Category Archives: 70’s-groove!

This Spy’s Sex Serum Will Drive Men EVILLY Mad! “Blue Rita” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray – DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own “Blue Rita” on Blu-ray and DVD Combo Set Today!

Misandrist Blue Rita owns a high-end gentlemen’s cabaret.  Her renowned nightclub is also a front for espionage activities.  With the help of a Bergen, her handling, and her right-hand club manager Gina, she’s fed male targets that are affluent and powerful to kidnap and torture to extract sensitive intelligence information.  As a side hustle, a perk that comes with exploiting the naked and chained up men in her underground boxed cells, Blue Rita uses her chemical powers of seduction to sexually torture her captives into withdrawing their bank accounts dry.  When new girl Sun is hired in to not only titillate the nightclub client with her erotic Pippi Longstocking performances, the Blue Rita pledger works her first mission to reel in a wealthy, international boxer as the next target but Sun’s own conflictions collide with Rita’s sworn hate for all men, cracking the door open ajar just enough for Interpol and the Russian intelligence agencies to try and undermine Blue Rita’s confrontational spy operations. 

What’s renowned most about eurotrash filmmaker Jesus (Jess) Franco is his diverse contributions to the European and American movie-making markets.  Though most of his work is regarded as schlocky, beneath the sleaze and sordidness is a carefully calculating psychotronic director.  True, Franco may not be famously esteemed as, let’s say Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg, but his infamy should not be ignored amongst the present company of similar filmmakers like Tinto Brass or even Roman Polanski.  One of the late Franco’s few spy game theme films, “Blue Rita” is a hot house of sleaze and deceit, written by the director.  Filmed in Germany with German actors and actresses, the film went under the original title “Das Frauenhaus” translated as “The House of Women,” referring to the Blue Rita’s distaste for men and keeping an all-femme fatale, and mostly nude, workforce for her clandestine affairs.  Elite Film is the production company with Erwin C. Deitrich (“Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun,” “Swedish Nympho Slaves”) producing.

Much like Franco’s diverse dips into a variety of subgenres, “Blue Rita’s” cast is also quite an assorted lot in talent from sexploitation, horror, and the XXX industry.  The German production also garnered not just homefield advantage with German actors but also lured into the fold some of the French cast cuisine to spice up the affair.  Martine Fléty is one of those French foreigners, embodying the lead role of Blue Rita.  An adult actress of primarily the 70s, “Blue Rita” became Fléty only titular role but wasn’t her last Jess Franco feature, having continued her X-rated run with the director in “Elles Font Tout,” “I Burn All Over,” and “Claire.”  Either half or entirely naked for the entire narrative, Fléty’s comfortability bare-bottom relays power in her performance as an unwavering femme fatale agent that has men begging for sex and begging for their very lives.  Back then, the lines blurred between porn and sexploitation, often times melding into European coalescence hitting the same marquee theaters until it’s eventual separation.  Esther Moser (“Around the World in 80 Beds,” “Ilsa, The Wicked Warden”), Angela Ritschard (“Jack the Ripper,” “Bangkok Connection”), Vicky Mesmin (“Dancers for Tangier,” “Love Inferno”), Roman Huber (“Girls in the Night Traffic,” “Sex Swedish Girls in a Boarding School”), Olivier Mathot (“Diamonds of Kilimandjaro,” “French Erection”) and Pamela Stanford (“Sexy Sisters,” “Furies sexuelles”) rode, among other things, that fine line between grindhouse gauche and the taboo and certainly do well to incorporate both traits in Franco’s equally indeterminate genre film.  German actor and one of the principal leads Eric Falk (“Caged Women,” Secrets of a French Maid”) too dappled between crowds as a tall, dark, and chiseled chin but the actor chiefly sought limelight in sexploitation and as the haughty boxer Janosch Lassard, who karate chops at lightning speed, Falk adds to “Blue Rita’s” sexy-spy thriller.  Opposite the titular vixen is “Wicked Women’s” Dagmar Bürger who, like the rest of the cast, have crossed paths in a handful of exploitation exciters.  Bürger has perhaps the least built-up character Sun as she’s subtly folded into Blue Rite’s innermost circle without as much as a single ounce of doubt in her character, perhaps due in part to Bergen, Blue Rita’s handler, was once Sun’s direct-to, but Sun becomes the impetus key to everything falling apart at the seams and her role’s framework feels unsatisfactory just as her crumbling infatuation that’s more arbitrary than motivationally centric.

“Blue Rita” doesn’t necessarily broach as a film by Jess Franco whose typical undertakings are coated with sleazy gothic and historical context.  The 1979 feature, set around the extraction of international intelligence data by way of chemical approach, not terribly farfetched considering how the CIA once used LSD as a truth serum, is about as sordid and sexually graphic as any Jess Franco film gets but brings about a futuristic air laced with not just super cool spy gadgets and weaponry, to which there are really none to speak of as an example, there lies a more ultramodern verge upon unseen in much of the earlier, Spanish-born director’s work.  A futuristic holding pen with a capacity no bigger than an industrial-sized washing machine with a descending spiked barred ceiling, a hyper-aphrodisiac goo that makes men so horny it puts them on the edge of insanity and death, and the sleek, contemporary sex room with translucent furniture and stark white walls all in the routine hustle and bustle of Paris, France. “Blue Rita’s” contrarian patinas add to the film’s colorful charisma of avant-garde stripteases and a black operations nightclub, two of which combined play more into the “Austin Powers” funky 1970s ecosphere rather than in the high-powered espionage world of James Bond, the Roger Moore years.

For the first time on Blu-ray in the North American market, Full Moon Features puts out into the world a fully remastered, high-definition, 2-disc Blu-ray and DVD set. The AVC encoded, 1080p, BD25 entails picture perfect image quality that sharpen “Blue Rita” with greater resolution in comparison to previous DVD versions with full-bodied color, in setting tones and in body tones, and a contour-creating delineation that establishes depth and texture better, presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Not flawless mind you with soft spots rearing up every so often in the variety of interior and exterior, organically and inorganically lit scenes but there’s distinct contrast that delivers a recognizing lighting scheme that deepens the shadows in the right places without signs of an inadequate compression, especially on a single layer Blu-ray, and the Full Moon release retains natural grain with no DNR or other image enhancements. The release comes with two audio options, a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and a French Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, both of which have a horrendously acted burned-in English dub of not the original actors’ voices. Banal dub does take the quality of Franco’s dialogue down a good peg or two, which the original dub track was likely spoken in native German and some French judging by the cast list nationalities and where the bigger distribution market was for the planned; yet, though the dialogue is verbose and ploddingly straightforward to make do, losing some of the depth in the process, the quality is voluminous to ensure no mistake is made in underemphasizing the story’s outline when necessary. Ambience and other design markers hit more than well enough to sell the surroundings and the action to make those qualities palpable. English subtitles are option but not available on the setup; they will have to added in per your setup’s options. The Blu-ray extras come with a rare photo gallery, an archived interview with Chris Alexander with Peter Strickland discussing Franco circa 2013, and a vintage Jess Franco Trailer Reel. The DVD houses a different set of special features, separate from the Blu-ray’s, with Slave in the Women’s House interview with Eric’s Falk plus the DVD also offers Eurocine trailers. Those interested in supplementary content will be forced to pop in both discs to fully abreast of all bonus material. What’s eye-catching about the Full Moon Feature’s release is the erotic front cover on the cardboard O-slipcover, sleekly illustrated for your kink and perversive pleasure. The Blu-ray Amary inside has a NSFW story still of Dagmar Bürger walking down a spiral staircase in the buff. The same Dagmar Bürger image graces the DVD cover while a new illustrated luscious lips are pressed on the Blu-ray disc opposite side. There is no insert or booklet included. The region free release has a runtime of 78 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: The late Jess Franco may have a cache full of sleaze in his repertoire, but the director had a sense of panache and intensity that’s sorely underrated outside his fanbase. “Blue Rita” shows Franco’s range, stylistically and genre, and Full Moon’s sultry release is now high-definition gold in the color blue.

Own “Blue Rita” on Blu-ray and DVD Combo Set Today!

Conman Bites Off More EVIL Than He Can Chew. “Impulse” reviewed! (Grindhouse Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Pre-Order “Impulse” Here at Amazon!

As a boy, Matt Stone had an altercation that resulted in the transfixing death of a man at his hands.  As an adult years later after a sanitarium stint, Stone seduces wealthy women as a sophisticated and well-off playboy, using the cultured guise as way to con women out of thousands of dollars, and then murders them when has milked them for all their worth or when their patience for his extravagant and philandering behavior has run it’s course.  When he meets widow Ann Moy, Stone begins his plan of deceit, eyeing not only the single mother for her riches but also Ann’s even more affluent and eccentric best friend Julia.   Stone’s scheme begins to unravel when a strong-arming ex-partner unexpected show up to force into his ploy, his mental instability flares into paranoia and near psychosis, and then there’s rambunctious Tina, Ann’s young daughter who even though doesn’t want Stone to replace her deceased father also witnesses firsthand Stone’s violent transgressions. 

Personally, when William Shatner comes into the conversation about anything, “Star Trek” inevitable pops into the mind first thing.  “Star Trek” and “Captain Kirk” have become not only a household name for Trekkies but also for the non-science fiction laymen who rather get lost in, dare I say, rom-coms.  Shudder.  Diehard horror fans know Shatner is more than just the charismatic space explorer seducing alien women, karate chopping the Gorn, and become inundated with the furry Tribble.  The now 92-year-old Canadian born Shatner has sporadically yet constantly been the star of thrillers for much of his career, such as 1966’s “Incubus,” 1975’s “The Devil’s Rain,” and even the more recent 2019’s “Devil’s Revenge” with fluctuating, polarizing success.  Yet, one of Shatner’s engrossingly more disturbing performances comes from director William Grefé’s (“Mako:  The Jaws of Death”) 1974 schizo-thriller “Impulse.”  Penned by “Blood Mania” and “The Killing Kind’s” Tony Crechales, “Impulse” was filmed in Tampa, Florida under Conquerer Films with Socrates Ballis in his first producing role.

What most don’t realize about William Shatner, from their limited scope of him inside just “Star Trek,” is the man has range and can accomplish more complexity than just being confident space captain.  “Impulse” really drives Shatner to split hairs and be a polygonal persona, one that goes into deep anxiety at the sight of blood or extreme violence, one that can polished and suave in charm and romance, and one that can be ruthless and cunning.  All these traits fit into Shatner’s performance bubble of Matt Stone, chiseling each angle of the traumatized encoded individual into a wolf in sheep’s clothing in constant conflict with himself and those around him.  With the exception of Tina, those around Stone are targets as he swoons Anne Moy (Jennifer Bishop, “Horror of the Blood Monster”) and Julia Marstow (Ruth Roman, “The Baby”) of their money.  Anne and Julie feed into Stone’s false promises and hidden agendas and, as characters, Bishop and Marstow play their diverse friendship with traditional flare that can be easily duped by a stranger from off the street and barely know.  Tina is the only wildcard.  With the look like Heather O’Rourke and a prickly preteen attitude, Kim Nicholas falls in tune with the boy who cried wolf but, in this instance, as the girl who cried wolf as she becomes the aware adolescent privy to a fault to Stone’s dangerous side.  Agitated by the loss of her father and her mother’s effortless slip into a physical relationship, not to forget to mention her impish naughtiness, turns Tina into an incredible source, labeled spiteful, and angry at the world despite her true knowledge of her own world burning down around her with Matt Stone at the wheel.  “Impulse” rounds out the cast with James Dobson (“The Search for the Evil One”), Marcia Knight (“Stanley”), Shatner’s then wife Marcy Lafferty (“Kingdom of the Spiders”), and James Bond’s Odd-Job himself, the former heavy weight wrestler Harold Sakata as the ex-partner Karate Pete crashing Stone’s scam.

William Grefé steers childhood trauma to be the root cause that shapes Matt Stone into a cold and calculating killer.  While not driven to be a rabid dog seeking to kill on sight, the sweet and innocent child only protecting his mother from the potentially rapist hand of a drunken brute had not only been scarred by the incident but also incited his mother to institutionally commit him as if assigning him blameful wrongdoing, extenuating his reality into a woman hating deviant.  And the worst part of it is, and the part that Grefé is able to define and make Stone be sympathetic to audiences, is Stone knows he shouldn’t have been deinstitutionalized, as he more than once referred to his situation as a puppy left out in the middle of the street.  Then, does “Impulse” become more of a tragedy for our principal villain as an unfortunate byproduct of a catastrophic situation, an ill fit mother, and a system that have all let him spiral down to this point in the story?  The only individual to see through his ruse, in fact, is another child, Tina, with a child’s sixth sense in their melting pot of developing emotions.  The social niceties and grown-up cognitive reasoning shield Anne Moy, Julia Marstow, and others, and even to an extent the unscrupulous brute Karate Pete, from Stone’s devious nature and his will to survive at any cost, no matter who he has to kill whether be a lover, former partner, or a little girl. 

The new Grindhouse Releasing, the first through the distribution firm MVD, is a 2-disc Blu-ray release restored from a rare archived, 35mm film elements.  The original negative was unfortunately destroyed and the restored, 4K scanned print comes with a prologue disclaimer that some elements may not be up to quality standards.  However, the print, on the March 12th Blu-ray release now available for pre-order, looks stellar, stored on an AVC encoded, 1080p High-Definition, BD50, and presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, with only a few noticeable scratches, faint to the eye, in a few brief frames within the natural grain.  Grading can appear monochromatic gray in some exterior scenes but the overall grading pops and are distinct in natural-looking shading. We can also look at Grefé’s direction and Edmund Gibson’s cinematography as just as striking as the picture quality with brazen, worth-while shots that include an interior car shot aimed toward the windshield heading toward a watery grave. The English language original mono track, for a single channel output, clears the bar with room to spare with intelligible, comprehensive dialogue, capturing every word and sentence distinct and syllabized to great detail without too much interference, technically and from layering. Slight popping and background electronic interference never engulfs or take the reins over the layers. Decent spacing and a good range, supported by the Lewis Perles lingering unhinged musical composition, adds value to Shatner and the casts’ performances. Grindhouse Releasing Blu-ray also comes with the original mono French soundtrack. English subtitles are optionally available. Loaded with special features with a William Grefé audio commentary, Shatner Between the Treks a Ballyhoo produced documentary regarding Shatner’s various projects before, after, and in-between, Kingdom of the Shatner is a William Shatner live interview in Santa Monica in Oct. ’22 after a Shatner triple feature, Shatner promo shorts, William Grefé shorts “Thumbs,” “Iceman,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “Underwood,” a making-of “Impulse,” the 40th anniversary screening at the Tampa Theater with William Grefé post-film discussion, the raw footage of Shatner saving Harold Sakata from accidental lynching with two commentaries from Grefé and Shatner, still gallery, two theatrical trailers, and other trailers from Grindhouse Releasing titles. Also included are bonus Grefé features, including “The Devil’s Sisters that has its own special features with an introduction, Grefé audio commentary, radio spot, still gallery, and a revisiting of the film from the director, plus “The Godmothers” with only an intro by Grefé. Grindhouse Releasing’s “Impulse” is truly a lovefest of the two Bills, Grefé and Shatner, and the label really goes the extra mile with a deluxe edition and restored release with a character and title embossed, fully colorized, and rigid cardboard sleeve with a clear, dual disc push lock Amaray Blu-ray case sporting the originally illustrated, composition cover art that’s also reversible with the same sleave cover design that’s utter madness on printed cardboard. Inside, the discs are locked in on the right, one on top of the other with the top disc snuggly in behind the feature disc in a vertical layout, and both disc arts are rendered with pulpy aesthetics and primary colored, yet darkened feature stills for full fear effect. Opposite in the insert section, a 4×6 illustrated liner portrait of Matt Stone painted by artist Dave Lebow, and a 6-page linear note booklet with color pictures, grindhouse posters, and an essay by Jacques Boyreau. The 87-minute Blu-ray comes region free and is not rated.

Last Rites: The tale of two Bills, Shatner and Grefé, is a match made in heaven, or, better yet, a match made in demented evil with “Impulse” and Grindhouse Releasing stuns with a fully loaded, supersized, and Shatner-stuffed 2-Disc release that puts the film rightfully up on a grandstand pedestal.

Pre-Order “Impulse” Here at Amazon!

100-Year Return Brings a Plague of Flesh-Eating EVIL to a Small Town! “Messiah of Evil” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The “Messiah of Evil” has Come to Blu-ray Home Video!

Arletty travels up the California coast to a small beach town known as Point Dune.  The reason for her visit is to find her artisan father after a series of bizarre letters came to an abrupt stop.  She arrives at his mural-graffitied home to discover it empty and decides to stay a few days to ask around town about his whereabouts and to be present for his return home.  Her inquiries at art gallery shopkeepers lead to a motel where Thom, a wealthy collector of urban legends and spooky stories, and his two travelling female companions, Laura and Toni, have also sought out Artletty’s father for his bizarre experiences.  As the days pass, Point Dune slowly becomes a literal ghost town that forces Thom and his companions to stay with Arletty and, together, they experience the horrible truth of what’s really happening to the  residents of the west coast community who eagerly await the arrival of the dark stranger. 

Once married filmmakers Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz are the creative minds behind the stories of “Howard the Duck” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”  They also wrote “American Graffiti” in what was to become their link toward working on Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones sequel since both “American Graffiti” and “The Temple of Doon” were both produced by the father of “Star Wars,” George Lucas.  Yet, in the midst of “American Graffiti,” the couple also penned and Huyck came into the entrance of directing with the 1974 horror-thriller “Messiah of Evil” that pulled from various themes of mindless consumerism and the rising fears of dangerous and deadly cults in the U.S.  Also known by a variety of titles around the world, including “Dead People,” “Night of the Danmed,” “Messiah of the Evil Dead,” “Revenge of the Screaming Dead,” and “Blood Busters” to name a few, the Californian coast shot film is a production of the International Cine Film Corp and V/M Productions with Gatz producing and Alan Riche (“Deep Blue Sea”) serving as executive producer. 

“Messiah of Evil” slinks into the soul leaving behind dread’s unwashed pull against what we know as conventional horror.  In order to accomplish such a fear-induced feat, a cast must envelope themselves fully in world of weird and irregularities that nestle an uneasiness stemmed not solely from their performances but from how they react to the eccentric environment, to the crumbling small town society, and to ghastly behaviors of normal-looking people.  Like most daughters, Arletty has concerns for her father and seeks to understand the truth behind his unhinged letters.  Marianna Hill (“Schizoid,” “The Baby”) plays the quietly curious at a cat daughter dabbing residents with barely an effort in interrogational questioning of her father’s whereabouts.  Hill floats Arletty through stages of a slow descent into madness that simmers slowly to a boiling point understanding of what’s taking shape around her.  The same happens to Thom, played by Richard Greer (“The Curious Female”), who initially is a fraction of the nonconformity surrounding Point Dune with his obsession toward collecting strange stories and his polyamorous collection of women.  Of character, Greer is resoundingly in control without being dominating with Thom who has wealth and magnetisms but isn’t someone to be beholden to forever as we see with Laura (Anita Ford, “The Big Bird Cage”) who deserts him for his open-door intimacy policy in his pursuit of Arletty and with the childish Toni (Joy Bang, “Night of the Cobra Woman”) in her infinitely naïve opinions surrounding the dull Point Dune.  One actor I wish we had more of but is utilized perfectly as Arletty’s father and a harbinger of what’s coming is Royal Dano (“Ghoulies II,” “Spaced Invaders”) in a non-humorous nor drunken idiot role that seemed to typecast him later in his career.  Dano’s short but sweetly terrifying stretch divulges a man torn between his previous life and a new terror that now occupies him as he interacts with Marianna Hill as concerned and contaminated father holding it all within toward his frightened, confused daughter.  “Messiah of Evil’s” cast rounds out with Elisha Cook Jr (“Rosemary’s Baby”), Bennie Robinson, and Charles Dierkop (“Grotesque”). 

Huyck directs with colorful and verismo synergism that takes the positives of what should be life’s routine pleasures and turns them against us as fantastical and harrowin deadly elements of false securities.  The rolling crashes of Point Dune’s waves takes on a constant cacophony of sinister foreshadowing, a bright and welcoming supermarket becomes a vacant trap in every aisle, the entertaining movie theater darkens with blood on the screen, and an artist’s home, full realistic murals and colors, is an oppressive feast of lifeless eyes.  Point Dune becomes a dead town, literally, as the inhabitants succumb to dark forces from beyond their years, turning primeval in their contemporary three-piece suits and evening blouses.  Huyck and Gatz story pulls inspiration from U.S. history and folklore to mark the 100-year return of spreading evil amongst the land, an evil that resorts to cannibalism by either spellbinding archfiend, an internal infection, or the rise of the undead and not just any mindless, shuffling, flesh-eating zombie but a transmogrified plotter able to move fast and think as a single unit with the touched by evil masse with telltale signs of a single rivel of blood seeping from out of their eye and their insatiable need to consume other people. ”Messiah of Evil” is not overtly graphic like George A. Romero zombies or like the unbridled number of zombie films to follow inspired by Romero’s zombie game-changing wake for the last 60 plus years, separating the flesh-eaters from Romero’s gut-gnashing, pale faced, and slow-walking undead and Huyck and Gatz’s transmitted pestilent receiving horde running fast in their best church shoes with vastly different traits. Huyck and Gatz dip into more eldritch means with the return of a paganistic dark stranger in a pared down explanation without explicitly being definitive who or what the dark stranger (a demon? Antichrist?) is that is driving foreboding signs to a doomsday-disseminating end. ”Messiah of Evil” thrives as the mysterious and strange fulcrum of the beginning of the end told through the point of view of young woman left to tell the world of what’s to come only to be about as believed as much as a man wearing a polka-dotted tutu who has delusions of unicorns dancing the waltz with garden gnomes in his front yard. 

United Kingdom distributor Radiance Films releases a new restoration transfer of “Messiah of Evil” also on their U.S. line. The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 presents a 4K scan of the best-known surviving 35mm print from the Academy Film Archive in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. As noted in the release’s inserted booklet, the restoration processes used was the Digital Vision’s Phoenix Finish and DaVinci Resolve was used for color correction, under the supervision of Sebastian del Castillo at the Heavenly Movie Corporation. Audio was also restored with the Izotope RXB. For a surviving print, the original elements look pretty darn good with barely any celluloid hiccup. No vinegar syndrome, not significant tearing, or exposure to name a few issues of possibility. There are a few minor blemishes and missing or damaged frames that seem to provide an unwanted cut but most of “Messiah of Evil’s” film problems stem mostly behind the camera with a rework of the story during the stop-and-go production and conflicts in marketing the film, hence the various title aliases of the film from around the globe. Other detail low points are when the film is bathed in blue and purple gels and tint for to set an apprehensive wander and wonder while retaining more natural grading in its majority throughout. The resorted audio is a lossless English LPCM mono mix. Really focusing on the electronic score of Phillan Bishop (“The Severed Arm”), the low-frequency score sets a perpetual and durable tone of dread out of place in a prosaic small town, much like the Arletty’s father’s work-of-art home that sticks out amongst the mediocrity. In design, dialogue remains robust yet delicate when the scene calls for it, such as Elisha Cook Jr. story of how he was born in what is essentially him, as a vagrant paid for his story, making the only noise in the room. Dialogue in these moments is greatly discernible with negligible electronic interference. Depth layers the permeating isolation of a town gone mad in unison with the range stretching from the distressing design of rolling, crashing, oppressive waves to the scuffles of zombies’ consuls and heels scuffing against asphalt, pavement, and shattering through panes of glass. Radiance provides English subtitles with their release. Bonus features include a new audio commentary by film historian and horror archetype authors Kim Newman and Stephen Thrower, an archived interview with director Willard Huyck, and a new, feature-length documentary showcasing “Messiah of Evil’s” background, themes, production, and influences by various horror scholars, including Kat Ellinger who also voiceovers a visual essay on American Gothic and Female Hysteria, which if I’m being honest, parallelly treads on similarities with Ellinger’s Motherhood & Madness: Mia Farrow and the Female Gothic on Imprint’s “The Haunting of Julia.” Radiance has in the short time poured their heart and soul into their releases and “Messiah of Evil” is no different with a sleek cladded and clear Amara Blu-ray case that’s subtle in showing less but feeling more on the cover art, opposite of the reverse side that houses a classical black and white compositional illustration of characters. Inside the 28th release for the label is a 23-page color booklet insert with the appraisal writings of Bill Ackerman, transfer notes, release credits, and acknowledgements. The disc is pressed red, much like the red moon in the film, with a stark black title. The Radiance release is unrated, region free, and has a runtime of 90 minutes. ”Messiah of Evil” uses cult fears, satanic panic, and the loss of ordinary life to penetrate the spirit by way of slowly eating at it. The crawling, creeping dread meanders, much like Artletty who is seemingly held in place at Point Dune, and we’re glued to the engrossing rate of the terror to come orchestrated by the captivations of a once married couple on a fast track toward success.

The “Messiah of Evil” has Come to Blu-ray Home Video!

Congratulations! You Won an All-Inclusive EVIL Trip to “Terror at Red Wolf Inn” reviewed! (Cheezy Movies / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Come for the Dinner, Stay to be Eaten at the Red Wolf Inn on a Cheezy Movies’ DVD!

When riffling through her mail, Regina McKee opens a letter informing her she has won a marvelous prize, an all-expenses paid vacation at the quaint resort of Red Wolf Inn.  The young college student is escorted on a charter plane to a quiet town where the historic 1891 resort house resides and to greet her re hosts Evelyn and Henry Smith along with their grandson Baby John Smith.  Occupied with two other guests, Regina finds the old house luxuriously relaxing, her hosts cordially jovial, and the food as about as fantastically delicious as it is seeming endless when the Smiths introduce course-after-course of beautifully cut fillets and delectable desserts.  The Smiths don’t like to skip a meal.  When the other guests’ planned departure feels abrupt without them saying goodbye, Regina begins to suspect something isn’t quite right with The Smiths, something hidden behind the doors of the walk in refrigerator and is being incorporated into all those fatteningly delicious meals. 

Before Papa Jupitar and his children terrorize and cannibalize the Carter family on their way to Los Angeles through the rural, desert roads of Nevada in 1977 and even before a group of young friends stumble upon a demented family abiding by the slaughterhouse rules of people in the backwaters of Texas in 1974, there was the elderly couple and resort owners named The Smiths who entertained young women for dinner to wet their appetites by plumping those same young women into dinner in 1972.  The Late director Bud Townsend, who helmed a limited filmography in his short feature film tenure between 1970 and 1985 with such titles as “Nightmare in Wax” and “Alice in Wonderland:  An X-Rated Musical Fantasy,” took the only credited Allen Actor script and fashioned it into a dissembling macabre for the silverscreen.  Also known as “Secrets Beyond the Door,” “Club Dead,” “Terror on the Menu,” and “Terror House,” which the latter was likely the version experienced for this review due in part to cuts made, “Terror of Red Wolf Inn” is a production of Far West Films and Red Wolf Productions LLC with “Count Yorga, Vampire’s” Michael Macready producing and Allen Actor and Herb Ellis associate producing.

Would you ever answer the letter to a strange solicitation about winning an all-expenses paid vacation in a sleepy little town?  No, neither would I, but that’s what the heroine principal Regina McKee (Linda Gillen, “Black Rain”) did on a whirlwind, excited whim during a time when scammers had only the United States Post Office to importune their tricks upon the gullible.  The 1970s are obviously not as clued in or as technological savvy as the modern times of today with caller Ids, tall tell signs robo-recordings, and all the news stories and documentaries about telemarking boiler rooms; instead, we’re transported back in time where the gift of deceit can be achieved too terribly easy.  Linda Gillen, a freckled face, auburn-haired actress looks like the girl next door with a realness about her modest appearance as a leading lady and when compared to the likes and looks of Mary Jackson (“The Exorcist III,” “Skinned Alive”) and Arthur Space (“Mansion of the Doomed,” “The Swarm”), as innkeepers Evelyn and Henry Smith, the elderly couple reel in that realness even further by being not overly ruthless in their confidence game of cooking with cannibalism and instead bring warmth and hospitality that results in a slow burning dread that can be just as terrifying as an open cookbook cannibal.  The one character I struggle with is Baby John Smith played by John Neilson (“Honky”) and is method toward an unhinged grandson Regina recklessly falls for in record time of knowing him.  Baby John Smith very much plays into his moniker with childlike tantrums and glistening eye wonderment under a tall and chiseled frame of a man, but his infatuation with Regina, that ultimately plays deeper into the story and to foul up his family’s usual dinner plans, feels ingeniously forced as a device just deployed without justification as there is nothing inherently special about Regina compared to the two other lovely guests with more interesting backgrounds and appearances in characters played by Janet Wood (“Ice Cream Man”) and Margaret Avery (“Night Trap”). 

Allen Actor’s script is overall just plain ludicrous.  Who in their right mind would jet off to an unknown small town for a vacation getaway they won out of the blue from a resort that somehow, someway received their name and address?  Was it just a name randomly picked by pointing to that person in the national phonebook?  Who knows because the exact why and how doesn’t see light within the framework that has Regina be the crab who doesn’t know they’re boiling in a pot of hot water until it’s too late.  There are also two good-looking female guests who are also invited for a 2-week staycation until a party and celebration are given by the host for what is ultimately their guest’s last meal to become a meal for the remaining, unsuspecting guests and the devious entertainers.  Aside from a questionable story setup, I found “Terror at Red Wolf Inn” to be well-made and acted.  Townsend obviously knew what he wanted and how to do along with cinematographer John McNichol (“Private Duty Nurses”) to effectively turn around a fly-by-the-seams script into something far more polished on the surface and that adds that layer of suspense when our heroine discovers the truth about her hosts and her newfound love interest.  There’s also an interesting angle of letting Regine free range the house and grounds after the unveiling of anthropophagy because the whole town is essentially in own the caper or the town’s just  one big family, the character pilot who dropped off Regina and the police offer who turns out to be Baby John Smith’s brother or cousin.  Not a lot of detail explores this angle but enough is said and done to know that Regina is trapped without being shackled to her room in a pretty surreal and scary variable of the Inn’s history.

The USA thriller has many titles, been released on many formats, and now Cheezy Movies and Trionic Entertainment presents “Terror at Red Wolf Inn” on a standard definition DVD.  The 480p transfer print is an anemically graded rip from the VHS, digitized to DVD with all the excessive noise, speckled dropouts, mistracking, and blocking included and on top of the original 35 mm print that had typically celluloid grain and, perhaps, its own age and wear issues by the time this print made it to tape.  The print used for VHS appears visibly clean if removing the VHS defects but with the lower resolution, the Cheezy Movies DVD looks pale and dark with very little detail in what is basically slapping together a DVD without any augmentation and restoration to the print.  This is very conventional for this distributor so no I’m not surprised.  The English language mono mix has an enervated strength being ripped from the VHS audio track. Dialogue meets bare standard being out-front and intelligible and can be rambunctious at times with the unpropitious parties for every guest sendoff but doesn’t have space or depth around them under the brittle unbridled bitrate that offers crackling and some hissing throughout. There are no subtitles available with this release. With most of Cheezy Movies’ catalogue, only within the static menu is a chapter selection in its near-nude dressing. The region free release comes with a, supposed cut, R-rated print and has a runtime of 90 minutes. Behind the exemplar 1970’s color graded and arranged poster art for the front cover, one of Evelyn and Henry Smith looking stern over a girl laid out in bikini, inside the standard Amaray DVD case is a disc printed with the same artwork, but title and tagline cropped with just the elderly Smiths and the bikini-bottomed gal. There is not an insert included. “Terror at Red Wolf Inn” is the precursor to a family of cannibal crazies subgenre that has, for the better part of its existence, exploded rather than imploded all due in part to Bud Townsend and his modest directorial.

Come for the Dinner, Stay to be Eaten at the Red Wolf Inn on a Cheezy Movies’ DVD!

The Only Fire This EVIL Monster is Afraid of is the One in His Pants! “Frankenstein ’80” reviewed! (Cauldron Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Frankenstein ’80” on Blu-ray from Cauldron Films!

At a renowned German hospital, Professor Schwarz has pioneered a new serum that has proven animal-testing results on stopping or reducing the process of organ transplant rejection.  Also, at the same hospital in another wing, a disgraced surgeon, now a posthumous examiner, named Dr. Otto Frankenstein toils away in the morgue, dismembering bodies and piecing together the limbs and organs into a new being he has named Mosiac.  The scarred and lumbering monster has an increase sexual libido and is always in pain from organ rejection, driving him to sexually assault and kill women in the shadows.  Frankenstein steals his colleague’s only batch of serum that could have saved reporter Karl Schein’s ill sister from organ failure.  Now, Karl is on the hunt for the thief along with hot headed police Inspector Schneider that have pieced together a connection between the stolen serum and the grisly deaths of young women. 

Straight from the pages of Mary Shelley’s timeless book, the Frankenstein monster was born out of mad science, or rather the fear of science gone too far, and the deep shadows of Gothic romanticism and tragedy.  The Italian took the creature and patchworked a new take on the reborn monster giving life from expired flesh and jolts of electricity.  Frankenstein took shape as a caricature, a wildly exaggerated shell of the original exterior with an increase sexual appetite and murderous rage that shifts the story from the conflictions of mad scientist to solely the exploits of his mad creation.  That’s what is Frankenstein and his creature succumb to in the 1972 Mario Mancini film “Frankenstein ’80.”  Also known by other various titles such as “Midnight Horror,” “Frankenstein 2000,” and “Mosaic,” the short stinted cinematographer, whose works include “French Sex Murders” and “Vengeance is My Forgiveness,” tackles his own directorial from a co-written treatment penned with Ferdinando De Leone.  M.G.D. Film banners as production company with Benedetto Graziani and Renato Romano (“Seven Blood-Stained Orchids”) producing the sewn-skin and flesh-exposed feature with a concupiscent creature. 

“Frankenstein ‘80” is full of colorful characters that clash literally and figuratively on screen with grandiose personalities that seek to topple over another.  The only normie of the bunch the truth-seeking reporter Karl Schein, played by British actor John Richardson (“Black Sunday,” “Torso”), in the aftermath of a criminal act and tragedy when miracle serum vanishes and his sister (Gaby Veruksy) dies on the operating room table due to potentially her unnecessary organ failure.  Bearing a lookalike tinge of schlock genre director Jess Franco, Roberto Fizz stiffens up to the be academic and scientific creator of the serum in Prof. Schwarz.  His mad science intending to make the world a better place is balanced by Dr. Otto Frankenstein’s sordid abomination and his own self-interest, a wonderfully portentous and arrogantly calm role filled to the brim by the distinguished faced genre veteran and America-born bodybuilder Gordon Mitchell (“Emanuelle, Queen of Sados,” “Malevolence”).  Mitchel doesn’t display his brawniness here as an extinguished gentleman, disgraced surgeon but his unique face with an 1000-yard stare and his tall height made him for a good imposing puppeteer on the brink of losing control of his erratically around and constantly in pain creation Mosaic by Xiro Papas.  With his behavior performance, Papas blended Golden Age horror with new wave violence by being voiceless face of stoic fear who would eventually ravage his beautiful prey.   With all these characters creating havoc and abnormalities, it’s Inspector Schneider that causes the most distress with a cocaine level high performance Renato Romano on the verge of stroking out with him and his men’s own incompetence sleuthing in solving the murder cases.  The diverse nationality cast rounds out with Dalila Di Lazzaro (“Phenomena”) as Karl’s love interest and adopted niece of Dr. Frankenstein, Inspector’s two leading investigators in Fulvio Mingozzi (“Deep Red”) and Enrico Rossi, Lemmy Carson as the suspicious male nurse, and Dada Gallotti (“The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine”) as the Bucher with hardly any clothes underneath the butcher frock.

Frankenstein of the future!  Or, at least, that was the idea for the 1972 released sleazy-schlocker to be conceived as “Frankenstein ’80,” a new generational and bastardized terror with speckles of the original Mary Shelley vision stuffed with horrid-sex aggression and grim depravity.  Blindly held together by it’s key actors, “Frankenstein ‘80” has a pervasive perversity against the unrationalized cowboy science.  We never know just why this particular Dr. Frankenstein is so keen on creating a jerry-rigged juggernaut of mixed-bag blood types and assorted body parts.  Is it because his discredited shame has driven him delusional and mad?  Or is Dr. Frankenstein hellbent on showing the world what abnormal science can accomplish?  Jolting electricity and hunchback henchmen are taken out of the equation altogether in his water version of Frankenstein; we don’t even know where Dr. Frankenstein’s disasterpiece is source from or how the body was brought to be assembled, dismantled, and assembled again over and over as there’s no mention of grave robbery or is just a slabbed soul who fell in the unfortunate hands of a crazed surgical practitioner.  “Frankenstein ‘80’s” has plenty of mania, sleaze, and misshapen aspects that not only include it’s scared and fragmentally pieced together monster that promote Italian ostentation inside the country’s own modern genre elements rather than originating English Gothicism. 

“Frankenstein ‘80” rises alive for the first time North American Blu-ray home video release from Cauldron Films.  The high-definition, 1080p, AVC encoded Blu-ray is pulled from a 35mm print restoration and is presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Stored amply on a BD50, the original print is elevated to a rich color palette that buoys, never dipping below the natural appearing skin tones, compromising the vivid warm grading, or shying away from the inky black voids.  There are spot horizontal scratches that are transparently faint and infrequent.  The release comes with two audio ADR-produced options, an English DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio and an Italian DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio.  The ADR razes the spatial depth a bit but the overall general clarity and prominence is excellent albeit insubstantially faint hissing.  “Frankenstein ‘80” has a nationality diverse cast between the Italian majority and peppered with British and American principals and you’ll see the dub synch better with the native English or Italian proficient depending on the audio track selected.  Range concentrates around the immediate surroundings, limiting the environment to virtually around just the character actions. English subtitles and English SDH are optionally available. Special features include Dalila Forever, an Italian audio recorded message from actress Dalila Di Lazzaro over a still gallery of what is essentially her life as she reminisces about her career, Little Frankensteins, a featurette that pays homage through Italian audio host Domenico Monetti on the assortment of Italian-made Frankensteins that stray from the original story and into a culture phenomenon through a time warp of Italian entries surrounding the creature, and last is an English audio commentary by film historian Heather Drain. The Cauldron Films’ clear-cased Blu-ray displays new art on the front cover, or from at least I can tell without digging up only a handful of one sheets and original posters., with the reverse providing the art from previous DVD versions. Beautifully blood red macabre and psychotronic, both colorfully cover contrasted cover illustrations are a testament to the film’s era and living up what’s on the encoded disc inside, pressed in pure black with a dripping blood red title. The region free Blu-ray comes with an 88-mintue, uncensored final product. Forget what you already know of the stitched together flat-top with pale skin and towering stature of resurrection and death after life as “Frankenstein ’80” embarks on savagery pieced together in the natural stink of science’s putrid decay with an unnatural libido leap into the arms of the unwilling, unsuspecting woman.

“Frankenstein ’80” on Blu-ray from Cauldron Films!