Author Archives: Steven Lewis

Sooie EVIL Sooie! “Pig Killer” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures & Darkstar Pictures / Blu-ray)

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On This Farm There Was a “PIg Killer” now on Blu-ray!

Pig ranching landowner Robert “Willy” Pickton’s compulsions to pick up unprincipled women involved in prostitution and drugs and horrifically rape and murder them in the name of salvation stems from a severely abusive childhood with the father’s physically and mentally tormenting as well as a scornful mother sexually assaulting him.  Willy’s fanatical obsession threatens his drug-fueled, orgy-laden, rock-n-rolling Piggy’s Powwow party, a regular throwdown held at his ranch that has elicited a cease and desist letter from the city, but Willy pushes the party forward despite his brother David and their lawyer’s stern opposition.  Paralleling Willy’s story is Wendy Eastman who almost dies of an accidental drug overdose.  The incident stirs more the already contentious bad blood between her uncompromising stepmother and insecure father that leads to storm out and bump into Willy at a bar with the feeling of destiny bringing them together only to horrifically discover Willy’s unsavory secret the hard way. 

Part one of my reviews on serial killer biopics, headfirst we go into the psychotic world of Robert “Willy” Pickton, a pig former turned one of Canada’s most notorious serial rapists and killers living in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia.  While the extent of his butchery is vague at best and even in some ways evolving over the course of the last two decades, Pickton was able to be the filmic inspiration for the Chad Ferrin brazen biopic “Pig Killer.”  The “Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!” and “Someone’s Knocking at the Door” director wrote-and-helmed the interpretation of the egregiously presumed methods Pickton executed upon his female victims, mostly drug-addicted sex workers from the Eastside of Vancouver.  Once under the working ttile of “Pork Chop Rod,” Ferrin’s Crappy World Films, Girls and Corpses (of Robert Steven Rhine’s Girls and Corpses Magazine), and the post-production company Laurelwood Pictures served as co-productions with 50-year acting vet Robert Miano (“Malevolence,” “Giallo”) co-producing.

Even though this actor has portrayed serial killers in “Identity,” “The Hitcher II,” and “The Frighteners,” and even a deranged zealot in “Contact,” I would never have imagined in a million years “Starship Troopers” actor Jake Busey would have stepped into the sordid shoes of Willy Pickton in a Chad Ferrin production.  There’s something to be said for Jake Busey’s nerve in moving forward with eccentric and controversial and Willy Pickton is every fiber of those infamy traits and all that is in between.   Disheveled and dirty, maniacal and demented, prosthetic phalluses and dildo revolvers, pig masks and masturbation – Jake Busey doesn’t hold back on an exigent script important to Pickton’s state of mind.  Creepy and apathetic blanked by his deceased mother’s devout spitefulness and her incestuous sexual abuse, Busey secretes these irascible qualities held dormant in Pickton until the sleaze is sated and his patients runs out then it’s time to go hog wild, literally. Lew Temple (“Halloween,” “Devil’s Rejects”) plays Willy’s brother David who also has mother issues, but that avenue is not as profoundly travelled as Willy’s, both men see delusional visions of their mother’s tirades but definitely lopsided in disfavor of Willy and that leaves David left in the dust some to not have his mental faculties inspected.  Their flashback, foul-mouth, and Electral loving mother goes to an unabashed by former adult actress turned low-budget horror scream queen Ginger Lynn Allen (“Murdercise,” “31”) in what her scenes can only be described as uncut and uncomfortable lewdness as she bares it all at the ripe young age of 60 years old.  Another standout performance goes to Kate Patel as the debut actress, who in her own right is an Amazonian goodness buff beyond rebuff in black lace underwear, finds her voice as a young woman named Wendy Eastman in a complicated and dysfunctional household after the death of her mother, at odds with a wicked stepmother, and an insecure father with passive fortitude.  The only obstacle that can be rendered cleanly from her performance is how her character’s written to be drawn to Willy Pickton as because between age gaps and social differences, the two have nothing tangible to drawn them together mutually.  “Pig Killer” rounds out the cast with producer Robert Miano as Wendy Eastman’s father, Michael Paré (“Streets of Fire”) and producer Robert Rhine as Detectives Oppal and Schneer, Silvia Spross (“Parasites”) as Wendy’s disparaging stepmother, Jon Budinoff (“Someone’s Knocking at the Door”) as Wendy’s friend and drug source, Elina Madison (“Caged Lesbos A-Go-Go”) as a druggie sex worker, Bai Ling (“Exorcism at 60,000 Feet”) as also a druggie sex worker, and Kurt Bonzell (“Parasites”) as Willy’s disfigured and throat-cancer suffering friend Pat. 

Sensationalized for cinematic charm, the story behind the “Pig Killer” hits near the bullseye of all major bullet points from the escape of Wendy Eastman (actual person being Wendy Eistetter) and her coinciding her drug addiction to the wild gathers at the Pickton farm known as Piggy’s Powwow (actual title being Piggy Palace Good Times Society) where motorcycle gangs and prostitutes congregated for a drug-fueled good time.  If having viewed a few of Ferrin’s credits before, some of the unrestrained gore and shock will not come at a surprise.  The benumbing unconcern of misanthropy is poignant amongst Ferrin’s soft-pedaling of horror with a whimsical manner within a gritty film that doesn’t feel as gritty as it should be considering the subject and subject material.  Another mitigating moment, one that’s more counterproductive to the Pickton storyline, is the parallel melodramatics of Wendy Eastman that eventually rendezvous with the titular “Pig Killer” and become the rendition of Wendy Eistetter supposed personal backstory and escape from death.  Wendy’s overdose and family issues provide reason for her subsequent run away from home, but the extent of the backstory unnecessarily rivals Willy Pickton’s and the whole destiny meetup enlists some deeper rooted significance that isn’t neatly fleshed out, turning awkwardly impertinent that waters down their entanglement. 

Arriving onto a Breaking Glass Pictures and a Darkstar Pictures collab, “Pig Killer” oinks itself onto an AVC encoded, 1080p, High-definition Blu-ray.  Presented in an anamorphic widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio, “Pig Killer” under the warm glow and desert dry eye of cinematographer Jeff Billings (“The Deep Ones”) sundries the shot types in various techniques, such as closeup slow motion to be inside Willy’s moment of divination, to provide Ferrin’s feature with comely appeal even in the vilest of moments. Details are sharp and delineated nicely albeit the quick editing for intensity purposes and to float Willy in and out of psychosis. Coloring is more natural than anything else with a few gels scatter about to spruce up the vibrancy. The lossless English DTS-HD 5.1 master audio renders clear dialogue without any distortions or other audible disturbances; however, the strength of the dialogue favors an infirm conveyance to grasp a few exchanges, especially in the exterior. A maximal Gerard McMahon soundtrack scores the entire biopic from start to finish with a range of 80’s power ballads to 90’s pop rock; the 76-year-old not only scores the project but also has a concert performance role with his band G Tom Mac. Depth and range supplement greatly as sound design cater to the surrounding atmospheres, such as the echo vibrations under the Eastside bridge or the pig-pen oinks and frenzies when feeding bits and pieces of sex workers to his farmyard swine. English SDH is optionally available. Packed with extra content, supplements included are an interview intercut with scenes with Ginger Lynn as well as a few of her clothed adult industry spreads/modeling, a behind-the-scenes footage with Michael Paré, deleted and extended scenes, and Q&A from Cine Excess, the making-of the Pig Mask, a making-of the film entitled Canadian Bacon, an introduction to Spunky the Pig aka Willy’s pig, a screen test of Kate Patel in the role of Willy, which was considered before Jake Busey landed the role, “Pig Killer” auditions, and the trailer. The clear Blu-ray Amaray case sports a dark-and-dirty gilt image of a half-naked Kate Patel and a menacing pig-masked person holding a clever overhead. Reverse side contains a still image of the insides of Willy’s pigsty camper while the disc is pressed with the same menacing pig and clever but more prominent. The collab release has a region A playback, a runtime of 122 minutes, and is not rated. The back cover also lists a 2000 production date, conflicting with the 2023 release states elsewhere, but the 2000 date would be before Willy Pickton’s arrest and so that might be a misprint. Chad Ferrin and Jake Busey jointly tackling the monster that is brutal serial killer Willy Pickton with an inkling of lighter material coursing through its arteries, style secreting through the madness, and, of course, gore, the most important ingredient to the likes of a film entitled “Pig Killer.” 

On This Farm There Was a “PIg Killer” now on Blu-ray!

EVIL Explains EVILThings! “Mansplained” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

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“Mainsplained” on DVD. Do You Need Me to Explain It To You?

Middle class professional Sara has just been mansplained how to be better at her job.  Numb by the experience, the humiliating moment eats at Sara’s sanity like a nagging drip of a leaky pipe.  In fact, drip sounds of a leaky sink invade her mental space as she nonchalantly places a towel and bucket under the constant dribble.  When her boyfriend Ryan comes home, his exasperation is triggered by Sara’s acute indifference and he breaks up with her, mansplaining in bullet points the reasons this relationship has failed.  Her blank stares send him off only to return later at the behest of his sister to make amends, but when he notices the leak and starts to mansplain and nitpick her solution, even though she called a plumber, the fed-up Sara stabs him in the eye and hides his body in the closet.  When the plumber arrives and begins mansplaining and making gross advances, she stabs him as well and hides his body in the closet.  Sara descends further into madness as the mansplaining and the dripping continue, and continue, and continue….

Mansplaining.  The newly conjoined word, that’s combines man and explaining is defined as a man condescendingly explaining a process or a subject they, themselves, know little about and assume the knowledge extent of the other person is less than their own, was officially added to the U.S. dictionary in March of 2018 during the height of the #MeToo movement.  Evan Jones, the man responsible for write and directing the substandard classics “Death Toilet” and its numerous killer commode sequels, is now behind “Mansplained,” a bareboned, indie psychological thriller self-described as Roman Polanski-esque and inspired from a story concept by SRS Cinema’s Ron Bonk who also produces the derogatory pejorative term and wokeness themed film alongside Jacobs’ microbudget production company Anhedenia Films.

One aspect of microbudget is a micro cast.  Not only is Evan Jacobs the writer, director, and producer, the filmmaker with 52 directorial projects under his belt since 1995 also dons four different characters mansplaining to Sara, played vacantly by Angelique Flores, to show masculinity similarity as well as to save a little mullah on the production bottom line.  Jacobs in multi-roles wouldn’t be so much of an issue if there putting in more variety of persona; instead, Jacobs just puts his own off-camera fundamentals into each role, rehashing the same guy, with the same inflections, with the same gestures, and with the same face and bald head.  Perhaps that carbon copy plays into the formula of a faceless man creeping into Sara’s one bedroom apartment to tell her how it is and how it should be.  I would like to think that’s how Evan Jacobs conveys this story but without any other real indicator that’s the vehicle we’re supposed to be taking a ride in, we’re still stuck at the curb waiting for our elucidation Uber to arrive.  As Sara, a woman internally cracking under ignorant male chauvinism, Flores is given no lines nor direction to do anything but to stay virtually silent with a 1000-yard stare.  Even when at a boiling spillage point where stabbing is the only way to mute mansplaining, there’s no fire in Flores’s eyes nor any searing-red anger people sometimes go blind to when up to their eyeballs in fury.  Sara stultifies about her apartment, looking out the window, looking the drip under the sink, meandering around the square footage, and this goes on for the allotted runtime.  “Mansplained” rounds out the cast with an experienced bunch typecasting themselves as various media talking heads, mostly men in newscasters, vloggers, etc., roles, with Clint Beaver (“Woods Witch”), Erica Dyer (“Macabre Mountain”), Brandon Farmer (“Amityville Apocalypse”), Francis Erdman (“Yule Log”), Paul Bradford (“Amityville Karen”), Rudy Ledbetter (“Night of the Tommyknockers”), and Jeffrey Wolf (“Motorboat”) with Lindy Hartsfield and Erin Hickman providing the telephone voice and physical presence of Michelle in a mixed up of associations with Sara.

To be honest, “Mansplained” is a slog which is more Polanski-lite than Polanski-esque.  The channeled madness Sara displays only nibbles the bait of being in the deluge of mansplaining by what is, essentially, the same person in her eyes and even the titular mansplaining comes off slightly feeble, never pushing the condescending boundaries of Sara’s limits and is more repetitive nonsense than patronizing prodding.  Without Sara reacting or trying to get a word in edge wise against Evan Jacob’s motor-mouthing salvo, a one-sided approach to a two-person dynamic renders the madness useless and impotent, especially when there are no other devices to support it.  Only in the very end does sanity crack open for us to peer into Sara’s disturb nature but even that moment of clarity has its legs cut out from under it, erasing the acrid accumulation of Sara’s stoically murderous, pent-up rage from the past hour in a quickly summed up way of an unexpected twist-like ending.  The periodic splice-ins of news reporters, vloggers, podcasters, and the like plant seeds of the philosophical sense around objective and subjective views, posing questions and raising awareness as if speaking to the audience watching the movie rather than to drive the characters in the story.  What Jacobs set out to accomplish was woman empowerment over condescending men in an enough-is-enough, kill-the-man way but what results is more the opposite with the heroine cracking under the bombardment of man’s sexist spew, succumbing to a catatonic and deranged state as she’s unable to handle the pressure. 

Produced by Ron Bonk, it comes to surprised that the home video rights would fall under Bonk’s SRS Cinema, a safe haven distributor for DIY indies.  The DVD is a MPEG2 encoded, standard definition, dual-layered DVD9, plenty of format space for adequate compression outcome as the bitrate maintains an average of 7.7Mbps.  Yet, the not as sharp quality stems from commercial grade video equipment that’s jittery, possible motion blur with the handheld and compounded by the slow-motion frame rate for stylistic effect and doesn’t produce finer details in the electronics’ finite capabilities.  Aside from some flashbacks and inner thoughts denoted by black and white imagery, “Mansplained” stays the natural color course without any strategic lighting to jazz up the appeal.  The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 mono has no complains inside a one location set with no vigorous action.   Overlaid telephone and podcast conversation audio, dripping/leak soundbites, and the brooding, discordant string soundtrack clearly come through with in-frame recording being very satisfactory, like ASMR satisfactory, in the minor, around-the-apartment hubbub as well as the dialogue albeit the audibly innate elbowroom echo.  There are no subtitles available.  Special features include a feature audio commentary with Evan Jacobs going into the genesis of the idea and his explanation for his methods and style choices, a 22-minute making-of featuring interviews with Evan Jacobs, Angelique Flores, and Lindy Hartsfield with crew including cinematographer Mike Hartsfield, “Mansplained” rehearsals that’s chiefly a PJ’ed Evan Jones acting alone in his residence, and the trailer.  The standard DVD Amaray case carries no ancillary material with the disc that has the same disc art as the DVD front cover, photoshopped with a maniacal Evan Jacob’s face grinning ear-to-ear between the opening of a chained lock door. The feature has a runtime of 74 minutes, comes not rated, and the SRS DVD has a region free playback.  Too much ambiguity on the table and not enough production value trumps the underlying expression as we actually need to be “Mansplained” to fully understand the endgame. 

“Mainsplained” on DVD. Do You Need Me to Explain It To You?

This EVIL, Straight-Razor Killer Has a Novel Idea! “Tenebrae” reviewed! (Synapse / 4K-Blu-ray Combo Set)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

2-Disc 4K UHD and Blu-ray Set Now Available of Dario Argento’s “Tenebrae”

While on a media book tour for his latest popular crime thriller novel, “Tenebrae,” American novelist Peter Neal is swiftly entangled in a killer’s puritanical wrath shortly after landing in Rome.  Using Neal’s story as an inspirational guideline to rid the world of what the fictional book labels as depraved people, the killer brutally murders women closely resembling characters in Neal’s book with a straight razor and sends Neal a deranged poetic message shortly after each death.  Police are on the case but always once step behind, even when the murders have seemingly stop connecting to the pages of Neal’s novel.  When the writer investigates by running through the list of possible suspects, the writer in him goes rogue by setting off to solve the case himself that would sensationalize and authenticate him as a crime writer, but the deeper Neal directly involves himself, the more the grislier the murders become and they’re starting to come closer to home than before. 

Dario Argento is unequivocally one of the best masters of horror for half a century, writing and directing not only some of the best Italian crime-mystery Giallos, splashed with hue vibrancy and caked in gruesome blood splatter, but also writing and directing those same films with major success internationally as his films connect with a global audience.  “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage,” “Deep Red,” and “Suspiria” have skyrocketed the filmmaker within the first decade of movie-crafting and Argento would not have been who is now without the guidance and the financial foundation constructed by father, Salvatore Argento.  Before his death in 1987, Salvatore produced one more of his son’s ventures in 1982 with “Tenebrae,” an emblematic mystery that brings Italian and American actors into the fold of Argento’s violent pulp puzzler.  Argento’s younger brother, Claudio, co-produced the feature under the Sigma Cinematografica Roma production company.

The Italiano-Americano production casts a pair of native New Yorkers in Anthony Franciosa (“Death Wish II,” “Curse of the Black Widow”) and John Saxon (“A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Black Christmas”) who regularly crossed over the Atlantic for roles in international pictures.  Franciosa plays the novelist Peter Neal with Saxon as Neal’s newly hired agent Bullmer.  Their portrayed amicable relationship succeeds expectations of client and manager professionalism, but a good publicity campaign can be torpedoed by a sadistic killer with a throat cutting fetish and Roma’s best officers on the case intruding into the Neal’s personal promotion with Detective Germani, played by spaghetti western regular Giuiliano Gemma (“Day of Anger”), and his partner, Inspector Altieri, played by Carola Stagnaro (“Phantom of Death”).  The third English speaker is John Steiner (“Caligula”), a proper Englishman setup as an Italian television host on the docket to interview Peter Neal’s latest release success.  Steiner becomes an early favorite as the suspected killer with his odd pre-show questioning that falls in line with the Killer’s motives, but he isn’t the only person of interest as Neal’s estranged lover Jane (Veronica Lario) holds a lover’s quarrel with the writer who has seemingly become intimately close with his personal assistant Anne (Daria Nicolodi, “Deep Red”).  A conglomerate of characters gyrate Argento’s maelstrom mystery, each exhibiting profound performances that make each rich in their own right, and fill out with an assemblage of robust supporting characters diffusing through the story with Ania Pieroni (“The House by the Cemetery”), Lara Wendel (“Ghosthouse”), Eva Robins (“Eva man”), and Mirella Banti (“Scandal in Black”), the model most infamously on the front cover of most home video releases and poster one sheets with the iconic neck-sliced open and dripping blood along with her wavy hair suspended in a pose of vivid void and color.

“Tenebrae,” in Latin translates to darkness, describes Argento’s post-“Suspiria” feature intently.  Giallo lives within this time capsulated enigmatic madness, color-coated and visually complex to become an easy pill to swallow amongst all others in the Italian-reared niche.  Accompanying all the hallmarks of a Giallo construct – the killer’s gloved hands in POV, psychosexual tropes, mental instability exposures, violent and gory – Argento also impresses us with baroque mise-en-scene of lavish houses, detailed interiors, and extremely broad, emotionally phrenic individuals.  We also receive technical style wonders like a long boom shot that cranes up a house exterior to follow the idiosyncratic and opposing activities of two presently quarrelling lesbian lovers on a dark, stormy night in a tensely presage moment mixed with the synth-rock sounds of the “Goblin” theme track.  “Tenebrae” is chic in its ugliness and the patience Argento shows is formidably impenetrable without being flawed with lingering stagnancy.  While wallowing into what we’re led to believe, red herrings and other subterfuges to throw off audiences’ keen-to-solve sniffers, the story stirs a cauldron of coherent progression that is, more often than desired, lost in most gialli trying to weave through an intelligible punchy crime-mystery without becoming disoriented by the twists, turns, and topsy-turvy outcomes.   

“Tenebrae” hits 4K onto a 2-Disc, UHD and Blu-ray combo set from the genre-leading distributor, Synapse Films. The HEVC, mastered in Dolby Vision, encoding 2180p UHD and the AVC encoded 1080p high-definition Blu-ray are presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio in both the English and Italian versions of the feature.  One of the more gorgeously restored versions ever to be presented, with sharp delineation and organic popping colors within the narrow margins of infrequent gel lighting, the near flawless original negative is greatly elevated by Synapse’s ultra high-def facelift that resound the lavish textures of various sets, the expressional details of the characters’ face, and the glistening shine of the spraying blood.  There’s real balance between the colors in this presentation, offering not only a wide variety of hues but a great display of the mix.  Gels are not overly used and are more key lighting spotlights to heighten tension or introduce moods on an almost subconscious level.  Both English and Italian versions score a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono.  This release caters to the very suspense Argento acoustically and phonically propounds that, in the same regard to the eyes, places viewers’ ears right in the middle of the action.  Every sound is distinct and unassuming during the throes of violence, a cleanly serrating effect that compounds killer consternation of being everything, everywhere, all at once.  Typical of the time and cost-efficient ADR usually retains some dubbing disharmony, but “Tenebra’s” tracks are neatly synchronous with Anthony Franciosa and John Saxon’s recordings timed exact and as if captured in the scene.   Some of the dubbing isn’t as in the bag, such as with Giuliano Gemma’s recording that’s does denote that space in between intensified by likely another voice actor’s reading overtop Gemma’s actual dialogue.  UHD offers English SDH on the English version while the Italian version has just regular English subtitles; the Blu-ray disc has the same.  Hours of bonus content, identical on both formats, begin with an audio commentary by Dario Argento: the Man, the Myths, the Magic author Alan Jones and film critic/historian Kim Newman, a second audio commentary by Dario Argento expert Thomas Rostock, and a third audio commentary by Maitland McDonagh, author of Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds:  The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento.  The fun doesn’t end there with a 2016 feature-length documentary “Yellow Fever:  The Rise and Fall of the Giallo” with interviews from Dario Argento, Umberto Lenzi, Luigi Cozzi, and Ruggero Deodato amongst the biggest names in film critic authoritarians, a newly edited archival interview with actor John Steiner, a newly edited archival interview with Maitland McDonagh, an archival featurette Voices of the Unsane with “”Tenebrae’s” Dario Argento, Daria Nicolodi, Eva Robins, Luciano Tovoli, Claudio Simonetti, and Lamberto Bava interviews, an archival interview with actress Daria Nicolodi, an archival interview with writer-director Dario Argento, an archival interview with composer Claudio Simonetti, an archival introduction from Daria Nicolodi, an international theatrical trailer, the Japanese Shadow trailer, an alternate opening credits sequence, “Unsane” end credits sequence, and an image gallery to wrap things up.  Inside the rigid O-slipcover, graced with a high quality and beautifully macabre illustration rendered by Nick Charge, is a Synapse Films’ black, 4K UHD labeled Amaray case with a double side disc lock and a reversible cover art with the Nick Charge graphic as default underneath the slipcover with the reverse side the Synapse Films’ standard Blu-ray cover art pulped with a famous death scene in pop art color. The insert houses a Synapse Films’ catalogue, and the discs are pressed with two notable kill scene frozen moments pulled in still image form. Feature runs at 101-minutes with an uncut presentation of the feature with a region free playback on both formats. ”Tenebrae” is Dario Argento in a cracked-up nutshell, paradoxically beautiful and horrible and burgeoning with suspense and color. The restored and remastered Synapse Films’ UHD and Blu-ray set is equally as such in its gorgeously grotesque packaging of film, its director, and its legacy that will outlive us all.

2-Disc 4K UHD and Blu-ray Set Now Available of Dario Argento’s “Tenebrae”

EVIL’s Coaxial Cord Right into Your TV Set! “HeBGB TV” reviewed! (Scream Team Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Contact Your Local Cable Provide to Upgrade Your Box for “HeBGB TV” on DVD!

In a world of streaming devices, the cable box era has become nothing but a memory until mysterious HeBGB cable boxes sudden appear on retail shelves and on homeowner doorsteps.  The what looks to be a brain in a box with some wiring quickly self-installs right into the cable jack and manifests a gaudy-dressed tangible host, The Purple Guy, right into your living room.  Promising a guaranteed fun time, The Purple Guy is eager for souls, I mean viewers, to subscribed to the endless commercial content of HeBGB TV, promising nothing but the best entertainment from the other side of the dimension has to offer.  Sordid horror, 90s-inspired carving infomercials, grotesque commercials, monstrous sexy hotlines, demonic feature films, and more provide a source of endless brain-rotting consumerism over the TV broadcast waves.  Eye-glued patrons of senseless horrors become slave to the screens that send their very souls to a machination machine from another world.  Who can stop the evils of doom channel surfing? 

Those who are now in their late 30s, early 40s likely remember how awesome and nearly uninhibited cable television was back in the day.  Money and creative talent were invested in turning the most ordinary retail product into a mini-movie of ostentatiousness, imbued with vividly stark colors and an insanity of pure energy.  Television didn’t coddle, it shaped the very fabric of impressionable children of that era, resulting in imagine and inspiration.  That is what comes to mind when speaking of “HeBGB TV,” a comedy-horror anthology of sorts of shorts written-and-directed by Eric Griffin, Adam Lenhart, and Jake Mcclellan.  The trio’s initial concept, prior to the creation of “HeBGB TV,” was something along the lines of an interactive variety show with short films, standup comedy, and puppetry held in front of a live audience.  When COVID hit in 2020, their idea pivoted toward a movie, eventually a script evolved into a drivable wraparound narrative chalked-full of some of the prefabbed material as well as some other new zany, horror-inspired skits, shorts, and string-pulling puppetries.  Griffin, Lenhart, and Mcclellan produce the feature under their LLC of HeBGB TV productions and PatchTown Films, based right in my regional backyard of Lancaster, PA.

Credited in the film as Knucklehead, Jake Mcclellan may act to the very definition of pseudonym but, in the lack of better words, is the face of “HeBGB TV” by having scores of roles and personalities at his disposable to dress up and become a totally new and grotesquely phantasmagoric character.  Whether be The Purple Guy, PU News’ greasy anchorman, the Blue Monster, or just desperate dieter with a health-hazard late night snacking problem, Mcclellan goes all out with makeup, costuming, and prosthetics in what could be considered a one man drag show and its gorgeously panache and over-the-top but doesn’t stray terribly too far from the outrageous era the horror-comedy emulates.  “HeBGB TV” is full of caricatures of late-night television and oddities of live TV and marketing campaigns, even Eric Griffin and Adam Lenhart get involved in front of camera as a hobo watching a portable antenna TV and as Smokie, the exterminator of potheads with noxious weed, as seen on TV, or rather “HeBGB TV.”  Most of the enthusiasm, and eccentrics, are within film’s faux television programming but the cast of performances flesh out with Ian Sanchez, Curtis Proctor-Artz, Josh Dorsheimer, Zenobia Decoteau, Michael Garland, Mike Madrigall, Ellen Tiberio-Shultz, Kristie Ohlinger, Colleen Madrigall, and Willow and Van Reiner as the kids who The Purple Guy connivingly entertains and Andrew Bowser reprising his most beloved YouTube persona, Onyx the Fortuitous.

Cut from the same cloth as Weird Al’s “UHF, Peter Hyams’s “Stay Tuned,” and Jeff Lieberman’s “Remote Control,” the cable box antics of the 80s-90s TV is quickly fading the analog years into nothing more than static snow of broadcast noise.  However, “HeBGB TV” is the answer, the recollection, and the nostalgia-driven film that delivers better than trying to get a glimpse of the vague outlines of adult actresses in the static noise of premium adult channels.  Directors Griffin, Lenhart, and Mcclellan combine their creative geniuses, incorporate their sentimental love of 90’s media, and integrate their own other interests into a cinematic cannonball of colorful comedy-horror.  While the wraparound stories outside the HeBGB TV box proves able with the inexplicable mass rollout of the brain-in-a-box cable program provider and rotting, killing, and transfiguring viewers into mindless gawkers, overdosed smokers, and malevolent demons, the real star of the feature is flipping through the channels for the go-hard mock-commercials and other putrid programming laced with horror themes and capturing the spirit of television culture of 20-to-30 years ago.  While most of the visual effects reside around the wraparound story, contributing to the alloying of the story, Adam Lenhart’s practical effects more than make up for it a DIY initiative of can-do sculpting, molding, and crafting ingenuity below the embraced realm of unreality.

Don’t touch that dial as Scream Team Releasing delivers cable television like never before with “HeBGB TV” now on DVD! Though the Scream Team Releasing DVD back cover lists the format as a Blu-ray, the data file is actually a MPEG2 encoded, singer-layer DVD5 that has a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio presentation. A combination blend of interlaced and digital video swirl “HeBGB TV” into a time warp of the past and present. The filmmakers captured not only the feel of rambunctious, eccentric, and vividly brilliant 90’s commercials but were also able to capture the look of it too with the interlacing horizontal lines indicative of video frame rates of the time. The wraparound narrative portions are digitally cleaner in juxtaposition, factionalizing present and TV programming with distinction until the culminating plan comes to conclusion. Some of the digital visual effects gags crumble under the practical elements of an analog airing, proving once again that the tangible and practical outstage the digital composition, but the crumbling doesn’t stem from compression issues. The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 mix is a symphony of frenzied chaos, pinpoint advert jingles, and deliciously distasteful horror gags facsimiled perfectly, as if it was plucked straight from the pre-millennium. Dialogue is quick but renders clean and clear in a blend of inset and ADR vocal recording, per the commentary. No issues with depth, range, or any kind of compression side effects. Well scored with a catchy main theme and topnotch sound designed to add to “HeBGB TV’s” romp commercial content. English subtitles are optionally available. Bonus features are aplenty with a retrospective interview with the three directors and short clips going in-depth with behind-the-scenes movie magic, a HeBGB TV video installation guide, a world-premiere pre-show, the first interactive show prior to COVID, and the theatrical trailer in the motion menu option shaped like a retro tube television with right side buttons. Inside the setup option along with the English Subtitle toggle, a directors’ commentary can be selected and played from there. The standard edition encased inside an Amaray comes with faded hues on an illustrated composition cover art of most of the “HeBGB TV’s” wacky pastiches and a disc pressed with the pulsing brain-loaded cable box. The release comes not rated, region free, and has a copasetic runtime of 78 minutes. ”HeBGB TV” is couch potato worthy that syndicates together hilarious travesties and transvestites for timeless television touting, stitched together from previously shot short films, puppetry depravities, and a new sci-fi fiction.

Contact Your Local Cable Provide to Upgrade Your Box for “HeBGB TV” on DVD!

EVIL Relaxes in the Serenity of a “Full Body Massage” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Lube Up and Get Ready for “Full Body Massage” on Blu-ray!

Nina, a middle-aged affluent art dealer, has just returned from a long business trip.  Settling back down into her own nature morte decked home, Nina pampers herself with a hot shower, a glass of wine, elegant music, and a soak in her open aired, backyard hot tub as she relaxes before for her masseur, Doug, a handsome young man she finds herself comfortably attracted to outside their professional relationship, arrives to put his oiled up hands up and down her naked body but when Fitch arrives, Doug’s more seasoned stand-in, Nina finds herself blindsided by the change and slightly disappointed in her sudden erotic deflation.  Fitch’s worldly approach to life conflicts against Nina’s narrow perspective on various topics, including art, happiness, and love.  Willing to be fully open with each other during the intimate and unorthodox massage, Nina and Fitch debate deep into their session without holding anything back with flashbacks on their experiences that led them to this very moment of unexpected connection.

Director Nicholas Roeg, the late acclaimed English director, is known for his in-depth humanizing of flawed or downcast protagonists, often times surrounded by desire and obstacles, having helmed such renowned features as “Walkabout,” “Bad Timing,” and “The Man Who Fell From Earth.”  Roeg has also dipped his directional toes in horror with films like “Don’t Look Now” and “The Witches,” running the gamut between adult and children thrills.  Later in his career, Roeg slowly moved away from theatrical features and into the realm of television, shorts, and TV movies with one of those made-for-TV films being “Full Body Massage” for the premium cable network Showtime.  Penned by “The Stranger’s” Dan Gurskis, “Full Body Massage” trades in a problematic mystery or obstacle for more of the unravelling of philosophical viewpoints of two strangers wounded in their own obvious way only to have the air purified each other’s different life paths and mere presence of mind.  The 1995 released U.S. network movie is produced by erotic thriller operators Julie Ahlberg and Michael Nolin of “The Pornorgrapher” under the LLC of Full Body Productions and Showtime.

Though a made-for-television movie likely marketed for and airing as a late night skin flick for the premium network channel in the cable box era of the 1990s, “Full Body Massage” was anything but your ordinary after dark tits up production with two well-known stars substantially casted and not just for the headline attraction.  “Ginger Snaps” and “Hider in the House” American actress Mimi Rogers is joined by Australian star and “F/X” leading man Bryan Brown who undertake the respective roles of world-weary Nina and worldly-candid Fitch.  While “Full Body Massage” has the hallmarks of softcore programming, an titillating title, sexy sax soothing tones, and a very naked Mimi Rogers, the machinating devices have more bark than bite as Rogers and Brown never engage into sexual intimacy albeit a lot of sensual massage manhandling by Fitch on Nina’s more than happy to be naked body with a stranger she just met.  The two mainstays are pundits for the story, verbally expelling their own viewpoints and experiences that have shaped their choices in life, molding them to who they are, and nearing the edge of gospel when in rhetoric with each other.  Their conspicuous dispute is nearly all narratively all consuming but not as nearly all argumentative in it’s very adult approach to discussion of just two people seeing the world through two very different eyes.   Other characters are told through mostly flashbacks and never interact in the same aortic piece with Rogers and Brown with Christopher Burgard (“Syngenor”), Elizabeth Barondes (“Night of the Scarecrow”), Gareth Williams (“Striking Distance”), Patrick Neil Quinn (“Swamp Thing” television series), Heather Gunn (“Ed Gein”), and Gabriella Hall (“The Erotic Adventures of the Invisible Man”) and Brian McLane playing younger versions of Nina and Fitch. 

“Full Body Massage” is not an intense, edge-of-your-seat nail biter bursting with action and suspense.  In fact, I struggle with film’s point and overall message to the world in what in essence boils down to a character study.  Fitch’s disapproving father no matter how perfection Fitch achieved, Nina’s continuous search for approvals in love, Fitch’s losing love that sends him on a spiritual journey, and Nina’s failed marriages between fast-and-loose husbands and hard to connect with ones make the two underlyingly wounded adults rigid and confidence in that unyielding measure until they meet each other and experience pliability out of a long-winded dialogue in not only a face-to-face manner, but also in the healing power of touch and massage that’s feels erotic per Roeg’s direction but also works out every kink in their twisted, knotted pasts to where they end in an uncertain but good place, a place they’ve never been before or have long forgotten.  By the course of two people talking, which most the world does every day, there had to be buzzier bright light to attract swarming audiences to the premium cable network’s thirst for viewership and that would be Mimi Rogers going nearly full-frontal for nearly the entire runtime and Roeg really plays into that erotic prance of unabashed confidence and comfortability while also, contrariwise, the dynamic progresses platonically. 

A newly scanned 2K transfer of 1995 film comes from an unlikely boutique distributor known mainly for extreme horror, gore and shock, and controversial material. Unearthed Films proudly presents “Full Body Massage” on Blu-ray as title lucky number 13 on their Unearthed Classics label. The AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD50 exhibits cable vision veneer in a television widescreen 1.66:1 aspect ratio. Roeg’s choice to go virtually without style really hinges on the substance for success. The natural approach consumes any low-lit or candle-lit warm interiors exclusively for flashback sequences. The 35 mm print has been cared for and it shows with pristine HD transfer that keeps the natural grain and doesn’t need to really sugarcoat any sour patches. The English lossless PCM 2.0 stereo mix offers exact fidelity of the original discourse and milieu ambience of an innate digital sound capture. With the dialogue heavy story, the discourse is clean, clear, and prominent, comprehensible in every which way. Depth provides expansion and echo inside Nina’s vastly roomy mansion, but range is limited to talking and not the sensual, sexy, arousing kind. English subtitles and SDH subtitles are available on this release. Special features include the television version presented in 1.33:1 aspect ratio, a minute still image gallery that’s mostly Bryan Brown behind Mimi Rogers giving her the massage, and the original trailer. While not a great selection of bonus content, the physical exterior succeeds slightly favorable with a cardboard O-slipcover with flat, yet beautiful, illustration of, again, Bryan Brown and Mimi Rogers in massage therapy that could be misleading as sensuality. The Amaray Blu-ray cover sports the same image on the cover art and even compressed even further on the disc art. The Blu-ray is rated R, locked in region A playback, and has a runtime of 93 minutes. I’m not going to try and kid you with what is and will be “Full Body Massage’s” immediate appeal, a very well-endowed and nude Mimi Rogers, but this anomalous Unearthed Classic brings a different highbrow criterion class to the extreme horror label in what is a brazen change of pace. 

Lube Up and Get Ready for “Full Body Massage” on Blu-ray!