Category Archives: Demonology

A Talking Black Lab with EVIL Red Eyes Target Children. “Where the Dead Go to Die” reviewed! (Mountain Oddities Home Video / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Where the Dead Go To Die” Now Lives on Blu-ray!

The first story in a disturbing 3-part omnibus tale concerns a little boy named Tommy.  Constantly at each other’s throats, Tommy’s troubled  parents don’t burden him down in their mini bickering wars and abusive verbal tirades where he becomes the passive aggressive fodder for each of them to shell the other with, but when Labby, a talking, red-eye dog proclaiming to be a messenger of God’s word, tells Tommy to kill unborn brother because he’s the antichrist, Tommy’s world is turned upside down when Labby murders both parents and the unborn child in the name of God.  In another story, a man steals liquid memories by killing people and extracting an intoxicating substance from their memory glands to inject them into his own body.  One particular liquid memory of a dying prostitute sends him through a warped nightmare of the underworld, one where he may never return to normal.  The last story focuses on a mask-wearing deformed boy named Ralphie, whose Siamese twin brother’s face protrudes out of the side of his face, and his infatuation with schoolmate and neighbor Sophia.  When trying to impress Sophia by relating to her father, Ralphie learns the father records VHS tapes of Sophia being molested by older men and is coerced to partake in an act Sophia is an unwilling participant.  At the behest of Labby, what Ralphie does next will put a fatal stop to the madness that surrounds him and his soulmate crush. 

In the same clunky spirit of crude early 1990’s computer generated imagery or in the early days of the original Playstation graphics, Jimmy ScreamerClauz’s “Where the Dead Go to Die” fully embraces the ungainly graphics in a 3D world of unimaginable horror where kids and demons intersect with wretched results.  The 2012 omnibus reflects three short narratives from ScreamerClauz and combined into one seriously screwed up tale, orchestrated by deal brokered wit Unearthed Films’s Stephen Biro who was sent two of ScreamerClauz’s short films – “Tainted Milk” and “Liquid Memories” – and challenged, or maybe even championed, ScreamerClauz for a third to build toward, and the eventual release of, a feature length product.  With the challenge accepted, the full-time musician and 3D animation artist succeeded with an unforgettable story that’s pure evil at heart and a surreal kaleidoscope of ghastly phantasmagoria.  ScreamerClauz not only writes, directs, and composes the film he also produces under the Draconian Films and Chainsaw Kiss production companies.  

As it has been already established Jimmy ScreamerClauz wears many hats in his production, we can add another with his voice acting of the demonic, fireball-eyed dog, Labby and along with the director’s voiceover participation, other genre actors and filmmakers are casted to voice one, or possibly more than one, of the crudely animated, disturbingly souled characters.  “Subject 87” director, “Reality Bleed-Through” actor Brandon Slagle tackles a double voiceover with the memory addicted man as well as Sophia’s sleazy abusive father.  As Sophia, the once upon a time softcore horror actress Ruby Larocca (“Witchbabe:  The Erotic Witch Project 3,” “Dr. Jekyll & Mistress Hyde”) has real innocent palpability up against Slagle’s aggressively toned, VHS-recording, and peeping perve that is her in character daddy.  Larocca also voices the mysterious advice-giver with the Lady in the Well and as the dying Hooker in the arms of the serial killer-for-liquid memories Man.  Another multi-voice player in the film and who also had a stint in the sex and violence category is Joey Smack with a string of strangler themed films (“Vampire Strangler,” “The Masked Strangler,” “The Bizarre Case of the Electric Cord Strangler, etc.,”).  Smack extends himself into a child and parent performance as the deformed Ralphie in “The Masks That the Monsters Wears” and Tommy’s dad in “Tainted Milk” that gives provides range albeit the quintessential grown man mimicking a child’s voice unmistakableness in the cracking high voice.  Much like Larocca, there’s something pleasant in seeing names like Linnea Quigley (“Return of the Living Dead,” “Night of the Demons”) and Devanny Pinn (“Nude Nuns with Big Guns,” “Bloodstruck”) be credited to voice because that takes the focus on their physical appearances and gives them a chance to actually be seen, or rather heard, with their dialogue performance.  In this instance, Quigley and Pinn embody the rancid maternity of Sophia and Ralphies’ mothers respectively.  “Where the Dead Go to Die” rounds out the cast with more B-movie actors in Trent Haaga (“Terror Firmer,” “Killjoy 2:  Deliverance from Evil”) as Ralph’s ashamed dad as well as Carlos Bonilla, Victor Bonacore, and Joshua Michael Greene. 

How a filmmaker chooses and utilizes his brand of CGI landscape is how that filmmaker’s film should be judged in the gelling of those areas, in my opinion.  “Where the Dead Go to Die’s” crude 3D animation is the intended result from Jimmy ScreamerClauz’s choice in conveying his short story narrative, but that intention won’t stop audiences and critics from browbeating and disparaging the film.  Yet, if accepting the former viewpoint and watch with understanding eyes through that recognition lens, “Where the Dead Go to Die” is one messed up and horrifying dystopia accentuated by the animation that gives each chapter more weight toward wretchedness and wrongdoing, gelling with tremendous intent to scramble the proverbial innocence with demonic forces and human perversions.  Some of the ideas and concepts swirling around ScreamerClauz’s head and make it into the three tales were just images he thought were visually neat but that speaks loudly on the dark mindset of creativity and many of those images are now temporally seared, scarred permanently into our long-term memory lobes.  Granted, tale transitions and recycling back to their sole connection with each other route into choppy territory at best, creating a windy, bumpy road in braiding the three chapters together under a single umbrella of animation style and storytelling, but “Where the Dead Go to Die” is a poignant and throbbing like touching a raw, exposed nerve through gouged muscle and tissue.  Every inch of surreal, sawtooth imagery is like a knife twisted into our virtuous side because upon closer look at Jimmy ScreamerClauz’s story containing children being hurt is only separated by the mere stylistic choice of cinematography. 

Out from the distribution shadows of Unearthed Films and in the hands of adult animation distributor Mountain Oddities Home Video, also in partnership with MVDVisual, for a new Blu-ray release, one we haven’t seen since Unearthed Films released the DVD and Blu-ray in 2012.  The first of two initial releases from Mountain Oddities Home Video, the Blu-ray comes AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition release, on a BD50 packed with extras.  Being mostly rudimentary 3D animation installed into a complexity of kaleidoscopic imagery, critiquing the quality is beyond our control but the compression is amply successful with no artefacts to note and the colorful saturation and grading levels provide an enriched, amalgamated dough of diabolic devil-bread, presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio that’s more compromised to its now out of print Unearthed Films counterpart from more than decade earlier.  Two English audio options are available:  a DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound and a DTS-HD 2.0.  At home audio recordings outside the sound barrier studio boxes are not as refined, capturing mic interference and hissing as well as the differences in varying audio volumes that don’t match between interacting characters in the same scene, creating that unshared space and gap.  Dialogue is unimpeded and clear and ScreamerClauz’s original gloomy-looming score fuels the deep morosity and malevolent themes.  English subtitles are option available.  Extras include a director’s commentary track with Jimmy ScreamerClauz, deleted scenes, an online video-conference interview with ScreamerClauz hosted by Quality Violent Cinema, behind-the-scenes featurettes of snipped dialogue recordings and interviews, including Linnea Quigley, Youtuber Diamanda Hagan’s video review of ScreamerClauz’s animated shorts “The Scuzzies,” and the director’s short film catalogue with “The Scuzzies” (that includes commentary), “Labby vs Mr. Pickles Rap Battle,” “Clinical Sodomy,” “Affection,” “Mutwa,” “Reality Bleed-Through Remix.”   Mountain Oddities Home Video’s Not Rated release is listed as the uncut version with a 95-minute runtime available with region free playback. 

Last Rites: An adult animation pushing the envelope with taboo themes involving kids and when you mess with kids, the public taste goes sour, but “Where the Dead Go to Die” swirls surrealism with poignant acting and strange fever dreaming amongst the basic, albeit creepy, animation.

“Where the Dead Go To Die” Now Lives on Blu-ray!

Sometimes It Takes EVIL To Bring Out the EVIL In Us All. “Jacob” reviewed! (Crazed House and MVDVisual / Unrated, Director’s Cut Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Jacob’s” EVIL is Coming to Blu-ray! Order Here!

In the Texas smalltown of Melvin Falls, a dark history engulfs the Kell family.  Edith Kell and her two children have lived in ostracized notoriety for years amongst their neighbors as Edith’s husband, obsessed with restoring a suddently inherited house immersed in haunted opine, walked into the town crowded bar and started violently killing patrons before being shot dead by the local sheriff.  Years later, Edith’s son Jacob is now a quiet, large, and lumbering young man with a death stare that’s akin to looking into the abyss, but Jacob’s underlining rage and psychopathic tendencies are comforted by his younger sister, Sissy, when tensions rise between his mother and her boyfriend, the abusive town drunk Otis.  When Otis inadvertently kills Sissy, Jacob’s bloody rampage is unleashed and the townspeople, led by a capital punitive sheriff, form a posse to bring down the vengeful Jacob, if they even can, in another Kell family massacre.

IMDB.com

Larry Wade Carrell writes-and-directs the dysfunction family and rural community horror “Jacob,” released over a decade ago in 2012.  The film is Carrell’s debut solo directorial that earned the filmmaker best Indie Fantasy-Horror, Best Young Actress, and Best Music Score at the WorldFest Houston before embarking into more recent horror of the last decade with “She Rises,” “Girl Next,” and “The Quantum Devil” that run the subgenre gamut with supernatural terror, trafficking abductions, and evil on a whole other plane of existence.  Carrell’s humble backwoods basket case thriller has broad stroke inklings of a supernatural catalyst.  Filmed in and around Richmond, Texas, “Jacob” is the last feature from Odyssee Pictures and the first for Javaline 98 Productions, produced on a low budget by Carrell, Odyssee Picture’s Stacy Davidson and Jeremy Sumrall (“Domain of the Damned,” “Sweatshop”), William B. Davis, Catherine and Frederick Rushford, James Martinelli, and Chuck Norfolk (“Conjoined”).

IMDB.com

Like most indie features, multiple hats are being worn in front of and behind the camera.  Not only does director Larry Wade Carrell write the script, he also dons the twin brother roles of drunkard abuser Otis and the gentile deputy Billy.  Edited so the two characters are never fully faced in a scene together, Carrell manages to pull off contrast personalities by portraying, essentially, the epitome of bad versus good with the no-good delinquent and intoxicated aggressor Otis up against the mild-mannered solicitous nature of Billy, a deputy.  While Carrell may be the core of the story playing two characters, he’s written a narrative that has to battle out against the titular character Jacob, played by Dylan Horne, and the venerated genre name of Michael Biehn (“Terminator”), in what can be considered as the worst impersonation of a whoopie-exclaiming Podunk, literally with the character yelling whoopie when learning of inheriting a house.  Aside from Biehn’s cringy performance, the acting is generally positive and compelling.  Carrell goes beyond the bar in melodramatics but manages to keep grounded by much of dynamic interactions supplied by scrupulous actors with Krystn Caldwell (“Psychic Experiment”) as Edith Kell, the staying in victim of abuse, Leo D. Wheeler (“Domain of the Damned”) as the manbun sheriff with a firm but gentle approach, and Grace Powell (“Hell of a Night”) as Jacob’s soothing little sister Sissy.  Horne, in the Jacob role, is voiceless throughout but imparts Jacob’s ogre-esque killer from inside out but is still overshadowed by Carrell’s double-edge role that takes away from his menancing run through the simpleminded townsfolk.   Dustin Lane (“The Darq’), Travis Hester, Sandy Ray (“Hairmetal Shotgun Zombie Massacre: The Movie”), Shane Stewart, Karen Schlag (“Domain of the Dead”), Nick W. Nicholson (“Pickaxe”), and Deke Garner (“The Void”) rounds out the “Jacob” cast.

IMDB.com

“Jacob” is one of those horror-thrillers that wears the trope suit of a large, quiet, countryside hulk with little intelligence but makes up for with strength and goes on a killing spree when a cataclysmic moment, usually spurred by external elements like peer bullying or the death of significant person, in this case the death of his sister, Sissy, breaks Jacob’s dammed violent tendencies and what ensues is a deluge of body mangling carnage in a big ole heap of misunderstanding as the Melvin Falls residents believe, with prior judgement and without a doubt, Jacob finally snapped and murdered his sweet baby sister, though far from the truth.  However, the reason for Jacob’s turn to madness is a little more complex than just dead sister vindictiveness.  In this case, less is more would have suited Carrell’s film more aptly as Carrell adds in a supernatural element with Jacob’s father inheriting a supposed haunted house.  As the father attends to the house rehab, a montage of him finding a book and able to read and be beguiled by the demon scripture inside causes him to slowly become obsessed and insane while fixing their newfound home which then leads to the bar massacre Jacob witnesses.  Jacob also comes in contact with his father’s spilled blood that night and that presumably passes whatever supernatural forces the father was affected by to his son, an evident metaphorical theme of hereditary genes gone wild through blood lineage that’s also demonstrated within Sissy who mentions hearing the house’s callings to her but she was not tainted by the touch of her father’s blood with her being inside mother’s womb. There’s a lot to digest and decipher but not properly arranged or the demonic mainspring is sorely underplayed to really nail the occult supernaturality on its head.

The Unrated, Director’s Cut of Larry Wade Carrell’s “Jacob” lands onto Blu-ray from Carrell’s current release company Crazed House and distributor MVDVisual.  The AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50 and presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Picture quality is a bit all over the place and its likely not from the compression codec but rather stylistic choices for flashbacks for a narrative that goes into a flashback while already inside a flashback, creating multiple tonal layers to distinguish the vying eras.    Carrell really gets his hands into a sepia and desaturated grading that sucks the color out in a fit leaning toward overexposure taking with it much of the finer detail points.  Combined with digital stock, the gritty tone Carrell goes for often loses the battle to an ultra-sheen effect.  The English LPCM 5.1 surround sound plays to the rigors of the dialogue.  The loquacious script, delivered on point by the actors, goes unobstructed with a prominent dialogue layer underscored by its Iain Kelso score that evokes a slightly better grittier tone Carrell attempts to achieve with the film’s appearance.  Range is limited to just what’s in frame and within the nucleus bubble and that often goes together with eliminating much of the depth when all the centered focus objects are making all the noise in the room and scene, diegetic speaking.  English subtitles are available.  The director’s cut has special features that include two commentaries with one including writer-director Larry Wade Carrell and the other including Stacy Davidson, a behind-the-scenes documentary The Journey of Jacob that has retrospective cast and crew interviews as well as raw footage and film footage of the film’s from alpha to omega, an interview at the “Jacob” Canadian premiere hosted by Yell Magazine, actors screen test, extended and deleted scenes with Carrell commentary, a storyboard comparison with Carrell commentary, and the theatrical trailer.  There is no stinger scene post credit.  The cover art screams low-budget and photoshop but is an adequate shoe that fits the rural horror and lumbering maniac concept.  “Jacob” comes in a standard Blu-ray Amaray for its region free, 92-minute feature presentation.

Last Rites: “Jacob’s” a good first effort in the big chair for filmmaker Larry Wade Carrell with solid acting, interesting characters, and palpable bloodshed. Where the weaknesses lie is with the story’s inability to connect the demonic, haunted house, ghost story, or whatever supernatural force may be to the essence of backwater calamity and dysfunctional family lineage.

“Jacob’s” EVIL is Coming to Blu-ray! Order Here!

Babysitter Wanted….by EVIL! “The House of the Devil” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

University student Samantha is strapped for cash when trying to express her independence from an invasive and inconsiderate college roommate by renting a house.  In need of quick money to put down the first month’s rent by upcoming Monday, Samatha answers a babysitting billboard ad that leads her to an isolated house outside city limits on a night when the moon is going to be fully eclipsed.  Misled by her employers, the Ulmans, that the care job is not for a child, but rather Mrs. Ulman’s elderly mother and in her desperation, Samantha accepts the odd job for the money needed to secure her new home.  Alone in a dark old house, Samantha’s nerves quickly tingle and recoil at every sound and strange occurrence, quickly coming to realize the Ulmans may be lying to her more than she knows, especially behind the locked rooms where satanic secrets reside and she’s the key to their black practices during the occultation. 

Perhaps one of the hottest directors in the horror genre today with his “X” trilogy, within the trilogy is also “Pearl” and “MaXXXine,” Ti West has been a consistent genre filmmaker since his first feature “The Roost” two decades ago.  Yet, before the “X” trilogy, the year was 2009 when West caught the attention of horror fans with his 198’s inspired and veneered satanic panic film, “The House of the Devil.”  Shot in Connecticut, primarily in an older woman’s gothic Victorian style home, West wanted to bring back the alone babysitter and old dark house theme from decade the story is set, shooting entirely on 16mm that, too, provides that grainy image and darker aesthetic through each frame of the stock.  Initially called just “The House” in initial script treatments, Ti West’s completed film is a production of Larry Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix (“The Last Winter”) in association with RingTheJing Entertainment and Construtovision with MPI Media Group (“Henry:  Portrait of a Serial Killer” presenting and is produced by Fessenden, Josh Braun (“Creep”), Derek Curl (“Stake Land”), Roger Kass (“A History of Violence”), and Peter Phok (“X”).

In her western, button-up plaid shirt and high-rise mom jeans, Jocelin Donahue (“Doctor Sleep,” “The Burrowers”) epitomized the look of young college girl of the 1980s and with her dialogue and her eclectic 2-minute dance session through the Ulman house proved she has the speech and movements that resemble the timeframe as well.  Donahue is extremely good of taking her character, Samantha Hughes, from a panic scale of one straight up to panic scale of ten in this slow burn, tension-building thriller that isn’t a rollercoaster ride of the next attention deficient disorder event but rather a steady increase of anxiety and anticipation that nags in the back of one’s mind.  Donahue has good reason to be as frightened as she appears on screen with the towering presence of the ever something’s-terribly-off-about-this-character portrayal by “Manhunter’s” Tom Noonan and the malicious grim of a steely wolf under a pearly sheep’s wool from “Night of the Comet’s” Mary Woronov as a pair of satanists.  Noonan and Woronov don’t have immense screentime and are behaviorally underused in the interactions with their babysitter Samantha as West intended target is for Samantha to dynamically degrade within the shadows and creaks of a creepy old house rather have characters be the foremost formidable, focused fear.  In the peripherals is Samatha’s wealthy and vocally blunt friend Megan (Greta Gerwig and, yes, the same Greta Gerwig who wrong and directed that “Barbie” movie) who provides that calling of rationality toward a strange situation only to find herself too wrapped up in her friend’s choices rather than seeing the danger that’s in front of her and there’s also fellow Satan cultist Victor (AJ Bowen, “You’re Next”) who is more or less the son in this Ulman trio of terror.  The cast rounds out with Heather Robb (“The Roost”) as Samantha’s inconsiderate roommate and the genre actor Dee Wallace (“Cujo”) in a small cameo role of the Landlady who, refreshingly, isn’t part of the core plot to burden the actress as an accelerant to pulse the heart of the story faster.

Ti West really did harness and recreate the dark, solemn energy of the alone babysitter and/or the old dark house subgenres that propelled films such as “When a Stranger Calls,” “Black Christmas,” and even “Halloween” into the cult favorite cosmos.  These particular horror categories are obviously nothing new to diehard fans but they have unfortunately been, for a lack of a better term, forgotten, conjured up only in stored memory banks of those old enough, like me, to have lived consciously through the 70s and 80s and, maybe because of West, audiences starting to see a revival of sorts with modern day retrograding to relive the golden age of the slasher renaissance, popularized by hardcore and gory scares with films like “All Hallows Eve” and the “Terrifier” trilogy,.  Yet, “The House of the Devil” is not an overly gory and squirmy disgusting feature as West meticulously structures the narrative to be evidently tense in an uncomfortable, unfamiliar environmental setting of an antiquated house owned by equally antiquated, and frankly weird, bunch in Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov and West guides audiences step-by-step very slowly up to craggy edge before pushing us violently into the infernal grips of satanists and the demons that seek a female vessel for, whom we presume will be, their unholy lord and destructor.  The third act rips ferociously in contrast to earlier acts in a spiral fit of rite and sacrifice that incorporates more characters, more blood, and a cynical ending that requires no more exposition, no more scenes, and no further explanation in its wayward wake. 

Second Sight Films delivers Satan to us with a new UK Blu-ray release.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 is jam-packed with bonus content and a more than satisfactory A/V package.  Presented in a widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1, the colorist reproduction leans into that of an 80s horror with a diffused, mid-level saturation of frame cells on 16mm stock, bestowing the image quality with more noticeable grain elements because of its smaller size blown up.  The seemingly white fleck-riddled darker areas or clustering grain experience may discourage audiences of a broad digital generation but for those who know, know how great “The House of the Devil” aesthetically looks as a whole, complete with era appropriate wardrobe and set dressings.  Textures and details do come through despite the stock naturalities but they’re not terribly overpowering or as substantially present an a mostly tan or brown color scheme in a lower contrast.  The English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio offers superb audio reproduction and spatial dissemination, especially through the wood-laden house to where the strain creaks of wood floors and doors offer a side and back-channel chill.  There’s plenty of front loaded, two channel action between the dialogue and the rest of the meium-to-close range shots with a range of diegetic effects – i.e. gunshots, telephone rings, and other actionable movements within the frame – and non-diegetic effects that include demonic whisper through moveless lips and, of course, those creaky noises amongst the empty house.  Dialogue is clean, clear, and prominent throughout.  There are English subtitles optionally available for selection.  Second Sight films did a ton of legwork here for special features, conducting and encoding new interviews with director Ti West The Right Vibe, actress Jocelin Donahue Satanic Panic, actor AJ Bowen Slowing Down is Death, producer Peter Phok A Level of Ambition, producer Larry Fessenden An Enduring Title, director of photography Eliot Rockett It All Feels Appropriate, and composer Jeff Grace Hiding the Seams, sound designer Graham Reznick Writing Through Sound.  There are also a pair of audio commentaries with 1) writer-director Ti West and actress Jocelin Donahue and 2) West with producers Larry Fessenden and Peter Phok along with sound designer Graham Reznick and the rounds out with a making-of featurette, deleted scenes, and original trailer.  Since we’re reviewing the standard Blu-ray release from Second Sights, this version does not call with all the physical bells and whistles associated with the limited, rigid slipbox releases that contain lobby cards and booklet, usually.  Instead, the standard release is a streamlined, green-hued Blu-ray Amaray with uncredited illustrated artwork of Donahue’s character overtop of the titular house with the dark and spooky moon in the background.  Instead, is just the disc pressed with the same front cover image of the house sans Donahue and the moon.  The UK certified 18 release contains strong violence and gore, is hard encoded B for regional playback, and has a runtime of 95 minutes.

Last Rites: The 80’s knock back with Ti West’s satanic panic inspired alone babysitter thriller with a sleek new Blu-ray, overflowing with new retrospective interviews, from Second Sight Films!

Milan Has All the Best Short Film EVIL! “Drag Me To Fest” reviewed! (Rustblade / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Hurry! Grab the Limited Edition Copy of “Drag Me to Fest” Before Its Gone!

An outpatient nurse is requested by an old woman leaving by her lonesome.  Always forgetting and troubling eccentric, the humble nurse finds he’s in way over his head with a clearly unstable, possibly delusion woman, until the truth of her hidden secret unveils a web of horror.  A young couple looking to help a lonely farmer find themselves erecting a sheep fence as well as maintaining the upkeep of a strange rock formation known as a Tursemorkel that emits ooze out of black orifices and soon find the psychological and physiological energy from the Tursemorkel is more than they can withstand.  An elderly couple, tucked away inside their roadside camper trailer, whips up a finger-licking meaty stew made from all natural, locally sourced ingredients as they watch the nightly news’ top story of a missing person.  A man answers the doorbell and finds a package on his step, scratching and crawling out is a festering corpse eager to play with him.  A priest with an obsessive bug collection has him turnaround when a recently caught rare beetle toys with his mind.  Dafne, a young woman lost in another state of mind, is in the presence and in the arms of her own, personal demon. 

These bloodcurdling tales are the latest batch of horror shorts from the annual Milan, Italy hosted Drag Me to Fest.  The festival brings together Italy and international filmmakers to submit their unique brand of terror.  The 2024 lineup were submitted to the Milan collection in 2023, hit the festival the following year, and has now been compiled onto a home video release for North American audiences to enjoy and cower in teeth chattering fear under its namesake title, “Drag Me to Fest,” from Italian distributor Rustblade Records in association with MVD Visual, a subsidiary of MVD Entertainment Group.  Norway’s “Vevkjerring,” or “The Weaving” by Øyvind Willumsen and “Tistlebu” by Matthew Valentine kick off the anthology followed by Italian filmmaker’s Riccardo Suriano’s “Long Pig”, Julie Gun’s “Dafne is Gone,” and Jacopo Vismara’s “Il Coleottero” and finally rounding out with Japanese director Nori Uchida’s “For What the Doorbell Tolls,” all of which are self-produced.

Three countries, six distinct films, and all packed into the unusual side of ambiguously horrifying elements contained inside six short films.  Each character is curated to fit inside the narrative design, no matter how outrageous or avant grade the message is.  Willumsen’s “The Weaver” is a more straight forward, common structured horror of building up tension in an already uncomfortable situation of a friendly, living assisted male nurse Henrik (Fredrik Hovdegård) knocking on the doorstep of a haggard and kooky old croon named Gudrun, played devilishly and disgustingly by Isa Belle.  The next four episodes become a bit vaguer in their intentions of madness, purgatory, survival, and obsession that intends to either harm or transfigure into something beyond the dimensional standard.  “Tistlebu” aims to transfigure as a young city couple (Sascha Slengesol Balgobin and Sjur Vatne Brean) look to connect with nature and their curiosity, coupled by intrusive misuse and sexuality, toward an earthy pillar of energy inside a widow’s (Oda Schjoll) barn enraptures them into something more primordial, literally connecting them to an omnipresent natural world that’s much bigger than their insignificant need.  Uchida provides his own one-of-a-kind performance based immensely off Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” by playing not only the hero but also the decaying plaything that arrives at the hero’s doorstep in one’s mirrored rotting of loneliness.  “Il Coleottero’s” Don Antonio (Mimmo Chianese) has a crisis of faith that become sidetracked by his diligent hobby of entomology when his prized find, a rare beetle, suddenly disappears from his collection.  Chianese finds the balance between being a disenchanted priest and an anxious man hunting for the beetle that got away and that will eventually destroy him.  Julie Gun’s “Dafne is Gone” is more operatically finessed with interpretive dance between Dafne (Giulia Gonella) and a demon (Jason Marek Isleib) that’s completely absent of dialogue, stagecraft visualized, and characteristically naked to showcase Dafne’s descent into the Demon’s spellbinding movements.

The collected and presented works are not the highest dollar productions but do encase a prosthetic practicality as seen in Willumsen’s “The Weaver” with a shedding of an exterior layer into a more grotesque freak of nature while Uchida takes the tribute route using filleted flesh and milky contacts, along with LFE tones and grading, modulated vocals, to accomplish his own version of “Evil Dead” without the presence of Ashley Williams.  The others are not as cut and dry with their infinite interpretational insights that likely will speak more on a personal level than a glossy buttered popcorn one that requires little effort to absorb.  “Tistlebu” and “Dafne is Gone” entrench themselves in their respective unknown and modern art by providing very little in the one thing they both have in common, a shared sense of unsettlement.  There’s also an undertone of sexualism as if it equates to the very beast that entrances, which in these shorts is the Tursemorkel, which is a large surface growth that emits an allurement of safety and gratification, and, in comparison, to the demon, perhaps her own visceral demon, that frolics to breach Dafne’s temptation, drawing her closer to his own colorfully neon netherworld in a production of warmly dark euphemism.  “Il Coleottero” is perhaps the best understated undercurrent between the skepticism that plagues man and his faith.  Shot mostly naturally, tension is built on Father Antonio continuous deviations from his religious duties, distracted in his homilies and divine surroundings, by the mere fact of a lost beetle, a beetle, similar to the appearance of a Stag Beetle, that toys with him.  One could assume the beetle represents a test from God to challenge the priest’s diversification balancing his faith between realism against spirituality, to quote biologist J.B.S. Haldane, and I paraphrase, if the creator had made life, it must have been inordinate fondness for beetles because of their profound species diversity.

“Drag Me to Fest” has now hit DVD home video for the first time in its 3rd annual run with a limited edition to 500 copies courtesy of Rustblade Records, routed through the North American distribution channels of MVD Entertainment Group under their MVDVisual label.  The region free release, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, is encoded onto a MPEG2, upscaled 1080p, DVD5 with palatable average of image quality in its varying degrees of filming equipment, lighting, and technical know-how to get the intended look without suffering cinematography faux pas.  Compression wise can be a different story but, generally, “Drag Me to Fest” has an adequate presentation albeit a less-than-desirable color saturation, especially Gun’s “Dafne is Gone” that implements warm neon primary coloring in a high contrast, hard light emulsion.  Skin and pattern textures vary from short-to-short, but the delineation is there to not blend depth nor create solid, smoothed out surfaces.  Valentine’s “Tislebu” relies heavily on the rolling hills and greenery farmscape to enact its character qualities for an Earthy or terrestrial mystery important to the sentient and engrossing formation.  The Italian, Japanese, and Norwegian language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo offers a passable mix that doesn’t elevate the atmospherics or construct tension to the max but neither does it flounder or lay waste to the support of the shorts.  There’s not a profound amount of leveled depth or creative sound design to fabricate space as much of the dialogue and environment resides in the foreground, and the dialogue does render over clean and clearly with forced errorfree English subtitles, but the focus is primarily on moving the story in a matter of minutes for some of the shorts, leaving narrative devices, such as characters and the effects, to drive the story and its tension.  The DVD is a barebones released that does not come with any encoded extra content, but the slim, trifold jewel case does depict a grouping of cherry-picked ideas from the shorts in a green bath illustration from graphic artist Gonz and has individual taglines and color stills for each short.  The 92-minute anthology is unrated. 

Last Rites: Abroad anthology with a goal to highlight and amplify short filmmaker voices, “Drag Me to Fest” finishes up from the main screen and extends to home video for the first time! Rustblade and MVDVisual illuminate the cinema obscure for the general public and we’re all the richer for it!

Hurry! Grab the Limited Edition Copy of “Drag Me to Fest” Before Its Gone!

The Jack-O-Lantern of EVIL Curses! “The Pumpkin Man” reviewed! (Scream Team Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Don’t Accidently Curse Yourself by Not Owning “The Pumpkin Man” on DVD!

The town of Cromwell lives and breathes off the demonic urban legend known as Pumpkin Man during the town’s full embracement of the Halloween season. College student Catherine, the town’s biggest savant of Pumpkin Man lore, has been given a tidbit of information of where to look for clues in discovering the lost book of spells that can summon the demon. After Catherine incantates the book’s passages, the frenetic young woman receives the intended reaction out of her friends, to scare the living daylights out of them with a legendary prank, but as true legend goes, those who read the words and summon Pumpkin Man back from the depths of Hell will become cursed to die by the demon’s elongated claws. Now, Catherine and her friends are haunted while they sleep, and their reality is twisted while awake as the Pumpkin Man toys with them until those who evoke his name is dead.

Halloween may be over, Thanksgiving too, but the spirit and the fear will always remain, especially when we all embark into the jolliest times of year.  There would be no shame in watching “The Pumpkin Man” while drinking hot cocoa and basking in the warm glow of your red, white, and green tree lights as you sit in the dark.  The glow of the television setup will keep you cozy and warm as a tall, pumpkin-headed demon literally rips the faces off cursed kids in director Ryan Sheets’ first feature-length film based off his short films series of the titular, iconic character.  Sheets’ inconspicuous indie franchise has spawned 5 short film sequels from the original 2016, 4-minute short, including a versus pitted against another Ryan Sheets’ regular character Kreepy the Clown.  Sheets cowrites the feature with Nick Romary, the original Pumpkin Man actor Jeff Rhodes, and his wife Janae Muchmore, pieced together by the central Florida team’s production company South Ridge Films with Sheets’ daytime colleague, fellow attorney Jason P. Herman, footing most of the bill as executive producer. 

Unlike the shorts, the feature features a whole new cast of carefully crafted victims for the demon to shake up and slaughter.  Even the Pumpkin Man himself is not played by Jeff Rhodes, who previous played the titular villain by more slasher-esque means with a butcher’s knife and a slow gait.  Instead, Ryan Sheets reimagines Pumpkin Head’s supernatural aesthetic and bearing by playing the demon gourd himself, in stilts, with less Michael Myers essence, and providing a proper name for the demon of Fall known as Kürbis.  The holiday spirited demon with a Cromwell history of whomever summons him will be cursed to die by him plagues a new set of fool-hearted conjurers nearly three centuries after a supposed Cromwell witch took her own life to stop the demon.  The film introduces the first-time principal role for Barbara Desa, a social media influencer and Orlando-based actress with a ton of a spunk, as Catherine Quinn, a quirky, Kürbis-obsessed Cromwell denizen with no real substantial motivation for finding the lost book of Kürbis other than to play a Halloween trick on her friends and be heedless to the consequential power it holds.  This makes Catherine dangerously unstable, and she feels more like a villain than the Pumpkin Head when irresponsibly meddling with something she truly doesn’t understand, compromising not only her own life but her friends too for fun at their expense.  The development of supporting characters outshines the simpleton needs of the principal Catherine as her friends, and outside the clique but stay in close proximity, find themselves having to make choice, such examples lie with Catherine’s best friend Jenny (“Stephanie Kirves) who chooses the demise of another just to save her own skin while Cather’s cop older brother Tim (Estaban Abanto) can’t ignore the gruesome facts of his little sister’s involvement in a couple of Cromwell murders and disappearances.  There’s also Michael (Matthew Beaton), a potential love-interest for Catherine being pulled from out of the friend zone and into more flirtatious foundations but is quickly blocked by the presence of Pumpkin Man’s uncanny ability to enter dreams and stir their existence into an unbalanced waking nightmare.  “The Pumpkin Man” rounds out with more local Floridian casting with Ariel Taylor, Krysti Reif, and Josh Rutgers.

This isn’t the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. “The Pumpkin Man” doesn’t start off super strong with a tattered accumulation of characters and backstory that barely carve out the shinier surface’s meatier pith that provides traces of sympathy and capability for situations and characters before the turning point turns dour.  Yet, if you stick around through “The Pumpkin Man’s” missteps, what you get is a progressively better reconstruction of a supernatural slasher that sees some decently gore-soaked effects for an independent production.  The added bonus being the cost-saving aspects of Sir Henry’s Haunted Trail, a Florida Halloween walk-through attraction that provides the spooky atmospherics and ghoulishly made-up cast of jump-scare actors as background or pop-in macabre aesthetics.  What starts as a demon resurrecting, potentially unleashing Hell on Earth represented by Halloween synecdoche, the story hits a turning point and switches gears toward slasher properties that work more ideally with a Freddy Krueger inspired killer, embodying the spirit of Halloween in a different and welcoming way than other Samhain-centric killers with a high seasonal watch repeat and an unforgettable antagonist.

Scream Team Releasing shows what happens when the pumpkin smashes back in “The Pumpkin Man” on DVD home video.  Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the MPEG2, upscaled 1080p, single-layered DVD5 has lower image resolution because of the single layer compression that’s encoded with not only the feature but also a fair amount of bonus pumpkin batch content.  Black areas are not as clean and void with some noticeable posterization, details and overall picture crispness are not as sharp with a smoother contour between interior and exterior scenes, and coloring is often muted with missed opportunities for a punchier palette as the cinematography is completely ungraded, appearing as mostly raw, jittery footage underneath a more dynamic audio layer.  The lossless English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo levels range from an anemic muffled to just at the edge of overextending the audio capacity but keep in line for better precision.  The diverse band soundtrack livens up downtime sequences to evoke a Halloween and rock or rockabilly mood and the sound design digs into the atmospherics with bug chirps, floorboard creaks, clock ticks, and the intertwinement of the brief ominous minor keys.  Dialogue is clean and clear, but Pumpkin Head’s post-added dialogue doesn’t ride parallel to the actor’s which is slightly isolated and boxy but is not terribly sync to make an audible make-or-break difference.  Extras include a director’s feature accompanying audio commentary with Ryan Sheets, a making-of featurette Carving a Pumpkin, Tales from the Book of Kürbis an 8-part short horror anthological series directed by Ryan Sheets, and two trailers.  The DVD comes with a Casey Booth designed cover art that’s yells diabolical autumn harvest with a disc pressed with a more traditional, evil-cut pumpkin head overtop the orange-colored, rough-carved, and spikey “The Pumpkin Man’ font.  The not rated DVD has a runtime of 91 minutes and is region free for all.

Last Rites: Could “The Pumpkin Man” be worth exploring deeper into the mythos? After many successful short films in the last decade, Ryan Sheets has perfected the formula for his own temporal-traversing, gourd-headed demon and with a little more refining and stamina, we wouldn’t mind seeing “The Pumpkin Man” more on screen, or in our nightmares.

Don’t Accidently Curse Yourself by Not Owning “The Pumpkin Man” on DVD!