Category Archives: abduction

Stranded and Terrorized, Longtime Friends Must Confront Their Own EVIL Past! “The Boat” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Kee Your Enemies Close but Your Friends Even Closer! “The Boat” Now Available on DVD

Three well-off couples party on a luxury, personal yacht for a holiday getaway and to celebrate Enrico’s birthday.  Sizzling romance, boozy-filled dancing, and smoking weed relaxes the group on the calming waves as the party goes through into the night but when morning comes, they find themselves coming out of a stupor and in the middle of the ocean with the yacht having been sabotage and adrift with no food, water, or means of communication.  A mysterious voice comes over a hidden walkie-talkie poised to punish those onboard in a plight of revenge for a past transgression involving them all and expose the groups’ dark secret kept from each other.  Tensions rise and their tormentor slowly unveils the truth through a series of chastising games that turn the tide on the group’s closeknit friendship for the worse but not everything is what it seems that’ll shed a light of truth on certain ill-conceived perceptions of the past.

Waking from a party-filled night that can’t be remembered and quickly realizing there’s something inherently wrong about the situation, no land in sight with the yacht drifting further out into the ocean, is a sweat-inducing nightmare scenario that has immense palpable fear with a person’s severe disconnect from land and, to make matters worse, all the life-sustaining supplies and modern day conveniences have strangely vanished.  That’s the primal premise setup for the mystery-thriller “The Boat,” a 2025 released Italian-made film from director Alessio Liguori (“In the Trap,” “Shortcut”) and a trio of writers in Gianluca Ansanelli, Nicola Salerno, and Ciro Zecca.  Filmed just off the port of Piano di Sorrento and in the Amalfi Coast, including the illusion of open water scenes, “The Boat” is a Lotus Production, a subsidiary of Leone Film Group, and Rai Cinema feature under producer Marco Belardi and executive producer Enrico Venti.

Reviewing Marco Belardi and Enrico Venti’s producing film repertoire suggests that the duo have hardly tasted tension and experienced thrilling tenterhooks with a more comedic, period piece, and melodramatic works that revolve around the tough, sometimes scathing, human dynamics.  The cast resembles similarly in their credentials, using the melodramatic, soap opera feigns of being hurt, lost, confused, and damaged inside a tight group of longtime friends getting together for a holiday only to find that maybe they’re not so good friends after all, definitely not good people, harboring hazardous secrets.  Diane Fleri (“Ghost Track”) and Filippo Nigro (“Deep in the Wood”) play the epitome of a wealthy yacht owning couple, the reoccurring nightmare plagued Elena and her breadwinning husband Flavio, Alessandro Tiberi (“The House of Chicken”) and Marina Rocco are the fast-lane lovers Federico, the filmmaker, and Claudia, a social media influencer, and Marco Bocci (“Caliber 9”) and Katsiaryna Shulha (“Hypersleep”) play unemployed birthday boy Enrico with his much younger, new girlfriend Martina make up the struggling confounded stranded on a boat.  The once carefree, ready to party friends fall quickly from a standard of grace by a mysterious man radioing from a nearby boat, instructing and commanding them under his thumb with his own set of terms and in a position of authority by holding all the cards as they slept off the hidden sedative, and soon after, they’re perfectly perceived lives are craved in two from a superficial shell of money laundering, betrayal, and murder.   Eduardo Valdarnini (“Bad Habits Die Hard”) helms the calculated antagonist with a plan but his character isn’t kept faceless as first introduced and has his intentions unmasked way too early, running the impact of what naturally would have been a twist moment where it all clicks and makes sense his reason for retribution.  Valdarnini’s depth is in focus, a clear means with a strong case for a longstanding grudge, but the targeted friends rapidly decline into spineless and spiritless absorbents of their fate and are willing to roll over for reside or kill over an emotionally distraught act despite the situation they’re in, both not fitting the narrative bill 

“The Boat’s” strength resides mostly in the first act setup of each couple’s time together before boarding the yacht with tidbit hints of their idiosyncratic lives and their private opinions of each other.  This establishes personas and mindsets that become, or at least should have become, important later to test their surface laid out bond.  The second act transitions from partying the night away into a quickly devolving situation the next morning, discovering their boat adrift and no supplies left on board in apparently robbery.  By now, the tension is high and not set internally amongst the friends as their bewilderment extends to the audience who are too looking for answers.  Only when the mysterious voice over the radio comes a calling do the third act fail to secure a clean sweep of next level thriller.  There’s little-to-no fight in the mostly pampered elite apart from Enrico who only fits in because of his allotted friendships with the other passengers and he brings in the only outsider, his young girlfriend Martina, to which his friends casually mock the age difference behind his back further clueing us in on their true colors, but even Enrico’s fight is reserved for more diplomatic head-way with a man with a vendetta, especially with a gun pointed at him, but his explanation of involvement in past events is too easily taken to heart by the opposition rather than be questioned for its validity.  This leaves an opening of hope and sacrifice that ill-fits the story’s framework and causes an unlikeable situation based either on truth or the mattes of the heart, both of which are never challenged to the extent they should be in a crusade to bring down the affluent guilty.

Sailing up to DVD is “The Boat” from the Philadelphia-based label Breaking Glass Pictures.  The single-layered MPEG-2 video codec on a DVD5 provides a less than crystally defined picture quality in it’s 720p standard resolution, available for converted upscale.  Presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio that truly engulfs the anamorphic image with isolating oceanic oppression, “Orgy of the Dead’s” Mirco Sgarzi’s ability to retain depth without it being washed away in the vast waters creates anticipating moments of visual stimuli with the example being Flavio sitting solo in a life raft with the mysterious man cruising toward him in the background, an iconic culmination of objects in one frame that can be seen in “Jaws 2” when the shark moves in for the kill on a stationary Sheriff Brody holding a powerline while sitting in a raft.  As mentioned, details are shaky at best with objects often appear fuzzy around contouring lines and darker areas are chalky, but the image is more than suitable enough for DVD image delineating.  “The Boat” comes with a mostly Italian, some English PCM 5.1 Surround Sound audio mix that’s cinematically balanced between a forefront and clear dialogue track and a background of diegetic and non-diegetic of ocean grabs, such as waves splashing, distant gull calls, and the roar of a high-powered boat engine.  “Here After’s” Fabrizio Mancinelli’s score doesn’t have an inspiring bone in its ocean body with a route low-key pulse score; it fails to instill that alone enthralling alchemy of being lost at sea with a maniac great-white-circling and looking for blood.  English subtitles are available for selection and while they pace well, there are a couple of infractions on the translation that won’t ruin the visual picture or transcription.   Special features include only a photo gallery and a trailer with the DVD houses inside a standard Amaray case with an aerial pictorial that provides a strong lured interest.  The region 1 DVD comes not rated and has a runtime of 94 minutes.

Last Rites: “The Boat” sails a nautical knot of secrets to reveal not all old friends are faithful and true with a past that eventually catches up to them. The waters will be tested on this newly released Breaking Glass Pictures DVD.

Kee Your Enemies Close but Your Friends Even Closer! “The Boat” Now Available on DVD

Never Steal EVIL’s Dead Body and Think to Get Away Scot-Free! “Frightmare” reviewed! (Troma / Tromatic Collector’s Edition)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

It’s not a Nightmare. It’s a “Frightmare” on Blu-ray!

Aging horror icon Conrad Radzoff is on the verge of being forgotten by all except for a few handfuls of diehard fans who gather around a horror society that appreciate classics that are quickly fading from public view.  Arrogant and conceited, Radzoff doesn’t take criticism all too well.  In fact, he kills over it.  After murdering a commercial director and his longtime collaborating director, both of whom loathed his tyrannical, prima donna attitude, Radzoff dies of heart failure shortly after.  The youthful members of the horror society steal his body from Radzoff’s elaborate decorated and booby-trapped mausoleum on a whim and spends the night dining, dancing, and photographing with his lifeless corpse until Radzoff’s wife uses a medium to locate her late husband’s body and inadvertently resurrects him from dead with supernatural psychic powers to pick off his naïve graverobbers one-by-bone in what will be his last great horror performance. 

“Frightmare,” aka “The Horror Star,” is the supernatural slasher that tears into the fabric of being forgotten with a lasting impression, one with deadly consequences for a mischievous teens disrespecting the past in order to live with impunity in the present.  The 1983 picture is written-and-directed by Norman Thaddeus Vane, co-director of “The Black Room” and the Elvira-inspired 1988 film “Midnight.”  Shot mostly in the Los Angeles area, “Frightmare’s” principal photography and wrap was completed during 1981 but the film itself was not released until two years later and is not a remake of and has no connection to the Pete Walker film of the same title years earlier in 1974, which focuses on a seemingly mentally disturbed rehabilitated woman released years after committing deadly crimes.  This more necromancing and resurrecting slasher “Frightmare” is produced by Callie and Patrick Wright and with “Shadow of the Hawk’s” Henry Gellis serving as executive producer under the Screenwriters Production Company. 

“Frightmare” would undoubtedly become director Norman Thaddeus Vane’s first attempt at replicating a horror icon shell that would later inspire him to direct “Midnight” that pulls influences off horror hostesses, such as Elvira or Vampira.  The centralized character, one who’s prim-and-proper snobbish attitude and flair for the theatrical in film and in life, is loosely, in Conrad Radzoff is loosely based off the Vincent Prices and the Christopher Lees of the genre, classically trained method actors astute to the craft.  Radzoff is, however, embellished with a hellish soul, unlike Price or Lee who sustained a rather indifferent or benevolent character.  There’s a lot to take in and enjoy from Ferdy Mayne’s performance as Radzoff.  Mayne’s first role of it’s kind for the actor with its meta intent to be an actor playing a horror actor reawakened as psychic sociopath from the depths of Hell groomed and garbed as a Vincent Price/Christopher Lee-like gothic vampire, in which Mayne was quite trained for having starred in vampiric films such as “The Vampire Lovers” and “The Fearless Vampire Hunters” in the 1970s, and he crushes the performance with profound effect with Vane’s Euro-style slasher that keeps tabs on the killer as he lurks through the property of the horror society, consisting of going from contravening teens to the unfortunate victims played by Luca Bercovici (“Parasite”), Jennifer Starrett (Run, Angel, Run!”), Alan Stock (“Poison Ivy”), Scott Thomason (“Ghoulies”), then Michael Biehn’s now ex-wife Carlene Olson, Donna McDaniel (“Angel”), and one Jeffrey Combs that would be one of his first films pre-“Re-Animator.”   Narratively, this laid out is the core cast of characters but there are peripheral support characters that are introduced and have key moments but are quickly diminished or erased from completing their story arc.  Radzoff’s wife Ette (Barbara Pilavin, “Maniac Cop 3:  Badge of Silence”) barely has five minutes of screentime but provides the undead Radzoff the key, go-ahead directive to kill his body snatchers but after that intense moment where they psychically connect, her scenes are no more other than one moment with a lightly knotted loose end.  Same can about the intensity of Mrs. Rohmer (Nita Talbot, “Puppet Master II”) that it pops clean off after connecting with Radzoff.  Leon Askin (Doctor Death:  Seeker of Souls”), Chuck Mitchell (“Porky’s”), and Peter Kastner (“Steambath”) fill in the cast.

If only one element stood out as “Frightmare’s” most redeeming characteristic, Joel King’s cinematography takes the top spot on the podium with a diffused fog machine backlighting that’s out of this world, angles and movements that complex the simplest and most stationary scenes, and an ingenuity that manifests the magic of a macabre movie also assisted by both of the aforementioned lighting techniques and the camera placements.  “Frightmare’s” also heavily infused with Gothic nuances that pay tribute to the subgenre as well as add to the sinister and oppressive tone of a rapidly enclosing atmosphere of darkness, shadow, and vaulted architecture from Radzoff’s Victorian-era, aristocratic black and white attire to the wood dark-toned and concreated exterior, two-story mansion that becomes the prison to the horror society they can’t escape from, in life with their hobby and in death with Radzoff hunting them through secret passages, dumbwaiters, and its delicately antiquatedly trimmed rooms and hallways.  Blood is accentuated with slow motion and splatter along walls and out of gash wounds with practical effects constructed by “Critters’” Chuck E. Stewart who can build a ghastly looking burned up and smoking body dead on the ground.  “Frightmare” isn’t a narrative that’ll strike fear around every corner but is rather a campy, supernatural slasher with hammed performances and a solid method for one-by-one offing.  The story’s a bit thin with motivations that keep Radzoff’s egocentric boasting about his last performance in death, his deathtrap mausoleum as if the actor knew there would be intruders, and the whole stealing of the corpse that just seemed to be a fruitless, ill-advised whim where there would be no escape from authorities or even the smell of an actively rotting corpse being stowed away in a non-climate controlled attic. 

Troma re-releases the Vinger Syndrome transfer onto their own Blu-ray through a partnership contract where Vinegar Syndrome receives first dibs on the upgraded, high definition 1080p, 2K transfer from the original amera negative with the title holding partner, Troma, releasing their own Blu-ray upon after the agreed term and the VS edition now out of print circulation.  The identical AVC encoded onto a BD50 “Frightmare” is presented on a Tromatic Special Edition set that retains the same quality as the Vinegar Syndrome 2021 release even, carrying over some Vinegar Syndrome special features.  Graded toward a dark tone, Joel King’s diffused backlighting and primary color tint elevates “Frightmare’s” kitschy, campy posture toward saturated spooky atmospherics.  Details are more than generally reproduced with deep absorbing in the smaller aspects of eliciting skin surfaces and object textures, such as the mansion wood-grain aesthetic and cobweb strung attic.  There are darker scenes that have unavoidable crush outside the colorful haze key lighting, but most retain pitchy space in the 1.78:1 aspect ratioed framing.  The English audio mix is a DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix that also the same as Vinegar Syndrome’s release that has adequate audio propagation and diffusion without the lift of distinct layer and multi-channeling.  All through single channel can collide at times, especially between Jerry Mosely’s (“Bloodtide”) inclusively gothic score and the dialogue, but despite the rough audio patches, the single-conduit tracks are constructively discernible for a better part of the runtime.  English subtitles are available.  Special features are blend between Vinegar Syndrome produced historical commentary with David Del Valle and David DeCoteau, a now historical commentary by The Hysteria Continues podcast hosts, an archived interview with director Normal Thaddeus Vane, and a video interview featurette with director of photography Joel King and Troma exclusive supplementaries that are not entirely related to the feature, those include an old Debbie Rechon and Lloyd Kaufman generic intro from the original DVD version (Rechon and Kaufman a years younger), Lloyd Kaufman gives his personal lesson opinion to aspire indie filmmakers from the set of “Meat for Satan’s Ice Box,” the music video for “INNARDS!,” an artwork gallery, the original theatrical trailer, and the ever included Troma Radiation March.  “Frightmare” receives new Troma sleeve art that covers the macabre more than the usual campy slapstick with a horror flair, slipped inside a Blu-ray Amaray with no extra accoutrements inside or on the reverse side the sleeve.  The 86-minute Troma release is region free and is like the R-rated version, much like the Vinegar Syndrome was, but is unlisted on the backside or on the disc.

Last Rites: A supernatural slasher gothic in tone and crude around the edges, “Frightmare” is one of Troma’s more earnest acquirements into the horror genre that looks now leagues better in high-definition with Joel King’s hazy effervescent lighting, Norman Thaddeous Vane’s looping self-referential narrative, and reliable physical gore.

It’s not a Nightmare. It’s a “Frightmare” on Blu-ray!

Add This EVIL SOV to Your Halloween Watch List! “V/H/S/Halloween” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Spend Halloween With What Scares You on Blu-ray!

A new soda from the Octagon company is about to hit commercial retail shelves but before it does, voluntary testing is recorded for posterity with test subjects examined as they drink Diet Phantasma, a spirt-infused carbonate drink surely to die for.  In between the mopping up of test subjects, four more tales of terror penetrate the safety of the soul.  Two high school seniors go out trick-r-treating for one last mischievous hurrah only to find themselves trapped inside with Mommy, a matriarchal creature from the afterlife that kidnaps bad children on Halloween and makes them her own kids.  A night of revelry trespass onto the mansion grounds of a past gone necromancer who communicated with the dead and when the partygoers pickup the calls from the dead, a tremendous terror can’t go unanswered nor unseen.  Another group of adult trick-r-treater comes upon an unattended bowl full of obscure chocolates only to find themselves suck into the bowl itself and inside a desolate factory where the candymaker toys with his new fun size ingredients.  A media service aims to protect children with their videography services, especially from an unidentified abductor who mutilates and kills kids, but the service may be doing much more harm than good collecting children’s information as they walk through the store.  Lastly, a waning father-and-son bond over their makeshift Halloween maze turns into a nightmare when a record incantation brings to life each of the maze’s horrifying scenarios from ghosts to zombies, to child-eating witches.

For over a decade, the horror anthology series “V/H/S” has been terrifying audiences with short, original tales that break the scale of reality and enter a new dimension of horror that illuminated the careers of modern horror directors Ti West (“X”), Adam Wingard (“Godzilla vs Kong”), and David Bruckner (“Hellraiser” ’22), to name a select few.  The concept created by Bloody Disgusting’s founder Brad Miska in 2012 has one more installment with a new focus, Halloween.  All Hallow’s Eve already has a spooky air about it with a bit of treat to counteract its trick but in the 2025’s “V/H/S/Halloween,” there’s more sinister means than there are chocolates and sweets for new blood enters the series with filmmakers Bryan M. Ferguson writing-and-director “Diet Phantasma,” Anna Zlokovic writing-and-directing “Coochie Coochie Coo,” Paco Plaza directing and co-writing “Ut Supra Six Infra” with Alberto Marini, Casper Kelly writing-and-directing “Fun Size,” Alex Ross Perry writing-and-director “Kidprint,” and R.H. Norman helming a cowritten script of House Haunt” with Micheline Pitt-Norman.  Miska returns as producer alongside Michael Schreiber (“V/H/S/94,” “V/H/S/99”), Steven Schneider (“V/H/S/Beyond), Roy Lee (“V/H/S/Beyond),, James Harris (“V/H/S/85”), Josh Goldbloom (“V/H/S/94,” “V/H/S/99”), and Derek Dauchy (“Late Night with the Devil”) making his producing debut into the franchise.  “V/H/S/Halloween” is a coproduction of Shudder Films, Cinepocalypse Productions, Imagenation Abu Dhabi, and Spooky Pictures. 

In true “V/H/S” fashion, the anthological shorts include a cast few would be familiar with, fresh faces for the grinder as each short touches Halloween night in a different, diabolical way than what we’re use to seeing.  The wraparound story “Diet Phantasma” opens with the Octagon corporate COO Blaine Rothschild being escorted into the manufacturing and testing plant devising the experiment.  David Haydn takes charge of his COO character that flashes a false grin but conveys an authenticity directive while doing it that leads a number of testers to their carbonated demise, from a cast comprised of UK and American actors.  In “Coochie Coochie Coo,” mother knows best as minor hooligan high school friends Lacie (“Samantha Cochran) and Kaliegh (Natalia Montgomery Fernandez) embark on their last night of mischief before moving away to college and stumble upon a light-pulsating house where they discover milk-induced deform adults acting like babies and their six-breasted mother has more milk to give!  Cochran and Fernandez are in the shoes of characters you wouldn’t root for as they’re more rulebreakers than young women with healthy goals and desires as they smoke weed, steal candy from children, and overall take life for granted and the two actresses do criminal-type behavior with justice, pun intended.   Underneath Mommy’s unnatural milkers, talk stature, and evil grin, all underneath a white nightgown and bonnet, is Elena Musser’s phenomenally creepypasta take on fictional lore for the short.  The Spanish-language “ Ut Supra Sic Infra” opens with a back and forth between an interrogation of sole survivor Enric and his eye-removed, bone-crushed friends strewn about a medium’s sacred chamber where Enric, detectives, and his lawyer return to unearth what went down that night.  Spaniard Teo Planell runs polar opposite with his centralized character Enric who begins in fear and ends in wicked confidence as the re-enactment of events turns into a repeat of that fateful night.   One of the more unfavorable performance stories is “Fun Size,” a quirky, corporate consuming double entendre that teleports four friends into a human meat manufacturer that turns their smallest body parts into chocolate covered goodies.  Lawson Greyson (“Herman”), Jenna Hogan (“Surviving the Sleepover”), Riley Nottingham (“The Demoness”), and Jake Ellsworth’s (“Party of Darkness”) performances hit the nail of artificiality and not-so-fun sized corniness.  The cringe acting coupled with stilted dialogue will have audiences root for the antagonist, a candy-headed, crown-wearing, suit-sporting supernatural entity named Fun Size provided with his best “Terrifier” like playfully menacing movements by Michael J. Sielaff with “V/H/S/Halloween” not being his first rodeo with the series having played Pale Face & Babysitter in the “Stork” segment of “V/H/S/Beyond.”  “Kidprint” perhaps has the most disturbing and realistic tale of a child abductor and murderer with a storyline set in the late 80s-early 90s.  Stephen Gurewitz (“The Scary of Sixty-First”) plays Tim Kaplan, owner of Kaplan’s video services where parents can record VHS tapes containing their children’s appearance and information in case they go missing for XYZ reason, and the do-gooder shop owner becomes intertwined with the real killer, someone close to him, who has access to all the tapes and all the information needed to indulge his sociopathic whims, a role “Hostile’s” Carl Garrison was born to play.  Last short shows through home video the decaying stability of a son’s bond with his father over a shared interest in what is a natural progression of coming of age with the now teen boy who’s tired of being bullied by his peers for his dad’s obsession over a Halloween haunt maze he builds every year.  Jeff Harms and Noah Diamond are father-son Keith and Zack in the throes of phasing out their once beloved bond because of teenage angst and peer pressures.  That tension and rebinding of affection is interrupted by the sudden personification of their inanimate horror show that goes straight for the throat in a show of supernatural and classically-creaturfied blood shedding within a homemade maze, leaving teenage angst to be wiped up with a mop. 

Like most “V/H/S” installments, each entry has hits, and each has misses, and this first of its kind holiday-themed ‘V/H/S” anthology produces the same effect.  Spanning across decades from the 80’s to the 2000’s with a series no longer cornered by a particular era, each SOV production produces an original tale all of which grab a handful of disturbing and unsettling content, most with a gore edge.  “Coochie Coochie Coo” and “Fun Size” are two good examples with each carrying opposite elements that make horror horrifying.  Though both shorts are my personally my least favorite of the six, “Fun Size” offers that grossly disturbing factor that invades a person’s private parts for candy making satisfaction but the while the story is short and sweet, there’s nothing shuddering about it where as “Coochie Coochie Coo” trades the vulgar gore for another unsettling factor, pure creepiness that feels like one of those cheap survival horror PC games but can jump scare the hell out of you.  “Ut Supra Six Infra,” “Kidprint,” and “House Haunt” seize a more traditional inlaid suspense with a properly encased twist moment, quickly downgrading a tense by calm story evolution to spiral out of control with madness of monsters, maniacs, and mayhem violently gnashing what’s left of a good around the campfire spooky tale.  “Diet Phantasma” is also a neat premise with an evil spirit infused soda under a corporation eager for obedience and mind control, a metaphor for soda companies running the world as we see such situations in other countries where Coca-Cola is the leading provider of clean purchasable water.  Ferguson also treats fans with an homage to Tommy Lee Wallace’s “Halloween III” by riding a similar plot but with trick-or-treat masks that kill children to resurrect Gaelic, or Samhain, sacrifices.  The COO is also seen reading a Fangoria magazine with hee John Carpenter penned off-shoot sequel on the front cover, suggesting further the idolizing connection.

Acorn Media International distributes the Shudder production onto an AVC encoded, 1080p high-def resolution, BD50.  Like it’s predecessors, the imitated and authentic SOV shoots go through periods of interlaced distortions and static snow that simulate the signal interference, tape artefacts, and low quality, low-graded detail and saturation with some shorts elbowing their way into the cleaner digital camcorder era.  No issues with the true compression of the Blu-ray format; audiences will be pleased to see they will get exactly what the filmmakers’ intended, a harried shaky cam first person view that has it’s monsters looking right back at you under a veil of vagueness and to be a hostage to the purposed angles that translate immense fear just out of frame, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio rather than the organic 4:3 framing for the stories from the 80s to mid-90s with videotape.  The English and Spanish language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio has no issue delivering a vigorous and balanced mixed layers of sound depth based on design short that may contain areas of static, a weaker strength, and certainly a lot of screaming that reaches the mics physical limits to capture and reproduce the sound.  Dialogue is clear and prominent but, like I said, lots of screaming and wailing when events turn southward that it doesn’t matter often what is being said when it all just comes out of as chaotic cacophony.  I will say that “V/H/S/Halloween” is one of the better sound designed productions with more attention to the individual layering.  English subtitles are optionally available as well as French.  Special features include a director’s commentary for each short, a behind-the-scenes featurette for “Diet Phantasma” and “Coochie Coochie Coo” that’s is a swing between mostly raw footage during in between shots and some during shots with commentary here and there, a deleted scene from “Kidprint,” “Diet Phantasma” uninterrupted without the cut-to other shorts, “Diet Phantasma” faux commercial, and a gallery for the Ferguson short.  The physical appearances have the traditional “V/H/S” themed skull front and center on its one-sided sleeve art, sheathed inside the plastic of a Blu-ray Amaray.  There are no other tangible accompaniments.  The UK certified 18 film is region B locked and has a runtime of approx. 115 minutes. 

Last Rites: “V/H/S/Halloween” has original spooky tales centered around the holiday but as a collection, this anthology is a mixed bag of often great knee-buckling terror with considerable absurd tailspin that tries too hard to be scary out of the most unalloyed.

Spend Halloween With What Scares You on Blu-ray!

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!

EVIL Sleeps with Women to Anticipate the Antichrist’s Arrival! “Violent New Breed” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Violent New Breed” is a violent Visual Vengeance video available now!

The city of New York is under siege by a new drug as the narcotic Rapture sticks in the arms of his addicts, leaving them mindless and helpless to the effects.  At the head of the snake, a demon race known as Breeders are responsible for trafficking Rapture across the city.  Jack and Steve are part of a covert government operation well versed with the Breeder’s stimulation scheme of the junkie community. Going undercover at a Breeder establishment front, Jack concealed effort is blown and he falls to the Breeder’s vile ways, leading partner Steve, along with Jack’s teenage daughter Amy, down in the underbelly of the Breeder lair where cyborg servants are constructed and human women are led to breed more demonic spawn, one in particular in plan to be the birth of the antichrist.  In a hellish, NYC basement, amongst viscera and body part leftovers, Steve and Amy must complete the mission and stop the antichrist from reigning hell down on Earth. 

Independent horror filmmaker Todd Sheets has become a master of the microbudget horror scene since the mid-1980’s.  His evolution began with humble shorts, such as “Blood of the Undead” and “Dead Things,” with the latter being re-imagined by Sheets a decade later, and those early years really sowed the seeds of his behind-the-camera love for extreme and outrageous gore and horror as he creates low-budget horror through the years a rapid, breakneck pace, releasing titles such as the lycanthropic “Moonchild,” the anthological horror “Hi-8 (Horror Independent 8) that brings eight of the best indie filmmakers together to tell their tales of terror, and “Clownado.”  Yes, “Clownado” is, you guessed it, a tornado swirling with murderous clowns in it’s vortex.  My personal favorite has always been “Dreaming Purple Neon” for its off-coloring performances and survival-esque storyline with demons and drugs.  “Violent New Breed” is in the middle of his career having been released in 1997 with Sheets gaining traction on multiple filming locations, employing more principal and supporting cast members as well as an abundance of extras, and upping the violent tone and degenerate microcosms that transport viewers to seedier and deadlier worlds.   “Violent New Breed” is written and directed by Sheets under his early production label, Trustinus Productions, securing him a producer credit too.

Sheets has never been the type of filmmaker to follow conventional guidelines when it comes to his characters, often switching them around or executing a red herring to flesh out the real protagonist or anti-hero.  “Violent New Breed” plays into the former with a switcheroo of the principal protagonist, initially beginning with Jack going undercover and infiltrating the Breed’s strip club bar used as a front for their demonic dealings and ending with partner Steve taking the antichrist to the finish line.  The audience will get pretty far and involved with Jack’s life as he struggles with his divorce and custody of daughter Amy (Rebecca Rose).  Mark Glover, who has worked with Sheets on “Bloodthirsty Cannibal Demons” and “Zombie Bloodbath 2,” lands the subconscious weight of personal strife as he inevitably becomes the lone cop sheep in a den of demonic wolves that leave Amy fatherless.  That’s when Nick Stodden (“Clownado”) steps into the fold as Steve.  Steve’s not terribly present in the fist half of the film but is thrust into the Breed labyrinth by duty and by promise to his partner to keep Amy safe.  Strodden plays an average hero with Steve’s bravery in plenty of supply, but the character lacks the hand-to-hand combat skills or weaponry for a government agent trained to deal with supernatural killers.   Embracing entirely Asmodeus, the slick-rick head honcho of the demon hierarchy, is “Moonchild’s” Dave Miller who rather dons the nice suit, cocky attitude, and twisted demon leader suitably despite some reckless decision-making faux-pas moments that ultimately cost the character everything he’s worked toward.  The characters a mostly filled in with little human survivors of the foreboding infernal uprising, such as with Tamara (Jenni Geigel, “The Shivers”) and Trixie (Becky Stodden, “The Shivers”) who find themselves caught in the middle, and with Rod Will (“The Shivers”), Joel Hedge, Jody Rovick (“Prehistoric Bimbos in Armageddon City”), and Andrea Ureno as numerous demons, even one that has a carcinization lower body while still resembling a humanoid at the top-half with protruding mandibles, an absurd radical efforted pulled off successfully by Sheets and his limited budget. 

Sheets’ vision has always been larger than his funds, but the ambitious indie horror filmmaker can’t be contained or constrained by the size of his wallet and the size of his heart for the genre that inspires his creativity.  “Violent New Breed” epitomizes that Todd Sheets ingenuity and the image of a horrifying tomorrow with a large cast, lots of blood, and a striving story set on the streets of New York City while not actually taking one step in the Big Apple.  Yes, “Violent New Breed” is completely filmed in the Midwest, more specifically in Sheets’ hometown and state of Kansas City, Missouri, but the urban jungle is sold through the editing with interjected NYC cityscapes. However, none of the action really happens on the streets but in enclosed bars, basements, and backalleys that could sell to be anywhere, USA. Like many other Todd Sheets productions, there’s not a ton of backstory to chief characters, such as with Jack and Steve’s covert company of infiltrating and obliterating Breeder operations in what is considered an off-the-books undertaking, not recognized officially, yet the pre-apocalypse of the Breeders’ mission isn’t worth the money or resources to warrant the assignment more than two men. Breeders also outweigh hundred-fold, have abilities to invisible-phase, and have an army of Cyborgs all with the influencing poison on the streets to control most of the human population. Sheets sets up a David vs. Goliath narrative without much fight in the heroes and heroines with the Breeders’ shortcomings breed essentially from them tripping over their own shoelaces by not taking advantage when advantage appears opportune. The heroes’ dumbluck constantly and consistently happen through the film and becomes tiresome to watch weak torchbearers fumble to save all of humanity against domineering supernatural terror from Hell!

‘Violent New Breed” gets a violent-illustrated new release from Visual Vengeance. The new Blu-ray glorifies Sheets’ SOV artistic style through an AVC encoded, 1080p high-resolution, BD50. The precursing title card warning of the film’s technical imperfections through commercial or economical equipment, a wonted service by the Wild Eye Releasing’s SOV label, are not egregiously touched up but rather accentuate a cleaner, meaner version for show, presented in its original pillarbox full screen 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The world-wide debut Blu-ray contains the director approved transfer of the SD master tape elements. The faded details incline toward a warmer tone that almost seems ablaze with a glowing heat lamp just out of frame and this also, along with the 720p video, suppresses finer textures with notes of aliasing around character actions. Sheets’ color gels and hazy lighting work to an extent but there’s little pop to the graded coloring. The English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo offers more bite than expected out form it’s two-channel output but has some difficulty deciphering distinct layers inside the scene. Dialogue echoes and varies in volume sporadically through the picture with it also melding into the diegetic environment in a less-than-refined sound. However, dialogue does push through to an extent and is discernible with a rock soundtrack scoring through more effectively like a hot knife through butter. There are English subtitles available for selection. Packed with 12 hours of bonus content, Todd Sheet fans will receive a comprehensive look on not only a “Violent New Breed” but as the filmmaker as a whole. Those with older format copies of the film with be familiar with one of three commentary tracks on the Visual Vengeance release that includes director Todd Sheets and actors Nick Stodden, Antwoine Steele, and Becky Stodden. There’s a Tony Strauss of Weng’s Chop magazine commentary and a Visual Vengeance produced 2023 remastered commentary with Sheets and Rob Hauschild, founder of Wild Eye Releasing. Other bonus content contains an interview with actor Jerry Angell and director Todd Sheets, Sheets discussing working with the late “Dolemite” actor Rudy Ray Moore who plays the last-standing city cleric, a behind-the-scenes documentary, a 2023 Q&A session at the Nitehawk Cinema / Visual Vengeance screening, a blooper reel, a behind-the-scenes image gallery, the original Kansas City local news spot, an uncut version of the strip club entrance sequence, Todd Sheets’ 2014 short zombie-western “Fistful of the Undead” from the 2016 anthology “Grindsploitation 2: The Lost Reels,” and the original and Visual Vengeance trailers. Also included are two alternate versions of the film: the DVD version and The Movie Channel’s R-rated cut. Three movies from the prince of one! Now that you’ve gone through 12-hours of encoded content, next stop is the hefty physical content beginning with graphic artist Heavy J’s Ghana-inspired artwork on the pink carboard O-slipcover that unveils inside a more traditional-approach to Visual Vengeance’s orange, yellow, and black, character-compiled primary art for the standard, clear Blu-ray Amary. The reverse side has the original poster art of a blue-tinted negative image of an axe-wielding Breeder cultist. The insert section has a single-sided folded mini poster of the Ghana art, a trifold essay from Tony Strauss with a bio on Todd Sheets, his filmography, and on “Violent New Breed” that also includes behind-the-scene and movie stills, a single fold, cardboard birth announcement for the coming of the antichrist, and a retro sicker sheet. The 114-minute feature is not rated and is region free encoded.

Last Rites: Todd Sheets enlarges an evil urban with an insidious poison coursing through the city, taking women when they please, and bring forth the antichrist and there’s only a handful of ill-equipped humans to stand in their way. “Violent New Breed’s” Visual Vengeance release, packed with extra content and a spiffy physical presence, is a victory for Todd Sheets and all independent filmmakers like him.

“Violent New Breed” is a violent Visual Vengeance video available now!