Category Archives: 70’s-groove!

EVIL is Waking Up to Find Yourself Married as a Simple Wife to An Abusive Island Fisherman. “Splendid Outing” reviewed! (Radiance Films /Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Splendid Outing” on Limited Edition Blu-ray!

President Gong Do-hee is an elite executive on top of the business world that’s mostly male-dominated profession.  Securing trade agreements, being head speaker at events, and forming relationships with male peers of other nations, President Gong is exhausted by the end of the day, returning home to regain recharge even if that means not spending time with her two children by letting the governess oversee play and bedtime.  Vivid dreams of being called to the seaside by a mirror image of herself and her therapist reminding her of her dead twin sister in relation to the dream sends President Gong on a road trip to the shore where she’s tumultuous caught up in a riot and chased by a mob only to find herself waking up to four fishermen handing her off to an agitated Island fisherman, Lee Min-Joo, who claims to be her husband.  Seeming stripped of her life on the mainland, she’s constantly under surveillance and abused by Lee’s certainly of her place under him as a dutiful wife by cooking, cleaning, hosting, and taking care of their crippled daughter. Gong Do-hae plays along, submitting to Lee’s instruction, until the right moment to escape back to Seoul where her past life may not be there anymore. 

Coursing with gender inequality, patriarchal oppression, and imposter syndrome, director Kim Soo-young (“Sorrow Even Up in Heaven”) challenges reality with a surrealistic dissociation and inescapable threat of being forcibly tied to an insufferable situation in his 1978 drama-thriller “Splendid Outing.” The South Korean film, originally titled “Hwaryeohan wichul,” is written by Cho Moon-jin (“Dying in Your Arms”) as a personal nightmare where one loses their existence and cut off from the rest of the world, essentially torpedoing their life before and being replaced or forgotten.  Kim Tae-su’s longstanding Taechang Productions (“Deadly Kick,” “Red Eye”) produces the feature from Seoul on the mainland to the adjacent unnamed islands where filming took place.

Without dishonoring or neglecting her costars’ performances, Yung Jeong-hie is “Splendid Outing’s” one woman show as the stoically exhausted President Gong.  From her POV entrance being escorted to her office where the camera turns to face her undivided business façade to the moment she steps into her affluent home with a nanny and maid, the “Village in the Mist” actress can rub elbows with elite professionals as if gender didn’t exist but there’s still this unbalanced tension that’s unsettling for President Gong, one that’s a male-driven society that flippantly places expectations of systematic conventions in regard to women’s placement within the workforce and society.  That pressure through peer misconduct induces anxiety, subverting her subconscious into a trip toward the seaside where being called to ends up being appallingly costly in a mind-boggling spirit-breaking deconstruction of herself.  This is when she meets Lee Min-joo claiming to be her husband, a brutish fisherman with an abusive hand and tongue with stereotypical, old-fashion perspective on where wife should be spending their time.  “Eros” actor Lee Dae-kun rendition of the role depicts an uncouthly aggressive and maybe even on the spectrum with his island bumpkin behavior.  Lee Min-joo’s not niceties extent beyond his mistreatment of Gong with womanizing ways and thievery.  Being trapped on the island, there’s nothing Gong can do is bide her time, time the punishment, and try to use her decision-making skills for the right time to escape but even when she does, the life that she once knew is over like it never existed before.  Those who saw her daily only see a faint resemblance in who they now considered long dead, her children have moved out of their family home with no mention of a forwarding address, and even her bank accounts of whittled down to nothing to complete the total erasure of her life after a year of living on the island.  “Splendid Outing” rounds out with significantly minor supporting roles in Lee Yeong-ha as the visiting island doctor and Kim Jeong-ian as Gong’s island daughter. 

From the opening walk-through of President Gong’s daily schedule and interactions to the oppressive nature of Lee Min-joo’s husbandry, themes of inequality stack up and out of “Splendid Outing’s” Lynchian narrative that courses like a bad dream of subdued impostorism.  President Gong single-handed success is stolen away by the cackling jabs of male perception that women should get married, someone to take care of them.  That seemingly innocent interaction brings big consequences to the executive’s psyche, inducing dreams of the seaside and her sister, and influencing a far drive to an unnamed fishing town where she doesn’t provoke to be whisked away in an unconscious state only to awake married, handed off to a stranger claiming to be her husband.  From there, President Gong is not only top executive of her class but rather in the position she has feared most – in stereotypical relationship with conventional gender roles of men providing, women working, and its askew gender dominance controlled and welded like a weapon by the uneducated island man called her husband.  Other than dreams and flashbacks during Gong’s time on the island, Kim Soo-young doesn’t lean on fantastical uneasiness to culture the effect.  The situation itself bores that sensation right into your core and frantic motions kick in to try and piece the puzzle together of how, why, and when she ended up on a strange fishing island with a strange fisherman.  Combination of her twin sister and the seashore experienced during the dream deduces possibility – perhaps her twin sister isn’t dead but just ran away?  Or perhaps President Gong is mistaken for her deceased twin and the man claiming to be her husband is her brother-in-law?  And even with sprawling open-aired island with jagged rocky hills and lush nature, a feeling of claustrophobia encompasses her as there’s no escape from the island, a hovering over every move husband, and the distance between neighbors creates a sense of confining isolation.

Coming back from dead, President Gong lost everything, or so she thought.  For Kim Soo-young and “Splendid Outing” coming back from the video graveyard, their feature fairs better, gaining all the glow-ups of a new and improved release with Radiance Films’ Blu-ray.  The limited-edition, single disc Blu-ray, “Splendid Outing’s” world-wide debut on the format, comes AVC encoded with 1080p high-def resolution onto a BD50.  The digitized transfer is produced from a 4K scan from the 35mm negative stored at the Korean Film Archive that was sent to Radiance Films for restoration at the Heavenly Movie Corp and presented to us today in an anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  Overall, the picture looks phenomenal with a natural diffused saturation, depth of focus in the details between background and foreground, and a fabric texturing that presents no challenges to distinguish.  Skin coloring appears also organic and captures enough glinty sheen of sweat and wet soaked skin and the coarse nature of a days long stubble.  The original print has survived the test of time to assist in producing a freshened up and restored transfer but there are noticeable but minor and faint instances of vertical scratching, mostly on the viewers’ right side of the frame.  The Korean language PCM mono mix offers an adequate mix that harnesses the surrounding the background noise and integrates it harmoniously in with the dialogue and sound designed or hard sound effects.   Dialogue tops the layers with a vigorous ADR that matches the movements with pleasing synchronicity, especially early on in President Gong’s routine where numerous different languages are spoken, such as Japanese and English before entirely switching solely to Korean.  The range extends from the hustle and bustle of a city urbanscape to the coastal sounds of calling seagulls and water splashes against rocks and shores.  Improved English subtitles are available with this Blu-ray.  Limited to 2500 copies, the catch them if you can special features a new audio commentary from Ariel Schudson, writer of classic gender and Korean films, a new opinion interview with “Peppermint Candy” and “Burning” filmmaker Lee Chang-dong, a new interview with assistant director Chung Ji-young, and a Pierce Conran visual essay Stranded But Not Afraid:  The Island Women of Classic Korean Cinema.”  The interviews are in Korean with English subs.  The Blu-ray comes with Time Tomorrow’s new (primary) and the film’s original artwork (reverse) with an informational technical and synopsis obi strip behind the plastic of a clear Amaray case.  The disc is pressed in the Radiance Films’ conventional single block color of mostly pink with black lettering for the title.  The insert contains a 35-page color picture and essay booklet with essays and excerpts from Chonghwa Chung, director Kim Soo-young, and Pierce Conran along with the cast and crew credits and Blu-ray release notes and acknowledgements.  The region free playback gives all nations the availability to enjoy the 94-minute, unrated mainland to island mystery and psychological thriller. 

Last Rites: “Splendid Outing” is a trip down the rabbit hole and Kim Soo-young is Lewis Carroll surrealistically asserting our Alice, aka President Gong, onto a topsy-turvy island of a have-no-say and abusive marriage, ideals and concepts not of her own nor not of her favor. Soo-yonng’s story deconstructs the consummate family idea into an utter nightmare subverted by a male influenced traditionalist society.

“Splendid Outing” on Limited Edition Blu-ray!

Ai Nu the Most Beautiful Woman to Capture the hearts of both Men and Women’s but EVIL Has Other Plans for Her. “Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan” and “Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan” reviewed! (Imprint Asia / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Order the #34 and #35 of a “Chinese Courtesan” from Imprint Asia’s Boxset!

Taken against her will while living off the streets, Ai Nu’s kidnappers take her and other snatched girls to the Four Seasons Brothel where the once homeless young girl is greeted by the elegant Chun-yi, the brothel head mistress whose cold and ruthless, but Chun-yi, despite letting Ai Nu be whip beaten and raped by her prestigious paying clients, falls for Ai Nu’s beauty.  The two women form a close, sexual relationship while Chun-yi continues to sell Ai Nu’s body to the wealthiest bidder.  All the while, Ai Nu plans her revenge, slow and steady to get back to those who exploited her.  That’s the harrowing and melodramatic exploitation premise, streaked with reality-defying Kung-Fu, from a Shaw Brothers production and its reenvisioned remake that diverges itself from the original story with additional elements that influence what type of revenge Ai Nu is plotting and provides alternate emotional context to the principal characters. 

“The Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan” and “Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan” are the 1972 original and the 1984 remake violent martial arts and brothel underbelly love, rape-revenge narratives brought together by Via Vision’s Imprint Asia sublabel.  These films pushed the moral fiber envelope with prostitution decadence, scandalous lesbian themes, and sexual violence displayed on Hong Kong’s cinematic screen.  “Haunted Tales’” Yuen Chor, credited as Chu Yuan, helmed the Kang-Chin Chiu (“Finger of Doom”) script of “The Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan” with Chor returning over a decade later to sit back in the director’s seal for the remake, “Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan” in which he wrote the script that keeps most of the core similarities that mildly varies yet significantly differs the emotive motivations that affect the finale and character outcomes.  Both films are a production of Shaw Brothers with Runme Shaw producing “Intimate Confessions” and Mona Fong, wife of Runme’s brother Run Run Shaw, produced the “Lust for Love” sequel of the “Chinese Courtesan.” 

Power, under an affluential and admired ruling thumb backed by the wielding of Kung-fu arrogance, is what Chun-yi of “Intimate Confessions” embodied and, eventually, is what blinded her to her undoing.  In her debut role, Betty Pei Ti creates an unforgettable impression that cements Chun-yi as a fierce and fixated force being a corruptor of young women and a criminal kingpin with her deadly mitts in just about every provincial authority and lawmaking body.  The “Police Woman” and “Succubare” actress seizes one-half control of the story with her beauty, acting command, and dynamic and complicated relationship with on screen actress Lily Ho as Ai Nu, a homeless young woman with equally fierce fight in her but not backed by any kind of authority or station.  Ho, a veteran actress with stardom success as the titular character from Chih-Hung Kuei and Akinori Matsuo’s female fatale picture “The Lady Professional” the year prior, brings a vulnerable ferocity to Ai Nu.  Like a scared cat back into a corner, Lily Ho claws the character through a no-win-scenario of survival in a tough role that involves multiple men thrusting themselves onto her but like a switch, Ho’s able to turn off Ai Nu from being an erratic rebel to save her life to actually saving her life by calmly weaponizing love.  Kuan-Chen Hu portrays the Ai Nu character a little bit different in the 1982 version.  Not as feisty and more brittle, Hu’s uno card reversal on the brothel mistress turns into a ménage à trois of greed in it’s underlaying of revenge.  Chun-yi, too, has varying traits to the “Intimate Confessions” counterpart as On-On Yu (“Black Magic with Buddha”) gives the brothel mistress, who goes by Lady Chun, a softer harshness when it comes to delicate and delegating dastardly business and personal affairs.  Lady Chun also doesn’t have a martial arts bone in her body unlike Betty Pei Ti’s fighters-of-death Chun-yi who is a more of a typical well-rounded, boss-level antagonist, but what Lady Chun does come with more is contextual backstory, a woman who rose from power but sees much of herself in Ai Nu and makes promises of reciprocal care with fellow orphan and childhood friend, and skillful hired sword assassin, Hsiao Yeh (Kuo-Chu Chang, “Killer Rose”).  On-On Yu’s version can be cruel but be cruel while exacting a tender heart to her fixation on Ai Nu, adding a deeper and different complexion to what we’ve seen Chor produce before more than decade before.  The cast of each film round out with kidnapping scoundrels, crooked officials, and one lone decent constable within a supporting cast that includes Yueh Hua, Lin Tung, Wen-Chung Ku, Fan Mei-Sheng, Chung-Shan Wan, Shen Chan, Alex Man, Miao Ching, and Kuo Hua Chang.

Watching the two films back-to-back can throw one for a loop as the remake is not a carbon copy of the original, but there is a lingering familiarity that can’t be shook as it hooks itself to “Intimate Confessions’” key plot and forcibly exclaims its remake existence.  Like many things that have a sense of duality, there are also stark and contrasting differences between them.  If personally favoring sadist measures, rougher sexual confiscating, and a confident villainous vixen, the original “Intimate Confessions” will be more to your like.  If personally favoring a slow-and-steady wins the race melodrama, brewed and stewed in romance and storytelling, with more wuxia fighting and swordplay, the “Lust for Love” checks the boxes.  Compositionally, Chor’s vivid backlighting through a hazer fog with different spectrum colors is evident in both films but “Intimate Confessions” has profound designed objects and background combinations that work with the choreography that tells the mood of the story:  the windy and hazy night of Ai Nu and the good natured constables first meet that tells of a foreboding fate, the the bright and joyous revelry of exciting patrons of on the verge of copulating with exploited, kidnapped young women, or the darker streaked toned of betrayal and death in the finale showdown between principal players.  “Lust for Love” also has a tone about it that’s more in tune with the melodrama with expensive looking sets accompanied by a delicate palette of gold, white, and softer reds and yellows.  Plenty of third act loving making from the love triangle showcase told through a sequence of surrealism and teeing up fantasy desires heightened by the glisten outdoor tub water sloshing side-to-side in their passion, on the dewy moss the half-naked roll in, and in the gold rimmed adorned bedrooms where lesbianic lovers flirt.  Chor first ventures the rough rape-revenge thriller only to chuck the indelicacies of the original film and replace with swirling succulence of sex and self-indulgence, a contrasting brilliance formed and reshaped only a dozen years apart.

Imprint Asia knows all about courtesans, or at least about the Yuen Chor courtesans, in “Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan” and “Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan” with a new 2-disc Blu-ray boxset from Australia.  The 1080p high-definition transfers are pulled from the original 35mm negatives and are AVC encoded onto a BD50s and presented in their original aspect rations of 2.40:1 (“Intimate Confessions”) and 2.35:1 (“Lust for Love”), compressed by spherical anamorphic, widescreen lens with the noticeable curvature in the image.  Both presentations offer an ideal image experience with neither damage showing signs of damage or age, palpable textiles of the silk-spun and cotton blend garbs that sheen as expected and absorb a gratifying amount of reflected light within its respective fabric.  Grain appears light yet organic with skin tones and textures with an organic display, unlike in the Shaw-Shock Volume 2 set where skin coloring appeared orange in quite a few scenes.  The spherical lends offers depth despite its slightly warped edging as if looking in a corner convex mirror.  The audio formats include a Mandarin LPCM 2.0 Mono mix with burned-in English subtitles.  There’s also a Cantonese language option of the same spec but the English subtitles are optional.  Subtitles synchronization is on point with the ADR track that’s retains a clear and discernable dialogue albeit the gurgling quality of recording interference present through. The over exaggerated transcript on top of its equal over exaggerated performances, especially with the googly-eyed and giddy older village officials looking to score handsomely with the courtesans, is present in every inch of a less-than-seductive prostitution rendezvous.  Soundtracks boast a melodramatic and action pack score with an extremely westernized design only fiddling slightly with traditional Chinese melodies and with Fu-Liang Chou adding some harsh guitar during the spicier segments of Ai Nu’s lesbian grooming.  Chin-Young Shing and Chen-Hou Su provide a more classic and harmonically sound for “Lust for Love” to exact more passion and heart and less depravity.  Special features or “Intimate Confessions” include a new audio commentary by author Stefan Hammond and Asian film expert Arne Venema, a new informational and highlight discussion from film historian Paul Fonoroff, an archived featurette directed by Frederic Ambroisine Intimate Confessions of 3 Shaw Girls takes the female perspective and review from journalistic critics and actresses including one actress for the films, an archived interview featurette with critic and scholar Dr. Sze Man Hung, critic Kwan King-Chung, and filmmaker Clarence Fok, and rounds out with the original theatrical trailer and DVD trailer.  “Lust for Love,” in comparison, is more barebones in bonus content with an audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan and the DVD trailer.  The physical presentation is similar to Shaw-Shock Volume 2 but just a slightly be slimmer with a jagged tooth topped, rigid slip box with a line split down the middle of the front cover depicting illustrations of characters for each film in either a contrasting blue or pink background.  The backside has a compilation of melded together pictures from both films.  Inside, two clear case Amaray, complete with their own original one sheet as cover arts with a reverse side having pulled a scene from their respective film, sit snug inside the slip box.  The boxset has a total run of 3 hours and 6 minutes, is not rated, and is region free.

Last Rites: Yuen Chor’s dichotomy of the two films is an odd and rare accomplishment of the filmmaker’s re-envisioning of his own work but “Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan” and “Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan” have idiosyncratic merit despite the same underlining premise and now it’s showcased in a brilliant boxset from Imprint Asia for you to decide Ai Nu’s revenge and motivations in the fray of brothel captivity.

Order the #34 and #35 of a “Chinese Courtesan” from Imprint Asia’s Boxset!

Creating the Perfect EVIL Race Takes Needless Amounts of Surgery and a Good Pair of Balls! “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” reviewed! (88 Films / 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“S.S. Experiment Love Camp” 4K and Blu-ray is Ripe for the Taking!

Nazi officer Colonel von Kleiben heads a concentration camp where he experiments of young Jewish and Russian female prisoners.  His experiments bore through the encampment lot with unconventional reproductive system surgery for the good of and in the name of purifying the Aryan race, experimentations that also including nonconsensual sexual activities between the women captives and the top physical specimens of the Nazi ranks.  Kleiben’s masked, real intentions are to practice for his own sake in a testicle transplant after a Russian woman castrates him during his attempted raping of her during conflict.  Woman after woman is sacrificed for the surgeon’s rigorous rehearsal by having their uteruses removed and replaced by another and when they expire on the table, their corpses are discarded into the camp’s incinerating ovens.  One Nazi solider is earmarked to be Kleiben’s hope to be whole again and uses the soldier’s affections toward a female prisoner to gain power and control in coercing him blindly into the experiment. 

If pleasure seeking banned films from certain sovereign states, then perhaps “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” should be on your short list.  The 1976 Nazisploitation film from Italy depicts a semblance of torture simulations used from Hitler’s Reich and lays the groundwork for total absurdity with a plot coursed with nonsense motivation at the disadvantage of a minority group under the threat of torture and death.  Also known as “Captive Women II:  Orgies of the Damned,” as more of a sequel in the collective Naziploitation subgenre popular in the 70’s, or most widely known as simply “S.S. Experiment,” the film is from the “Django the Bastard” and “Kill Django… Kill First” director Sergio Garrone, who co-wrote the script alongside “The Weapon, the Hour, & the Motive” co-screenwriter Vinicio Marinuci.  The Società Europea Films Internazionali Cinematografica produced the video nasty venture and expressed no regret the depictions of Nazi terror with the continuation of the subgenre by producing “S.S. Camp 5:  Women’s Hell” as well as other rape-inclined exploitation, such as “Mandinga” between master and plantation slaves and the caged women narrative of “Barbed Wire Dolls.”  

Sifting through the atrocious Nazi experiments, the unabashed sum of nudity, and the ridiculously selfish plot of one Colonel’s lengths to restore his manhood, “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” has a handful of mainstay principals key to the premise’s perpetuation encircled around Colonel Kleiben’s clandestine reasons to willingly and uncompassionately order a new type of surgical procedure on innocent civilian women prisoners.  Played by the square jawed, blonde haired Italian Giorgio Cerioni, who after “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” went on a string of playing a woman abusing Nazi in nazisploitation films between ’76 and ’77 with “Deported Women of the SS Special Section,” “SS Camp:  Women’s Hell,”  “The Red Nights of the Gestapo,” Kleiben’s a stoic, behind-the-scenes force and Cerioni dons the decadence evil well behind German medals and sense of false soldier duty as he works both the known to Kleinben Jewish world class surgeon Dr. Steiner (Attilio Dottesio, “The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine”) pretending to be German and Kleiben’s targeted German solider Helmet (Mircha Carven, “Death Will Have Your Eyes”) sought for his textbook testicles.  Dottesio’s Dr. Steiner is a conflicted man brought to do surgery on his fellow Jews that will result in their certain death and while he knows this, and it weighs on his conscious, the stuck doctor keeps himself from being exposed from other than the Colonel who knows and exploits his little secret for advantage; Dottesio wears a burden upon the surgeon’s face but doesn’t do enough to provide the body language of resistance in being doctor death against his will.  Yet, Carven wholly depicts an outlier amongst the typical German national who rather read books than shoot the sexual gab of his countrymen, which is in itself a nice slice of visual irony with the Nazi being known for burning literature.  Carven keeps Helmut relatively quiet, reserved, and a watcher from afar, noticing blonde prisoner Mirelle as the two fall for each other at the moment of locking eyes.  Carven and Paolo Corazzi (“SS Camp:  Women’s Hell”) sizzle with chemistry that’s left pieced too far apart and with not enough relationship context toward their insta-love connection.  There are other peripheral dialogue characters that keep the story spicy in their debauchery with Serafino Profumo (“Escape from Hell”) who had that perfect thin mustache and bald and stout look that makes him a formidable slimeball as the Nazi Seargent, Patrizia Melega (“SS Camp:  Women’s Hell”) as Dr. Steiner’s sadistic lesbian colleague Dr. Renke, and a handful of German soldiers to be the plug to the female prisoner outlet, such as with Matilda Dall’Agilio, Agnes Kalpagos, and Almina De Sanzio.  One of the more details to gripe about the cast is that they’re all Italian bronze that dilutes the allusion of the nationalities their portraying. 

“S.S. Experiment Love Camp” comes with a smidgen of notoriety having been banned in select western European countries over its depiction of violence, especially at the hands of Nazis, and its controversial poster of a naked woman crucified upside.  To this day,  Garrone’s film is still shocking and abhorrent with the aforesaid but also the emotion confliction etched into characters like Dr. Steiner or Helmut who must make a choice, weighing the balance of self-preservation over the salvation and safety of others, and that’s what really drives this nazisploitation to have tremendous impact in an absurdist plot of colonel cajones.  Garrone favors a more realistic approach to the tortures and horrors of a Nazi concentration camp by including close reenactments to their torture methods and Garrone also lingers ever so uncomfortably on the complete discard of corpses into the oven without any dialogue, expression on any faces, and even adds a surrealist glance into the oven of the bodies moving, in an artful dance way, when the flames are ignited.  There’s also the given, often gratuitous nudity that accompanies most nazisploitation films and while nudity usually arouses, stimulation stalls under the barbarism that’s present in the air, the context of which the sex acts are being conducted for, and the outcome of ghastly blood and sinew that follows to the end of the mortal coil.  There’s sensuality between lovers and transactions between prostitution and paying customers but even those innocuous instances rapid degrade into unnerving anticipation. 

88 Films’ new 2-disc, dual format 4K UHD Blu-ray and Standard Blu-ray set is a marvel of physical media engineering.  The 4K UHD is HVEC encoded and presented in Dolby Vision HDR10, 2160p ultra high-definition, and stored on a BD100 while the Standard Blu-ray is AVC encoded with a 1080p resolution on a BD50, both brand new 4K remastered transfers stem from the original negatives and displayed in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Between the two formats, there’s identical visuals to the naked eye but the 4K UHD does provide a slightly sharper image that has more an immersive pop when comparing the two formats side-by-side.  Colors are rich with a complete hue saturation that isn’t present in previous, more muted DVD or other Blu-ray editions.  Darker scenes have an intention rough quality about them as well as the concrete and unpigmented concentration camp as intended by director Sergio Carrone to put forth as much realism as possible.  No identifiable issues with compression as the picture quality looks clean through-and-through with blacks retaining an inky bide, grading remains consistent and stable, and the minutiae of fabric and skin color doesn’t contest with any ambiguity as Nazi uniforms distill a gray cotton-wool blend, you can also touch the little fuzzies on their garb, and the stubble and sweat greatly show the length of detail on strained and tense faces during torture or combat scenes.  The formats both have the same audio mixes:  an ADR English 2.0 LPCM and an ADR Italian 2.0 LPCM.  The uncompressed audio brings an unfiltered and considerate quality to the front channels with clean and clear dialogue under a diminutive amount of interference and an ambience track that puts its best foot forward, or rather the front, with distinct, sundry range of electronic voltage, machine gun fire, and the surgical slippery stickiness of organs being handled.  The new translated English subtitles are paced well and have no grammatical or misspelling issues.  Special features include a feature tandem audio commentary with Italian film experts Eugenio Ercolani and Nanni Cobretti.  Plus, Italian audio only interviews subtitled in English, including an interview with the late director Sergio Garrone Sadistically Yours, Sergio G., an interview with music historian Pierpaolo de Sanctis SSadist Sound, an interview with editor Eugenio Alabiso The Alibiso Dynasty (a back cover misspelling error perhaps?), an interview with cinematographer Maurizio Centini Framing Exploitation.  The special features conclude with the Italian title credits for the opening and closing of the film and the original Italian trailer.  88 Films and Joel Robison bring a newly illustrated, censored and uncensored cover art with the censored version on the rigid dual-sided slipcover that’s crazily detailed in all its tempestuous glory with the backside depicting the original poster art of a reverse crucified naked woman, both images are impressed with a pop-pulp coloring and chrome effect. The uncensored version lies within the plastic slip of the black 4K Amaray with a reverse side depicting also the original cover in its more traditional coloring of the horrendous and country-banning portrayal.  Inserted on the left interior is an uncensored illustrative cover, of the original poster art, atop of a 11-page English essay from Tim Murray entitled “Nazisploitation, Punks, and The Nasties…”  The Not rated, 95-minute film is region free for global player use. 

Last Rites: If nazisploitation or Eurosleaze just isn’t what tickles your movie mania, any cinephile can appreciate the pristine transfer, the raw and uncompressed audio, and its physical accoutrements that rise “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” into a must-have release.

“S.S. Experiment Love Camp” 4K and Blu-ray is Ripe for the Taking!

The Shaw Brothers Deliver the EVIL Lovers! “Shaw Brothers Horror Collection Volume 2” reviewed! (Imprint Asia / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Shaw-Shock Horror Collection Volume 2 is Now Avilable for Purchase!

The Qing Dynasty of Imperial China is full of spiritual folklore, mysticisms, and romance.  Three tales of supernatural passion arouse not only enduring amorousness and longing desire but also strikes fear of apparitional ghosts and grudges into naive and honest souls from beyond the grave, crossing existential planes to be with intended suitors no matter the cost.  These stories will send a pining chill down your spine:  a traveling scholar bunks at an abandoned temple to find he’s enchanted by a young woman not of life and protected by a blood thirsty lady-in-waiting, a provincial governor crosses paths with a beautiful virgin while taking shelter at her home.  When he catches her nude, he’s willing to marry her to avoid her shame but little does he know she’s a lonely ghost searching for love and revenge against those who raped and killed her, and, lastly, an arranged marriage is foiled by the sudden death of a young mistress and the late arrival of the master because he was being robbed of a debt he owned the mistress’s family.  Unfulfilled in love and life, the young woman returns to court the young master with the help of her elderly servant who took her own life to make the love between them possible.  Not believing the rumors of her death and discounting the spirit warnings from those close around him, the young master falls in love with his intended bride despite the obstacles put in between them by the master’s servants, Taoist priests, and even a band of bodyguards. 

Australian distributor Imprint, under their sublabel Imprint Asia, has released the second volume of the Shaw-Shock:  Show Brothers Horror Collection with three more titles that fall within the release window of 1960 to 1973.  These adapted stories stem from and inspired by Songling Pu’s Liaozhai Zhiyi, aka Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, which is a collection of classical Chinese ghost narratives, and they include the 1960 “The Enchanting Shadow,” directed by Han Hsiang Li (“The Ghost Story,” “Return of the Dead”) and written by Yue-Ting Wang and Wong Yuet-Ting, the 1972 “The Bride from Hell,” directed Hsu-Chiang Chou (director of “The Enchanting Ghost,” not to be confused “The Enchanting Shadow”) and penned by Tien-Yung Hsu, and 1973’s “The Ghost Lovers,” the only film of the three from Korean-born filmmakers, director Shin Sang-ok (“3 Ninjas Knuckle Up”) and writer Il-ro Kwak (“Ghosts of Chosun”).  Runme Shaw produces all three films in the Shaw Brothers production studio. 

Other than being a Shaw production, each of the three stories are also connected by common elements – travelling male scholars or those high in station, a dead or recently deceased high-born woman in phantomic form, and the two intertwine romantically under false pretenses all the while Taoist priest, servants, or family of the living beg, plead, and even self-interject themselves in between the unnatural love affair to save the man from a wraith’s haunt, whether the affectionate intent by the ghost is malicious or benign, but each also differ in style and substance.  Lei Zhao (“Succubare”) plays a servant-less travelling scholar, Ning Tsai-Chen, unphased by the foreboding warning of ghosts and death of a dilapidated temple where those who stay the night don’t live the next morning.  Ning falls for adjacent neighbor maiden in Nie Xiaoqian (Betty Loh Ti) and between the actors there is a show of palpable and touching natural coquet that’s honorable to their period and to their characters’ hearts but their being from two different worlds puts up a marital blockade unlike in  “The Bride of Hell” that has generally has the same amorous bond between Yang Fang (Nie Yun Peng) and Anu (Margaret Hsing Hui) that eventually leads to marriage, but the Anu guileful portraying of a living is more deceitful to use Yang Fang despite also actually loving him in this more revenge based spookery involving Fang’s unscrupulous family members.  “The Ghost Lovers” also uses ghostly deceit to trick the master into a coitus cemented bond revolving and complicated around Han His-lung’s (Wei-Tu Lin, “Corpse Mania”) honor and shame and the affluent Sung Lien-hua’s (Ching Lee, “Sexy Girls of Denmark”) unfulfilled life and love before an untimely death.  There are of course the conflicts that get in the middle – the blood thirsty Lao Lao (Rhoqing Tang, “Brutal Sorcery”) aims to kill temple trespassers and Nie Xiaoqian suitors no matter how much a gentlemen they are, there’s the rape-revenge aspect in “The Bride of Hell,” and the sundry hindrances that try to keep the undead Sung and the alive Han from being unionized.  There’s quite a bit of hammy performances to digest in what’s relatively near being the same story said over thrice,  The three films fill out the cast with Chih-Ching Yang and Ho Li-Jen in “The Enchanting Shadow,” Carrie Ku Mei, Hsia Chiang, Chi Hu, Feng Chang, and Yi-Fei Chang in “The Bride from Hell,” and Shao-Hung Chan, Feng-Chen Chen, Ki-joo Kim, Ling Han, Han Chiang, and Mei Hua Chen in “The Ghost Lovers” as the belabor the melodramatics of ghostly fervor. 

From a bird’s eye view, the Shaw Brothers productions appears virtually unoffensive and harmless period pieces set in the Imperial China with romanticized slices of fantasy in love after death, unstoppable passion, and an adherence to honor, principles, and duty to others, but a closer look reveals a darker sliver coursing through the supernatural palaver with it’s unnatural fascination of hooking up dead beautiful women with eligible scholarly men.  The most outlying and blatant example would be the rape-revenge narrative of “The Bride form Hell,” a coarse title that’s been spun into various renditions over the decades – take Quentin Tarantino’s The Bride from “Kill Bill” for example – by a woman embarking on path of retribution after being wronged in a maliciously despicable way and she uses everything to her advantage, even if that means marrying a relative, while a spirit I might remind you, of the men who raped and murdered her during their plundering of riches.  The film also doesn’t mind it’s hands a little dirtier with some nudity unlike the other two films of the set.  “The Ghost Lovers” isn’t as deeply disturbing with more of an untimely and unfortunate situation robbing mistress Sung of life and love and master Han of time and wealth that would have solidified a bond if the elements were not stolen from them.  There’s also a misunderstanding with fear of the unknown and a twisted sense of intent by humble servants and priests who distress of anything not of this plane of existence.  Much can be said the same about “The Enchanging Shadow” but that also deploys a countermeasure to the good heart nature of spirit Nie Xiaoqian as she’s balanced by her pure evil and bloodthirsty caretaker Lao Lao who between love and represents unholy demise.  Han Hsiang Li, Hsu-Chiang Chou, and Shin Sang-ok don’t stray too far away from each other when it comes to production set and scene compositions by keeping much of the storylines set during the mischief of the night when folkloric ghosts are more awake and present and keep the coloring cold contoured under grays, blues, and only hints of muted vibrancy outside the monochrome.  Special effects are kept close to the chest with fleeting rudimentary prosthetic and makeup, superimpositions to liven the ghost effect, and lay a dense fog in certain moments of atmospherics.  Combine all the elements infused with Chinese culture and superstitions and you get three stories that shutter with phantasmic passion. 

The Shaw-Shock:  Shaw Brothers Horror Collection Vol. 2 from the Imprint Asia line under parent company Via Vision is another awesome Shawtastic boxset that takes obscurity into the light.  The three disc Blu-ray set is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, encoded onto BD50 is limited to 1500 copes.  Each included film is catalogue as numbers 31 to 33 in the Imprint Asia sublabel.  “The Enchanting Shadow” is the only one of the three presented in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, transferred from a rougher print that has patches of cell damage and varied grading as if a couple of prints were spliced together.  There is a prelude title card warning of the quality so there should be no surprise when it does come up.  “The Bride from Hell” and “The Ghost Lovers” are presented a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio and have used a cleaner print for the hi-def transfer with no notice of damage issues.  All carrier a softer, airy image from the film stock and film processing scans and combine with sharp key lighting, there is a glow effect around objects but not enough radiance to affect the diffusion of colors and smooth out details.  Skin tones often fluctuate between an organic and an orange tinge that can sway the perceived quality.   The much older “The Enchanting Shadow” from 1960 definitely shows its age with more muted earthly tones within its darker scaling.  Each film uses a compressed, spherical lens as the curvature is more severe than you notice in more modern productions, hallmarking Hong Kong’s utilized lenses during the decades.  All three films are in Mandarin with no other language option within a LCPM 2.0 audio format that adequate fills the front channels of dialogue, ambience, and soundtrack.  Dialogue and ambience is not immersive with the stereo mix but the ADR track is present and discernible with some noticeable sparse hissing in the dialogue and low level gurgling interference amongst more docile moments.  Along with the image damage, “The Enchanting Shadow” has counterpart audio damage with tears in the audio layer that pop and crackle during the damage breaks. English subtitles are available on all three titles and are paced well but the subtitles on the “The Ghost Lovers” come with a few grammatical and misspelling errors. New special features encoded on the releases include an audio commentary by author Stafan Hammond and Asian film expert Arne Venema, film historian analysis by Paul Fonoroff, an archival interview with director Hun Hsiang Li, and the original and DVD trailer for “The Enchanting Shadow,” the “The Bride from Hell” has a new audio commentary also by Arne Venema with the DVD trailer, and “The Ghost Lovers, too, has a new audio commentary from critic and filmmaker Justin Decloux with film scholar Wayne Wong discussing the film. The new encoded special features compliment the tremendous and substantial Imprint Asia rigid box set with a removable jagged tooth locked top that includes compositional artwork and permeated with the Shaw Brothers insignia. Inside, the three Blu-rays sit snug in individual clear Amaray cases, each with their own original cover art reflecting the original posters with the reverse side pulling a still from the film. The total runtime of all three films is 4 hours and 14 minutes in its region free, unrated capacity.

Last Rites: A triple threat of Shaw Brothers’ classics resurrected from the dead to haunt your collection! Imprint Asia’s boxset continues to recover unearthed Hong Kong and Chinese culture, folklore, and fantasy for new enthusiasts of the far East and avid collectors of physical media!

Shaw-Shock Horror Collection Volume 2 is Now Avilable for Purchase!

Caught in the Act, Evil Must Do Evil’s Bidding. “The Killer Must Kill Again” reviewed! (Rustblade / 50th Anniversary Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Killer Must Kill Again” on a restored, 50th Anniversary Blu-ray!

Giorgio and Norma’s hot-and-cold marriage takes a turn for the worse when Giorgio’s greed convinces him to plot her murder after she threatens to cut him off from her family’s money.  When Giorgio catches a sexually perversive killer in the act of dumping a young girl’s body in an isolated canal, he devises a blackmail agreement with the killer to murder his wife and falsely claim a ransom from her father to satisfy Giorgio’s gluttony.  Killing Norma was easy enough but after the killer brings the car around to put her body in the trunk, a young couple steal the car for an all-night joyride to the beaches of Seagull Rock, unbeknownst to them a dead body stowed in the trunk.  With the killer in pursuit of the couple and the police suspicious of Giorgio’s involvement of his wife’s disappearance, it’s only a matter of time before the killer must kill again.

“L’assassino è costretto ad uccidere ancora,” aka “The Killer Must Kill Again,” is a straying kind of Italian psychotronic film from the typical giallo overload being produced out the country between the 1960s and up to the early 1990s.  Released right in the middle in 1975, the film never enshrouds viewers in mystery with a blunt, clearcut case of who and who is not the villains, the victims, and the heroes.  “The Naked Doorwoman” and “Contamination” director Luigi Cozzi helms the script he cowrites with Daniele Del Giudice (“The Story of a Poor Young Man’) with an inclination of slipping darkly dry comedy into the fold of a cold and callous killer’s purview of an extorting mastermind’s bidding and the uncomfortable self-serving sexualized force thrust upon women, the dead and the living.  Sergio Gobbi (“Vortex”) and Umberto Linzi coproduce the GIT International Film, Paris-Cannes, and Albione Cinematografica coproduction. 

The cast is comprised of an ensemble lot and for an Italian production, there are hardly any Italian actors leading the charge.  Most of the principal cast hails from Europe, mostly Spain, and with a few outliers from France and even one from Uruguay in South America.  Each actor and actress have a rough fair share of screen time, preluded with the titular killer, played by Frenchman Antoine Saint-John.  Saint-John has a face for television, villainy television that is, with high cheekbones that create deep contoured shadows, a danger stare, and a round head with cranium hugging, short dark hair that make him distinct amongst his fellow castmates.  “The Beyond” actor’s heart put effort into a heartless role of the unnamed perverted murderer of young, beautiful women for unknown reasons and motivations.  That’s not the case for the opposite transgressor, the killer’s blackmailer Giorgio Mainardi who’s a scheming businessman and money leech off his wealthy wife (Tere Velázquez, “Night of 1000 Cast”), two reasons and motivations to put a kill contract on his wife.  “The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh’s” George Hilton dons the dapper swindler with trim suits, neat hair, and a handsome façade underneath his ugly intentions as he tries to fraud his wife’s ransom for himself.  Caught in the middle of this plot are two young lovers, who in themselves are not so innocent by stealing the killer’s car with a dead woman in the trunk.  Cristina Galbó (“The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue”) and Alessio Orano (“Lisa and the Devil”) are the couple Laura and Luca, two teens on a stolen car joyride to a distant beach front in order Luca to try and convince Laura to take her virginity.  While there’s ransom fraud, murderous plots, murdering, corpse disposal, and other heinous crimes, the most disturbing in the story is Luca’s pressuring to get into Laura’s pants and his means of satisfying his lust by picking up car stranded blonde (Femi Benussi, “Bloody Pit of Horror”) and cheating on Laura while she is raped when confronted by the pursuing killer.  The sleaze and skeeze level on Luca is beyond reproach and it really makes him more the villain than the actual killer who’s up two bodies by this point.  The principal cast can’t be complete without police presence and that is where Eduardo Fajardo (“The Murder Mansion”) steps in as the cool, suave, know-it-all-and-see-how-it-all-plays-out inspector, a cliched role of the time and even in today’s whodunit ventures.   

This crime giallo lacks mystery but makes up for it with rich characters, a sleaze-bag crime, and a little style from director Luigi Cozzi and cinematographer Riccardo Pallottini in their choice to visual effects to insulate the moment within a scene by matte narrowing the focus and using a sharp spherical lens to heighten the tension around the center focus with a semi-fishbowl effect.  Coupled with solid editing and great lighting for the night drive sequences between the two cars and it’s reflexive, subsequent chase, the story’s pace doesn’t rush into the more gushing violence and sexual subversion, effectively building up a pressure cooker of a confrontation between the killer and the kids that’s brilliantly edited in a taut juxtaposition that flips back and forth between the killer’s virtually explicit raping of Laura and Luca’s wanton encounter with a stranded licentious blonde motorist; both elicit wrongdoings, rendered around the crave of naked flesh, but they are from different perspectives with one being a clean cheat of carnality with another person and the other being a malicious rape of innocence yet both leave that sour taste of discomfort in the mouth but the edited design is about as sweet as it gets. 

The Italian distributor Rustblade Records, under the movie release sublabel of simply Rustblade, release L’assassino è costretto ad uccidere ancora,” aka “The Killer Must Kill Again,” onto a new Blu-ray in its complete Cozzi’s original vision and is a restored transfer for worldwide audiences in association. The 50th anniversary Blu-ray is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, on a surprising BD25. The BD25 is surprising because the restored picture quality looks phenomenal considering the capacity, retaining deep shadows, vibrant color palette, and no incongruous signs of compression artefacts. There is however some detail smoothing fragmented throughout depending on the interior or exterior scene. More of the opening moments between Giorgio and Norma look quite polished and intricate regarding textural skin and fabrics but a good number of moments appear to smear portions of the face, especially in Antoine Saint-John’s more distinct facial characteristics. Depth and range favor the bold with Cozzi able to obtain decent amount of space between objects within his stylized choices and the color spectrum, like many giallo films, is saturated with intensity. An Italian and an English 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio are the reigning encoded audio choices, both of which are post-production ADR and both of which show the obvious synchronization discord. The English translation, as well as the English subtitles, contain generalizations of a perhaps more complex scripted dialogue intent. With ADR, dialogue clean and clear with present, defined space right in the front two channels but lacks milieu acoustics, depth, and little range with the action added with Foley. Nando De Luca’s lingering avant score blend single low-note guitar chords, resonating piano keys, and Theremin wooing lift up the story with ominous tension. The English subtitles appear accurate without any grammatical errors. Special features include an interview with director Luigi Cozzi, a film analysis by Federico Frusciante, a horror enthusiastic musician from Rustblade Records, film locations toured by Giallo Italiano, and the feature trailer. The 50th Anniversary Edition comes with two versions: a limited-edition DVD/Blu-ray Deluxe mediabook with postcards and a single disc Blu-ray. For this review, the single disc was provided in a clear Amaray case with double sided art sleeve of a giallo yellow and contrast shadowed illustrated composition of characters and the reverse side depicting two moments from the movie drenched with giallo yellow. Presented in widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, the not rated, region free film has a runtime of 90 minutes.

Last Rites: A giallo unlike the rest, “The Killer Must Kill Again” is a perversion of greed, lust, and murder without virtuous players in a plot gone awry. Luigi Cozzi’s 1975 classic is a genre staple for fans old and young in this Italian murder shocker and Rustblade offers a new and improved, director approved vision that collectors will see to acquiring immediately.

“The Killer Must Kill Again” on a restored, 50th Anniversary Blu-ray!