Category Archives: Death

EVIL Sentences You to the Torture Dungeon and his Bedroom! “Night of the Blood Monster” reviewed! (Blue Underground / 4K UHD + Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Night of the Blood Monster” on 4K + Blu-ray is Here and On Sale!

After the death of King Stewart, 17th century England went into asunder chaos with the ruthless, usurping King James and the rightful, exiled King William of Orange who sought to return and topple King James’s authoritarian rule of a false claim to monarchy.  During the beginning and at the height of the revolution, Chief Justice George Jefferies presides over witchcraft cases with extreme and unethical prejudice, subjecting them to the torture chamber for what is labeled a ‘thorough examination” of their heretic ways, and eventually sentencing to public execution.  When the sister of one of the condemned women attempts to flee the country with a nobleman’s son, Jefferies learns of their dissidence and sends his henchmen to fetch the lovely woman to exploit her within the context of his own licentious litigiousness but closer and closer do the rebels and William of Orange’s men come to men like Chief Justice Jefferies who believe their power, influence, and proximity to God will save them from the noose.

A 17th century Eurotrash period piece forged out of mostly flesh and wolfish self-importance, “The Night of the Blood Monster” is yet another reteaming of Jesús (Jess) Franco and Sir Christopher Lee based loosely on historical context despite Lee’s best efforts for the contrary.  Also wildly and otherwise known as “The Bloody Judge,” and not to neglect mention the exorbitant unofficial titles from around the globe like “Witch Killer of Broadmoor,” “Throne of the Blood Monster,” and “Trial of the Witches” to name a few, the Spanish-German-British coproduction, cowritten between Jess Franco and Enrico Columbo (“Hell Commandos”) is a biographical interpretation of the Chief Justice George Jefferies and the brief span of his cruel litigator’s life set against an epic regime kerfuffle and grimy, exploitation barbarity.  The storyline concept was imagined by longtime Jess Franco producer and overall B-movie votarist Harry Alan Towers (“99 Women,” “The Blood of Fu Manchu”) alongside Columbo and Arturo Marcos (“She Killed in Ecstasy”) under production firms of Fenix Cooperative Cinematografica, Prodimex Film, and Towers of London Productions.

In yet another instance similar to Jess Franco’s “Eugenie” of a prior year or two where Christopher Lee channels the spiritual embodiment of a pain-and-pleasure pundit connected to the Marquis de Sade yet is unaware of the actual skin-and-sleaze that’s happening all around him while he crafts his melodramatic character, “The Night of the Blood Monster” has Lee conduct a stern symphony for Chief Justice George Jefferies’ conceited righteous carnage, living true to the factual George Jefferies designation of a hanging judge.  Lee is ruthless and cold while proper in public as he peeps beautiful bosoms and skirts from afar.  His costar, the gorgeous blonde with soul pierce eyes in fellow “Eugenie” thespian, Maria Rohm, who was also Harry Alan Towers wife at the time, definitely wasn’t clueless about the more undressed scenes, going full frontal in a couple of occasions with one of the supposedly with Lee as the exploiter of her beauty and circumstances.  However, Lee is never shown and only Jefferies’ hands are seen caressing Rohm’s character’s, Mary Gray, bare skin with post-event moments alluding to the implied affect.  Yet, there’s plenty of well-scripted dynamic play for Lee to bounce off against, which Franco is good at in his work as long as his at least 75% of the work makes it to the screen and not too terribly chopped up and spliced for the sex appeal and gratuitous blood.  Milo Quesada (“The 10th Victim”) swings a mean bastard sword as one of Jefferies head knights of dirty work, Hans Hess (“X312 – Flight to Hell”) is more vanilla than complex as the rebellious nobleman son and Mary Gray paramour Harry Selton, and Leo Genn, who initially wasn’t supposed to play the Lord Wessex, really cements Lee’s genuine performance with his own as the aristocratical, oppositional counterpart to Jefferies sadism.  “Night of the Blood Monster” rounds out with Peter Martell (“The French Sex Murders”), Margaret Lee (“Asylum Erotica”), Howard Vernon (“Angel of Death”), and Maria Schell (“99 Women”) as the clairvoyant old woman Mother Rosa living in the hills. 

Like “Eugenie,” “The Night of the Blood Monster,” and most of Franco’s scripts and films, the historical accuracy you must take with a grain of salt.  Though the underline basis of historical figures and perhaps time periods are more-or-less on point, there’s a greater number of misrepresentation of events or an imprecise use of period appropriate props and costuming that is deemed close enough by a fast-and-loose industry standard. Yet, with any Jess Franco film, the modern-day consumer is not expecting award-winning and emotionally moving cinema but rather fleapit flicks of the fleshy kind with handfuls of equally perversive cruelty.  “The Night of the Blood Monster” fits the bill perfectly with a dressing that, to the untrained eye, would pass historical surroundings, give tribute to sordid bygone figures, and revel in its own unabashed filth outside the interpretations of its own core group of filmmakers.  On one hand I feel bad for Christopher Lee who didn’t know, maybe, that the edification of the character was being twisted into something more carnal but on the other hand, the man has been in quite a few Franco and Towers productions to have learned by then.  However, Franco does depict a remarkable presence of a low-level epic with fabricated Classicism set dresses and interior architecture while keeping the budget down by having multiple scenes of men on horses gallop through an unrecognizable, middle-of-world forest.  With that said, the story doesn’t have perfect fluidity with a choppy sense of tempo that fails to coordinate our specific concepts of time.  Seasons don’t change yet months pass between the wrongful execution of Alicia Gray and the impending arrival of William of Orange’s invasion. In all, there’s a brilliance in the behind the face value and a heart to make Chief Justice George Jefferies the worst person possible yet the timing feels off and the story suffers for it.

I’m curious to understand why Blue Underground used the title “Night of the Blood Monster” on their new 2-Disc 4K UHD and Blu-ray set instead of their previous DVD that had the less-generic-more-fitting title “The Bloody Judge.” No judge-ment here really other than “Night of the Blood Monster” isn’t as catchy. The 4K UHD is HVEC encoded, 2160p high-definition, on a double layered BD-66 presents a new 2023 Dolby Vision HDR 4K scan that is gorgeously sharp in detail of interior structures, brighter exteriors, and even the dungeon scenes invoke the dewy coldness and bloodletting squirms. The skin tones can get a little funky at times with an overly warm, and orange-ish, glow not conducive to elements around the ambiance. Other than a few instances of the skin tones, the grading is overall rich in saturation where we get some really nice and thick contrasting reds and yellows with no artefact inference that cause distraction in darker spots or around the edge of objects. The Blu-ray format offers a lesser immersive picture with a lower pixel count but the compression decoding around 35-38Mbps and the compilation of transfer as well as the high-definition pixels is worth the combo set alone. The English language DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track has lossless compression that renders a clean and unfiltered fidelity in dialogue and in the other audio composited audio layers. Granted, some actors are dubbed due to the international co-production with German and Spanish natives not speaking their native tongues but the dub itself, especially in Lee’s own dubbed track, is one of the better inlaid and integrated tracks compared to most with not a load of static feedback. Blue Underground was able to obtain a cut that is the complete and uncensored version of “Night of the Blood Monster” by combining multiple transfers but in adding additional scenes of nudity and blood from a German transfer, the English dialogue track does briefly switch over to German with burned in English subtitles for two segments. English, French and Spanish optional subtitles are available. The 4K UHD carries with it three historian audio commentaries: 1) Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson, 2) Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw, and 3) David Flint and Adrian Smith. The Blu-ray carries a bit more. Including the aforementioned commentaries, there is also deleted scenes and alternate scenes that rework scenarios or add stylistic choices, an archival interview Bloody Jess with Jess Franco and Christopher Lee, an interview with Stephen Thrower, author of “Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco, in Judgement Day, an interview with Alan Birkinshaw and Author Stephen Thrower as they discuss producer Harry Alan Towers in In the Shadows, and rounds off with trailers, TV spots, and still galleries. What I love about this new Blue Underground UHD+Blu-ray combo release is not only the picture but also the cardboard slipcover, a remarkable blend of film factuality and gratuitous sleaze of half-naked and scared women chained up in the dungeon with the embossed tactile title “Night of the Blood Monster” in bold gothic lettering. The same image graces the front cover of the black 4K UHD Amary case but if you do want “The Bloody Judge” title, you can reverse the cover art and there it is but with a different, less fun front cover art that’s more in tune with the narrative. Each disc, punch locked into its own side of the interior case, is pressed with a different illustrated image, 4K being the same as the slipcover while the Blu-ray is more Lee and Executioner focused. No inserts or books included. The not rated, 103-minute release comes region free on both formats.

Last Rites: The verdict is in! “The Night of the Blood Monster” now has the best-looking, most-complete version possible with a new, uncensored cut from Blue Underground. Christopher Lee heralds in hopelessness in squalid measure while holding his nose up high as one of England’s most notorious magistrates to ever rule and the brazen Jess Franco brandishes brilliance that glints through the cracks of an overrun production.

“Night of the Blood Monster” on 4K + Blu-ray is Here and On Sale!

EVIL Has Now Been Digitized. “August Underground’s Penance” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“August Underground’s Penance” on Blu-ray/DVD Combo Set. Purchase Here!

Armed with a digital camcorder and a dark desire to kidnap and brutally torture, rape, and murder random people, deranged serial killers Peter Mountain and his girlfriend Crusty are now a gruesome twosome after the demise of Crusty’s brother Maggot.  The couple’s documentarized carnage continues forward near Pittsburgh where fooling around in metal clubs and on the isolated outskirts of city is balanced out with a healthy dose of basement snuff as body after body after body begins to strain their warped relationship.  What unveils is a descent of their paired destruction as Peter’s rage and undying fascination with female flesh, and internal organs, gaslights Crusty’s simmering and unhinged toxicity.  During the stretch of the Christmas holiday season, the gift of gory packages will be unwrapped and sexualized cookies will be enjoyed before the festive filleting of body parts and December dismemberments trail off into a tale of grim totality. 

Fred Vogel’s third and final film to shut the book on the story around the atrocious Peter Mountain and his extreme exploitation and degrading of people is back on limited-edition physical media for snuff salivating audiences as “August Underground’s Penance.”  Nothing short of gratuitous ultraviolence, the final chapter of “August Underground” marks another successful viscerally visual installment in a clearly digitized effort, elevating the graphic nature with ooey-gooey detail in a vividly discernible image resolution.  A reuniting four years later between Fred Vogel and his cowriter/costar Cristie Whiles after their collaboration on “August Underground’s Mordum,” the second sequel provides a level of continuity, a very low level at that, not seen between the 2001 series starter and “Mordum.”  Under Vogel’s Toe Tag Pictures banner, the company behind the trilogy, the shock realism filmmaker co-produces the film with wife, Shelby Lyn, and Cristie “Crusty” Whiles and special effects artist Jerami Cruise servce as associate producers. 

Aforementioned, Peter Vogel and Cristie Whiles lace up yet again for the Peter Mountain and Crusty show of sadism.  Vogel returns as the mania screaming and overall brute Peter Mountain, a juggernauting maverick amongst murderers with no moral principles, a cynical constitution, and a weak-ish stomach that can’t handle his own gutting of bodies as Mountain, like in the first two features, wretches and coughs and nearly loses his lunch in most graphically intense scenes of spilled blood and guts and other appalling perversities.  Whiles’s Crusty is a carbon copy counterpart, a demented love interest under a loveless veneer, but the Crusty character certainly has evolved between “Mordum” and “Penance” as the coquettish amoralities at the beginning devolve shown in an unconventional narrative way with rough-hewn rough cuts that avoid structuring time and guiding in segues.  It also doesn’t help that the two often have screaming matches or are yelling at their lifeless victims to get a better understanding of melting down mutual relationship based on common callousness and, probably, rough sex, just the way they individually like it.  This is how Peter Vogel circumvents a “Mordum” repeat; not that “Mordum” was terrible as it did convey a Mountain, Crusty, and Crusty’s on the suicidal brink brother Maggot breaking down whatever threadbare bond that kept them for killing each other, but “Mordum” departs with uncertainties surrounding the characters in that memorably haunting final sequence.  “Penance” then takes the two remaining nihilists out in the backyard to basically shoots them, figuratively speaking, to put them out of their misery in an artistic way, as if to say, “that’s it.  I’m done.”  Like previous “August Underground” films, killers are centrically focused with not a lot of repeat characters popping in and out (because they’re all being snuffed out by the killers)  but those played victims round with Selby Lyn Vogel, Jeremi Cruise, Anthony Matthews, Rob Steinbruegge, Ed Laughlin, Matt Rizzutto, Autumn Smith, and Trevor Collins.

While Vogel and Whiles psychopathic performances will make your skin crawl, the real star of “Penance” spurts onto the floor, oozes from the entrails, and has a nasty crunch sound when being sawed into.  I’m speaking of none other than Jerami Cruise’s nauseating blood, guts, and all the colorful viscera in between practical effects that extinguish any kind of comfortability you might have had going into the scene.  Animal intestines are once again used to for seamless builds.  The lines between what’s real and what’s not has no definition, is smoothed over well into the folds, or is vaguely blurry at worst that when the cutting, gouging, severing, perforating, slicing, or whatever other harmfully human puncturing wound words come into the scene, your mind is your greatest enemy unable to tell the differences in the gruesomeness acts all of which are accentuated by Vogel’s dry heaves.  While the story itself begins to shutdown “August Underground’s” pseudo snuff run, the third entry is as much as a regurgitation of the previous two installments peppered with noticeable yet minor differences that less often than more separate themselves from each other.  One of the biggest, advantageous differences in “Penance” is the move away from the fuzzy standard definition analog tape and into the digital world with a widescreen ratio camcorder that details more of the ghastly dissections and without any modifications to the camera, a cleaner sense of raw realism is better conveyed. 

I remember a time, not too long ago, when the “August Underground” films were nothing more than rumor, urban legends of the physical media world, lost archetypes of extreme horror seemingly nonexistent to the everyday joe, like me, and only those who are close to Vogel and his Toe Tag family or willing to fork over large amount of money for a long out of print and rate copy were the lucky ones to ever experience the trilogy. Yet, now, we’re living in the golden age of physical media, paradoxically smackdab at the height of new age and ever-growing streaming platforms, and Unearthed Films has released all three films onto a 2-disc Blu-ray and DVD limited collector’s set. The Blu-ray is an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, 2K scan on a BD50 while the DVD is a MPEG2 encoded, dual-layered, DVD9. Obviously, switch from tape to digital video makes is a tremendous step for image processing and clarity as “Penance” tops the trilogy with a better pixel resolution, a wider angle (1.78:1 aspect ratio), and much less quality degradation than analog. All the nasty bits and pieces are visual described in great realistic detail in what is an ungraded showing of a full-on display not for the weak of stomach. The raw image, even with all it segued pauses in between scenes, punctuates practicality over the conceptual nihilistic serial killer construct. Unearthed Films preserves that through the looking glass, unfiltered video with more than sufficient capacity. The English language uncompressed PCM 2.0 stereo mirrors the same caliber with a home video disharmony of an onboard camera mic that manages well to create distance where needed also while capturing every innate surrounding sound element, such as the whooshing of passing cars, Mountain’s echoed screams in a confined basement, or the overburdening decibels of daunting death metal. There’s a steady amount of low-level interference too that doesn’t hurt the variable levels of dialogue depending on where the principals are and what they’re doing. Between the Blu-ray and DVD, the hi-def format has more capacity for bonus features with most of the new bonus material on the Blu-ray. What’s on both formats are a new audio commentary by special effects artist Jerami Cruise, producer Shelby Lyn Vogel, director Fred Vogel, and Ultra Violent Magazine editor Art Ettinger, a second commentary with Vogel and editor Logan Tallman, a third commentary with the Toe Tag Team, and a fourth commentary with just Fred Vogel. Also included of both formats are a behind-the-scenes documentary Disemboweled and the feature’s very own commentary track, deleted and extended scenes, music video Poppa Pill – “The Murderer is Back,” music video Rue – “The Locust,” original trailer, and new extended photo gallery and teaser outtakes. Exclusively to the Blu-ray is a conversational interview with editor Logan Tallman, going through the nuts and bolts of the most disturbing scene with Peter Vogel, superfan Rob Steinbruegge’s experience and bit role in “Penance,” a new Zoë Rose Smith, creator of “Zobo with a Shotgun” and editor-in-chief of Ghouls Magazine, interview with Peter Vogel, a second new interview with Peter Vogel Voyage to Perdition with Severed Cinema’s Chris Mayo, a discussion roundtable with Peter Vogel, wife Shelby, Logan Tallman, and Ryan Logsdon moderated by Dave Parker, and Unearthed Films’ Stephen Biro’s new interview with Peter Vogel to wrap it up. The physical presence of the release clearly states its homicidal intentions with the thin cardboard O-slipover of Peter Mountain caressing power of his bound and bloodied victim. The clear Blu-ray Amary case displays new, religious art spoofed cover illustration by San Diego artist Paul Naylor; the religious art also continues on the reverse side of the cover with a marred icon of the Virgin Mary being engulfed by the darkness. With the DVD punch-locked at the right and Blu-ray at the left, there’s really no room for an insert to be crammed in but the silver lining there is the pseudo data-cast captures of notable scenes that are the disc pressed art. Unearthed Films’ release is region A locked (region for the DVD is not listed but assumed to be region 1), is not rated, and has a runtime of 81 minutes.

Last Rites: While ever so slightly different from the previous films, “Penance” is more of the same snuff but in its truest, purest form legally allowed on video. Unearthed Films are match made in a human abattoir, like the tacky peanut butter and bloodred jelly. Their collaborated, limited collector’s set release of “August Underground Penance” is nothing short of phenomenal and, if you’re lucky and quick enough, grab all three before they disappear back into obscurity.

“August Underground’s Penance” on Blu-ray/DVD Combo Set. Purchase Here!

Be Careful Of Your Friends. They May Be EVIL! “Stabbed in the Face” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Stabbed in the Face” is now on DVD!

A high school Halloween party becomes the catalytic event for a motley of friends that plan a party in a remote haunted house where the urban legend of the three legged lady had brutally slain her husband and his mistress before her own insanity was gunned down by local authorities.  Simultaneously, a prison escaped murderer roams free around the same area, living a few friends on edge but reassured by the others that nothing will happen.  As the party begins, sex, drugs, and alcohol fuel the night away until one of the girls winds up missing and all that is left is a blood-stained bathroom where she was last seen heading.  Fingers begin pointing at each other as panic and anxiety sets in but as the thought of a deranged escape convict overtakes as best suspect, the others quickly split up to find more of their roll-in-the-hay and pothead friends only to discover the hard way that splitting up is a bad idea when hidden agendas come to light.

A character trope loaded slasher forms the foundational framework and sets up filmmaker Jason Matherne’s 2004 feature with a killer-thriller twist.  With an unambiguous forthcoming of brutality right smack-dab in the middle of the title of “Stabbed in the Face,” Matherne, the low-budget director of the franchised “Goreface Killer,” an if-you-can-believe-it less profane name to the film’s true title of “the Cockfaced Killer,” helms his sophomore gruesome gorescape off a script by fellow “Goreface Killer” writer and collaborator Jared Scallions.  The independent gore-and-shocker set in the late 1980s lands a setting in Louisiana and Mississippi, specifically around the off-beaten trails and areas of New Orleans, under Matherne’s New Orleans-based horror and exploitation yielding Terror Optics Films, under the copyright of CFK (Cockface Killer) Enteratinment, which innately chairs Matherne with the executive producer hat as well as with Jaren Scallions co-executive producing and having a principal role in the story.

Character clichés clutter the chain of events with your typical pot smokers (Jared Scallions and André Le Blanc), bad boy (Eric Fox), jock (Bill Heintz), nerd (Steve Waltz), slut (Kristen McCrory), bitch (Dana Kieferle) and goody two-shoe virgin (Amanda Kiley).  The gang is all here for the slaughter, initiating formulaic conventionalisms that would make any horror aficionado cringe with an internal “here we go again” snide rippling through their gore-bore heads at the lack of originality and creativeness from another indie production.  Yet, if you stick with the story and pay attention (instead of doom scrolling your phone), Scallion’s script evolves out of being a simplistic carbon-copy primate and into a singular, secerning Homo Sapien with idiosyncrasies because though most characters remain on the routine attribute course, more than one don’t in an an uncommon but rarely explored concept that puts audience theories and callouts to bed before the unsuspecting reveal.  If needing a comparison, think about the “Scream” franchise as those films are really good at playing out the whodunit in complicated pairings with a big surprise at the very end.  In “Stabbed in the Face,” the unmasking is not as potent but the possible advents serpentine the story, some more obvious than others, and each carry a different motivation crashing head-on with each other after a few Matherne measured red herrings to throw off the plot predictable scent as well as building up tropes to the max of their mechanics, such examples would be the overly unchaste Starr who bed hops men without shame or overstating Bruce’s money and smarts with talks of getting into Harvard and his girlfriend is only with him for his family’s wealth.  Scallion slathers principals thick with stenciled overflow and when that bottom drops and all hell breaks loose, the ostensible outcome dissolves like wet paper.  Katheryn Aronson, Samantha M. Capps, Matt Mitkevicious, Bonnie W. Picone, Jerry Paradis, Helen Whiskey, Betsy Fleming, and J.C. Pennington complete the cast.

“Stabbed in the Face” is about as savage as it sounds.  Perhaps not as graphic or intense as the Wild Eye DVD illustrated cover art (we secretly wished it was), kills that amount to the titular act has a mortality rate of only two and those pair of perforations don’t live up to the wonderfully ghastly illustrated cover but, overall, fulfills the promise.  It’s quite evident that Matherne has no qualms about using splatter and sex, two of the biggest keys to a successful slasher, in his punk-scored abjection of lewd-laced murder.  Yet, it would be very remiss of me if I didn’t point out that “Stabbed in the Face’s” blade strikes air at times with the story.  Disconnection between the first couple of scenes and the haunted house party planning and then on completely omits the transpiring moment of the jock’s sister’s murder as scenes progress, passing through the event without as much of a whisper.  She’s just there in a scene and then she’s not and that isn’t explained until after the planning of the haunted house trip when the virgin naively asks while settling into his car about the girl who apparently was hacked to pieces on school grounds two months prior.  The heavy weight of that loss isn’t there for the jock, not even a fleeting moment of sadness or shock, as everything continues as if nothing happened.  The other characters are not struck by the loss either and this sweeps the character’s death under the rug and insignificant to the plot, but does a film entitled “Stabbed in the Face” really care about emotional scarring?  Or is the intention to leave open wounds to fester with more knife strikes, decapitations, and eviscerations?  If I was a magic eight ball, all signs would be point to yes toward the latter as special effects team Jason Bradford, Robert Masters, and Richie Roachclip pull their weight (professionally, not emotionally) creating better than anticipated morbid scenes of murder albeit the one or two obvious CGI blood splatter.

An 80’s teen slasher incarnate, “Stabbed in the Face” glorifies gratuitous sex, drugs, and gore, appropriately curated and displayed by our friends at Wild Eye Releasing on their Raw & Extreme sublabel.  The 78th released title on the sublabel is presented in a blown-up aspect ratio of 1.85:1 widescreen, eliminating the horizontal bars, on a MPEG2 encoded DVD5.  Resolution retains the image tautness with only a handful of scenes cropped and zoomed in even more that reduces pixels to a more granular façade.  Matherne owns the softer presentation with instances of posterization, especially when creating a period piece using stark colored gels and less light for positioning thicker shadow that hazily defines objects, as if lurking in the dark.  The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track has great dialogue strength that does sound boxy.  I suspect a ADR dub but highly unlikely with the really good synch and might just be more carefully attained specified audio with key boom placement.  Eric Fox’s electron and punk soundtrack parallel “Stabbed in the Face’s” indie-grunge horror with synthesizing tells of inspiration from the 80’s era.  Punk and hillbilly rock bands on the soundtrack include multiple tracks from The Poots, The Projections and The Pallbearers – the three Ps.  The static menu features full-length tracks from the soundtrack overlaying its static menu with the only bonus feature being a “Stabbed in the Face” Featurette, a behind-the-scenes look in raw and polished form at the film’s genesis and production with discussions from cast and crew.  Along with the feature’s own trailer, also included but separate from the bonus features are other Raw & Extreme trailers of “Crimewave,” “Goregasm,” “Whore,” “Video Killer,” “Blood Slaughter Massacre,” “Hotel Inferno,” and “Acid Bath.”  This portion of the menu options does not include a music track.  To turn consumers onto the film, more so the gore fans than popcorn film goers, the ultraviolent cover keeps in accordance with the Raw & Extreme profile.  The cover art is also semi-reversible with magnified bloody image on the inside of the frosted Amaray DVD case.  The disc is printed with the same cover art image, just downsized.  The unrated DVD has a runtime of 81 minutes and is region free.  Just hearing the title can induce the sensation of a sharp edge going through soft flesh and with that phantom impression of pain, “Stabbed in the Face” is horny, bloody, and punk!

“Stabbed in the Face” is now on DVD!

Prancing Forest EVIL Will Seduce You to Death! “Devil Times Two” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Devil Times Two” on DVD from SRS Cinema

A forest encircled convent hidden away from the Milan population undertakes an occult responsibility to keep bloodthirsty and callous demons from entering the human world.  On the verge of retiring, Father Ernesto Taro, a once formidable force for good who exorcised a powerful demon decades ago that cost the lives of many in his fellow cohort except for Mother Dolores, takes on a younger understudy to be his replacement, the ambitious Father Chuck Bennet.  Father Taro and Bennet were summoned by Mother Dolores when grisly body of a young hiker is discovered.  A pair of former Nazi sadists turned Netherworld demons come to Father Bennet in a vision and are suspected to be the carnage culprits.  Souls are at stake and the world is on the brink of falling into darkness as the Returnees are only the right hand of a more profound evil itching for complete and utter omnipotence. 

“Devil Times Two” is an Italian-made, demonology-contextualized horror from Italy writer-director Paolo del Fiol.  Having purveyed grindhouse horror in anthological means with previous films “Connections” and “Sangue Misto,,” del Fiol branches out into his solo feature-length narrative set in the 1970s as a faux lost film recovered onto VHS from the only known syndicate televised program on Telelaguna to account the terrible tale full of profane hostilities, sexual stimulating supremacy, and, of course, gore in the interlacing recognition between the popular devil, demon, or hell on Earth inspired movies and the obscenities connected to eurotrash and sleaze movement of the 70s topped a hint of Japanese adulation, a motif heavily sprinkled into the film carried over from the director’s previous work as well.  Underscored by the tagline Quado le Tenebre escono al Bosco, or When Darkness comes out of the Woods, “Devil Time Two” once again pits religious good versus irreligious evil in this Himechan Movie Production self-produced by Paolo del Fiol.

Characterized as the titular pair, Returnees Jasmine and Umeko are the ethereally evil duet of diabolical detriment who seemingly float in and out of the material world as alluring succubi, seducing prey into their web of demonic lust and languish.  Some turn up grotesquely inside out while some others disappear, saved for later for special ritualistic planning.  Erika Saccà, an Italian fitness instructor in her debut role, plays the blonde Returnee Jasmine in a sleeveless, lowcut gown and with nearly ever kill, exposes and massages her augmented bosom with underboob scarring in a change to showoff her toned physique, and Reiko Nagoshi (“Re-Flesh”) wears a kimono without any unveiling of skin but does a bit of thrust-damage on her quarry that initially and inexplicable appears to be a strange phenomena when everyone in the scene is a woman but becomes apparent there’s something unholy and very “War of the World’s” alien under that traditional Japanese garb.  Saccà and Nagoshi wear many hats in this product but also don’t have the dialogue to hoist their demonesses higher.  The dialogue is left with the trio of convent gatekeepers in Father Taro (Enrico Luly), Father Bennet (Paolo Salvadeo, “Occultus”), and Mother Dolores (Amira Lucrezia Lamour, “Re-Flesh”) in what becomes a deeper understanding of their backstories around Father Taro’s deadly bittersweet exorcism decades ago, his on the sly and subtle affection for Mother Dolores, and Father Bennet’s questionable rise to supersede Father Taro, laying a foundation of doubt within the current gatekeeper.  While I like the contrasting dynamics of the two factions within the cast, I found the discourse overly bulk and tedium between the trio of piety that strung on scenes way too long with way too much talk that it ultimately suppresses the pacing when every little detail has been uncovered and explained. All the casted bits in between are slaughter fodder with Denise Brambillasca, Alessandro Carnevale Pellino (“The Wicked Gift”), and Martina Vuotti in non-defying death roles.

Paolo del Fiol’s unaccompanied and independent deluge of demonian debut has doses of phantasmagorical imagery sublet by its more shocking and odd immolation of incognizant individuals unlucky enough to cross paths with the Returnees. Likely to have never seen, Fiol’s film very similarly compares to James Sizemore’s “The Demon Rook” by creating unique mythos not reliant on a religious bedrock and use independency as an advantage for showcasing practical makeup and effects and while “The Demon Rook” would overwhelm with prosthetic made-up characters, “Demon Times Two” focuses attention more on the guts of the matter, the gore, but though not pernicious enough to the story, the eyeball sucking, throat lacerating, or intestine exposing bloodshed is prosaic panoply that won’t outshine in the sea of subgenre synonyms. Aforementioned dialogue scenes can be a slog to get through with many exchanges overstaying its course between the pious gatekeepers, especially between Father Taro and Dorlores, and that hurts the pacing to pick up the gore more frequently for more potency. Instead, exchanges are more elucidations that go around-and-around to where we’re lost on the mounting reveal of the Returnees’ mission and master which turns out to be visually more stimulating and visceral in the last ten minutes than in the first 100 minutes of runtime. The backlot lore is Fiol’s greatest achievement simulating a 70’s style grainy movie caveated as only broadcasted once on December 8th, 1983 (a few days before this reviewer’s birthday) and never seen again until it’s VHS recording is recovered.

Under a pretense of being a buried lost film, under the tribute of a grainy and scratched psychotronic celluloid, and under the falsity of genuine huge knockers, “Devil Times Two” is twice baked into a classic contemporary dish served by SRS Cinema on DVD. Arriving on the SRS Cinema: Extreme and Unrated Nightmare Fuel label, “Devil Times Two” is nothing short of being a modern-day emulator of once was with suitable grain overlay, a hazy, if not washed, overcast grading, and trope-laden atmospherics with dense fog, unnerving dissonances within earshot, and blood brilliantly cut with pseudo Telelagua commercial programming of brief adverts until returning to regular scheduled programed checked in and out by a gondola and it’s gondolier in dusk silhouette. Presented in a pillar box 1.33:1 aspect ratio, the fuzzy and non-delineated details are not a punch to the salient gut as the intent here is to be obscure, opaque, and ominous in nature and in technique bathed in 480p. The Italian PCM is the exact recreation of a time period post-dubbing with the actors re-dialoguing their performances as it was common practice in most motion picture industries, especially Europe, at the time. ADR is clear but not necessarily clean to recreate that shushing and crackling of an older recording. The subtitles are also forced or burned into the film with the sole Italian audio option. Bonus content includes what is called Backstage, a raw filming look into the production shoots and behind-the-scenes footage with no real direction or cosmetics, a photo gallery, a trailer with English subtitles, and other SRS Cinema released trailers. The SRS Cinema DVD front cover resembles mock-70’s, thick-red font with a bare woman’s back dressed in a painted Satanic symbol within the border of a VHS-esque rental casing with rental stickers. Inside the amaray case is a pressed disc with an extreme close up and crop of the same front cover with no insert in the adjacent slot. Pacing burdens this release, especially in its near 2-hour runtime with a clock-in at 114 minutes which is approx. 24-minutes too long in my opinion and the film comes not rated and has region free playback. No matter how much arcane the content is, or how grotesque the horror show, or how much perversity and skin can be unclothed, “Devil Times Two” has difficulty retaining a flow of fascination in a rather windbag approach to a rather devilishly good salvo construction.

“Devil Times Two” on DVD from SRS Cinema

The Home Recordings of a Pure EVIL! “August Underground: Mordum” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray/DVD combo)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“August Underground:  Mordum” Limited Collector’s Edition!

Uncompassionately deranged serial torture and murderer Peter Mountain is back.  Along with his maniacal partner Maggot and his depraved sister Crusty, whose also Peter Mountain’s girlfriend, the terrorizing trio videotape their exploits with no shame and with no end from no matter how mundane to no matter how gruesomely vile.  Rage and lust mix together with sociopathy and psychopathy, resulting in a dangerous combination for whomever crosses their path.  Shocking glimpses of their killing spree reflect through the lens of their camcorder, capturing every kidnap, imprisonment, confinement, rape, mutilation, torture, and eventually murder of their sadomasochistic onslaught onto every random, unlucky soul but with every moment of madness captured, their no so friendly friendship verges ever closer toward a volatile collapse when Maggot and his sister Crusty hook up from time-to-time and the perpetually aggressive juggernaut Peter Mountain is on the brink of breaking more beyond his broken mental state.

The return of Peter Mountain marks the return of shock and gore director Peter Vogel with “August Underground:  Mordum,” the 2003 sequel to Vogel’s unnervingly raw depiction of depravity and exploitation in “August Underground” released two years prior.  Not a traditionally subsequent sequel, “Mordum” is a standalone entry with only the presence return of Peter Mountain to connect the two stories together, but “Mordum” initially didn’t start out as a sequel and only morphed into a feature when Vogel was requested to shoot gruing material for the aptly named death/gore metal band Necrophagia and the band’s lead singer, Frank “Killjoy” Pucci, suggested to turn the material in a follow up film of “August Underground” with Killjoy co-wring alongside Toe Tag Picture’s Vogel, Christie Whiles, Michael Todd Schneider and Jerami Cruise.  What emerged felt like an organic chapter in Peter Mountain’s found footage mausoleum of bloodlust mayhem.  Shot in and around the Pittsburg, Pennsylvania area, “Mordum” is a production of Toe Tag Pictures under executive producer Jerami Cruise.

2001’s “August Underground” brought a terribly raw image to the independent cinema fold that house realistic depictions of the utmost evil and perversion.  So much so, a few of the cast members decided to not use their real names.  For Peter Vogel, a follow up film was like another day walking in the park as a proud papa of his villainous protagonist Peter Mountain, an eclipsingly large and laughing feverishly fiend of a man who preys on the cries and screams of his victims.  “Mordum” introduces us to two new actors into the fold with Christie Whiles, who would reprise Mountain’s girlfriend Crusty in the third Entry “Penance,” and Michael Todd Schneider (“I Never Left the White Room”) as Crusty’s brother Maggot.  It’s not exactly made clear if Maggot is a returning character, the hyena chuckling man behind the character played by pseudonym Allen Peters, or not.  In either way, Whiles and Schneider are equally as vicious on screen as Vogel but invite a whole of a hell a lot more nudity, non-simulated genitalia fondling, and induced vomiting to give “Mordum” that extra mile of stomach-churning, eye-adverting discomfort.  As the fluids deluge in scene-after-scene of massacre depictions, the triple threat come across a like-minded individual, played by the person who very much encourage and inspired for the sequel.  The late Frank Pucci, aka Killjoy, the front man for Necrophagia plays an equal with a slaughter shed full of rotting, putrid corpses, beheaded babies with maggots, and prime meat tied and lying in wait for him to butcher as his leisure.  “Mordum” offers up a slew of victims in different abattoir and snuff scenarios, casted with a rising makeup artist in a pre-crew acting role Midian Crosby (with makeup credits including “Halloween Ends,” “Cop Car,” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”) and Elmo Painter in the vomit and viscera evacuation scene, Rick Kundrach and Tim Grubjesik as unfortunate junkies, as well as Chris Shaw, Shelby Lyn Vogel, Allana Sleeth, Dave Brown, Erika Schultz a few pseudonyms in Daisy, M. Kadath, and E. Jay, and with Ultra Violent Magazine editor Art Ettinger.

Similar to the first film, “Mordum” has no plot in it’s a series of found footage flashes in the day in the life of a serial killer.  This approach makes what you’re having to behold for 70-minutes that much more plausible and realistic and what you’re seeing is quintessential gore porn.  “Saw” wasn’t the basis of the coined term.  No, my sanguine licking friends.  Fred Vogel pioneered that course three years earlier with his sick and twisted show of seminal underground.  The only reason why Vogel wasn’t at the top of the gore porn list was because none of his films had mainstream theatrical runs.  However, literally, “Mordum” contains that borderline porn element of exposed and molested nudity, the below the waste naughty parts that don’t see a tone of skin-to-skin action, and there’s certainly enough gore to go around and around and around and around again.  Some of those smaller gore elements were real, such as skin cutting.  Another element that makes “Mordum” effectively morbid is the special effects work by Vogel, Jerami Cruise (who has gone on to do major studio films from his extreme horror indies), and the late Ryan Nicholson (director of “Gutterballs” and who also was a special effects supervisor on a wide scope of studio and indie films) who provided many of the dismembered and grimed up dummy props framed through a standard definition, commercial camcorder for the Necrophagia music video.  If no story arises, one hell of a damn good show must come out of the horrific footage and Peter Vogel and the Toe Tag team achieve diabolical decadence with stomach content-emptying pizzazz.

Unearthed Films and Toe Tag Pictures have teamed up to release limited edition releases of Peter Vogel’s “August Underground” trilogy.  “Mordum” receives the royal physical release treatment with a 2-disc, Blu-ray/DVD, Limited Collector’s Edition.  The Blu-ray is an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 can only be so detailed with a shaky, consumer cam but the image could not look any better, or gruesome.  Presented in a pillarbox framed 1.33:1 aspect ratio, RGB color model leans more toward warmer reds, yellows, and greens so you don’t get an authentic color scheme on objects or skin tones.  Darker scenes render nicely enough despite the MiniDV magnetic tape’s e-interference compression artefacts and some tracking lines onto digital recording that makes the image jittery/jumpy, but all the in-your-face closeups, low-quality picture quality adds to “Mordum’s” rancid-sensing realism.  The English PCM 2.0 audio track has copious clarity for its unrefined, raw built-in mic recording that comes with some crackling and echoing if the decibels rise during screaming or shouting and the built-in can’t handle the received input. Depth is lossy with the range of the recording and range doesn’t factor into play as dialogue pushes through whereas the low-budget constraints leave the action audibility left to the imagination. Subtitles are not available on either format. The limited-edition regurgitation of the sequel warrants a ton of special features in its inauguration to the mainstream masses. Both formats share most of the extras but the Blu-ray features many more. Brief Dave Fogel touchpoints on certain aspects of “Mordum’s” obscure longevity Mordum Lives!, the climax’s most disturbing visuals The Most Disturbing Scene, and an ode to Necrophagia’s front man Remembering Killjoy dive into those specific nuts and bolts of involvement, a new interview with Michael “Maggot” Schneider A Family Affair of Love and Hate which also includes The Ravenous music video from Necrophagia, offering some more cut scene insight, a sit-down interview with between Unearthed Film’s Stephen Biro and Tog Tag’s Jerami Cruise on the gruesome special effects work on a budget of literally what was lying around, Necrophagia’s promotional video of Rue Morgue Disciple, a new Rue Morge Disciple Behind-the-Scenes gallery, deleted and extended scenes that prolong the violence of the most graphic, extreme scenes and add another level of behind-doors sexual deviation to near pornographic heights, the U.S. premiere from 2003, a brand new extensive photo gallery, original animation work, and trailers while the Blu-ray includes these features, also on the hi-def disc is a new interview with Ultra-Violent’s editor Art Ettinger and Allana Bleeth who both have small roles in the film, a new interview with Zobo With A Shotgun’s Zoë Rose Smith interview director Fred Vogel, filmmaker Dave Parker interviews Vogel as well, Severed Cinema interviews Vogel too in Snuff Purgatory, a new mockumentary and its trailer for Sickcess: A Necrophagia, and a Zombie Demo from Flashback Weekend circa 2004. On top of the special feature filth, the physical aspects of the release come in a clear and traditional Blu-ray snapper case housed inside a cardboard slipcover showcasing the infamously disturbing scene. The same scene is also illustrated on the Blu-rays cover art with reverse cover art providing a rough-and-ready composition alternative of the same scene. Both disc arts are pressed with camcorder blurry images of depicted carnage. The region A/Region 1 locked Unearthed Films combo set has a runtime 91 minutes and comes, obviously, not rated. If looking for the original 3 from Hell, Peter Vogel’s “August Underground: Mordum” assembles three monsters to ever savage the screen with their horrible, unspeakable acts of sadism. The unabashed Unearthed Films rightfully doesn’t lubricate our hole of curiosity, sodomizing our prurience with the metallic taste of blood and madness.

“August Underground:  Mordum” Limited Collector’s Edition!