Category Archives: Exploitation

This Serial Killer is the Mother of all EVILs. “Ed Kemper” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Ed Kemper” on Blu-ray Home Video

Edmund Kemper at the age of 15 tortured animals and killed his grandparents just to see what it was like.  For five years, Kemper was held at and subsequently released from a psychiatric ward where he was deemed not harmful to society.  His acrimonious relationship with his mother as a child did not stop Kemper from living with her as an adult man after his release and her abusive, alcoholic ways continued on him as well.  After some time, Kemper’s aggressive sexual urges sought out hitchhiking women and in the months between 1972 and 1973, Kemper had abducted multiple school age women and either strangled, stabbed, or shot them in isolated areas of arid California.  From there, Kemper satisfied his depravities with dismembering their bodies and committing necrophiliac acts with the sawed-off parts.  Before turning himself in to authorities, Kemper’s killing spree culminates back to his very existence with the death of his abusive mother and he does not spare her from receiving the same kind of posthumous dismemberment and sexual acts he done upon the young women before her.

American Edmund Kemper is the titular subject of the latest film from director Chad Ferrin, horror director known for pushing eyelids open for atrocity-laden films, such as “Someone’s Knocking at the Door,” “Pig Killer,” and “Scalper.”  Ferrin also cowrites the biographical horror drama with Stephen Johnston, a serial serial-killer screenwriter who has painted with font some of America’s most notorious serial murderers from Ed Gein to Ted Bundy, to Kenneth Bianchi from “The Hillside Strangler.”  The tall, dark complexioned, round glasses framed, and pitched mustached Kemper is the next subject for Johnston and the first serial killer biodoc from Ferrin that takes him from fiction to nonfiction while still retaining his admiration for graphic content, produced under Ferrin’s production company of Crappy World Films in association with Dance On Productions and Laurelwood Pictures.

In the role of Kemper is Brandon Kirk who is a by all comparisons a beefier Ed Helms and Kirk has worked with Ferrin on numerous projects since their first collab in 2021’s “Night Caller,” marking “Ed Kemper” as their sixth film together in Ferrin’s rapid release method.  Initially, Kirk seemed to not fit the role that started off with Kemper suitcase in hand being escorted out of the psych hospital and back into society.  His presence felt shallow, unimportant, and a punching bag for his mom’s barrage of boozy hate with little kickback from Kemper’s large and formidable frame and his deadly past which was only half a decade ago.  Kirk has the tall stature and framework to resemble Kemper in that department but didn’t quite fit the bill instill a confident killer that can chill to anyone to the bone with a simple smirk.   By the end, Kirk proves our conceptions incorrect by becoming a delusionally composed killer that no longer needed a smirk to make blood curdle but rather just look into the camera with his plain eyewear frames and mile stare when casually conversing atrocity as if noting the weather.  It’s plain to see how Kemper came to be with a mother like Clarnell Strandberg and her incessant physical and verbal abuse through and beyond Kemper’s youth; Susan Priver, who has also worked with Ferrin and Kirk since “Night Caller,” nails worst mother of the year being in Strandberg’s constant drunken tirade.  Kirk and Priver’s mother-son dynamic has no and is not depicted to have such traditional warmth or merit and, instead, is a one-sided browbeating at Kemper’s expense is fueled by necessity, and perhaps a little bit of masochism on Kemper’s part because if it really got under the skin of either one of them, I’m sure living on the street would have been better.  Repeat scene principals are laid with only a few with Brinke Stevens (“Nightmare Sisters,” “Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity”) in the role of Clarnell’s closeted lover Sally Hallett, adding a bit more complexion to Clarnell’s life choices and fueled bitterness after failed heterosexual marriages, and Joe Castro (“Blood Feast 2:  All U Can Eat”), special effects makeup artist on the film, also down the traditional black horn, red-caped devil that influences young Kemper’s abused mental state.  The co-ed of the Co-Ed Killer include roles filled in by Erin Luo (“Feral Female”), Patty Hayes, Isabelle Morgan, Autumn Rose Ruch, Gloria Therese, and Katie Silverman (“The Exorcists”).  Familiar faces of Lew Temple (“The Devil’s Rejects”), Robert Miano (“Chained Heat”), and Cassandra Gave (“Conan:  The Barbarian”) pop in supporting parts. 

If you’ve seen the deeply studio underappreciated and fan-favorite “Mindhunter” Netflix television series that was prematurely and devastatingly cancelled, Cameron Britton’s performance may have already seared a first impression of Kemper.  The David Fincher crime drama was dark, bleak, and interesting in what makes serial killers tick as the series investigators sat down with Kemper and utilized him as a source of knowledge, much like novelist Thomas Harris had done with his Hannibal Lector character to track down the Red Dragon killer.  Britton’s large stature and soft-spoken delivery made for a terrifying persona when Kemper goes bluntly, coldly, and without expression into detail of his own exploits and methodology with women and corpses.  Side-by-side, Britton and Kirk are starkly different portrayals and those familiar with “Mindhunter,” like me, may already have an impressed idea of Ed Kemper, but Kirk manages to reign in that initial impression and engrave his own version of the murderer into the solidified stone.  In contrasting stylistic and storytelling choices, Ferrin’s film also strays away from reality quite a bit with the Devil inside Kemper’s mind as a child, his frequent disconnection with time, and delusions with seeing things, like John Wayne knocking on his driver side window and giving him sage advice.  There’s more cinematic universe with “Ed Kemper” the feature film than reality-gripping realism to tell his tale without sensationalism, but the story does get down and dirty in Kemper’s Co-Ed killing days.  Initially, the feature felt watered down and wouldn’t go into the darkest of territories inside Kemper’s skeleton closet and deranged mindset but Ferrin, true to form, gets weird with Kemper and his sexualized obsession with dismembered corpses, unafraid to flash gore and nudity that couldn’t go untold with this type of nonfictional narrative, and to be honest, being the nudity shy Dread Presented film, I was shocked with their green light of certain scenes. 

Dread and Epic Pictures Group present true crime horror-drama “Ed Kemper” on Blu-ray that’s AV encoded with 1080p resolution on a BD25.  Presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, Jeff Billings cinematographer handles the 70’s aesthetic of an arid brown California scenery melded perfectly with 70’s period specific avocado green, mustard yellow, and a singed orange while also tackling the black-and-white representing Kemper’s childhood past.  No compression issues to note, blacks are solid, the colors saturate and diffuse nicely throughout, and details are on the softer side but stick the detailed landing unequivocally in the color scenes with the black-and-white harnessing what it can through lack of color.  The English language audio track is compressed with a Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0.  The sole compressed options hangs back the full potential of disorienting muscle, such as with Joe Castro’s basement dwelling devil who’s aimed to be an intense, delusional provocateur of Kemper’s evildoings and also Kemper himself when he goes into full-throttle turmoil within himself, when he can’t take his mother abuse or when he’s grinning ear-to-ear with killing, hacking up, and necrophiliac-loving co-ed victims.  Dialogue comes through clear and clean with optional English and Spanish subtitles available under the title menu.  What’s additional interesting about the “Ed Kemper” score is it’s orchestrated by Richard Band, brother of Charles Band, and is a stray away from his conventional carnivalesque tone into a more traditionally dark that swells tension when needed and coddles the more abusive scenes to picture Kemper as the victim of abuse.  Special features contain an audio commentary track with director Chad Ferrin, co-ed victim audition tapes, deleted scenes, a Kemper 70’s Psycho featurette documentary that’s a raw look behind-the-scenes and get a real sense of Chad Ferrin’s all-in, guts and all, directing style, a Lost Ending providing an alternate finale to the sensationalized Kemper tale for this release, “The Devil’s Slide” music video, the official theatrical trailer, and trailers for other Dread Presents films.  The traditional Blu-ray case has a mustard yellow covert art of Kemper’s face close up but does not appear to be Kirk’s Kemper mug.  The cover art is one sided and there are no other physical trimmings with a disc printed with Kirk’s Kemper mug split down the middle expressing two different faces and incorporated into a personnel file like design.  Not rated with a runtime of 92 minutes, “Ed Kemper” is encoded with a region free playback compatibility. 

Last Rites: To put all of his immoral and depraved transgressions into just over 90 minutes is simply skimming the odious surface but the Chad Ferrin and Dread / Epic Picture Group collaboration condense the irreverence and the ickiness of “Ed Kemper” onto a platform that reminds us all there is true pure evil in this world.

“Ed Kemper” on Blu-ray Home Video

Ai Nu the Most Beautiful Woman to Capture the hearts of both Men and Women’s but EVIL Has Other Plans for Her. “Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan” and “Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan” reviewed! (Imprint Asia / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Order the #34 and #35 of a “Chinese Courtesan” from Imprint Asia’s Boxset!

Taken against her will while living off the streets, Ai Nu’s kidnappers take her and other snatched girls to the Four Seasons Brothel where the once homeless young girl is greeted by the elegant Chun-yi, the brothel head mistress whose cold and ruthless, but Chun-yi, despite letting Ai Nu be whip beaten and raped by her prestigious paying clients, falls for Ai Nu’s beauty.  The two women form a close, sexual relationship while Chun-yi continues to sell Ai Nu’s body to the wealthiest bidder.  All the while, Ai Nu plans her revenge, slow and steady to get back to those who exploited her.  That’s the harrowing and melodramatic exploitation premise, streaked with reality-defying Kung-Fu, from a Shaw Brothers production and its reenvisioned remake that diverges itself from the original story with additional elements that influence what type of revenge Ai Nu is plotting and provides alternate emotional context to the principal characters. 

“The Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan” and “Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan” are the 1972 original and the 1984 remake violent martial arts and brothel underbelly love, rape-revenge narratives brought together by Via Vision’s Imprint Asia sublabel.  These films pushed the moral fiber envelope with prostitution decadence, scandalous lesbian themes, and sexual violence displayed on Hong Kong’s cinematic screen.  “Haunted Tales’” Yuen Chor, credited as Chu Yuan, helmed the Kang-Chin Chiu (“Finger of Doom”) script of “The Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan” with Chor returning over a decade later to sit back in the director’s seal for the remake, “Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan” in which he wrote the script that keeps most of the core similarities that mildly varies yet significantly differs the emotive motivations that affect the finale and character outcomes.  Both films are a production of Shaw Brothers with Runme Shaw producing “Intimate Confessions” and Mona Fong, wife of Runme’s brother Run Run Shaw, produced the “Lust for Love” sequel of the “Chinese Courtesan.” 

Power, under an affluential and admired ruling thumb backed by the wielding of Kung-fu arrogance, is what Chun-yi of “Intimate Confessions” embodied and, eventually, is what blinded her to her undoing.  In her debut role, Betty Pei Ti creates an unforgettable impression that cements Chun-yi as a fierce and fixated force being a corruptor of young women and a criminal kingpin with her deadly mitts in just about every provincial authority and lawmaking body.  The “Police Woman” and “Succubare” actress seizes one-half control of the story with her beauty, acting command, and dynamic and complicated relationship with on screen actress Lily Ho as Ai Nu, a homeless young woman with equally fierce fight in her but not backed by any kind of authority or station.  Ho, a veteran actress with stardom success as the titular character from Chih-Hung Kuei and Akinori Matsuo’s female fatale picture “The Lady Professional” the year prior, brings a vulnerable ferocity to Ai Nu.  Like a scared cat back into a corner, Lily Ho claws the character through a no-win-scenario of survival in a tough role that involves multiple men thrusting themselves onto her but like a switch, Ho’s able to turn off Ai Nu from being an erratic rebel to save her life to actually saving her life by calmly weaponizing love.  Kuan-Chen Hu portrays the Ai Nu character a little bit different in the 1982 version.  Not as feisty and more brittle, Hu’s uno card reversal on the brothel mistress turns into a ménage à trois of greed in it’s underlaying of revenge.  Chun-yi, too, has varying traits to the “Intimate Confessions” counterpart as On-On Yu (“Black Magic with Buddha”) gives the brothel mistress, who goes by Lady Chun, a softer harshness when it comes to delicate and delegating dastardly business and personal affairs.  Lady Chun also doesn’t have a martial arts bone in her body unlike Betty Pei Ti’s fighters-of-death Chun-yi who is a more of a typical well-rounded, boss-level antagonist, but what Lady Chun does come with more is contextual backstory, a woman who rose from power but sees much of herself in Ai Nu and makes promises of reciprocal care with fellow orphan and childhood friend, and skillful hired sword assassin, Hsiao Yeh (Kuo-Chu Chang, “Killer Rose”).  On-On Yu’s version can be cruel but be cruel while exacting a tender heart to her fixation on Ai Nu, adding a deeper and different complexion to what we’ve seen Chor produce before more than decade before.  The cast of each film round out with kidnapping scoundrels, crooked officials, and one lone decent constable within a supporting cast that includes Yueh Hua, Lin Tung, Wen-Chung Ku, Fan Mei-Sheng, Chung-Shan Wan, Shen Chan, Alex Man, Miao Ching, and Kuo Hua Chang.

Watching the two films back-to-back can throw one for a loop as the remake is not a carbon copy of the original, but there is a lingering familiarity that can’t be shook as it hooks itself to “Intimate Confessions’” key plot and forcibly exclaims its remake existence.  Like many things that have a sense of duality, there are also stark and contrasting differences between them.  If personally favoring sadist measures, rougher sexual confiscating, and a confident villainous vixen, the original “Intimate Confessions” will be more to your like.  If personally favoring a slow-and-steady wins the race melodrama, brewed and stewed in romance and storytelling, with more wuxia fighting and swordplay, the “Lust for Love” checks the boxes.  Compositionally, Chor’s vivid backlighting through a hazer fog with different spectrum colors is evident in both films but “Intimate Confessions” has profound designed objects and background combinations that work with the choreography that tells the mood of the story:  the windy and hazy night of Ai Nu and the good natured constables first meet that tells of a foreboding fate, the the bright and joyous revelry of exciting patrons of on the verge of copulating with exploited, kidnapped young women, or the darker streaked toned of betrayal and death in the finale showdown between principal players.  “Lust for Love” also has a tone about it that’s more in tune with the melodrama with expensive looking sets accompanied by a delicate palette of gold, white, and softer reds and yellows.  Plenty of third act loving making from the love triangle showcase told through a sequence of surrealism and teeing up fantasy desires heightened by the glisten outdoor tub water sloshing side-to-side in their passion, on the dewy moss the half-naked roll in, and in the gold rimmed adorned bedrooms where lesbianic lovers flirt.  Chor first ventures the rough rape-revenge thriller only to chuck the indelicacies of the original film and replace with swirling succulence of sex and self-indulgence, a contrasting brilliance formed and reshaped only a dozen years apart.

Imprint Asia knows all about courtesans, or at least about the Yuen Chor courtesans, in “Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan” and “Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan” with a new 2-disc Blu-ray boxset from Australia.  The 1080p high-definition transfers are pulled from the original 35mm negatives and are AVC encoded onto a BD50s and presented in their original aspect rations of 2.40:1 (“Intimate Confessions”) and 2.35:1 (“Lust for Love”), compressed by spherical anamorphic, widescreen lens with the noticeable curvature in the image.  Both presentations offer an ideal image experience with neither damage showing signs of damage or age, palpable textiles of the silk-spun and cotton blend garbs that sheen as expected and absorb a gratifying amount of reflected light within its respective fabric.  Grain appears light yet organic with skin tones and textures with an organic display, unlike in the Shaw-Shock Volume 2 set where skin coloring appeared orange in quite a few scenes.  The spherical lends offers depth despite its slightly warped edging as if looking in a corner convex mirror.  The audio formats include a Mandarin LPCM 2.0 Mono mix with burned-in English subtitles.  There’s also a Cantonese language option of the same spec but the English subtitles are optional.  Subtitles synchronization is on point with the ADR track that’s retains a clear and discernable dialogue albeit the gurgling quality of recording interference present through. The over exaggerated transcript on top of its equal over exaggerated performances, especially with the googly-eyed and giddy older village officials looking to score handsomely with the courtesans, is present in every inch of a less-than-seductive prostitution rendezvous.  Soundtracks boast a melodramatic and action pack score with an extremely westernized design only fiddling slightly with traditional Chinese melodies and with Fu-Liang Chou adding some harsh guitar during the spicier segments of Ai Nu’s lesbian grooming.  Chin-Young Shing and Chen-Hou Su provide a more classic and harmonically sound for “Lust for Love” to exact more passion and heart and less depravity.  Special features or “Intimate Confessions” include a new audio commentary by author Stefan Hammond and Asian film expert Arne Venema, a new informational and highlight discussion from film historian Paul Fonoroff, an archived featurette directed by Frederic Ambroisine Intimate Confessions of 3 Shaw Girls takes the female perspective and review from journalistic critics and actresses including one actress for the films, an archived interview featurette with critic and scholar Dr. Sze Man Hung, critic Kwan King-Chung, and filmmaker Clarence Fok, and rounds out with the original theatrical trailer and DVD trailer.  “Lust for Love,” in comparison, is more barebones in bonus content with an audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan and the DVD trailer.  The physical presentation is similar to Shaw-Shock Volume 2 but just a slightly be slimmer with a jagged tooth topped, rigid slip box with a line split down the middle of the front cover depicting illustrations of characters for each film in either a contrasting blue or pink background.  The backside has a compilation of melded together pictures from both films.  Inside, two clear case Amaray, complete with their own original one sheet as cover arts with a reverse side having pulled a scene from their respective film, sit snug inside the slip box.  The boxset has a total run of 3 hours and 6 minutes, is not rated, and is region free.

Last Rites: Yuen Chor’s dichotomy of the two films is an odd and rare accomplishment of the filmmaker’s re-envisioning of his own work but “Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan” and “Lust for Love of a Chinese Courtesan” have idiosyncratic merit despite the same underlining premise and now it’s showcased in a brilliant boxset from Imprint Asia for you to decide Ai Nu’s revenge and motivations in the fray of brothel captivity.

Order the #34 and #35 of a “Chinese Courtesan” from Imprint Asia’s Boxset!

Creating the Perfect EVIL Race Takes Needless Amounts of Surgery and a Good Pair of Balls! “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” reviewed! (88 Films / 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“S.S. Experiment Love Camp” 4K and Blu-ray is Ripe for the Taking!

Nazi officer Colonel von Kleiben heads a concentration camp where he experiments of young Jewish and Russian female prisoners.  His experiments bore through the encampment lot with unconventional reproductive system surgery for the good of and in the name of purifying the Aryan race, experimentations that also including nonconsensual sexual activities between the women captives and the top physical specimens of the Nazi ranks.  Kleiben’s masked, real intentions are to practice for his own sake in a testicle transplant after a Russian woman castrates him during his attempted raping of her during conflict.  Woman after woman is sacrificed for the surgeon’s rigorous rehearsal by having their uteruses removed and replaced by another and when they expire on the table, their corpses are discarded into the camp’s incinerating ovens.  One Nazi solider is earmarked to be Kleiben’s hope to be whole again and uses the soldier’s affections toward a female prisoner to gain power and control in coercing him blindly into the experiment. 

If pleasure seeking banned films from certain sovereign states, then perhaps “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” should be on your short list.  The 1976 Nazisploitation film from Italy depicts a semblance of torture simulations used from Hitler’s Reich and lays the groundwork for total absurdity with a plot coursed with nonsense motivation at the disadvantage of a minority group under the threat of torture and death.  Also known as “Captive Women II:  Orgies of the Damned,” as more of a sequel in the collective Naziploitation subgenre popular in the 70’s, or most widely known as simply “S.S. Experiment,” the film is from the “Django the Bastard” and “Kill Django… Kill First” director Sergio Garrone, who co-wrote the script alongside “The Weapon, the Hour, & the Motive” co-screenwriter Vinicio Marinuci.  The Società Europea Films Internazionali Cinematografica produced the video nasty venture and expressed no regret the depictions of Nazi terror with the continuation of the subgenre by producing “S.S. Camp 5:  Women’s Hell” as well as other rape-inclined exploitation, such as “Mandinga” between master and plantation slaves and the caged women narrative of “Barbed Wire Dolls.”  

Sifting through the atrocious Nazi experiments, the unabashed sum of nudity, and the ridiculously selfish plot of one Colonel’s lengths to restore his manhood, “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” has a handful of mainstay principals key to the premise’s perpetuation encircled around Colonel Kleiben’s clandestine reasons to willingly and uncompassionately order a new type of surgical procedure on innocent civilian women prisoners.  Played by the square jawed, blonde haired Italian Giorgio Cerioni, who after “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” went on a string of playing a woman abusing Nazi in nazisploitation films between ’76 and ’77 with “Deported Women of the SS Special Section,” “SS Camp:  Women’s Hell,”  “The Red Nights of the Gestapo,” Kleiben’s a stoic, behind-the-scenes force and Cerioni dons the decadence evil well behind German medals and sense of false soldier duty as he works both the known to Kleinben Jewish world class surgeon Dr. Steiner (Attilio Dottesio, “The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine”) pretending to be German and Kleiben’s targeted German solider Helmet (Mircha Carven, “Death Will Have Your Eyes”) sought for his textbook testicles.  Dottesio’s Dr. Steiner is a conflicted man brought to do surgery on his fellow Jews that will result in their certain death and while he knows this, and it weighs on his conscious, the stuck doctor keeps himself from being exposed from other than the Colonel who knows and exploits his little secret for advantage; Dottesio wears a burden upon the surgeon’s face but doesn’t do enough to provide the body language of resistance in being doctor death against his will.  Yet, Carven wholly depicts an outlier amongst the typical German national who rather read books than shoot the sexual gab of his countrymen, which is in itself a nice slice of visual irony with the Nazi being known for burning literature.  Carven keeps Helmut relatively quiet, reserved, and a watcher from afar, noticing blonde prisoner Mirelle as the two fall for each other at the moment of locking eyes.  Carven and Paolo Corazzi (“SS Camp:  Women’s Hell”) sizzle with chemistry that’s left pieced too far apart and with not enough relationship context toward their insta-love connection.  There are other peripheral dialogue characters that keep the story spicy in their debauchery with Serafino Profumo (“Escape from Hell”) who had that perfect thin mustache and bald and stout look that makes him a formidable slimeball as the Nazi Seargent, Patrizia Melega (“SS Camp:  Women’s Hell”) as Dr. Steiner’s sadistic lesbian colleague Dr. Renke, and a handful of German soldiers to be the plug to the female prisoner outlet, such as with Matilda Dall’Agilio, Agnes Kalpagos, and Almina De Sanzio.  One of the more details to gripe about the cast is that they’re all Italian bronze that dilutes the allusion of the nationalities their portraying. 

“S.S. Experiment Love Camp” comes with a smidgen of notoriety having been banned in select western European countries over its depiction of violence, especially at the hands of Nazis, and its controversial poster of a naked woman crucified upside.  To this day,  Garrone’s film is still shocking and abhorrent with the aforesaid but also the emotion confliction etched into characters like Dr. Steiner or Helmut who must make a choice, weighing the balance of self-preservation over the salvation and safety of others, and that’s what really drives this nazisploitation to have tremendous impact in an absurdist plot of colonel cajones.  Garrone favors a more realistic approach to the tortures and horrors of a Nazi concentration camp by including close reenactments to their torture methods and Garrone also lingers ever so uncomfortably on the complete discard of corpses into the oven without any dialogue, expression on any faces, and even adds a surrealist glance into the oven of the bodies moving, in an artful dance way, when the flames are ignited.  There’s also the given, often gratuitous nudity that accompanies most nazisploitation films and while nudity usually arouses, stimulation stalls under the barbarism that’s present in the air, the context of which the sex acts are being conducted for, and the outcome of ghastly blood and sinew that follows to the end of the mortal coil.  There’s sensuality between lovers and transactions between prostitution and paying customers but even those innocuous instances rapid degrade into unnerving anticipation. 

88 Films’ new 2-disc, dual format 4K UHD Blu-ray and Standard Blu-ray set is a marvel of physical media engineering.  The 4K UHD is HVEC encoded and presented in Dolby Vision HDR10, 2160p ultra high-definition, and stored on a BD100 while the Standard Blu-ray is AVC encoded with a 1080p resolution on a BD50, both brand new 4K remastered transfers stem from the original negatives and displayed in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Between the two formats, there’s identical visuals to the naked eye but the 4K UHD does provide a slightly sharper image that has more an immersive pop when comparing the two formats side-by-side.  Colors are rich with a complete hue saturation that isn’t present in previous, more muted DVD or other Blu-ray editions.  Darker scenes have an intention rough quality about them as well as the concrete and unpigmented concentration camp as intended by director Sergio Carrone to put forth as much realism as possible.  No identifiable issues with compression as the picture quality looks clean through-and-through with blacks retaining an inky bide, grading remains consistent and stable, and the minutiae of fabric and skin color doesn’t contest with any ambiguity as Nazi uniforms distill a gray cotton-wool blend, you can also touch the little fuzzies on their garb, and the stubble and sweat greatly show the length of detail on strained and tense faces during torture or combat scenes.  The formats both have the same audio mixes:  an ADR English 2.0 LPCM and an ADR Italian 2.0 LPCM.  The uncompressed audio brings an unfiltered and considerate quality to the front channels with clean and clear dialogue under a diminutive amount of interference and an ambience track that puts its best foot forward, or rather the front, with distinct, sundry range of electronic voltage, machine gun fire, and the surgical slippery stickiness of organs being handled.  The new translated English subtitles are paced well and have no grammatical or misspelling issues.  Special features include a feature tandem audio commentary with Italian film experts Eugenio Ercolani and Nanni Cobretti.  Plus, Italian audio only interviews subtitled in English, including an interview with the late director Sergio Garrone Sadistically Yours, Sergio G., an interview with music historian Pierpaolo de Sanctis SSadist Sound, an interview with editor Eugenio Alabiso The Alibiso Dynasty (a back cover misspelling error perhaps?), an interview with cinematographer Maurizio Centini Framing Exploitation.  The special features conclude with the Italian title credits for the opening and closing of the film and the original Italian trailer.  88 Films and Joel Robison bring a newly illustrated, censored and uncensored cover art with the censored version on the rigid dual-sided slipcover that’s crazily detailed in all its tempestuous glory with the backside depicting the original poster art of a reverse crucified naked woman, both images are impressed with a pop-pulp coloring and chrome effect. The uncensored version lies within the plastic slip of the black 4K Amaray with a reverse side depicting also the original cover in its more traditional coloring of the horrendous and country-banning portrayal.  Inserted on the left interior is an uncensored illustrative cover, of the original poster art, atop of a 11-page English essay from Tim Murray entitled “Nazisploitation, Punks, and The Nasties…”  The Not rated, 95-minute film is region free for global player use. 

Last Rites: If nazisploitation or Eurosleaze just isn’t what tickles your movie mania, any cinephile can appreciate the pristine transfer, the raw and uncompressed audio, and its physical accoutrements that rise “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” into a must-have release.

“S.S. Experiment Love Camp” 4K and Blu-ray is Ripe for the Taking!

EVIL Versus EVIL to the Death! “Mad Foxes” reviewed! (Cauldron Films / Limited Edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Mad Foxes” LE 4K UHD and Blu-ray Still Available to Get Before X-Max!

Playboy Hal drives fast cars and enjoys a good time.  While driving his girlfriend out for a night on the town, a road rage run-in with a Nazi biker gang leaves one of biker’s dead and Hal continues on his way to the nightclub for bubbly and music.  The bikers track him down, beating Hal to a pulp and raping his date as the night ends.  Not to roll over and be passive take to insult, Hal recruit’s a friend’s dojo class for an all-out brawl during the outside funeral ceremony for the biker’s fallen comrade, taking violence to the extreme by castrating the gang leader.  In retaliation, the entire dojo class is gunned down in a vengeful massacre days later.  Hal and the biker gang continue their back-and-forth as they embark on a short-term blood feud aimed to annihilate each other’s lives, spilling violence beyond friends and into family ties without mercy. 

A tale of perpetual revenge and exploitation from Spain, “Mad Foxes” takes one-upping to a whole new grotesque level.  After production manager Paul Grau worked on the tantalizing pictures “Secrets of the French Maid,” “Caged Women,” and “The Amorous Sisters” and before helming the comedic sexploitation “Six Swedish Girls in the Alps,” the Nordic born filmmaker debuted with tit-for-tat terror in the streets film cowritten between Grau and softcore, erotic film producers Hans R. Walthard (“Six Swedes in Paradise”) and Jaime Jesús Balcázar (“The Couple’s Sexual World”), leaving no surprise to the shocking and provocative nature of this Euro-nasty that castrates Nazi bikers, shotguns old ladies in wheelchairs, and blows up entire apartment buildings all in the name of spite.  Erwin C. Dietrich and Hans R. Walthard serve as producer and executive producer under the production collaboration of Jaime Jesús Balcázar’s  Balcázar Producciones Cinematográficas and Reflection Film.

A biker gang revenge story sounds right up there with “Death Wish” starring Charles Bronson, but instead of Bronson’s character going up against the impossible odds by way of an organized and self-controlled planning, executing, and removing the threat for good, “Mad Foxes” strikes impulsively while the iron is hot with such ferocity it’ll make your head spin right off the neck.  José Gras (“Hell of the Living Dead,” “Conquest”) envelopes himself to the solo side as Hal in contra the larger Neo-Nazi biker gang.  Hal’s a bit of a philanderer though it’s not entirely explicit but his raped date Babsy (Andrea Albani aka Laly Espinet, “The Hot Girl Juliet”) is a quickly and inexplicably out of the picture before he picks up free-spirited nomad Silvia (Laura Premic) and, by then, Hal seemingly doesn’t have any other care in the world though the aforesaid date Babsy, or perhaps it was his young girlfriend, was raped, and his good friend’s entire dojo, plus said friend (Paul Grau), are massacred in an open fire execution of bullets after they wipe the floor with the Neo-Nazis in a karate skirmish that ends in the gang leader being gratuitously castrated.  Having already cross paths with the gang at least four times, Hal hops in his fast car and drives to the countryside to get away from it all, picking up Silvia on the way, but he inadvertently leads the ruthless camo and leather-cladded gang, led by character played by Peter Saunders and Eric Falk (“Blue Rita,” “Ilsa:  The Wicked Warden”), to his wealthy, elderly, and impaired parents and their house servants.  From there you can imagine the bloodshed that quickly spirals into payback but all throughout the retaliatory strikes, one begins to question who the actually is the good guy in all of this because Hal actually initially ran one of the biker’s off the ran and to his death, driving away with speed and a serene sense of no remorse or concern.  Does Hal bring an ill-fated war upon himself?  One could argue a case for it.  “Mad Foxes” rounds out with Helmi Sigg, Brian Billings, Garry Membrini, Ana Roca, Hank Sutter, Iren Semmling, Hans R. Walthard, Esther Studer and Guillermo Balcazar.

“Mad Foxes” is a gratuitous showcase of trashy Euro cinema, the grindhouse champagne of Spanish sleaze, and has little worth toward elevated commentary or technical grandeur.  Yet, within our miniscule cinema-thirsty molecules and riding along our less trodden synapse highways, a spark of interest can’t keep our eyes off the lurid lunacy that’s unfolding before us.  Paul Grau has invested, produced, and released an entertaining indelicate that won’t bore, won’t tire, and won’t be a total waste of time in its eye-for-an-eye format.  Does one man’s need for revenge need to make self-preservation sense?  No.  Does a bike gang have the wherewithal to track down one man from city-to-rural without breaking a sweat?  No.  One aspect of the story that holds relatable consistency through the years, decades, or even millennia is that violence remains a universal truth, and “Mad Foxes” has plenty of teeth to tout when an act of pettiness turns into the next World War for one man and a biker gang.  The story is no “Death Wish” or “Death Sentence” but it does remove rationality from the shackles of a rancorous reality and plops viewers into the throes of an odd quarrel that won’t seemingly end until the very last standing have turned vertical, and all signs of life has ceased.  Hal’s no rogue ex-cop or former elite marine, just a regular playboy with friends in karate places and has a stubborn will to take on the gang singlehandedly on their own sordid turf.  Grau’s unabashed violence never stumbles or wanes to be implied with the Switzerland director helming a Spanish produce movie that churns out Italian-like shock with the closeup carnage and the cynical nature of a fatalistic bout. 

Cauldron Films proudly presents “Mad Foxes” Ultra High-Definition debut to the world featuring a new 4K restoration with Dolby Vision HDR color grading on an HVEC encoded BD66 with 2164p.  This limited-edition 2-disc set also includes a standard Blu-ray presentation that’s AVC encoded on a BD50 with a 1080p resolution.  The Dolby Vision HDR 10 offers extensive and immense saturation that’s balanced, stable, and more vibrant in it’s support of a wider pixel range.  Without compromising the story’s gritty nature with an unflexed amount of detail, textures retain their respective fabric types from the sheen of Hal’s silveresque bomber jacket to the taut leather of the neo-Nazi bikers.  The skin tones appear organic with a surface appeal that denotes and defines body hair, wrinkles, and other skin imperfections, more notably in close ups.  Focal depth does not completely wash out objects or landscapes with careful delineating a sandy beach and wavy ocean with distinction while the cityscape has the light and tone range in clarity of the object.  Only the UHD was covered for the image review, but the Blu-ray pulls from the same 4K restoration that I suspect has most of the same results but with a lesser pixel count in the quality that may be not as perceptible.  Both formats include an English DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio, a DTS-HD 2.0 mono, and a Spanish DTS-HD 2.0 mono mix.  All include optional English subtitles in, what I consider horrendous, ADR mixing.  Dialogue has clarity and is clean throughout, but the voice acting is just beyond reproach with drab inflection to express the right emotion during the scene, its all fairly monotonic and automaton deliveries through the asynchronous matching of voice and mouth.  With no innate recording during filming, the milieu sounds are limited to the immediate action of post-production kick and punch skirmishes, a volley of gunshots, car and motorcycle engines, and murderous snikts of blade strikes.  This, in turn, limits and relegates the surround sound channels to mostly the front with only a flutter of immersive quality, mostly with the revving car engines and the occasional gunfire.  Special features on the UHD only include the commentary by film critics Nanni Cobretti and Merlyn Roberts.  The commentary is also on the standard Blu-ray along with additional content in The Untold Story of Robert O’Neal:  a near feature-length interview with leading man José Gras discussing his career in Europe, Erwin and the Foxes offers interviews with producer Erwin C. Dietrich and actors Eric Falk and Helmi Sigg discussing their roles and the production, an additional interview Mad Eric has a second interview with actor Eric Falk, and Troy Howarth provides a video essay with stills and video snippets in Nazi Fox Bikers Must Die.  The special features round out with an image gallery and a feature trailer.  The curated packaging comes in a rigid slipbox with new compositional artwork by Justin Coffee.  Inside, is a clear Amaray Blu-ray case that display same primary artwork and is accompanied with an adjacent folded mini poster, also of Coffee’s art.  The UHD is region free and the Blu-ray is region A for playback as both films carry an unrated designation and have na 80-minute runtime in their widescreen, 1.85:1 aspect ratio, presentation. 

Last Rites: Revenge films are often formulaic but “Mad Foxes” is no ordinary payback thriller that continues to the hit back well into last man standing. The new Cauldron Films’ limited-edition boxset pushes the media technology to max superiority sure to squash any rival, unlike Paul Grau’s ceaseless chaos.

“Mad Foxes” LE 4K UHD and Blu-ray Still Available to Get Before X-Max!

You, Me, and EVIL Makes Three on “The Island” reviewed! (Eureka Entertainment / Special Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Island” from Eureka Entertainment and MVD Visual! Order Here!

Geography teacher Mr. Cheung faith in his student’s studies lacks encourage and their grades likely won’t improve.  He decides to take his class on a field trip to an isolated island he once visited more than a decade ago as a young man.  With the intended purpose of relaxation, Mr. Cheung refuses his students of mentioning any schoolwork and studies to try and enjoy the coasting waters and the native nature the island has to offer.  However, there’s more than just animals and plants inhabiting the island as a family of three eccentric brothers welcome them with strange behavior and creepy vibes.  When the younger brother selects one of the student girls as his bride to carrier on their lineage, the once ideal getaway traps Mr. Cheung and his students without a way of escaping the irrational whims and delusions of the three brothers.  With a retrieval boat still a day out, the cornered teacher must keep his party alive at all costs. 

Considered Hong Kong’s answer or version of the backwoods pursuers of cutoff society people, 1985’s “The Island” secludes normal kids and their acquiescent teacher on an island where inbreeding has corrupted the copies of three brothers who’ve recently interred their adamant mother to rest and who’ve been searching for mainland women suitable to be the unsterile youngest’s wife.  Leung Po-Chi, or Po-Chih Leong, director behind “He Lives By Night” and “Hong Kong 1941,” produces a Jekyll-and-Hyde contrasting tale that’s sad and bleak to the core with a script not pinpointed to one particular writer but rather to a creative team within the production company D & B Films, aimed to capitalize on the western grim nature of the deranged and callous upon the unsuspecting and innocent seen in such exploitation and other B-pictures as Hong Kong shifts from the longstanding yet now waning Kung-Fu pictures.  Dickson Poon, Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, and John Sham, the founders of D & B Films, produce the film. 

John Sham may not be the ideal looking or sounding hero with a receiving hairline close to Three Stooges’ Larry Fine, thick, round spectacles, and about as average build of a middle-aged man as they come, but for “The Island” the ‘Yes! Madam” actor and D & B Films’s cofounder is suitable and ideal to be the pliantly, run-of-the-mill geography instructor looking to leave the woes of education behind him for a chance to revisit a place from his youth.  Unfortunately, Sham’s inadvertently the head of the snake as everyone remembers the exposed poisonous fangs threateningly elongated from with out the jowls underneath the reptilian beady and glowing eyes.  No one really remembers the slithering body unless there’s a warning rattle connected at the end.  That’s how the rest of the student body reproduces in trying to portray characters to care about but not really achieving the level of sympathy needed to rise about that film of understanding.  One of the more prominent kids is Phyllis, labeled the chunkier one by youngest aggressive, the snotty-simpleton Sam Fat (Billy Sau Yat Ching, “Scared Stiff”) and she’s targeted for Sam Fat’s procreation affections.  Played by Hoi-Lun Au, Phyllis has a working but tiffed relationship with Ronald (Ronald Young, “Sex and Zen III”) and see the untimely death of Ronald sends Phyllis into seeing red, being a formidable survival combatant against the remaining Fat brothers Tai (Lung Chan, “Encounter of the Spooky Kind”) and Yee (Jing Chen, “Riki-Oh:  The Story of Ricky”).  Billy Sau Yat Ching, Lung Chan, and Jing Chen are distinctly diverse to the best possible way, and each deliver their own dish of crazy that gives “The Island” an inescapable locked inside a padded cell substructure all too familiar on its base componentry but alien enough to master a new diverging kind of terror.  Che Ching-Yuen, Chan Lap-Ban (“Hex After Hex”), Kitty Ngan Bo-Yan, Lisa Yeun Lai-Seung, and Timothy Zao (“Diary of the Serial Killer”) costar in the relatively fresh faced and unknown at the time casted film. 

Leung Po-Chi wets our whistle with an opening of an intense forced marriage ceremony involving shuddering sexual exploitation and personal space invasive mistreatment of a mainland young woman, a swimmer who swam her way into trouble with the island’s inhabitants – an elderly mother and her three disturbed sons with the goal of using her for breeding a new bloodline.  This ultimately sets up the tone for a bleaker story that tells of nihilist cruelty with a thematic division between the urban educated and the unsophisticated rural folk, in this case the rural Bumpkins are isolated island inhabitants, but then Leung switches gears with a lighthearted introduction of frolic scurrying teacher and his students as they spread amongst the island’s sandy beaches wearing brilliantly colored skin tight swimsuits and bask in the island’s natural beauty with a couple of them going tangent into their own personal secondary storylines.   Those subplots never vine out and upward to flower fully but there’s enough stem and leafing groundwork between the good old gay times and a few individual internal affairs to setup sympathy for at least a select few as the relationship between visitors and residents quickly sours with Sam-Fat’s eyes growing bigger and bigger and his drool becoming slobbery and slobbery for Phyllis.  There’s not a ton of autonomy for the brothers who do their mother’s bidding long after she expires, committing themselves to the original plan of marrying off Sam-Fat in a show of take and force that robs Mr. Chueng’s dual purpose plan of a good time of fun and nostalgia.  Leung acutely abrupt faces again, back to the cruel inklings from the beginning, that displays unsettling camera shots, dark and low-warmth lighting, and a ferocity that’s always been with the brothers now more evident and growing inside the remaining survives who must fight for each other as well as themselves.  Leung’s style feels very much like a blend between the quick editing and fast action of a martial arts production but has the lighting and chaos-laden horror of an Italian video nasty that does see and lingers onto blood spilled. 

“The Island’s” a terror-riddled getaway that has arrived onto a new Blu-ray from UK label Eureka Entertainment routed through North American distributor MVD Visual.  For the first time on the format outside of Asia and as part of the company’s Masters of Cinema series (#324), Eureka’s Special Edition release is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, BD50 and presented in the original widescreen aspect ratio 1.85:1.  With a brand new 2K restoration scan, “The Island” has impeccable quality measure that emerges the most minute details in every frame.  Skin tones have inarguable organic quality and a true-to-form reactionary sweat-gleam look induced when the chase is on.  The textures pop through in garb, foliage, and in dilapidated structure that gives certain discernibility and depth of object.  The original print has virtually no wear or tear as well as any aging problems, appearing to be a fresh off the reel transfer with natural appeasing grain.  The original Cantonese mono track is the only track available and is really the only mix we could expect and receive without a remastering, but, in all fairness, the mono works well enough to satisfy dialogue, ambient, and soundtrack integrity in its limited fidelity box  Dialogue is clean and clear on the encoding with no damage or other verbal obstructions but the modulation favors the antiquate characteristics of the era and the paralleling ADR offers little synchronous value, both to not fault of Eureka.  The optional, newly translated English subtitles by Ken Zhang pace well and are in flawless transcription.  The special edition is encoded with a new commentary with East Asian film expert Frank Djeng, a second new commentary by genre connoisseurs Mike Leeder and Arne Venema, a 2023 interview with the director Po-Chih Leong Surviving the Shoot, East Asian film expert Tony Rayns provides an appreciation video essay Tony Rayns on “The Island,” and the film’s trailer.  The limited-edition set comes with a red and yellow pastel colored O-card slipcover with new beaitfully illustrated artwork by horror graphic artist Ilan Sheady, whose supplied extreme and gory “Terrifier” franchise artwork to European media books, and delivers “The Island” a warm glaze of trouble-in-paradise, capturing the essence of what to expect from the story.  Original poster art graces the clear Amaray façade with a sepia image of John Sham from the opening scenes on the reverse side.  The limited set also includes a 19-page color booklet containing photos of “The Island” as well as other Leong productions, cast and crew credits, To Genre and Back:  The Cinema of Po-Chih Leong program notes by Roger Garcia for a strand celebrating Po-Chih Leong at the 2023 Far East Film Festival, an interview with the director conducted by Roger Garcia All Within the Same Film:  An Interview with Po-Chih Leong, and bring up the booklet’s rear are viewing notes and release credits.  The not rated feature has a runtime of 93 minutes and is region A/B locked for playback.

Last Rites: Director Po-Chih Leong’s trip to “The Island” is beyond bleak in social commentary and in of dire situation of nothing but pure innocence being destroyed by those left forgotten on the outskirts of mainlanders and of sanity. Eureka Entertainment’s Blu-ray honors “The Island” with praise upon praise for its slick high-definition picture, solid extras, and beautifully designed O-slipcase and design.

“The Island” from Eureka Entertainment and MVD Visual! Order Here!