The terror continues. Resident Evil 7: Beginning Hour demo (Post final update review)

Posted by EvilGamer on December 5, 2016

December is finally here and that means one thing. Well yes you could say the holidays but for me, it means we are a month away from Resident Evil 7! In recent years I never thought I would be excited for another Resident Evil game, seeing how downhill the series went and the disappointment I had with Capcom. Now that the demo is complete and Capcom is getting their game ready for release, let’s look at what this small teaser has to offer. Resident Evil 7 Teaser: Beginning Hour_20161205142042

The demo starts off the same. You wake up in the same room with a fireplace, piano and TV set, as well as the same objective; escaping from the house. The new addition in the final update is the locked door on the right is now unlocked and leads you into a creepy hallway. Already this is where I sort of felt like I was playing an old Resident Evil game. Walking into another part of this creepy house where I am greeted with a hallway or room that feels different from the previous one. Different wall colors, sounds and all around the feeling of something bad is going to happen. Resident Evil 7 Teaser: Beginning Hour_20161205142132

The First room on the right is a bathroom where for some reason is a blood filled bathtub with a bike in it. Cool. Anyway, between the bathtub and the toilet is a pipe missing a valve. Next to the pipe is a blood filled toilet which we need to flush to get what’s inside (spoiler alert: It’s a gun). So thus begins my journey of finding this valve and collecting my weapon. Continuing down this hallway and collecting several handgun bullets and other items we come to an iron gated door that leads to the house’s basement. Resident Evil 7 Teaser: Beginning Hour_20161205142450

Before entering the basement, I could hear something lurking inside the room and that feeling of dread came right over me. After opening the door and taking a few steps in, this room is just not sitting right with me. Bodies dangling from the ceiling, weird noises, the valve I’ve been looking for is right across from me and oh look; Black slime that we have seen before is dripping from the vent. This isn’t good. Just like the older games, I was preparing myself for what I am going to trigger by picking this valve up. Resident Evil 7 Teaser: Beginning Hour_20161205142504

Picking up the valve I walk to the door and see that good old Jack Baker has blocked me in with god knows what. The model of Jack is really well done and his facial expressions are amazing. He almost frightened me when he showed himself on the other side, laughing at me. Once Jack takes his leave and our first encounter with a monster begins, I manage to break out of the basement and back track my way to the bathroom to retrieve my weapon. After finally getting a gun I must go back to the basement and face the monster again. Resident Evil 7 Teaser: Beginning Hour_20161205142652

After going back into the basement and collecting a final item, I must fight the monster. The monster looks very similar to the regenerador in Resident Evil 4, but this is actually a new enemy called ”molders”. The design of the monster is nice and looks like something you really don’t want to run into. Fighting it can be pretty hard. It’s attack is pretty fast and being in a small room doesn’t help since it can grab you pretty easily. Along with the fast and creepy music playing during the fight it can really get your heart racing. Resident Evil 7 Teaser: Beginning Hour_20161205142225

Now we come to the end of the demo. After getting your items and fighting the molder you must get to the attic window and escape. There are two new endings in this update, which I will not spoil. Both endings are based on how you play the demo, one ending is the ”True” ending and the other is the ”infected” ending. Each ending left me with more questions and wanting to continue on. Capcom did really well with this demo and did more than enough to show me that they care for this franchise. If you have a Playstation 4 please download this demo and give it a try, whether you’re new or a veteran. For Xbox One and PC players, don’t worry the demo is coming December 9th. Capcom I am ready to return to the world of survival horror. Resident Evil 7 Teaser: Beginning Hour_20161205142837

This Is One Evil Bunny! “Bunny Und Sein Killerding” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on November 28, 2016

An ambivalent group of people are under the relentless rampaging attack of a half man, half bunny. Kidnapped and given an unknown chemical cocktail, one man looking for creative inspiration in a quiet snowy woodland becomes forced to be the object of experimentation by armed and dangerous thugs, transforming him into a vicious hybrid seeking only one desire…fresh pussy. Shredding through every single body who stands in the beast’s path, the chances of surviving the snowy night dims rapidly in the isolated Finnish Mountainside. Under the sheath of dirty fur, the unstoppable creature runs wildly with large limp genitalia flailing about, ready to stick it anywhere and into everyone with, what constitutes as, a fleshy hole.

“Bunny und sein Killerding,” otherwise known in English as “Bunny the Killer Thing,” is an insanely phallic and deranged creature feature with special needs under the madness of director Joonas Makkonen. Based off of Makkonen’s short film of the same name with a noticeably different storyline, both inhabit a mythically outlandish villain with a raging hard on and mouth agape to swallow any bulbous genitalia that’s ready for the taking. If you couldn’t tell already, Joonas Makkonen is a Finnish native and, thus, the film comes straight from Finland’s snowy landscape. München, Germany distribution company Tiberius Films releases Makkonne’s pet Bunny project onto a region 2 DVD given the reason for the German title “Bunny und sein Killerding.”

Makkonen’s unorthodox and unpredictable story scratches at being bold and unprecedented with a maniacal furry woodland animal while still being relative with the typical tropes when creating a horrific atmosphere. When dissecting what the director does best, not one character has been penned to stand above amongst the group that continues a revolving door of hero and heroine perceptions, opening up possibilities for each character on all fronts to come forth for glory. A killer bunny with a veiny stiffy looking for the freshest of the snatches doesn’t even explain the absurd juvenility that went through the creation of this film. Yet at the same time, something has to be said about the endless amount of sleazy enjoyment being had into the viewing experience. A slimy guilt residue overtakes just one piece more of your remaining morality and innocence every time Matti Kiviniemi, in a shamelessly shoddy adult bunny outfit, twirls clockwise the at least ten-inch lifelike dildo in such a menacing and manic manner that it makes turning away from the screen that much HARDer.

However, there’s plenty to dislike about this particular release and none of the negativity originates from the 2015 Finnish film. The Tiberius Films’ heavily edited treatment of this release has been reworked toward a more anti gun violence propaganda film rather than a bunny rocking out with a large cock out. About four minutes, most of it gun violence, has been purposefully omitted, resulting in a slew of choppy scenes that are attempting to piece together a coherent story. If you’re like me and never seen “Bunny the Killer Thing” before, then you may not know much better, construing a mental story about how foreign films sometimes just like to be too artsy. I did have an inkling that an edited disc was in my possession and I was unfortunately correct. The first two acts are passable in the reassembled manner, but the last act has been reduced to nothing more than shambles of it’s true, gory self and, disappointingly enough, the edit loses the required connectivity tissue needed to fire up the necessary neurons of associating scenes with one another. Pivotal scenes are harshly given the editorial boot to remove any type of explicit gun violence, leaving all overly graphic and icky parts of “Bunny und sein Killerding” involving firearms are solely on the Germany theatrical trailer.

Cut Scene from “Bunny und sein Killerding”

“Bunny the Killer Thing” runs the horror comedy at an uncut 88 minutes, but the Tiberius Films upcoming Region 2 DVD and Blu-ray December release will clock in at a shocking 84 minutes. Fortunately, the DVD and Blu-ray will be presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio with a German and Finnish Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and a German DTS option. I won’t be able to critique either the audio or video qualities as I was sent a press screener only; however the Ari Savonen and Janne Andberg special effects and the creations by the visual effects teams along with Makkonen’s directorial style dares to be big production and reminds me a lot of what the Spierig brothers accomplished with their Aussie zombie film “Undead” in 2003. Bonus features consists of a theatrical trailer, behind the scenes featurette, and Makkonen’s 17-minute plus short film of the same title. A remarkable class act of Finland and British actors comprises the film’s lineup in this raunchy and violent horror comedy including a stunning, on-point beauty in Enni Ojutkangas, Jari Manninen, Orwi Manny Ameh, Veera W. Vilo, Roope Olenius, Hiski Hämäläinen, Vincent Tsang, Marcus Massey, Katja Jaskari, Olli Saarenpää, Maria Kunnari, and Matti Kiviniemi as Bunny the killer thing. British actors, you say? Yes! Much like the Bunny creature, the film’s a bit a hybrid itself when on the topic of dialogue. The DVD and Blu-ray will have German or Finland audio tracks with German subtitles, but the natural dialogue track will be a combination of Finnish and English! In conclusion, I watched the film, but, at the same time, I didn’t because of the extreme cuts, whether to discourage gun violence or for whatever reason, made to the original runtime that reduced the intended gruesome firefight ending to nothing more than incomprehensible scenes resembling an intense slap fight.

UNCUT TRAILER!

There’s Astronomical Evil in Them Mountains of Mars! “First Man on Mars” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on November 8, 2016

The Cologne Space Labs launch their project billionaire sponsor and gold-greedy astronaut Eli Cologne into a two-year journey in hopes for a beneficial Mars expedition. Cologne, being the first man on the red planet, encounters a shiny gold-like object that infects him with a foreign organism. As mission control rashly make the decisive decision to abort the expedition and leave Cologne stranded on the wasteland that is Mars, the brazen astronaut plans not to die on the alien planet, fleeting back to the return module, and blasting off back into space where he becomes lost for one year until his return module crash lands on Earth under the massive cloak of Hurricane Katrina. His human form ceases to exists, transformed into a flesh feasting, hideous extraterrestrial in a space suit who wreaks havoc and terror for years in a podunk Louisiana bayou where the nearby local Sheriff, Dick Ruffman, attempts to save from ultimate destruction.

When Tempe Video and TomCat Releasing dropped the news of “First Man on Mars” feature on my e-doorstep in a Tempe Video press release, something very deep in the cavernous, unholy part of me wanted to screen the film’s trailer. After witnessing a primo homage of super-8 b-horror schlock, I immediately brought my finger tips to my laptop’s keys and typed ferociously, requesting a press coverage copy for a film that had me instantly reminisce of “Lobster Man of Mars,” a 1989 sci-fi comedy directed by Stanley Sheff. As weeks passed, no response of my request was returned from the distributor. However, when the film’s director Mike T. Lyddon, an experienced independent filmmaker with more than two decades worth of low-budget films under his belt, e-mails Its Bloggin’ Evil and wonders if the site could review his latest project, a satirical sci-fi comedy, by forwarding over a screener link, I gladly jumped at the opportunity and, low and behold, I wasn’t disappointed when the end credits started to roll!

Under a massive umbrella of pop cultural science fiction references, “First Man on Mars” oversteps many plot conventions, exaggerating to the fullest extent a simple story of one man’s plight of an unquenchable desire for shiny gold that literally consumes him and, consequently, consumes others surrounding him in a cauldron of cannibalistic campiness. Even though the lesser part of Benjamin Wood’s dual role shows his mug as a friendly bar patron, his Eli Cologne performance never shows character face beyond the golden shield of his space helmet or before his pre-gruesome transformation into a hideous, razor-teethed, otherworldly beast, providing anonymity to an important character much similar to that of the character V in “V for Vendetta,” if you don’t consider the stock footage prior to the film’s title. Okay, so I might be comparing caviar to spam, but nonetheless, Lyddon uses comedy and a jerry-built space suit to create an ambiguity villainous character.

Trust me, “First Man on Mars” is not at all serious as the feature is comprised of zany rednecks, birdbrain scientists, and gratuitous violent hilarity garnished with suitably colorful dialogue that can be funny while being extremely crude, can be smart in it’s admiration, and can be juvenile with bathroom-riddled humor where appropriately scened. Every actor executes the swallowing of pride process to extend verbal and physical indirect comedy that purely goes hand-in-hand with this sort of satirical storyline constructed from the certifiable portions of Mike Lyddon’s brain that might or might not be sizzling on an illegal and dangerous narcotic. Gavin Ferrara, Kirk Jordan, Marcelle Shaneyfelt, Roy “Rusty” Jackson, Jr., Kelly Murtagh, Joey Harmon, Sam Cobean, and Tresslar Burton round out the comically darling cast.

“First Man on Mars” is an absurd blast from low-budget director Mike Lyddon and his team of willing actor and crew participants, putting everything on the proverbial line to make this ambitious project first and put their seemingly absent shame second. The TomCat Releasing was presented to me as a screener link, therefore I can’t officially review the audio and video quality nor any bonus features that might have accompanied the release, but as a soft judgment, the 16mm stock that “First Man on Mars” is shot on revels in the hokey dialogue, the substantial monster violence, and the utter gore as a remembrance of the once larger than life creature feature movies from the drive-in theater era.

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Vestron Video Collection’s Blu-ray Return of the Living Dead 3 and C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud Shows Love for Sequels!

Posted by Steven Lewis on September 21, 2016

From Liongsgate Home Entertainment comes Vestron Video Collection’s Blu-ray releases of two sequels that needed some refreshing! “Return of the Living Dead 3” and “C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud” will see the light of Blu-ray day come November 22nd, instilling a 1080p campy fear into hearts of North American horror fans! Packed with extra content and a fresh coat a cover art paint, Lionsgate has resurrected (and remastered) the Vestron Video label from it’s burial ground in the 1980’s, re-delivering cult classic titles into super Hi-Def and redefining a label that made a name for pioneering B-movies such as the below.

C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud

PRE-ORDER C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud at http://amzn.to/2cpUgyC for only $28!

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS
Kevin, Steve, and Katie are an inseparable trio of friends doing some extracurricular snooping in the school science lab when, among the test tubes and beakers, they discover a corpse! But before they can say “Abra Cadaver,” the body disappears, rolling down Route 51 strapped to a gurney. The kids need a spare stiff, and fast. What they find is “Bud the Chud,” a half-dead decomposing humanoid, the result of a military experiment gone haywire. When Bud sets out on a killing spree, the kids, the Army, the police, and the FBI are hot on his trail, trying to save the entire town from becoming “Chudified!”

BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES
• Audio Commentary with Director David Irving
• Interview with Actor Gerrit Graham
• Interview with Actress Tricia Leigh Fisher
• Interview with Special Effects Artist Allan Apone
• Still Gallery

Return of the Living Dead 3

PRE-ORDER “RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3” at http://amzn.to/2diuIRj for $28!

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS
In Return of the Living Dead: Part II, the chemical Trioxin turned people into flesh-eating zombies. Now, the government is trying to control these unstoppable cannibalistic killers in Return of the Living Dead 3. When a young man uses the chemical to bring his girlfriend back to life after a motorcycle accident, she is driven to eat the only thing that will nourish her…human brains! She tries to stop her own feeding frenzy but a chain reaction has already begun, as hordes of undead are unleashed from their graves!

BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES
• Audio Commentary with Director Brian Yuzna
• Audio Commentary with Actress Melinda Clarke and Special Make-Up Effects Artist Tom Rainone
• “Ashes to Ashes” – A Conversation with Director Brian Yuzna and Screenwriter John Penney
• “Living Dead Girl” – An Interview with Actress Melinda Clarke
• “Romeo Is Bleeding” – An Interview with Actor J. Trevor Edmond
• “Trimark & Trioxin” – Interviews with Production Excecutive David Tripet and Editor Chris Roth
• “The Resurrected Dead” – Interviews with Special Effects Designers Steve Johnson and Chris Nelson
• Still Gallery

In A World of Evil, An Embryo Becomes the Hero. “Mécanix” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on July 23, 2016

In a dystopian of metallic wires, continuously spinning gears, and nightmarish creatures, human beings are being driven extinction, enslaved by these same terror creatures that rule the human’s once empowered world. Rounded up like mindless cattle for vivisection, humans dwindle in numbers and in spirit. When one human stumbles upon the embryo, the only object to which the creatures fear and the reason for the humans being vivisected, a new hope of freedom emerges out from the last of the human beings as the last freeborn man implants the embryo inside him. As the horrid creatures learn of the embryo’s whereabouts, a means to an end of their existence drives a frantic frenzy of nonstop destruction before their race becomes obliterated by the embryo’s uniting power.

“Mécanix” is a stop-motion, German Expressionistic film that’s a hard sell for most audiences. Director Rémy M. Larochelle and producer Philippe Chabot have extracted hell and beauty out of an idea of post technology cataclysm inspired by the DIY filmmaking. Spanning over a four year production and then another ten 13 years until U.S. DVD distribution, the 2003 released “Mécanix” creeps to make a cult film impact, but Larochelle’s film is making an impact nonetheless. The experimental nature, the stop-motion effects, and the entrenched expressionism of symbolism makes “Mécanix” unique and memorable thats a labor of love stemmed from Larochelle’s painting, drawings, and sculptures.

Back more than a decade ago, Larochelle sought to display technology and human interaction organically. The film doesn’t necessarily setup the series of cataclysmic events and lays down layers of assumption that humans have created technology and technology eventually goes Terminator coup, but, as if believing in the existence of the circle of life, technology can’t maintain without the human element and so they’re alignment ultimately comes together. “Mécanix” is a representation of that alignment that’s deeply subjective and disturbing, yet oddly fascinating, hooking automated teeth into an unsuspecting viewer.

Aforementioned, “Mécanix” took four years to completely conjure into a 70-minute motion picture feature. Within that time span, Larochelle painstakingly and thoroughly guides every aspect of the special effects, creating reality and fantasy together from through a 16mm camera to the spectacular finished product on screen, making the composited material flush and fitting for visual consumption. Also, ambient audio flawlessly helps bringing the sculpted terrifying creatures come alive who wield bulbous arms of clanky rebar and fleshy pulp, bares unidentifiable skulls protruding through cyborg tissue, and slither across the floor through dark crevices and nooks.

“Mécanix” isn’t an overly gory film, but it’s a hellishly wretched one coming out of Canada. Brief scenes of self-mutilation and depicted re-arrangements of the human anatomy are as about as graphic as “Mécanix” gets, subtly hinting more at explicit content. Stéphane Bilodeau’s freeborn man character, the male lead, and Julie-Anne Côté’s character, the female lead, born from the embryo have light weight speaking roles. The creatures communicate much more of their need for the embryo, giving inanimate characters a good slice of the dialogue, yet Bilodeau and Côté singularly convey their scenes appropriately despite never being in the same scene together. The two main characters present the only non-mechanical beings. Even the humans who are enslaved have a rigidness about them, android-like, while serving their master creatures, who some even don the use a wheelchair to move around – technology needs technology to maintain life sustainability.

Unearthed Films and MVDVisual brings the IPS Films, Creatio Ex Hihl & Avant-Gore Films “Mécanix” to the U.S. home entertainment market 13 years after the world premiere. Being Rémy M. Larochelle’s only feature film to credit, the director can’t be compared to his other work obviously, but “Mécanix” is a fine debut, especially with the amount of sacrifice put into his inspired “Begotten” similar artistic style. The DVD is presented in a in 1.33:1 full screen aspect ratio with a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix that’s suitable for the drowning tone soundtrack from Southern Lord’s doom metal group Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine. The video quality is an attribute to 16mm standards, containing speckles of imperfections that simple add to the charm. The only extra included is an unorganized, yet entertaining interview with director Rémy M. Larochelle and Philippe Chabot, geeking out over answering prepped questions about the film’s formation and inspiration. “Mécanix” rarity will be the prayerful hope and the ultimate declination towards the film’s success as the market for experimental is never catchy with audiences, but the uncontrollable gawking over the “Mécanix” mechanical creatures and practical effects becomes unavoidable.