Category Archives: abduction

This Serial Killer is the Mother of all EVILs. “Ed Kemper” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Ed Kemper” on Blu-ray Home Video

Edmund Kemper at the age of 15 tortured animals and killed his grandparents just to see what it was like.  For five years, Kemper was held at and subsequently released from a psychiatric ward where he was deemed not harmful to society.  His acrimonious relationship with his mother as a child did not stop Kemper from living with her as an adult man after his release and her abusive, alcoholic ways continued on him as well.  After some time, Kemper’s aggressive sexual urges sought out hitchhiking women and in the months between 1972 and 1973, Kemper had abducted multiple school age women and either strangled, stabbed, or shot them in isolated areas of arid California.  From there, Kemper satisfied his depravities with dismembering their bodies and committing necrophiliac acts with the sawed-off parts.  Before turning himself in to authorities, Kemper’s killing spree culminates back to his very existence with the death of his abusive mother and he does not spare her from receiving the same kind of posthumous dismemberment and sexual acts he done upon the young women before her.

American Edmund Kemper is the titular subject of the latest film from director Chad Ferrin, horror director known for pushing eyelids open for atrocity-laden films, such as “Someone’s Knocking at the Door,” “Pig Killer,” and “Scalper.”  Ferrin also cowrites the biographical horror drama with Stephen Johnston, a serial serial-killer screenwriter who has painted with font some of America’s most notorious serial murderers from Ed Gein to Ted Bundy, to Kenneth Bianchi from “The Hillside Strangler.”  The tall, dark complexioned, round glasses framed, and pitched mustached Kemper is the next subject for Johnston and the first serial killer biodoc from Ferrin that takes him from fiction to nonfiction while still retaining his admiration for graphic content, produced under Ferrin’s production company of Crappy World Films in association with Dance On Productions and Laurelwood Pictures.

In the role of Kemper is Brandon Kirk who is a by all comparisons a beefier Ed Helms and Kirk has worked with Ferrin on numerous projects since their first collab in 2021’s “Night Caller,” marking “Ed Kemper” as their sixth film together in Ferrin’s rapid release method.  Initially, Kirk seemed to not fit the role that started off with Kemper suitcase in hand being escorted out of the psych hospital and back into society.  His presence felt shallow, unimportant, and a punching bag for his mom’s barrage of boozy hate with little kickback from Kemper’s large and formidable frame and his deadly past which was only half a decade ago.  Kirk has the tall stature and framework to resemble Kemper in that department but didn’t quite fit the bill instill a confident killer that can chill to anyone to the bone with a simple smirk.   By the end, Kirk proves our conceptions incorrect by becoming a delusionally composed killer that no longer needed a smirk to make blood curdle but rather just look into the camera with his plain eyewear frames and mile stare when casually conversing atrocity as if noting the weather.  It’s plain to see how Kemper came to be with a mother like Clarnell Strandberg and her incessant physical and verbal abuse through and beyond Kemper’s youth; Susan Priver, who has also worked with Ferrin and Kirk since “Night Caller,” nails worst mother of the year being in Strandberg’s constant drunken tirade.  Kirk and Priver’s mother-son dynamic has no and is not depicted to have such traditional warmth or merit and, instead, is a one-sided browbeating at Kemper’s expense is fueled by necessity, and perhaps a little bit of masochism on Kemper’s part because if it really got under the skin of either one of them, I’m sure living on the street would have been better.  Repeat scene principals are laid with only a few with Brinke Stevens (“Nightmare Sisters,” “Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity”) in the role of Clarnell’s closeted lover Sally Hallett, adding a bit more complexion to Clarnell’s life choices and fueled bitterness after failed heterosexual marriages, and Joe Castro (“Blood Feast 2:  All U Can Eat”), special effects makeup artist on the film, also down the traditional black horn, red-caped devil that influences young Kemper’s abused mental state.  The co-ed of the Co-Ed Killer include roles filled in by Erin Luo (“Feral Female”), Patty Hayes, Isabelle Morgan, Autumn Rose Ruch, Gloria Therese, and Katie Silverman (“The Exorcists”).  Familiar faces of Lew Temple (“The Devil’s Rejects”), Robert Miano (“Chained Heat”), and Cassandra Gave (“Conan:  The Barbarian”) pop in supporting parts. 

If you’ve seen the deeply studio underappreciated and fan-favorite “Mindhunter” Netflix television series that was prematurely and devastatingly cancelled, Cameron Britton’s performance may have already seared a first impression of Kemper.  The David Fincher crime drama was dark, bleak, and interesting in what makes serial killers tick as the series investigators sat down with Kemper and utilized him as a source of knowledge, much like novelist Thomas Harris had done with his Hannibal Lector character to track down the Red Dragon killer.  Britton’s large stature and soft-spoken delivery made for a terrifying persona when Kemper goes bluntly, coldly, and without expression into detail of his own exploits and methodology with women and corpses.  Side-by-side, Britton and Kirk are starkly different portrayals and those familiar with “Mindhunter,” like me, may already have an impressed idea of Ed Kemper, but Kirk manages to reign in that initial impression and engrave his own version of the murderer into the solidified stone.  In contrasting stylistic and storytelling choices, Ferrin’s film also strays away from reality quite a bit with the Devil inside Kemper’s mind as a child, his frequent disconnection with time, and delusions with seeing things, like John Wayne knocking on his driver side window and giving him sage advice.  There’s more cinematic universe with “Ed Kemper” the feature film than reality-gripping realism to tell his tale without sensationalism, but the story does get down and dirty in Kemper’s Co-Ed killing days.  Initially, the feature felt watered down and wouldn’t go into the darkest of territories inside Kemper’s skeleton closet and deranged mindset but Ferrin, true to form, gets weird with Kemper and his sexualized obsession with dismembered corpses, unafraid to flash gore and nudity that couldn’t go untold with this type of nonfictional narrative, and to be honest, being the nudity shy Dread Presented film, I was shocked with their green light of certain scenes. 

Dread and Epic Pictures Group present true crime horror-drama “Ed Kemper” on Blu-ray that’s AV encoded with 1080p resolution on a BD25.  Presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, Jeff Billings cinematographer handles the 70’s aesthetic of an arid brown California scenery melded perfectly with 70’s period specific avocado green, mustard yellow, and a singed orange while also tackling the black-and-white representing Kemper’s childhood past.  No compression issues to note, blacks are solid, the colors saturate and diffuse nicely throughout, and details are on the softer side but stick the detailed landing unequivocally in the color scenes with the black-and-white harnessing what it can through lack of color.  The English language audio track is compressed with a Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0.  The sole compressed options hangs back the full potential of disorienting muscle, such as with Joe Castro’s basement dwelling devil who’s aimed to be an intense, delusional provocateur of Kemper’s evildoings and also Kemper himself when he goes into full-throttle turmoil within himself, when he can’t take his mother abuse or when he’s grinning ear-to-ear with killing, hacking up, and necrophiliac-loving co-ed victims.  Dialogue comes through clear and clean with optional English and Spanish subtitles available under the title menu.  What’s additional interesting about the “Ed Kemper” score is it’s orchestrated by Richard Band, brother of Charles Band, and is a stray away from his conventional carnivalesque tone into a more traditionally dark that swells tension when needed and coddles the more abusive scenes to picture Kemper as the victim of abuse.  Special features contain an audio commentary track with director Chad Ferrin, co-ed victim audition tapes, deleted scenes, a Kemper 70’s Psycho featurette documentary that’s a raw look behind-the-scenes and get a real sense of Chad Ferrin’s all-in, guts and all, directing style, a Lost Ending providing an alternate finale to the sensationalized Kemper tale for this release, “The Devil’s Slide” music video, the official theatrical trailer, and trailers for other Dread Presents films.  The traditional Blu-ray case has a mustard yellow covert art of Kemper’s face close up but does not appear to be Kirk’s Kemper mug.  The cover art is one sided and there are no other physical trimmings with a disc printed with Kirk’s Kemper mug split down the middle expressing two different faces and incorporated into a personnel file like design.  Not rated with a runtime of 92 minutes, “Ed Kemper” is encoded with a region free playback compatibility. 

Last Rites: To put all of his immoral and depraved transgressions into just over 90 minutes is simply skimming the odious surface but the Chad Ferrin and Dread / Epic Picture Group collaboration condense the irreverence and the ickiness of “Ed Kemper” onto a platform that reminds us all there is true pure evil in this world.

“Ed Kemper” on Blu-ray Home Video

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Bring Life into Existence, One Must Go Through the unscrupulous EVIL Trials and Tribulations. “The Last Frankenstein” reviewed! (DiabolikDVD / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Last Frankenstein” on Blu-ray from DiabolikDVD

Jason Frankenstein is the great grandson from a long ancestorial line of corpse reanimators.  Feeling unfulfilled in life and his destined legacy, Jason goes through the motions of being a hospital’s physician assistant and putting up with his less ambitious girlfriend, Penny.  When a disfigured serial killer is brought into his hospital, Jason immediately recognizes the shell of a man as his grandfather’s reanimated corpse brought back to life with the family’s secret elixir, Adrenarol.   Hiring two crooked, drug-dealing EMTs to do his kidnapping bidding in exchange for medical grade drugs and with the assistance of a confidential nurse with a disreputable past, Jason sets to complete what his grandfather started by creating his own living, breathing, thinking monster with the family reanimating formula.  Selective hacked up body parts, double-crossing henchmen, and a troublesome manmade man goes against his birthright grain with the only path forward soaked in the blood created by his own hands. 

Resurrected from the depths of just a concept and electrified by crowdfunded, “The Last Frankenstein” is alive, ALIVE!, from writer-director David Weaver in his debut feature length film.  The U.S. film from 2021 was set and shot in Weaver’s hometown of Amsterdam, New York, just northwest of the state capital of Albany.  Labeled as an existential slasher, extracted from Mary Shelley’s classic gothic novel, Weaver sought to recreate exploitation films of the 1970s-1980s with a raw façade, gruesome practical effects and gore, and an assortment of cynical characters in a story that tells of generational expectations, the pressures of living up to greatness, being the last of one’s family surname.  The Kickstarter production raised $13,500 for mostly the shooting costs with much of the post work being completed by Weaver to maintain low costs and is a production of Gila Films with Jay Leonard producing.

“The Last Frankenstein’s” acting tone is a curious one.  Complex with the desire to conquer death with footnotes of drug peddling and murderous EMTs, longing relationships and carnal stress releases, and death, much death, there’s a severe lack of emotion amongst the character pool, delivering a consistent and constant cadence of flat intonations.  The same expression is pretty much splayed onto each face with attitudes and personalities to match in a widespread of white bread acting.  In a way it works toward the story’s apathetic and cynical nature but while Frankenstein’s monster lives with a new life, “The Last Frankenstein” cast utterly is lifeless, beginning with the lead actor William Barnet in the titular role and though a doctors are conventionally attributes plainspoken, carry an unbiased inflection, and eve have some sense of being on the spectrum, perhaps, Barnet’s lukewarm woodenness extends beyond his reach and to the rest of the lot.  There’s no concern or fear in Nurse Paula’s (Keelie Sheridan) eyes when her acquaintance is killed by Jason Frankenstein or that the doctor is trying to resurrect the dead, no anger, resentment, or guilt from the two stoic ambulance drivers (Jeff Raiano and Ulisses Gonsalves) covertly dealing drugs and doing Frankenstein’s dirty work, and there’s definitely no life behind Frankenstein’s monster’s eyes, neither his grandfather’s nor his, that’s very opposite to the legacy portrayals by Boris Karloff’s sadness, Robert De Niro’s revenge, or Peter Boyle’s joy and fear.  This different take on the canopied story has the creature boiled down to a Jason Voorhees type, especially with eldest creature (Roderick Klimek) that looks very much like hockey mask slasher from the backside and even kills like him too.  Jason Frankenstein’s version, played by Michael Wetherbee, at least shows some reserve, some kind of calculation happening behind the flesh-stitched face, and does abide by his apathetic opportunity to kill but also resists the juggernaut chase to slaughter even if detrimental to his existence.  What that resistance is that holds him back goes without exposition or a vague sense of implicit explanation but it’s a performance that renders the most feeling in a rather frozen stiff guild of actors.  Jana Szabela plays Jason’s girlfriend Penny, Brett Owen plays Jason’s father in flashbacks, and cult actors Jim Boelsen (“Strange Behavior,” “The Curious Case of the Campus Corpse”) and the late Robert Dix (“Forbidden Planet,” “Horror of the Blood Monster”) also costar.

The creature’s Gothically enriched surroundings, darkly and bleakly trimmed with elaborate castles inside sinister castles and grotesque in unordinary shapes, styles, and hauntings, are more than replaced by David Weaver’s backwoods entry into the electrified monster.  Trading castles for cabins and grandiose laboratories for makeshift surgical rooms, “The Last Frankenstein” utilizes what’s immediately around, and in this case it’s Weaver’s hometown of Amsterdam, New York, a quaint, post-industrial smalltown surrounded by brick homes, rundown factories, and woodland that gives the story an unconventional look and approach while keeping true to the basic principles of Frankenstein and his monster.   With the idea that small towns hold secrets, “The Last Frankenstein” leans into the problematic drug problem less populated areas encounter with most turning a blind eye or ignorantly keeping their blinders down to the transgressions that are happening right underneath their noses.  In this instance, the drug dealing EMTs are utilized via blackmail but deal to come out better than before with more peddling product than before without risking exposure through a doctor approved sign out sheet for narcotics, which is how Frankenstein caught onto their scheme.  To dig deeper into that latter statement, Frankenstein is the smartest amongst his living peers but can’t seem to understand and figure out his and his ancestor’s creations that go against his family tree in a visceral and violent protest of what it means to live, promoting once again that anti-God actions spoil the fruits of man.  There’s a show of arrogance and false omnipotence to cheat the natural course of death found in all the Frankenstein subject films and those who create variations of the filmography, such as with “Re-Animator” and “The Lazarus Effect.”  

The film may be called “The Last Frankenstein” but it’s the first title with the DiabolikDVD label as a company release.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 Blu-ray is presented in the original widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1.  “The Last Frankenstein” favors a neutrally saturated raw image, capturing a lot of the natural greenery and aesthetic of nearby woods, creeks, and other characteristics of rural America, including trailer parks, post-industrial buildings, and wood paneling interiors.  The surrounding intricacies of a clearly puttied and latex mask used for the Frankenstein grafted facial skin looks like a true mask instead of skin but that’s the very intention of a created being, pieced together in slapdash stitchwork to add a layer of differentiation much like the original monster’s scars or bolt.  General particulars around exteriors and interiors are clearly defined with the consistent laid out image quality that produces ordinary smalltown charm contained to limited landscapes and mostly the direct environs that are not exactly cinematically picturesque but does depict the visual boredom of the vicinity.  The sole audition option is an English LPCM 2.0 stereo that reproduces faithful fidelity of the dialogue and diegetic action within the front channels.  The foley and Steve Noir’s poignant trance of a synth score are a little more girthier bodied to fill the entire medium that get to being comical in action (in foley) yet powerfully bleak and hypnotic (in score).  Dialogue is clean, clear, and in the forefront mostly, often vying for position with Noir’s repetitive and pulsing soundtrack portions. English SDH are optionally available.  Special features include feature-length commentary with writer-director David Weaver and producer Jay Leonard, a second commentary track with Weaver, a making-of featurette Reanimating the Last Frankenstein that goes through cast and crew interviews, the Kickstarter campaign, and a creation thought process for the concept and its materialized conception, deleted scenes, outtakes, still gallery, and a mentioned bonus easter egg listed on the back cover but unable to locate it on the disc. The reviewed copy isn’t the DiabolikDVD exclusive with limited slipcover, but the standard Blu-ray comes one-side cover art that actually requires the slipcover in its muted and dark composition of characters with no title, only the subtitle Nothing Lasts Forever, which makes me believe the slipcover is the one and only primary cover art. The 102-minute featured release comes not rated and region free.

Last Rites: Not to be a wash, rinse, and repeat of the canonical Frankenstein films, “The Last Frankenstein” is creature feature-lite in toneless, small-town adversities of creating an existence that requires life and limb…many, many limbs.

“The Last Frankenstein” on Blu-ray from DiabolikDVD

Tony Todd’s Last EVIL Released Film! “Cutter’s Club” reviewed! (Full Moon Feature / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Cutter’s Club” is Ready for Your Corpse! Buy it Here!

Two promising surgeons Jack and Jill seeking to reach new heights beyond their Hippocratic oath find themselves in presence of Dr. George Roberts, a once renowned surgeon turned obsessed head of a secretly society of surgeons known as the Cutter’s Club who use their skill to be monster makers, craved from slivers of fresh human flesh and harvested internal organs.  Suffering from a severe dissociative order, Dr. Roberts is eager to recruit his former lover and colleague Jill who has the necessary surgical skillset and medical knowledge to bring his two-headed, pint-sized monstrosity to life.  There’s only one problem, Jill’s boyfriend Jack is not in Dr. Roberts’s good graces and is kept out of secret operations to piece together a monster.  As Dr. Roberts’s split personality divides even further and the police become aware of the missing corpses used in their experiments, all of the Cutter’s Clubs efforts, two-headed monster, and even their lives are in jeopardy.

Filmed in 2005, shelved due to lack of funding, and thought lost by the lab storing the negative, the Charles Band directed “Cutter’s Club” went through hell and back to be finally released 20 years later.  The science fiction-horror teeters the same basic premise and principals of David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future” where surgery is the new sex and expressive art, a concept Cronenberg had for decades prior, yet the “Videodrome” director couldn’t fully flesh out the idea into cinematic fruition until recently, starring Viggio Mortensen and Léa Seydoux in 2022.  The script that’s less body horror and more mad science than Cronenberg’s vision is penned by “Thir13en Ghosts” and “AMIEE:  The Visitor” writer, and long time Full Moon narrative collaborator, Neal Marshall Stevens under his pseudonym of Benjamin Carr.  Re-discovered, ironically, the same month Tony Todd died, the “Cutter’s Club” was restored to be the unreleased swan song production from the late and great “Candyman” actor.  Band produces the venture under his founded company Full Moon.

This November is the one-year anniversary of Tony Todd’s death, yet the actor still has new movie releases with “Cutter’s Club” being one of them.  As Dr. George Roberts, Todd plays to his stereotyped tune of being large and in-charge, commanding the screen with his low-frequency voice and intense stares, but Dr. Roberts also has a softer side in his disassociation, a side that’s kinder and gentler against the mad doctor version of himself but that more gentile version barely surfaces and Todd’s ultimately stuck playing an aggressor role he’s all too familiar with and known for.  Not to speak too ill of the dead, but Todd does a bit of overacting with the character by stretching into unnecessary exposition and melodrama, especially when kinder Dr. Roberts briefly sits behind the driver’s seat.  A more down-to-Earth performance comes from Melissa Searing (“Deadly Beloved”) as the anti-heroine Jill.  Grounding an overly articulated Todd to the story, Searing makes for a decent ambitious surgeon trapped inside the confines of the law and ethics and being romantically attached to colleague Jack who’s own self-indulgent inclusion is motivated by the affection he has for Jill.  Played by Davee Youngblood (“Bigfoot County”), Jack looks like the typical Full Moon principal white guy actor that’s more surfer dude with an early 2000’s spikey hair and puka pendant necklace and less defined as a serious surgeon other than wearing the blue scrubs.  Along with Todd’s Dr. Roberts, the Cutter’s Cub society is comprised of lesser disturbed promising medical professionals with David Sean Robinson, Jemal McNeil, and Raelyn Hennessee in various facets of medicine from anesthesiology to retrieving dead bodies from the morgue to being star students when it comes to surgery.  The latter Hennessee is also supposed to playing the jealous other woman to Jill with an at interval relationship with Dr. Roberts that suggests a level perversion or infatuation we’re never privy to.  Jon Simanton, from another Charles Band production “The Creeps,” fills out the cast as the man in a monster suit, stuffing himself into Two-Head, the pieced together monstrous creation.

Without a doubt, horror fans will flock to get their hands on the last and once lost Tony Todd title, but as with many notable genre actors, only a handful of first-class films out of many of the horror legends’ filmographies deserve to be stamped and sealed into their legacy.  “Cutter’s Club” will not be one of those remarkably renowned films.  And like usual, the interesting story of monster making and crafting art out of the flesh of the recently deceased is cut off at the knees by the production’s lack of funding, funding that has rarely been outside the inbreeding of crew talent that retains a certain staleness and the necessary funding to elevate “Cutter’s Cub” from out of the depths of dirt cheap filmmaking and into novel and crisply stylish territory.  Charles Band also nearly always finds a way to integrate his fascination with miniaturized dolls and creatures by having Two-Head be short and stout side villain, adding his directing trademark where he can.  You know it’s a dime-store production not by the rudimentary crafted man-in-a-shoddy-monster suit or the bunch of greenhorn actors that can’t express lines or actions without sullying themselves but rather by the obvious nude nipple pastie on Melissa Searing as she rides an over-sex acting Davee Youngblood nearly convulses out of the bed while lying on his back.  While nude nipples pasties themselves don’t indicate the production’s value, its the from behind-and-over-the-shoulder perspective camera shot that provides a little Searing side boob with the bubbling and loose pastie that really speaks to the fast-and-loose “Cutter’s Club” construction, screaming to the top of it’s lungs that not even a nipple pastie is worth the time and effort to fix for realism.  The story itself has the bone density to stand on it’s own two feet but has hardly any flesh clingy on the Jill love triangle with Jack and George, Jill’s intense motivation to be beyond the grave of a conventional surgeon’s oath to help people, and the secretly society’s wishy-washy goal that doesn’t quite materialize whether their objective is to sculpt art out of flesh or to be monster makers as their deranged core values.

Todd fans will surely want to pick up this lost but not forgotten movie that has been resurrected from the tomb of misplaced films. Full Moon Features handles their own production and distribution with a Blu-ray release on an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, BD25, formatted in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  For an early-to-mid 2000s horror, that pleasant film layer of 35mm stock grain is a sight for sore eyes from modern day digital capturing with natural saturation and texturization that provide better practicality to the picture quality. Depth between medium to close up shorts offer plenty of outline and detail around the simultaneous focus points.  There’s not a ton of color range or texture with a most of the mise-en-scene blends a bland swirl of greens, browns, and blacks mostly only a few micro pops of brighter hues, though muted from the desaturated grading, coming through with Jack and Jill’s blue scrubs and we do get some nice sliminess from Two-Head’s stucco flesh.  Full Moon encodes two English audio options:  a Dolby Digital 2.0 and a Dolby Digital 5.1.  Both mixes keep put mostly in front with little atmosphere surround through the back and a front channels, resulting in the stereo mix to be just as adequate as the surround.  Dialogue retains prevalence throughout with the carnivalesque soundtrack of a usually tagged team of Charles Band-directed and Richard Band scored mix replaced with the Jonathan Walters trickling keyboard struck alto keys of menacing science.  English closed captioning is available.  Special features include an interview featurette with director Charles Band and actors Melissa Searing and Davee Youngblood.  The official trailer rounds out the special content laid out alongside a Full Moon promotional trailer for their streaming video magazine, VIdeoZone.  The standard Amaray Blu-ray contains collective character compositional artwork with no other physical trimmings.  The 82 minute, not rated film has region free playback capabilities. 

Last Rites: Jack and Jill might have went to fetch a pail of water, but “Cutter’s Club” is the one that fell and broke its crown. Nice to see Tony Todd in a relatively new project posthumously; yet, having no more financial standing to finish, “Cutter’s Club” feels just that, unfinished, as another slapdash, get-it-out-there-on-the-shelves, product to bank as the unseen film.

“Cutter’s Club” is Ready for Your Corpse! Buy it Here!