Category Archives: bluray

Romance, Arsenic, and EVIL from the “Coven of the Black Cube” reviewed! (Blood Sick Productions / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Don’t Take a Drink from “The Coven of the Black Cube!” See On Blu-ray!

In a romantic tale brewed in turmoil and death metal, Violet’s relationship with girlfriend Gumby has spiraled into rocky territory.  Meanwhile, a coven of witches, the coven of the black cube, use a façade storefront to sell their arsenic infused potions to women who patron the store looking for spells, elixirs, or anything they can get their hands on to give them their just desserts.  Along with a steep price for the potion, the coven’s intent is to also extract the hearts from the corpses for black ritual purposes.  When Violet meets Clover, one of the coven witches, she’s smitten with their newfangled friendship, entrusting Clover enough to naively purchase the potion that only truly works if the other person actually loves them back.  Violet’s plan backfires when the potion takes Gumby’s life but in tragedy she finds solace, warmth, and love from Clover as the two find a stronger connection than before.  Yet, Clover’s coven doesn’t see their amorousness as conducive and plot against Violet and her inner circle who know a little too much of their murderous plans. 

“Coven of the Black Cube” is the 2025 alternative-goth romance horror from Brewce Longo.  The 2024 released film is Longo’s third full-length feature film behind “Blood Sick Psychosis” and that timeless – or was it tasteless – holiday classic, “A Corpse for Christmas.”  Longo pens the shooting script from a story concept by Longo, the film’s costar Zoe Angeli, and Josh Schafer, a VHS aficionado with producing involvement in the VHS documentary “Adjust Your Tracking” and videotaped themed adult animation film in “The Magnificent Kaaboom!!! VHS.”  “Coven of the Black Cube” takes a shine to Schafer’s enthusiasm for the antiquated media format as Longo devises an analog appearance from shooting with a VHS camcorder.  Longo and cinematographer Michael DiFrancesco serve as executive producing financiers of the lo-fi and underground horror production with “Busted Babies’” X Menzak and Charles Smith as co-producers. 

At the dark heart of the story, two women devoid of true love are a piece of a larger pie of characters and while Morrigan Thompson-Milam (“Debbie Does Demons,” “XXX-mas”) and Zoe Angelis (“Flesh Eater X,” “A Corpse for Christmas”) play the characters on opposing sides of the morality scale who find a connection of desire for each other’s comfort and company, there is often a focus on Milo, the laissez faire pot shop, VHS, and pizza-making entrepreneur, and his frustrated wife looking for husband humiliation.  Milo’s a long haired, mustached, glass-wearing, dope smoker with a penchant for Carl J Sukenick movies and the finest college combo of cold pizza and warm beer.  “Pigshit’s” Josh Schafer cowrites in his character’s love for the underground and obscure horror in a retro-VHS format and instills an uncouth yet gentle behavior for a likeable Milo, but Milo’s is benign to “Coven of the Black Cube’s” theme as well as his wife’s (Annie Mitchell, “A Corpse for Christmas”) distaste for his uncivilized and disinterested spousal conduct.  There’s segment has little value other than to be another coven case of trying to get rid of one’s husband and to be not a good friend, but just a floating friend to Violet and Gumby (Kasper Meltedhair, “Darbie’s Scream House”) that supplies them weed from time to time.  We’ve seen Angelis before in more X-rated material from extreme indie filmmaker SamHel’s short films “Vania” and “LoveDump” but her role as Clover takes it down a notch by only going full nude for a steamy moment, exposing just enough yet plenty for a lead into sex scene that fades to a black transition just before getting down with Violet.  Clover and Violet relate to effectual romance that’s organically not sustainable due to the coven’s strict unwritten policies on privacies with Luna (Aja Long) as the representational face of the coven head who will do what is necessary to keep their practices a secret.  The cast fills in with Tina Krause (“Bloodletting”), Joe Swanberg (“You’re Next”), David ‘The Rock’ Nelson (“Blood Sick Psychosis”), and Chris Seaver (“Scrotal Vengeance”).

Underneath the darkling foundation and it’s deathrocker-and-hillbilly rock scene, “Coven of the Black Cube” has perfected the notes of being an analog horror in the modern, digital age by actually using era specific filming equipment to achieve a natural aesthetic with tracking lines, interlaced blocking, and a low-bandwidth process with magnetic tape decay resulting in color shifting and bleeding of the warmer tones produces a nostalgic exactness, an infinite times better aged look through proper medium than a digital image could ever try to reproduce through  being played back through a VHS recorder or any VHS filter.  High praise for a more than accomplished film aesthetic can only push its success so far as the story, a dark-and-grim queer romance, struggles to keep focus with a disjointed narrative, diluting too much of the Violet and Clover rising relationship within the killer-coven context.  Sidebar scenes of Milo’s substory, subjecting his wife’s disdain for his change over the course of the marriage and the subsequent consequence of her plot to do harm to him, dissent the story’s core queer love affair tone too much and too heavy-handily while keeping an overtop cloud of wicked witchcraft whirling about between murdering men, selling pernicious beauty products and services, and holding dark rituals involving a coffin, torture of manhood, and ill-effect open-heart surgery.  Gore effects are moderately effective, especially with the back alley penile canal probing that’ll have all the men cross their legs in fear but also include disemboweling and heart removals.  One item that really digs under the skin, nagging for it to be further explained, is the significance of the black cube.  It’s symbol is worshipped but is still an ambiguous cause or idol the coven sees fit to follow; however, a little research suggest Longo’s story pulls inspiration from the occultist and magical religion Cult of the Black Cube that has been segmented over he course of time, one of those segmentations being blood sacrifices in order to harvest souls for possibly Satan and that closely resembles the filmic plot. 

Blood Sick Productions receives the high-definition Blu-ray treatment for “Coven of the Black Cube,” distributed by MVD Visual.  Encoded onto a BD25, the AVC encoded, 1080p Blu-ray, presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, is an analog enthusiasts wet dream being shot on magnetic tape rather than digital, creating all sorts of color bleeding, interlacing issues, and fuzzy imaging that can both be an instilling nostalgia of reminiscent low-budget 1980s horror and a videophile’s ultimate night for apex image quality.  Longo’s intentions were for the former, a love letter to the VHS era, under the cinematography of Michael DiFrancesco who knew how to correctly light and angle certain shots ot appear vivid, such as in the nightclub scene where Violent and Clover meet eyes, and for the rest of the film use the inherent camcorder’s constraints to let the low resolution and limited color range to take the wheel.  The English PCM 2.0 stereo has a stronger mix than expected in contrast to the video quality, filling in the dual output with unrefined and flat but clear and prominently forefront dialogue, nonetheless.  A killer metal soundtrack is the film’s pride and joy, dispersed throughout appropriately emotionalizing and accentuating the type of scene, with performances from Sing Slavic, Fishgutzzz, Slasher Dave, ShitFucker, Blank Spell, Xarissa, Sorrow Night, deleter, Heavy Temple, Soft Teeth, and more, a full list is inside on an inserted one-sided sheet in their respective band fonts.  Other physical properties of include a harsh pastel and crudely demonic illustration by Paul Barton.  Inside with the insert sheet, the disc is pressed with a giant black cube, bordered with archaic rue figures in a bloodred backsplash.  Encoded special features include a commentary writer-director Brewce Longo, writer-star Zoe Angeli, writer-star Josh Schafer, and director of photography Michael DiFrancesco, a behind the scenes look, and the trailer.  The region free encoded disc has a runtime of 97 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: An alternative witchy tale for the alt-scene, “Coven of the Black Cube’s” nostalgia for the analog and the misandrist femme-fatales marks a different kind of cauldron-stirred potion for the black cat and broomstick subgenre but there’s an imbalance of story here that’s difficult to ignore with its wandering path that takes focus away from the significance of the black cube, trading defining substance around the coven’s existence for a quick cementing romance.

Don’t Take a Drink from “The Coven of the Black Cube!” See On Blu-ray!

A Hole in the Stratosphere Mutates a Whole Lot of EVIL! “Ozone! Attack of the Redneck Mutants!” reviewed! (Video Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Protect the Ozone Layer or Else Meet a Mutated Redneck Fate! Buy “Ozone! Attack of the Redneck Mutants!” on Blu-ray

Arlene, a passionate university student of environment science, and acquaintance Kevin, the untroubled son of an oil tycoon, travel to Poolville, Texas where Arlene’s adamant cause to save the planet has put her on edge with the imprudent Kevin and his family’s oil drilling, planet contaminating business.  Arlene’s mission in the rural town is to test the Ozone layer after a chemical manufacture spill while Kevin tags along much to her chagrin.  Before she can analyze the effects of the spill, the residents of Poolville begin to mutate into festering, flesh-eating creatures and Arlene and Kevin are stuck in the middle of the mayhem.  The exposure mutates Poolville’s population at a slow and unpredictable rate that leaves no where safe to shelter and their own lingering presence exposes them also to the chemical agents.  The longer they stay, the greater the chance their body will transform into flesh-craving fiends, wild-eyed and disgorging green vomit trying to get to their next meal. 

On the heels of “The Abomination,” shot back-to-back in the same month and also at nearly all the same set locations, “Ozone!  Attack of the Redneck Mutants” is the perfectly obscure grindhouse film for a double bill from directors Bret McCormick, who helmed the house-shelled creature feature “The Abomination,” and Matt Devlen’s environmental bumpkin zombie horror!   Shot on location in and around Poolville and Fort Worth, Texas, the lo-fi, flesh-eating, in more ways than one, gory feature is written by Brad Redd and produced by the Devlen and McCormick due along with composer Kim Davis, credited as Marie Skylar (“Body Parts”).  The film has a strong cautionary, allegorical theme of man-made containing spill effects on the environment, such as the ozone layer in this narrative, and their underlining harmful effects on humans that go to an exaggerated level of devouring each other in bits and pieces.  The body horror indie is self-funded by McCormick and Devlen and had a short run on VHS micro-label Muther Video. 

If you’re one of the lucky ones and seen Bret McCormick’s “The Abomination,” you may notice familiar actors in Devlen’s “Ozone!  “The Attack of the Redneck Mutants!”  However, the protagonists do a reversal of demeanor with Blue Thompson as Arlene, the environmental science student who is thrust into being a competent and adept fighter against the mutants whereas her character in “The Abomination” was no different than the stereotypical female victim of horror trope.  Scott Davis tackled the creature in his house with mild composer, even when it devoured his friends and family, but Davis’s Kevin Muncy is foolish and cowardly, wailing to the top of his lungs and flailing his arms and legs when attacked like he’s drowning in deep water because he doesn’t know how to swim.  Arlene and Kevin are an unlikely pairing, environmental antagonists, stuck together in the mutated middle traversing the back country while rural residents transfigure before their eyes into flesh-hungry fiends.  Loafing gun-toter Wade McCoy and his mother Ruby are two of those Poolville denizens that that come under threat.  Played by Brad McCormick, Wade’s a bit of a stereotypical caricature of the term redneck with plaid shirt, truck hat, beer in hand, and shotgun at the ready, as seen in earlier scenes with his character blowing off the broad face of old gourdes in his backyard.  Wade’s mother Ruby (Jance Williams, “Tabloid”)) is a fireball in her own aged way that’s gives evidence to Wade’s beer, guns, and philandering ways.  The rest of the cast are all farming mutants who receive sangre-spilling screentime with Luther Webb, Barry Stephen, Londy Porter, Regina Hackenbush, Leon Bardol and Lorraine Dowdy, Rhonda Rooney, and Barbara Dow as their victims. 

Spitting in the face of the budget’s limited purse strings, or rather spewing neon green glop right into it, “Ozone!  Attack of the Redneck Mutants!” has tremendous cult appeal with its sly editing of human-to-mutant transfiguration and its evisceration and cannibalism gore effects that munches on intestines, a staple dish for the prototypical zombie, undead or otherwise.  The horror looks monstrously great on screen with simple syrup editing under its grindhouse celluloid aesthetic that concentrates a steady transformation of surviving environmental terror, a theme that’s been persistently weighty on activists, politicians, and science communities’ shoulders and minds to this date.  Man-made chemicals and chemical reactions have had a known effect on the ozone layer since the mid-1970s when chemists found chlorofluorocarbons, such as in certain aerosols, had a negative depleting result on the ozone in the stratosphere.  “Ozone!  Attack of the Redneck Mutants!” pulls from that scientific fact and swirls it with an extreme horror element devasting to humanity.  Devlen and director of photography Guy Rafferty secure perfectly framed shots, with one sequence coming to mind of a grass field with wildflowers and buzzing with nature and the camera pans up and over a rolling hill toward a smokestack manufacturer that makes the connection stronger and more impactful to the story.  There’s also a subtle conspiracy between oil tycoon inheritor having some involvement in his father’s oil business and the twist knowledge that his family has a relationship in owning and distributor culprit chemical substances that igniting hell on Earth, sparking extended internal beef, as if the protagonists weren’t already polar opposites butting heads and at each other’s throats between their ideals of big oil and an environmental science, the latter on the precipice of being a muckraker. 

Tapping into the same man-made environmental crisis horror to the likes of “Godzilla” and “The Crazies” and if you’re hungry for more of the same subgenre, “Ozone!  Attack of the Redneck Zombies” is a bloody good time on a downsized appetite, now available on Blu-ray for the first time from Visual Vengeance, a partner label from Wild Eye Releasing.  The director approved standard definition master from the original 8mm elements comes out of the antiquated format shadows onto an AVC encoded BD50 but the transfer was done from super 8 celluloid, retaining much of the emulsion gaps in light leaks and garners a fair amount of speckling, cigarette burns, and vertical scratching but the overall original print has been cared for, well preserved to offer an upgraded resolution as much as the increase in pixels allows with an untouched grading that keeps the nostalgic, sandstone complexion.  A full screen 1.33:1 is the original aspect ratio applied also here on the Blu-ray.  The English PCM mono track is about as a feeble as you expect but adds to the nostalgia in it’s muffled, boxy, and slightly hissy-scratching post-production recording.  You honestly don’t need it touch up or have it upgraded into channel multitude or else it loses that signature singularity associated with hard-to-find, cult budget horror from the 80s.  The front channel produces all the action and dialogue surrounded by simple fixed score and it works better than most of its ilk, but you’ll still find it lacking vitality and having a mismatch gap between the action and the audio.  English subtitles are available.   Where the technical aspects of a Blu-ray are always subpar, because of the fair warning received at the beginning of each film, the encoded and physical special features are what fans crave from the always happy to delivery Visual Vengeance label.  Encoded is a commentary with producer/co-star Bret McCormick and actress Blue Thompson, a second commentary from horror/film experts Sam Panico and Bill Van Ryn, an interview with actress Blue Thompson which is an extension of her “The Abomination” interview on that Blu-ray release, location visits, deleted scenes and outtakes, including special effects behind-the-scenes, without audio, the original VHS intro reel from Muther Video, an archived interview with Matt Devlen from a Cinema Wasteland screening, a producer trailer reel from Matt Devlen, Devlen’s short film “Babies,” actress Barbara Dow’s acting reel, an interview with fellow era director Mark Pirro (“Nudist Colony of the Dead”) on the film, an archived public access TV interview Hollywood Unseen, a Devlen interview on the Let’s Watch Movies podcast, feature image gallery, the trailer for McCormick’s “Tabloid,” and other Visual Vengeance preview trailers.  A massively encoded presence is always accompanied by a massive physical presence, beginning with a newly commissioned cover art by graphic artist, The Dude Designs, on the cardboard slipcover.  The same art is also the primary art on the reversible sleeve, but I like to turn it around, switch it up, to reflect the original VHS box art.  Inserted in the clear Amaray is a mini-folded poster with even more new art by a different artist, Andrei Bouzikov, an official, black and white comic book adaptation with Marc Gras doing all the artwork from cover-to-cover, a white paper puke bag with the feature title, a Muther Video sticker, and a retro sticker sheet from Visual Vengeance!  A Visual Vengeance release is like opening a present on Christmas morning!  The region free, unrated film has 93-minute run which, in my honest opinion, is a bit too long for the story being told as does drag between first and second acts, and if memory serves me, “The Abomination” was exactly the same way.

Last Rites: Gun-carrying, tobacco-spitting, beer-drink rednecks stand no chance against the manmade decay of planet Earth in this done-right DIY horror from Matt Devlen that’s creatively spewing its neon juices galore! Video Vengeance sheds light on another obscure release that doesn’t deserve to be at the bottom of the barrel with its natural celluloid intact, a whole lot of extra goodies in the special features, and a fun and yearned full physical presence too good to be true.

Protect the Ozone Layer or Else Meet a Mutated Redneck Fate! Buy “Ozone! Attack of the Redneck Mutants!” on Blu-ray

Joe Lewis Takes on the EVILs of the World Church! “Force: Five” reviewed! (MVD Rewind Collection / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Force: Five” On a New Blu-ray Collector’s Set!

U.S. Government contractor Jim Martin is an expert martial artist, hired as a contracting agent in the field to handle special missions against country threats when they arise.  When Martin is subcontracted by a wealthy man who has ties to U.S. politicians, he’s assigned to rescue the plutocrat’s daughter from the clutches of the World Church, a fronted religious cult promising to its followers a palace of celestial tranquility from an oppressive world but their intentions are to trick the trust funded young adults into signing over their inheritance to support smuggling drugs and guns.  Martin builds a team of hand-to-hand fighting specialist to take down the World Church’s martial arts master Revered Rhee and his large right-hand man, Carl.  Infiltrating with a visiting U.S. Senator, masquerading as his aids, the team also tries to convince the U.S. Senator of the organization’s corruption while searching for their assigned rescue target. 

Joe Lewis, known as the Father of Modern Kickboxing and perhaps one of the leading martial artists out of the U.S. of his time, had his time on the action-packed silverscreen like most popular fighters of his ilk, such as Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee but certainly not as profound in appearance credits.  One of his first films is a martial arts and rescue actioner titled “Force:  Five” that was released just off the heels of the swanky 1970’s where the disco and soul-infused soundtrack and the chopsocky Kung-fu films reigned as one of the supreme sounds and subgenres on the globe’s East and West terrains.  Serial martial arts film director Robert Clouse, famously known for his co-direction on Bruce Lee’s “Game of Death” and notoriously known for his it’s so bad, it’s good “Gymkata,” writes-and-directs the film based on an alternate screenplay from debuting writers Emil Farkas (“Vendetta”) and George Goldsmith (“Children of the Corn”).   “Enter the Dragon” and “Black Belt Jones” producer Fred Weintraub hoped to capitalize on the melding of the aging martial arts and with the rising rescue/POW films that were on the rise and base the idea off of real events, such as People’s Temple and their cult leader Jim Jones that spanned two decades prior to the film’s written foundation and subsequent finished release.  The Italian language disc is pressed with the same sleeve art with the second disc pressed with alternate, dark-toned artwork, also original to the initial film release. 

Having already touched upon the star of the film, one of the best martial arts competitors in the world, having once beat Chuck Norris in an official event, Joe Lewis is surrounded by an entourage of real fighters who dabbled in acting.  Sonny Barnes plays the large muscle Lockjaw, the only black character in the story, and Barnes is trained and became a Sensei in Kenpo Karate, and he wasn’t the only minority listed in the eclectic group with Latino and Native American representation in Spanish-American Benny “The Jet” Urquidez, a skilled black belt Kickboxer with proficiency in a variety of fighting styles.  Lastly, Richard Norton, another major name in martial art features, hails from Australia and implanted his styles of Karate, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and Kickboxing in his work on both sides of the moral fiber with his characters, having played good and bad guys in “The Octagon” opposite Chuck Norris and in “China O’Brien” with Hong Kong superstar Cynthia Rothrock.  Rounding out the “Force:  Five” team is the only female member in Pam Huntington (“They Call Me Bruce”) with no fighting background and another nonfighter in Ron Hayden as the unhinged chopper pilot.  Though Huntington and Hayden’s fight scenes are limited to just a few in contrast to the trained martial artists, even the nontrained eye can tell the actors haven’t spent years learning the craft.  Now, what really nags at the pedantic in those in the audience is the film is titled “Force: Five” but the team listed above consists of six members so there’s ambiguity in if that was an elementary math error on the story’s part or the “Force:  Five” is just the team minus Joe Lewis, that’s not entirely clear, but what is clear is the antagonists with Korean grand master Bong Soo Han (“Kill the Golden Goose”), master of Hapkido, as the duplicitous Reverend Rhee and the very large and blank faced Bob Schott (“Gymkata,” Russ Meyer’s “Up”) taking trust babies fortune to back their drug and gun smuggling operation through an alternative church façade and scheme.  Reverend Rhee is a character that embodies the very essence of a stereotypical chop-socky or evil organization boss with bad lip sync and a flair for the ostentatious death, “Force:  Five’s” being a killer bull goring those in its labyrinth path, a deadly trap that’s a man-eating shark tank-type, James Bond-like thing to have in his possession. 

By today’s standard, “Force:  Five” is extremely formulaic but for 1981 and with the rise of the action rescuer, mostly inspired by the rescuing of POWs in either during or post-Vietnam War, the film’s a treasure trove of classic conventions of the subgenre that’s inundated with different kick and punch techniques and styles that strayed away from the Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan type of kung-fu that’s more an ostentatious showcase of ability rather than practicing in the practical realm but still pays homage to the craft masters.  Yet, these films resembled an espionage structure with an incognito infiltration, extraction, and scheming villainy pool rounded out exactly how we think movies play out in our head, with a swanky soundtrack that integrated the heart of Carl Douglas’s everybody was Kung-Fu Fighting into a clandestine operation conducted by U.S. operation contract agreement with confident, slightly cocky, Jim Martin.  However, “Force:  Five,” unlike other ensemble entrenched soldiers on a mission, came out too clean for comfort with an unscathed extraction and not one team member lost.  There isn’t even any nearly escape death by the edge of a fingernail.  Joe Lewis takes a couple of kicks to the face by Reverend Rhee and a handful of peripheral characters on the side good did take mortal damage at the hands of the bull and the wishbone split of one main contractor at the hands of Carl’s impatience, but none of the actual operators took one for the team and that usually puts a sour taste in the mouth by begging the question, was the mission really that impossible?  It appeared all too easy from the comforts of the couch to see an unarmed team of martial artists stroll into heavily armed compound (recall – they’re selling drugs and guns) and make it out alive without as much of a minuscule ballistic scratch. 

Coming in at number 70 on the catalogue of the Rewind Collections, MVD’s throwback sublabel, “Force:  Five” kicks itself back onto Blu-ray having been out of a print for nearly a decade on Hi-Def.  A slight better presentation with it’s return to the original widescreen aspect ratio of 1.851, the 2K scan evolves the detail levels to an only slightly higher degree when enlarging the pixels without sacrificing quality, producing a cleaner image perhaps from an advanced scanner.  There’s a balanced color diffusion with warmer palette that focuses mostly on greens and browns and there’s no sacrifice of grain but there’s still some dust/dirt speckling and the occasional vertical scratch but nothing too egregious to note viewing disruption.  The original 35mm print has been nicely preserved and now stored on an AVC encoded BD25.  The audio is generally the same as the previous Blu-ray release with an uncompressed English LPCM 2.0 mono that brings the double impact of all audio layers through the dual channel network, relishing in its small triumphs with small, enclosed explosions.  Dialogue has adequate carry over but there are hissing discharge and underlining crackle, but the overall general discourse is coherent in its post-production recording that leaves Master Bong Soo Han unfortunately reminding us of the higher pitched villainous voice of Betty from “Kung Pow:  Enter the Fist.”  Soundtrack doesn’t instill motivation or embark on danger with its standard stock coursing.  Foley hits and kicks are where “Force:  Five” makes its bread and butter with plenty of vehemently overlaid whomps and whacks.  Special features include a number of archival interviews, or more so toward fighting instructions, from a pair of actors, beginning with Joe Lewis in a sit down that really feels tense when he discusses his martial arts training and contests that lead into the movies and ending with Benny “The Jet” Urquidez offering fighting lesson tidbits in a pair of archived video instructions, such as wrapping your knuckles properly to avoid injury.  The original theatrical trailer rounds out the encoded extras.  The Rewind Collection’s physical treatment is unrivaled with a retro O-ring slipcover that doubles as a faux top secret objective folder on the backside and a VHS rental semblance on the front with previously viewed for sale stickers and mock wear of sun bleach and box creases.  The clear Amaray case inside houses a reversible slipcover with a cleaner, saturated image of the slipcover that has the same layout design on the reverse but with a variant character composition design encircled by a black border.  Inserted inside a mini-folded poster of the primary Blu-ray art.  The disc is also pressed with VHS nodule imagery that further it’s retro appeal into videotape.  The region A release has a runtime of 95 minutes and is rated R. 

Last Rites: “Force: Five” is about as skilled as any Chuck Norris or Jean Claude Van Damme film, and just as hokey as well, with an ensemble of experts of the kick and punch craft that go into a cocky show of bulldozing armed and dangerous smugglers with nothing more than their feet, fists, and wits.

“Force: Five” On a New Blu-ray Collector’s Set!

One Man’s Love and Another Man’s Revenge Take on the Mothers of All EVIL! “Forgotten Pistolero” reviewed! (Carambola Media / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Forgotten Pistolero” Now Available on Blu-ray!

Rafael is a hunted man as he travels from Mexico to Texas searching for his childhood friend Sebastian, a son of a Mexican general who years earlier was slain by an unfaithful wife and her lover shortly after returning from war with the French.  When Rafeal happens upon a man living in solitude on the land, he identifies him as his long-lost friend who has forgotten about his traumatic past and decides not to revictimize his friend of the past, but when Rafael is captured by bounty hunters, Sebastian saves his life that spurs Rafeal into unveiling to his friend his real childhood tragedy.  Sebastian and Rafael set upon a mission of revenge and to save Sebastian’s sister Isabella, who Rafael has fallen in love with and who has had an arranged marriage to a humble shopkeeper to rein in her opposition to her mother’s betrayal.  As the two men battle unscrupulous gun-toting henchmen and deal with their own personal issues in their own way, the gunfighters unravel the truth about their Sebastian and Isabella’s parents while shooting their way toward those directly responsible for unending their tranquil lives. 

“The Forgotten Pistolero,” aka “Gunman of Ave Maria,” aka “Il pistolero dell’Ave Maria” is the 1969 Italian spaghetti western based on the converging of Greek tragedies from Aeschylus, Euripides and Homer.  Notable Italian western director Ferdinando Baldi, director of “Texas, Adios” and “Django, Prepare a Coffin,” pulls forth the betrayal and revenge tale out of the fourth century and into the 19th century set in the semi-arid landscape between Mexico and Texas with spears traded out for six-shooters.  The script is penned by multiple writers with Vencenzo Cerami (“The Silent Stranger”), Pier Giovanni Anchisi (“Hate is My God”), Mario di Nardo (“Aphrodite, Goddess of Love”), Federico de Urrutia (“Hour of Death”), and even director Baldi to grasp the immense drama of tragedy and place it inside the context of a western gunslinger.  “The Forgotten Pistolero” came at the height of the spaghetti western subgenre produced out of Italy with “Django” producer Manolo Bolognini as feature showrunner with Izaro Films and B.R.C. Produzione as production companies filming primary in Spain doubling as the Central and North American west.  

Like many Italian films of the era, especially in the spaghetti western and horror subgenres, the cast is comprised of multinationals with New York-born Leonard Mann at the lead actor credit.  Mann, who began his career in Italy and continued acting in a number of Italian films (“The Unholy Four,” “Death Steps in the Dark”), plays the titular pistolero Sebastian inexplicably haunted by his past while living in solitude until childhood friend Rafeal, played by Italian-born Peter Martell (“God Made Them… I Kill Them”), discovers his friend and reveals he truth that’s subconsciously plagued Sebatian for far too long.  There’s a show of unspoken connection between the two characters that time faded and is rekindled by mutual respect in both – Rafael’s intentions to not hurt Sebastian with the truth by running away after finding him and Sebastian’s tracking him down and saving him from bounty bandidos.  No words needed to describe their bond and through Mann and Martell’s acting do we see that connection solidify to be indestructible.  Completing the childhood friendship is Isabella, played by Spanish actress Pilar Velázquez (“Naked Girl Murdered in the Park”), who is forced to marry a humble yet good man shopkeeper Ignacio (Luciano Rossi, “Salon Kitty”) to be out of illicit lover Tomas’s way as he tries to woo back Anna, both of whom staged a coup and killed Sebastian and Isabella’s father, General Juan Carrasco (José Suárez, “Texas, Adios”).  Isabella adds crucial love interest to Rafael’s state of mind as the hunted gunman finds solace at the bottom of the tequila bottle with his life on the run and his love married to another man.  Rafael’s only hope is Sebastian, thought dead or believed to have vanished by his treacherous mother Anna (Luciana Paluzzi, “99 Women”) and her scoundrel lover Tomas (Alberto de Mendoza, “Horror Express”) who have drifted apart and have their own complex dynamic to which in itself is failing falling out to have permanently taken a father away from his children and have it result all for naught.  Sebastian slowly reconnections with Rafael and himself as his subdued vengeance is ironically rooted by a fierce craving to see those responsible pay. 

Ferdinando Baldi’s surface-layer retribution theme has a subaqueous depth of leagues-upon-leagues of combative and raw emotion, seeded by a singular event of betrayal, separation, and loss all in the life-altering blink of an eye.  Though crucial to thought processes and motivations of the character on either side of the moral coin, the story bypasses the long years between the assassination when Sebastian, Isabella, and Rafael are children and much later when the obligation of adulthood comes knocking.  What’s not depicted from those omitted years are the trials of Rafael’s passion for Isabella and his arduous ordeal to evade capture by Thomas’s goons nor the privy of Sebastian’s life since the death of his father other than it’s made known Rafael’s mother took Sebastian under her wing and died recently.  What’s also missing, and has becomes quite a negative plot hole in the story, is how Rafael and Sebastian learned to gun fight and do it extremely well that becomes key to their reckoning success.  Isabella too suffers living in close proximity to her mother and her illicit lover with a seething hate, especially for her mother, and her relationship with a timid but kind shopkeeper who aims to please her happiness without demanding much from her already shattered childhood.  Triggering trauma, down the bottle depression, suffering in silence, and a searing hatred coupled with perfected embattled showdowns and gunslinging escapades lead up to an unraveled, truth-be-told twist ending of scorching inferno on where it all started.  Baldi knew how to frame a shot that paired people with steady tension or to find their true North when it came to exposition and his gunfights, and though not inundated with rabid rapid-fire riddling with bullet holes, “Forgotten Pistolero” does stand firm in the turbulent ocean of western films, especially with flawed, hero-errant protagonists.

Catalogued title 001 for the IFD Films offshoot label, Carambola Media, distributed through Diabolik DVD, “Forgotten Pistolero” quick draws a new 2-disc, high-definition Blu-ray, encoded with AVC on a BD25 for the English ADR and a BD50 for the Italian ADR language version because it’s accompanied with extras.  The different languages are encoded on individual discs.  The extra pixels offer an extremely high level of detail that reproduces a competent saturation of a warmer graded film, complete with saddle brown and burnt sienna tones, brightly lit in exterior definition and really absorbed with the interiors from it’s 2K saturation of the 35mm print presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  No obvious print damage to the 1969 film, emulsified and preserved properly for later restoration efforts of today.  Often skin tones appear orangish, as seen in many DVD updates, but the color correcting process works wonders with “Forgotten Pistolero’s” verisimilar viewing.  As noted, each language track has its own disc that offer two audio options on each disc.  The English and Italian language discs come with a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono mix and an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 Mono, both rendering ideal fidelity through the power of early Italian cinema ADR with only insubstantial studio inference and no hissing or crackling pops to note.  Either track will work with a seemingly natural flow, even the English track since some actors are mouth articulating English works, as any kind of desynch between the action of talking and the post-production audio has egregious control.  Gunfire has that distinctly rich ricochets effect, and the punches pack a nice wallop when struck, both typical in spaghetti western greats.  The interview with Leonard Mann and the original trailer is exclusively on the Italian language disc whereas the English track focuses just on the feature.  The standard Blu-ray comes in a standard Amaray with an extra lock-in flap for the second disc.  The sleeve art is of the film’s original poster art with a shirtless Leonard Mann, who’s never shirtless in the film, looking cowboy rugged with his gun holstered on his hip.  The hard A region encoded disc is not rated and has a runtime of 83-minutes.

Last Rites: Don’t mistake “Forgotten Pistolero” as an ordinary spaghetti western and don’t ever compare to it to The Man With No Name trilogy as a totally separate type of Italian western but the Carambola Media release is something special, pulled from the depths of Greek mythology, and spun to be a tale of tragedy, twist, and a torrent of gunfights and emotions.

“Forgotten Pistolero” Now Available on Blu-ray!

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!