDR – DolbyVision – onto a BD100 with the standard Blu-ray encoded with AVC with 1080p resolution onto a BD50.  Presented in it’s original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the new, director’s approved 4K scan and restoration comes from a 16-bit scan of the original camera negative and looks pretty flawless with image presentation, immersive depth, skin and fabric textures and tones, inky negative space, and a diffused color palette that’s mediumly saturated, slightly muted for a harder, gritty appearance.  Neither format shows areas of concern with compression artefacts in a clean transfer and decoding.  The main audio track is an uncompressed English 2.0 Stereo.  The dual channel audio has enough impact to provide a wide berth of action points with the kick and punch added hits, dialogue is clean and unobstructed even though Van Damme’s heavy Belgium accent which seems more egregious in this feature, and the soundtrack’s your staple culture blend of a Jan Hammer synth-pop rock and traditional notes of Hong Kong influence.  Depth is limited as well in stereo that front loads the action and dialogue with not a terribly immersive ambient track of a bustling Hong Kong city that would be the chief spatial and directional culprit for depth.  UHD special features are limited due to space and, in fact, the 4K disc is feature only.  All your extras are on the standard Blu-ray disc, including a near hour long Making-of featurette segmented in parts I and II that provides retrospective interviews from cast and crew, such as Jean-Claude Van Damme, director Sheldon Lettich, fight coordinator Peter Malota, producer Ashok Amritraj, and more.  The bonus content continues with director a short Sheldon Lettich interview Anatomy of a Scene, a behind-the-scenes featurette with Van Damme interviews archived from 1991, deleted and extended scenes, a raw footage B-roll with behind-the-scenes moments, television promotional clips, and an electronic press kit (EPK) that contains more interviews with Van Damme, Moshe Diamant, and Charles Layton.  The Rewind Collection always comes with a substantial exterior style that begins with the black background of a O-ring slipcover that mirrors the crinkled sleeve of a LaserDisc and has the original poster/home media art of the “brothers” Van Damme.  The black 4K UHD Amaray case has the same front cover image sans mock crinkles with the discs inside pressed with LaserDisc appearance imagery on the UHD and VHS texture imagery on the Blu-ray.  There’s also a folded mini-poster of the slipcover image tucked inside.  The 17th title on the Rewind Collection also has a reversible sleeve of the unwrinkled image.  Rated R for strong violence, sexuality, and langue, “Double Impact” has a runtime of 110 minutes and is region A locked.

Last Rites: You need double the media formats to enjoy double the Jean-Claude Van Damme in “Double Impact!” Double time it to get your copy in stores now!

“Double Impact” 4K UHD and Blu-ray Will Having You Seeing Double the Damme!

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.