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This EVIL Has Brains! “Head of the Family” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Remastered DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get Ahead in Life with “Head of the Family” on DVD!

The Stackpooles are a little strange and are usually the talk of the small town of Nob Hollows when the zombified trio of siblings pick up the groceries at Lance’s Stop and Shop general store and diner.  Yet, the Stackpoole’s are not Lance’s problem, not yet anyway, when Howard, a no-good shakedown thug, forces his might into Lance’s business as a silent partner.  Little does Howard know that Lance has an ongoing affair with his wife, Loretta, and they devise a plan to get rid of Howard using the newly discovered dirt on the Stackpoole family’s bizarre kidnappings to take care of Howard once and for all.  Lance figures he’s found his meal ticket after blackmailing Mryon, the fourth, and unseen, sibling who’s the mastermind and head of the family – literally a giant head – using telepathy and mind control to against his brothers and sister to do his bidding, but Myron is no fool to be taken advantage of so easily. 

Who just is this Robert Talbot?  The director of “Head of the Family,” who hides behind a black mask and speaks through a voice modulator, is none other than Full Moon’s secret identity for Charles Band under a pseudonym persona to exact a different kind of picture outside the context he’s expected to continue as well as an empire built on the image of horror.  “Head of the Family” may not be tiny dolls inflicting an affliction based on their evil ways or the resurrection of the formerly dead and abnormal to, once again, inflect damage upon their creators, and possibly, the world we know it.  Instead, “Head of the Family” slips out of Full Moon’s comfort zone and into another, different kind of shadowy namkeen to small plate audiences’ bizarre fascination with the weird and fantastical.   Also, to exhibit T&A more than like the usual in the Full Moon repertoire.  The less horror, more zany cult 1995 feature structures around the titular big headed villain, a band of his freakshow kin, and a constantly copulating couple that’s penned by Neal Marshall Stevens (“Thir13en Ghosts”), also under a pseudonym of Benjamin Carr, based off a “Talbot” story, and produced by, also “Talbot,” and “Hideous!” and “Witchouse” producer, Kirk Edward Hansen.

I couldn’t tell you if J.W. Perra is big-headed or not in real life, but the actor is certainly quite cranial as the family-telepathic, wheelchair bound Myron Stackpoole.  The literal pun of the title plays in tune with Full Moon’s madcap maniacal ties while having Perra’s large head shine, or rather sweat gland glisten, under a miniature lame body.  Myron’s enfeebled corporeal flesh drives his hunger to join the ranks of normal people as he kidnaps and surgically operates on the minds of unsuspected townsfolk to incorporate a portion of his higher intellect into a stronger body.  Myron uses his stupefied siblings’ talents, bestowed upon them through a paternal quadruplet birthing, with Wheeler (James Jones, “Dark Honeymoon”) given superhuman bugeye sight and hearing, Otis (Bob Schott, “Gymkata”) given the twice the strength of a normal man, and Georgina (adult actress Alexandria Quinn, “Taboo VIII”) given, you guessed it, the hot and voluptuous body to attract men like moth to a flame.  Speaking of hot bodies, former adult actress and “Femalien” star Jacqueline Lovell, aka porn handle Sara St. James, is absolutely supple as Loretta, a twangy blonde girlfriend to the scheming Lance, played with Cajun confidence by Blake Adams (“Lurking Fear”), and every chance Lance and Loretta get, they’re steaming the scene with erotically charged expo and exposition.  I’m fairly certain Lovell has more lines topless than she does with her clothes fully on.  In the supporting cast inventory, Vicki Lynn (“Fugitive Rage”) and Gordon Jennison Noice (“Virtuosity’) make up the remaining. 

I’ll admit I fell into that hole of expecting “Head of the Family” to play out just like any conventional Full Moon feature, comprised of pint-sized and mischievous devils to a carnivalesque tune of irregular horror.  To my surprise but not to my dismay, Band’s incognito oddity has the bones of a blackmailing thriller spiced with eccentric and caricature types and gratuitous sex at every turned corner.  “Head of the Family” progresses through interacting conversation to outline exploitation arrangements and to be informed of dangers of crossing a big headed brainiac, interjected with the occasional display of drooling operated rejects, Otis and Wheeler’s utilizing their inborn side effects, and, I keep coming around to this motif and hopefully not in a pervy way, the female toplessness that bares bountiful.  The depth perception effect to enlarge J.W. Perra’s head as Myron is executed pretty well with Adolfo Bartoli’s camera work that reflects the actors facing generally at the correct angle, as if they’re eye-to-eye with the Myron, and the edits do the effect justice as well, spliced precisely to account for dimensional space, the effects are reminiscent of Randy Cook’s illusionary work on “The Gate” films using dimensional animation and scale between live actors in the same frame but some distance apart.  If you excuse the upcoming intended pun, Band’s film is more of a talking head production than one of grotesque action, a realization you won’t be aware of until well stretched into the runtime and because of this that’s the reason there’s likely a ton of Jacqueline Lovell nudity.  Okay, okay, I’ll stop blabbering on about the nudity!   

“Head of the Family” arrives onto newly remastered DVD from Full Moon Features.  The MPEG2, upscaled 720p, DVD5, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, doesn’t have any detail regarding the remastering on the latest re-release but I suspect it’s the identical image or a slightly touched up 35mm negative used for the original Full Moon release from 1999 scanned in 2K.  15 years later, a reimagined “Head of the Family” retains the softer, radiant picture quality with a highly extensive color palette through the aura glow and a natural, yet reduced, grain.  The negative does have a flaw in what looks to be cell damage a little halfway through the runtime with a brief, dark cut line making itself known, if you blink, you’ll miss it.  This sort of obvious damage does lean more toward an identical transfer being used for the 2024 release with just a 2k scan without restorative elements.  Remastered restoration likely went hot and heavy into the audio elements.  The English language LPCM is available in two channel formats, a dual-channeled 2.0 and a surround sound 5.1 mix.  Robust with added nuances, “Head of the Family’s” soundtrack breathes new aural acuities that not only clean any distortions, if there was any, but also sharpens the tracks like a knife on a wet stone, cutting and clean.  Dialogue is clear and assertive through what is mostly a talking head span.  English close caption subtitles are available.  Much of the special features are reused from the 2016 Blu-ray release, including an audio commentary track from Actor J.W. Perra (Myron), promo behind-the-scenes video of the long anticipated “Bride of Head,” which has been stagnant for years, the original trailer, and other Full Moon Features’ trailers.  The DVD release is an exact mirror image of the physical Blu-ray release from 8 years prior with a disc press image of Myron’s closeup through a murky filter and no inserts included.  The region free release has an 82-minute runtime and is rated R without specifying the content but there is language, nudity, strong sexuality, and violence. 

Last Rites: “Head of the Family” bucks the lucrative trend of miniature killer imps for the Full Moon empire but keeps moderately in line with eccentric characters, unabashed skin, and a Richard Band jaunty soundtrack, accentuated even more in a brand-new remastered DVD version of the film that was helmed by Charlie Band himself in anonymity.

Get Ahead in Life with “Head of the Family” on DVD!

Awesome Boy and Bludgeon Man Fight EVIL at “Slaughter Beach” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

July 4th Is Here! Time to hit “Slaughter Beach” on DVD!

Ralph and Barry are best buds.  They’re best buds freeloading off Barry’s father’s shore house during the height of Slaughter Beach’s Summer season.  When Barry’s father becomes annoyed by his adult son and friend’s loafing, his ultimatum to them is to get a job or get out, but the touristy destination of Slaughter Beach has nearly become all but a ghost town as businesses and tourism shut down or come to a slow crawl after a string of mysterious disappearances along the beaches and boardwalk.  Barry’s idea to become vigilante crime fighters, under the hero names of Awesome Boy and Bludgeon Man of the duo’s moniker The FenderBenders and hoping to resurrect the once booming vacationing hotspot back to its full former glory, reels in a boatload of trouble when a salty, horseshoe crab fisherman behind the disappearances casts his deadly fishhook line toward the wannabe crime fighters to make chum out of them and anyone else who crosses his path. 

“Slaughter Beach” is the buddy horror-comedy and slasher set on the American Eastern shorelines of not the actual Slaughter Beach of Sussex County Delaware but actually shot 25 miles north in the more populated Rehoboth beach.  The 2022 released, Daniel C. Davis written-and-director feature is “The Scarecrow’s Curse” and “X Knight Escape from Warp Hell” actor’s third film in a decade span.  The Delaware-born, Wilmington University graduate continues his grow his independent filmmaking career in his home state and the surrounding metropolitan, tri-state area.  His latest directorial lands him on the Eastern beaches of Delaware with filming done mostly at night during the tourism offseason, allowing more wiggle room for shooting, less hassle from onlookers, and a better chance at snagging shooting locations that would be, perhaps, heavily trafficked during peak months.  “Slaughter Beach” runs under Davis and Brett Taylor’s production company, Clockout Films, and is produced by the two filmmakers alongside Jim Cannatelli (“Yester-Years”).

“Slaughter Beach” is amazingly well dialogued in the comedy context for a low-budget, independent feature and without the principal leads, the hapless and hero-lite buddies, of Jon McKoy, who I still recall his similar performance in “Easter Sunday,” and Ethan Han, in his debut feature film role, “Slaughter Beach” would have flop hard like a fish out of water, gasping for a watery breath.  Between McKoy and Han, Ralph and Barry’s antics are contrived out of dunce energy with good intentions that slow churns infectious wit to character likeability.  Their crude innocence faces impossible trials when against a foe that tests their trying not-very-hard heroic vigilantism on the shore’s boardwalk.  Jim Cannatelli, yes, producer Jim Cannatelli, dons the Sou’Wester hat and chest waders for the crazed Fish Man Sam’s crusade on hooking Lilith, the mythical and monstrous horseshoe crab, with his special human bait from wielding a weaponized line and lure and fishhook to gut and chum his victims.  In an appearance very similar to The Fisherman in “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” Cannatelli’s twist hits the old seadog stereotype complete with nautical vernacular and is a fine comic book antagonist to the campy, counterpart sideshow that is Ralph and Barry.  However, the standoff between good versus evil is held to the very end with Fish Man Sam angling boardwalk and beach patrons to their deaths, that’s closer to shooting fish in a barrel with support bit parts performances from mostly Davis casting regulars, such as Amy Lynn Patton, Michelle Qenzel, Keith Crosby, Shawn Shillingford, Heather Street, Kiyneeanay Dykes, and Ethan Han’s actual father, Oscar Aguilar, playing Barry’s dad.

There’s no shortage of zaniness, slapstick, or waggishness in Davis’s “Slaughter Beach.”  Same goes with the horror façade that’s well framed around the comedic core.  “Slaughter Beach’s” terror won’t be a trepidant of tension or knock off your tacklebox with fright, but Davis shows obvious signs of paying attention to the what-works in horror motifs with the crafting of looming angles, danger-building and coherent editing and score, and a villain that might be a caricaturable and an exaggeration vocally but appears damn right creepy in the background as the obscured and shadowing lurking fisherman.  A gory practical effects décor by Trauma Queen FX special makeup and effects artist, Isabelle Isel, elevates the feature’s victim pool to an anticipation level amongst the audience to see what Fish Man Sam has in store next for his ice chest full of horrors.  While visually alarming and usually frightening in nature, the villainous veneer and gore-soaked effects are not excluded from the comedy tone with the fishing themed gallows humor that’s about as ridiculously funny as it sounds.  What isn’t as fleshed out as hoped was Fish Man Sam’s obsessive and radical pursuit of bagging the giant horseshoe crab he’s bestowed as Lilith.  Its an important motivation factor that drives the deranged angler left to swim upstream and doesn’t elaborate and relay Ralph and Barry’s foe sympathetically as a man on a mission.

The Clockout Films production has been picked up by the longstanding zero-budget genre label, SRS Cinema, for the at home DVD release.  “Slaughter Beach” is MPEG-2 encoded onto a single-layer DVD5 with a 720p resolution and is ungraded.  With nearly zip on the hue saturation and stick with a lower resolution, “Slaughter Beach” is able to compress adequately, suppressing any major artefact issues to lesser posterization, and keeping a soft, yet relatively clean image that doesn’t focus on stylistic highlights but rather draws all the attention onto the buddy heroes and the gore.  Lighting is retained by the array of brightly lit Boardwalk bulbs, some specialized muted-colored uplighting for a slightly retro feel, and natural lighting, reducing much of the beachy backdrop to a black void that centers the characters without much depth to delineate within the widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  The English LPCM 2.0 stereo track musters enough strength from the blemish-free boom recording.  No crackling, hissing, or any other kind of distortions on the dialogue or LFE layers, suggesting that care was put into the audio, and it rightfully shows a coherent and competent mix with alternative-punk-ska tracks from The Jasons, Station, and Skatune Network.  Dialogue clear, clean, and prominent.  There are no optional subtitles available.  Special features include a feature length commentary with a roundtable, ride along discussions with director Daniel C. Davis, stars Ethan Han and Jon McKoy, producer and principal Jim Cannatelli, and director of photography Brett Taylor.  Also included is a raw footage gag reel and SRS trailers, one of which is for “Slaughter Beach.”  The extremely detailed and aesthetically illustrated cover art gives the physical DVD a lucrative eyeful but the release do not credit the artist, nor do I see a signature hidden inside the tonal shades. The region free SRS DVD has a runtime of 80 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: “Slaughter Beach” is more than a head in the sand thriller; the Daniel C. Davis horror-comedy paces to deliver timely laughs as well as casting flesh-ripping, barbed lures that easily hooks us for more giggles and gore.

July 4th Is Here! Time to hit “Slaughter Beach” on DVD!

Invisible As They May Be, Their EVIL is Palpable. “Imaginary” reviewed! (Lionsgate / 2-Disc Blu-ray and DVD Combo)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Chauncy Wants You To Be his Friend! “Imaginary” on Blu-ray DVD/Combo set!

Jessica purchases her family home, moving in with her new husband and stepchildren where she reminisced being happy once as a child up until her father’s mental breakdown forced her to move out of the house and live with her grandmother.  Returning to her childhood home might have suppressed most of memory but has also spurred a few good recollections she aims to share with the conflicting attitudes of her stepdaughters, the angsty, teenager Taylor and her little sister, Alice, who suffers from a traumatic past.  When Alice discovers a stuffed bear in the basement and conjures up an imagery friend named Chauncy, Jessica feels content knowing Alice is coping with a new friend outside intense therapy sessions but when Chauncy’s seeming innocent scavenger hunt turns to hurt Alice, all the forgotten, difficult memories of her past surface and Chauncy is more than an Alice’s imaginary friend but spurned entity seeking to reconnect to Jessica, feed off her unique creativity, and keep her always in the Never Ever world of imagination.

At least once during our childhood, we all had an imagery friend to lean on, to play with, to cope with difficult situations.  For me, my imagery friend was an 8-foot white teddy bear I would snuggle into its lap and read my adventurous stage one or two books to.  For Lionsgate and Blumhouse, their imagery friend is much, much more sinister!  “Imaginary’s” dark twist on the juvenile fantasy is the brainchild of writer-director Jeff Wadlow, the filmmaker behind 2018’s “Truth or Dare” and 2020’s “Fantasy Island.”   The Charlottesville, Virginia native seemingly has thing for spinning games and fantasies into crooked, ill-fated variants.  “Princess and the Frog” writers Greg Erb and Jason Oremland cowrite the script with Wadlow, adding their experiencing in writing children stories for Wadlow’s eviscerating of childhood joy.  Lionsgate Films and Blumehouse Productions distributor the Tower of Babble Entertainment film with Jason Blum, Sean Albertson, Paige Pemberton, Paul Uddo, Jennifer Scudder Trent, and Jeff Wadlow producing.

In the crosshairs of a targeting imaginary friend is Jessica, a successful children’s book author on the outside of trying to assimilate herself into a new family while, at the same time, struggling to understand her nightmares and troubled childhood past.  DeWanda Wise (“Jurassic World:  Dominion”) stars the struggling, but good-natured stepmother Jessica who’s married to “The Walking Dead’s” Jesus, I mean Tom Payne.  Taegen Burns and Pyper Braun play Payne’s sibling daughters in their respective roles of Taylor and Alice as they make their horror film debut.  Detrimental to “Imaginary’s” silkiness of a happy couple is the artificial interactions between Wise and Payne who appear to be just going through conventional motions of a very awkwardly scripted and painfully garish couple.  When Payne departs the entire climatic acts for his character’s musical tour, other characters begin to flourish more naturally from between Wise, Burns, and Braun who become entwined into a certain teddy bear’s revengeful plan and this fountains a pleasant range of character arcs with overcoming fears, building character emotions, and settling the tension between them within the context of a common foe narrative.  One crucial, tell-all character goes critically by the wayside because, at the very last possible moment, Betty Buckley (“Carrie”) as the longtime neighbor Gloria becomes a deluge of exposition and she’s only introduced in full much later into the story because the writers had no idea how to integrate her earlier and make the information Gloria sits make sense until desperate moments arise.  Buckley, though monotone at times, makes for a good crazy lady.  “Imaginary’s” cast fills out with Veronica Falcón (“The Wind of Fear”), Samuel Salary, Matthew Sato, and Alix Angelis (“The Cleansing Hour”).

Audiences will need to expand their imaginations to get immersed into “Imaginary’s” interdimensional, child creativity-eating plot that careens through the specifics and details.  “Imaginary” suggests children have this invisible pal that snake tongues into their ears, feeding them childish ploys and harrying shame to get them to do what they want, and, inevitably, suck them into the Never Ever world through a checklist bizarre ritual.  The story suggests a globally subversive circle of these entities have been explains that every culture has a take on the imaginary friend concept and even throws into the dialogue other children having disappeared shortly after speaking of the Never Ever but the shorted change of the widespread disappearances background and the fact that crazy old, neighbor lady Gloria somehow surmised a pile of information on the subject, self-published knowledgeability on the ritual, being, and even the Newer End world, provides threadbare, credulous support for the storyline.  Stylistic and visually, “Imaginary” endorses its own title with tactile manifestations of the entity’s power.  Men in nightmare costumes is always preferable over overly silky-smooth and impalpable computer-generated monsters and the work done by the effects crew greatly engenders childish fears with an overgrown, toothy, scary teddy bear and a topsy-turvy world that are magical yet foreboding. 

Snuggle up with your Teddybear and get ready to be scared in “Imaginary” on a 2-Disc DVD and Blu-ray set from Lionsgate Films. The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50, presenting the film in a 2.39:1 widescreen aspect ratio, is a solid showing of image integrity with crafty cinematography from James McMillan (“Twisted Metal“) that avoids the seams of the monster suits, keeping them in a considerable degree of low-level shadows, and using odd angles to make contradictory scenes flush in the Never Ever. Yet, despite the max storage capacity of a 50-gigabyte disc, compression banding still rears its ugly between gradient tones contrasting dark and lit scenes; problematic areas are not entirely throughout the picture but intermittently spotty to say the least. The DVD9 is MPEG-2 encoded with an upscaled 1080p. The English language option is a three-dimensional Dolby Atmos surround sound and if Dolby Atmos was going to be used for anything feature, “Imaginary” would be that feature with tons of range and depth mechanicals to float audio into the spatial fields above and below. When Never Ever doesn’t formulate a logical structure and up is down and down is up, Atmos caters and evolves to the fluid environment, emitting pinpoint ambience to be shaped to the size of television room. Dialogue comes over clean and clear, established in the forefront amongst the other audio layers. Spanish and French 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound are also available audio options with English, Spanish, and French subtitles to select from. Special features include a feature length audio commentary by director, and cowriter and producer, Jeff Wadlow with producer-actress DeWanda Wise. Also, encoded into one long featurette, are four medium-short mini-featurettes of Meet Your New Imaginary Friends of getting to know the characters of “Imaginary,” Frills and Thrills of taking a child’s joyous creativity and twisting it into a creature-laden nightmare, Crafting the Beast of Imaginary is a look at the tangible creations of “Imaginary’s” monsters, and Bringing Nightmares to Life looks at how the Never Ever is constructed and shot to get the illusion of an upside down interior slice of another dimension. Sheathed inside a glinty, nearly lenticular, cardboard slipcover is the traditional Blu-ray Amary, both with the innocently, ominously looking Chauncy bear on the front cover. In the interior, each side houses a respective format within a push lock. A digital copy does come with the release within the insert clasps. “Imaginary” is a PG-13 horror (are they trying to appeal to kids?) with a runtime of 104-minutes and a region A playback.

Last Rites: I Imagine “Imaginary” could have gone over ten times as smoothly and more coherent with a longer runtime time to flush out more characters and a better designed narrative. Instead, pacing is quickened to race through unpacking more complex themes: childhood abuse, childhood trauma, the division of the original and regluing of a new nuclear family, family history of mental illness, the concept of imaginary friends, and so forth. The result is a less than desirable bastardization of an imaginary friend that leaves us high and dry for more context and substance than just a puppeteered scare bear.

Chauncy Wants You To Be his Friend! “Imaginary” on Blu-ray DVD/Combo set!

Forest Hike Lands Four Friends Right in the Middle of Drug Smuggling EVIL! “Cascade” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Cascade” Available on DVD! Click Here to Purchase Your Copy!

The small town of Clearview offers little opportunity and for four teenage friends, they’re diverging, life-affirming paths will either cement their relationship stronger or obliterate it completely.  Looking to do something epic before everything changes and most will put Clearview in the rearview mirror, they decide to hike an unrestricted, waterfall area of the locale state park.  What they find at the bottom of the falls is a crashed personal plane, a bag full of drugs, and a dead body.  Half of the group seeing an opportunity to make a small fortune splits ties between them and leave them blindsided by the drug dealers’ sudden appearance and guns drawn interrogation to find the downed plane and their narcotics.  A series of scuffles leaves one friend dead and two others injured, pitting a sole, unconstrained teenage woman against multiple armed and dangerous narcotraffickers hellbent on retrieving their lost goods.  Determined to not go down without a fight and free her friends, she’ll use every advantage, no matter how desperate, to outwit her pursuers.

The adage there’s no such thing as a free lunch applies to the latest film from director Egidio Coccimiglio (“Compulsion”).  Coccimiglio, who puts out one film roughly every decade since the mid-1990s, begins the story of “Cascade” with two, smalltown young couples on the verge of entering adulthood, figuring out their relationships and their lives one indecisive moment at a time, until that decision is made for them when a group no good drug smugglers roadblock their grownup rite of passage.  The debut script of Ed Mason is shot in the scenic Crystal Creek forests trails and waterfalls in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada.  “The Void’s” Rosalia Chilelli and Jennifer Pun produce with Michael Baker (“Depraved Mind”), Bruno Marino (“Tormented”), and Anders Palm (“Trench 11”) executive producing the Edge Entertainment independent production and Blue Fox Entertainment presentation.

“Cascade’s” plot is split between two perspectives, the teens and the traffickers, but we’re mostly aborded into the teens’ backstory and imminent concerns:  Vince (Stephen Kalyn), a carefree, immature cut-up and army prospect aiming to leave Clearview by any means possible,  Em (Sadie Laflamme-Snow), Vince’s girlfriend whose keeping her newfound pregnancy with him a secret because of their uncertain future, Jesse (Joel Oulette), a by choice Clearview lifer who just landed the job of shop mechanic, and Alexis (Sara Waisglass), daughter to an estranged ruthless biker gang leader and who is uncertain a college opportunity is the right choice for her.  What’s admirable about the character list is that none of them are throwaway characters with ample, individual emotional weight for relatability and substance.   Compared to the adversary drug smugglers, there’s little to be known about them as their backstories are purposefully kept in the dark, evoking a dangerous impression upon first meet and scenes.  As the story unfolds, the two groups clash, and things get ugly, true natures emerge within both factions that turn once established sympathies into traitorous duplicity and vice versa.  Amid the switcheroo of moral standards, the fight for friendship and survival becomes a one-woman show with Sara Waisglass at the wheel, showcasing Alex as good as college material by outsmarting cruel yet hesitating foes.  Coccimiglio and Mason put in the trouble of frontloading meanness and calculated brutality only to fizzle into backpedaling renegers on their ill-fated promises toward Alexis’s captured and hurt friends.  We get a pretty good showing of bad guy mentality from a creepy looking Josh Cruddas (“Resident Evil:  Welcome to Raccoon City”) and a no-nonsense leader in Allegra Fulton (“The Shape of Water”), a not good showing from the bearded oldster Matt Connors (“Kicking Blood”), and a modest teetering of morality performance from James Cade (“Antiviral”).  “Cascade” rounds out the cast with Mark Brombacher (“The Kingdom of Var”), Joanna Douglas (“Saw 3D”), Bart Rochon (“Bloodslinger”), and Greg Bryk (“Rabid”) as the leader of the biker gang The Saints and Alexis’s father. 

Under the bank check of a humble budget, serviced with one primary, exterior location, and limited ostentatious stunt work, “Cascade” is forced into a character-driven corner, carried by a pack of toothsome personalities to keep the story wet with insatiability.  For the better part of the narrative, Coccimiglio successfully stacks the blocks of sympathy, disparage, and a rough action scheme and comes out on top for an independent action-thriller.  Contrarily, a few scenes stand out being too big for the film’s skinny jean britches.  Gun shot wound effects work with compelling impact with a fair amount of gruesomeness in the makeup and how the shooter and victim react; however, other stunts, such as the car collision, dampens the believability in which one person dies, one person suffers a compound fracture, and neither vehicle has flipped or sustained substantial wreckage to cause that much damage during a shaky-cam, car-crash simulation sequence.  These moments really announce, and announce very prominently, the weak points of the production which can be looked past considering how solid this indie feature generates the big picture story on a small budget scale.

From Breaking Glass Pictures, a Philadelphian based independent distributor delivering the thrills and the chills as well as LGBQT+ films of the world, brings a Blue Fox Entertainment release, “Cascade,” onto DVD.  The MPEG-2 encoded, upscaled 720p, DVD5 presents the feature in an anamorphic widescreen 2.39:1 that has a slight wrap around lens to capture a wider frame without feeling squeezed.  This works toward the director of photography Diego Guijarro’s advantage to enclose Crystal Creek falls and forest into the optical lens without being limited to medium-to-closeup shots.  The upscaled 720 resolution holds its own to decipher details distinctly between the lush greenery, white water spray of the falls, and the actors skin tones and clothing.  Since “Cascade” has limited stunt work there’s not much room for novel or innovative camera techniques but it’s a solidly organic colored film that looks professional rather than commercially graded.  The English language LPCM 5.1 surround sound, again, doesn’t have the range to really be necessary for an all-channel assault but diffuses well enough to carry a midrange peak tone. Dialogue is clearly and cleanly expressed with adequate prominence and depth is opportune but not key for any scenes except for some radio communication. English closed captioning is optionally available. The Breaking Glass Pictures DVD release is a barebones product with no special features or stingers during or after the credits. Physically, “Cascade” models much of the same splendor to keep in tune with a feature only release in a standard DVD Amaray with a decent gun-toting mockup cover. The disc is pressed with the same image art with no included inserts or other tchotchke material. The not rated release has a runtime of 95 minutes and region 1 encoded playback.

Last Rites: If in a mood for a third-tier thriller from Canada, “Cascade” checks all the necessary car chasing, gun-shooting, double-dealing, and no-frills boxes with the hunted becoming the hunter of do-no-good drug smugglers who’ll stop at nothing until thousands of dollars’ worth of their lost in a plane wreckage nose snow is recovered.

“Cascade” Available on DVD! Click Here to Purchase Your Copy!

Spiraling Vloggers Seal Their Fate When Face-to-Face with the “Woods Witch” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Woods Witch” Available on DVD from SRS Cinema!

Vloggers Jonah and Jocelyn struggle to sustain a healthy dose of followers for their internet channel.  To spice things up and increase follow traffic, the two embark on a 48-hour challenge to stay in the nearby haunted woods of Allensville where a number of people have gone missing, even a fellow, more popular, vlogger named Garrett Gasper after he was self- recording and suddenly vanished when stumbling upon the blood tree, a tree that oozes a blood-like substance from the trunk.  Tagging along are vlogging, ambivalent friends Dacia and Eugene to help capture the spooky essence of what should be an easy, follower-increasing stunt for the impulsive influencers.  They’re also joined, reluctantly I might add, by a local cowboy, two bar patrons, and a father looking for his daughter who don’t know what they’re instore for as what ensues the unorganized, slapdash survey of the woods is far from being simple and safe when they stumble into the area of a seemingly hippie commune that’s actually a sex cult devoted to the woods witch Melora.

If you’re a diehard horror fan, or even just a physical media movie aficionado, you might have heard of the name Shawn C. Phillips.  The eccentric, high-energy, social media personality buys, watches, and reviews the latest and greatest on home video weekly on this Youtube channel under the handle Coolduder.  Aside from being also a movie actor with a range of roles in mostly low-budget, independent, B-to-Z grade horror films, such as “Girls Gone Dead,” “Blood Orgy at Beaver Lake,” and “WTF!,” Phillips’s social media presence further extends to an inspirational weight loss journey, shedding over 235 lbs.  Having been a longtime actor and producer, one of the Baltimore, Maryland native’s newest ventures is directing having shot mostly self-recorded videos to be inserted into other filmmakers’ movies.  Phillips’s latest is “Woods Witch,” a found footage comedy-horror that’s one-part “Blair Witch Project,” two-parts ADHD (Attention Deficit, Hyperactivity Disorder).  He codirects the film with costar and “Amityville Karen” actress Lauren Francesca in her debut directorial and cowrites with Julie Anne Prescott, writer of many more recent “Amityville” inspired budget horrors like “Amityville Karen,” “Amityville Shark House,” and “Amityville Bigfoot.”  DRAX Films (“Bae Wolf,” “Acorn”) is the production company behind feature that provided most of the funding in conjunction with crowdfunded portion.

Obviously infatuated about being in front of the camera, taking a backseat to his own co-directed film wouldn’t be enough for the nearly 40-year-old personality who costars alongside Lauren Francesca as social media influencing boyfriend and girlfriend Jonah and Jocelyn.  Loud and opinionated, the couple struggle with maintaining viewership but, before that, they also they also struggle with the foulmouthed, death-threatening volley between Jonah and Jocelyn’s robbing-the-cradle by robbing-Jonah’s-cameraman mother, played by Sally Kirkland (“Fatal Games,” “Two Evil Eyes”).  And that sort of leads into a couple of themes “Woods Witch” harps on.  One theme is the constant bickering, shouting, and squabbling between anyone and everyone in a free-for-all of one-upping each other or to not take humility very well in front of others.  None of the characters side with one another, steadying a position of satellite attitudes and courses that lead the story into all different types of unhinged and unfocused directions.  The second theme connects with Sally Kirkland and the other in-and-outs of overripe star power for what crowdfunded money could afford and while there are some likeable and decent names in the cast, such as the late Tom Sizemore (“Relic,” “Saving Private Ryan”) in his last role before his death, James Duvall (“May,” “Donnie Darko”), Robert LaSardo (“Strangeland,” “Death Race”), and Lisa Wilcox (“A Nightmare on Elm Street 4:  The Dream Master”), they used to headline the attraction with only minutes to shine in their respective scenes.  The cast fills in with Kelly Lynn Reiter, David Perry, Carl Soloman, Bill Dawes, Lorelei Linklater, Nicole Butler, Ken Davitian, Bryant Smith, Eva Hamilton, G. Larry Butler, Mary Jones, Tom Harold Batchelder, Jake Pearlman, Brian Metcalf and Sadie Katz. 

“Woods Witch” uses multi-media found footage to tell the story where a bunch of egregiously entitled vloggers trek into infamously mysterious woods for hits, likes, subscribers, and e-revenue.  Not an original bone in its narrative body by any means, Antoine Le’s “Followed” comes to mind, but “Woods Witch” doesn’t hit where it should as a heavily improv comedy-horror that lampoons found footage horror in the woods and, instead, has undeniably become massively cacophonous of in all areas.  Going into the feature familiar with some of the cast and the distributing banner, expectations of a Shawn C. Phillips directed film were all fastened at the lower screwball level with horror elements tacked in here and there, aptly fitting the mold the social media influencer has established for himself with the eccentric personality of a physical media farceur who adores horror, but nothing can prepare audiences for how much confused noise is strewn about with the constant yelling, backbiting, and randomizing introduction of characters that turns what should have been an entertainingly crass and witchy film into just being a completely crass and witchy yawner.  Being completely flat and unfunny wouldn’t be a totally fair statement as “Woods Witch” does have its moments, such as the tree blood being rubbed all over Phillips’s naked torso and him, as Jonah, proclaiming naively Dascia’s kinkiness can be found humorous, but these funny bit moments are far and few in between and there’s just not enough new, fresh, or actor-driven comically-inclined wit and materially to feast on to support the lack of horror despite a few morsels of gore that are left in the dust, overshadowed by an immense pre-trip setup of interviews and infighting that ruins the rest of the reel. 

Enter the world wide web and wacky world of Shawn C. Phillips with his co-directed film with Lauren Francesca in “Woods Witch” on an SRS Cinema DVD. The MPEG2 encoded, 480i upscaled to 720p, DVD9 pulls the differing, clashing video qualities together, mostly earlier on and near the finale, for a coherent beginning, middle, and end narrative telling. If only I could say the same about the story, themes, and character roles. Anyway, not a lot of banding as there’s not a lot of dark scenes in what mostly is fill lighting that brightens up what’s in the scene. Details are okay enough when not implementing shaky cam’s in-and-out focusing found footage and lighting doesn’t completely washout the miniscule bits of texture. The coloring also has a naturally graded look as well as the objects’ organic color palette as budget doesn’t allow for too much fancy cinematography to also evoke a sense of realism. The English language PCM 2.0 stereo mix is consistent as it is coherent with the clarity and the dialogue. Even with pandemonium breaks out, which is often with the screaming and snappy conversations between each other, dialogue remains unscathed without audible squashing feedback or other interferences. English closed captioning is optionally available in the extras. Special features include a behind-the-scenes raw footage from fellow Youtuber Kenneth Ramone who has a small part in the film, a handful of cut scenes, theatrical trailer, funny trailer, an audio commentary by director/star Shawn C. Phillips going deep into the casting, locations, backstories, script and improv moments, etc., and there’s a Lisa Wilcox stinger in the post-credits as the mayor for an additional or extended scene with some improv. The SRS Cinema package comes in a standard DVD Amaray case with eye-catching illustrated artwork, disc pressed with the same artwork, and is an unrated, region free release with a 96-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Humor and horror underperform in the film “Woods Witch” that’s sole purpose is to be a comedy-horror. What the film does do is parody other found footage features and their filmmakers under a misguided sense that in-the-woods horror, from a camera lens point of view, is past its prime when in reality, the long-in-the-tooth subgenre is better than this parody by far.

“Woods Witch” Available on DVD from SRS Cinema!