Category Archives: Exploitation

This Spy’s Sex Serum Will Drive Men EVILLY Mad! “Blue Rita” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray – DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own “Blue Rita” on Blu-ray and DVD Combo Set Today!

Misandrist Blue Rita owns a high-end gentlemen’s cabaret.  Her renowned nightclub is also a front for espionage activities.  With the help of a Bergen, her handling, and her right-hand club manager Gina, she’s fed male targets that are affluent and powerful to kidnap and torture to extract sensitive intelligence information.  As a side hustle, a perk that comes with exploiting the naked and chained up men in her underground boxed cells, Blue Rita uses her chemical powers of seduction to sexually torture her captives into withdrawing their bank accounts dry.  When new girl Sun is hired in to not only titillate the nightclub client with her erotic Pippi Longstocking performances, the Blue Rita pledger works her first mission to reel in a wealthy, international boxer as the next target but Sun’s own conflictions collide with Rita’s sworn hate for all men, cracking the door open ajar just enough for Interpol and the Russian intelligence agencies to try and undermine Blue Rita’s confrontational spy operations. 

What’s renowned most about eurotrash filmmaker Jesus (Jess) Franco is his diverse contributions to the European and American movie-making markets.  Though most of his work is regarded as schlocky, beneath the sleaze and sordidness is a carefully calculating psychotronic director.  True, Franco may not be famously esteemed as, let’s say Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg, but his infamy should not be ignored amongst the present company of similar filmmakers like Tinto Brass or even Roman Polanski.  One of the late Franco’s few spy game theme films, “Blue Rita” is a hot house of sleaze and deceit, written by the director.  Filmed in Germany with German actors and actresses, the film went under the original title “Das Frauenhaus” translated as “The House of Women,” referring to the Blue Rita’s distaste for men and keeping an all-femme fatale, and mostly nude, workforce for her clandestine affairs.  Elite Film is the production company with Erwin C. Deitrich (“Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun,” “Swedish Nympho Slaves”) producing.

Much like Franco’s diverse dips into a variety of subgenres, “Blue Rita’s” cast is also quite an assorted lot in talent from sexploitation, horror, and the XXX industry.  The German production also garnered not just homefield advantage with German actors but also lured into the fold some of the French cast cuisine to spice up the affair.  Martine Fléty is one of those French foreigners, embodying the lead role of Blue Rita.  An adult actress of primarily the 70s, “Blue Rita” became Fléty only titular role but wasn’t her last Jess Franco feature, having continued her X-rated run with the director in “Elles Font Tout,” “I Burn All Over,” and “Claire.”  Either half or entirely naked for the entire narrative, Fléty’s comfortability bare-bottom relays power in her performance as an unwavering femme fatale agent that has men begging for sex and begging for their very lives.  Back then, the lines blurred between porn and sexploitation, often times melding into European coalescence hitting the same marquee theaters until it’s eventual separation.  Esther Moser (“Around the World in 80 Beds,” “Ilsa, The Wicked Warden”), Angela Ritschard (“Jack the Ripper,” “Bangkok Connection”), Vicky Mesmin (“Dancers for Tangier,” “Love Inferno”), Roman Huber (“Girls in the Night Traffic,” “Sex Swedish Girls in a Boarding School”), Olivier Mathot (“Diamonds of Kilimandjaro,” “French Erection”) and Pamela Stanford (“Sexy Sisters,” “Furies sexuelles”) rode, among other things, that fine line between grindhouse gauche and the taboo and certainly do well to incorporate both traits in Franco’s equally indeterminate genre film.  German actor and one of the principal leads Eric Falk (“Caged Women,” Secrets of a French Maid”) too dappled between crowds as a tall, dark, and chiseled chin but the actor chiefly sought limelight in sexploitation and as the haughty boxer Janosch Lassard, who karate chops at lightning speed, Falk adds to “Blue Rita’s” sexy-spy thriller.  Opposite the titular vixen is “Wicked Women’s” Dagmar Bürger who, like the rest of the cast, have crossed paths in a handful of exploitation exciters.  Bürger has perhaps the least built-up character Sun as she’s subtly folded into Blue Rite’s innermost circle without as much as a single ounce of doubt in her character, perhaps due in part to Bergen, Blue Rita’s handler, was once Sun’s direct-to, but Sun becomes the impetus key to everything falling apart at the seams and her role’s framework feels unsatisfactory just as her crumbling infatuation that’s more arbitrary than motivationally centric.

“Blue Rita” doesn’t necessarily broach as a film by Jess Franco whose typical undertakings are coated with sleazy gothic and historical context.  The 1979 feature, set around the extraction of international intelligence data by way of chemical approach, not terribly farfetched considering how the CIA once used LSD as a truth serum, is about as sordid and sexually graphic as any Jess Franco film gets but brings about a futuristic air laced with not just super cool spy gadgets and weaponry, to which there are really none to speak of as an example, there lies a more ultramodern verge upon unseen in much of the earlier, Spanish-born director’s work.  A futuristic holding pen with a capacity no bigger than an industrial-sized washing machine with a descending spiked barred ceiling, a hyper-aphrodisiac goo that makes men so horny it puts them on the edge of insanity and death, and the sleek, contemporary sex room with translucent furniture and stark white walls all in the routine hustle and bustle of Paris, France. “Blue Rita’s” contrarian patinas add to the film’s colorful charisma of avant-garde stripteases and a black operations nightclub, two of which combined play more into the “Austin Powers” funky 1970s ecosphere rather than in the high-powered espionage world of James Bond, the Roger Moore years.

For the first time on Blu-ray in the North American market, Full Moon Features puts out into the world a fully remastered, high-definition, 2-disc Blu-ray and DVD set. The AVC encoded, 1080p, BD25 entails picture perfect image quality that sharpen “Blue Rita” with greater resolution in comparison to previous DVD versions with full-bodied color, in setting tones and in body tones, and a contour-creating delineation that establishes depth and texture better, presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Not flawless mind you with soft spots rearing up every so often in the variety of interior and exterior, organically and inorganically lit scenes but there’s distinct contrast that delivers a recognizing lighting scheme that deepens the shadows in the right places without signs of an inadequate compression, especially on a single layer Blu-ray, and the Full Moon release retains natural grain with no DNR or other image enhancements. The release comes with two audio options, a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and a French Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, both of which have a horrendously acted burned-in English dub of not the original actors’ voices. Banal dub does take the quality of Franco’s dialogue down a good peg or two, which the original dub track was likely spoken in native German and some French judging by the cast list nationalities and where the bigger distribution market was for the planned; yet, though the dialogue is verbose and ploddingly straightforward to make do, losing some of the depth in the process, the quality is voluminous to ensure no mistake is made in underemphasizing the story’s outline when necessary. Ambience and other design markers hit more than well enough to sell the surroundings and the action to make those qualities palpable. English subtitles are option but not available on the setup; they will have to added in per your setup’s options. The Blu-ray extras come with a rare photo gallery, an archived interview with Chris Alexander with Peter Strickland discussing Franco circa 2013, and a vintage Jess Franco Trailer Reel. The DVD houses a different set of special features, separate from the Blu-ray’s, with Slave in the Women’s House interview with Eric’s Falk plus the DVD also offers Eurocine trailers. Those interested in supplementary content will be forced to pop in both discs to fully abreast of all bonus material. What’s eye-catching about the Full Moon Feature’s release is the erotic front cover on the cardboard O-slipcover, sleekly illustrated for your kink and perversive pleasure. The Blu-ray Amary inside has a NSFW story still of Dagmar Bürger walking down a spiral staircase in the buff. The same Dagmar Bürger image graces the DVD cover while a new illustrated luscious lips are pressed on the Blu-ray disc opposite side. There is no insert or booklet included. The region free release has a runtime of 78 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: The late Jess Franco may have a cache full of sleaze in his repertoire, but the director had a sense of panache and intensity that’s sorely underrated outside his fanbase. “Blue Rita” shows Franco’s range, stylistically and genre, and Full Moon’s sultry release is now high-definition gold in the color blue.

Own “Blue Rita” on Blu-ray and DVD Combo Set Today!

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sooie EVIL Sooie! “Pig Killer” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures & Darkstar Pictures / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

On This Farm There Was a “PIg Killer” now on Blu-ray!

Pig ranching landowner Robert “Willy” Pickton’s compulsions to pick up unprincipled women involved in prostitution and drugs and horrifically rape and murder them in the name of salvation stems from a severely abusive childhood with the father’s physically and mentally tormenting as well as a scornful mother sexually assaulting him.  Willy’s fanatical obsession threatens his drug-fueled, orgy-laden, rock-n-rolling Piggy’s Powwow party, a regular throwdown held at his ranch that has elicited a cease and desist letter from the city, but Willy pushes the party forward despite his brother David and their lawyer’s stern opposition.  Paralleling Willy’s story is Wendy Eastman who almost dies of an accidental drug overdose.  The incident stirs more the already contentious bad blood between her uncompromising stepmother and insecure father that leads to storm out and bump into Willy at a bar with the feeling of destiny bringing them together only to horrifically discover Willy’s unsavory secret the hard way. 

Part one of my reviews on serial killer biopics, headfirst we go into the psychotic world of Robert “Willy” Pickton, a pig former turned one of Canada’s most notorious serial rapists and killers living in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia.  While the extent of his butchery is vague at best and even in some ways evolving over the course of the last two decades, Pickton was able to be the filmic inspiration for the Chad Ferrin brazen biopic “Pig Killer.”  The “Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!” and “Someone’s Knocking at the Door” director wrote-and-helmed the interpretation of the egregiously presumed methods Pickton executed upon his female victims, mostly drug-addicted sex workers from the Eastside of Vancouver.  Once under the working ttile of “Pork Chop Rod,” Ferrin’s Crappy World Films, Girls and Corpses (of Robert Steven Rhine’s Girls and Corpses Magazine), and the post-production company Laurelwood Pictures served as co-productions with 50-year acting vet Robert Miano (“Malevolence,” “Giallo”) co-producing.

Even though this actor has portrayed serial killers in “Identity,” “The Hitcher II,” and “The Frighteners,” and even a deranged zealot in “Contact,” I would never have imagined in a million years “Starship Troopers” actor Jake Busey would have stepped into the sordid shoes of Willy Pickton in a Chad Ferrin production.  There’s something to be said for Jake Busey’s nerve in moving forward with eccentric and controversial and Willy Pickton is every fiber of those infamy traits and all that is in between.   Disheveled and dirty, maniacal and demented, prosthetic phalluses and dildo revolvers, pig masks and masturbation – Jake Busey doesn’t hold back on an exigent script important to Pickton’s state of mind.  Creepy and apathetic blanked by his deceased mother’s devout spitefulness and her incestuous sexual abuse, Busey secretes these irascible qualities held dormant in Pickton until the sleaze is sated and his patients runs out then it’s time to go hog wild, literally. Lew Temple (“Halloween,” “Devil’s Rejects”) plays Willy’s brother David who also has mother issues, but that avenue is not as profoundly travelled as Willy’s, both men see delusional visions of their mother’s tirades but definitely lopsided in disfavor of Willy and that leaves David left in the dust some to not have his mental faculties inspected.  Their flashback, foul-mouth, and Electral loving mother goes to an unabashed by former adult actress turned low-budget horror scream queen Ginger Lynn Allen (“Murdercise,” “31”) in what her scenes can only be described as uncut and uncomfortable lewdness as she bares it all at the ripe young age of 60 years old.  Another standout performance goes to Kate Patel as the debut actress, who in her own right is an Amazonian goodness buff beyond rebuff in black lace underwear, finds her voice as a young woman named Wendy Eastman in a complicated and dysfunctional household after the death of her mother, at odds with a wicked stepmother, and an insecure father with passive fortitude.  The only obstacle that can be rendered cleanly from her performance is how her character’s written to be drawn to Willy Pickton as because between age gaps and social differences, the two have nothing tangible to drawn them together mutually.  “Pig Killer” rounds out the cast with producer Robert Miano as Wendy Eastman’s father, Michael Paré (“Streets of Fire”) and producer Robert Rhine as Detectives Oppal and Schneer, Silvia Spross (“Parasites”) as Wendy’s disparaging stepmother, Jon Budinoff (“Someone’s Knocking at the Door”) as Wendy’s friend and drug source, Elina Madison (“Caged Lesbos A-Go-Go”) as a druggie sex worker, Bai Ling (“Exorcism at 60,000 Feet”) as also a druggie sex worker, and Kurt Bonzell (“Parasites”) as Willy’s disfigured and throat-cancer suffering friend Pat. 

Sensationalized for cinematic charm, the story behind the “Pig Killer” hits near the bullseye of all major bullet points from the escape of Wendy Eastman (actual person being Wendy Eistetter) and her coinciding her drug addiction to the wild gathers at the Pickton farm known as Piggy’s Powwow (actual title being Piggy Palace Good Times Society) where motorcycle gangs and prostitutes congregated for a drug-fueled good time.  If having viewed a few of Ferrin’s credits before, some of the unrestrained gore and shock will not come at a surprise.  The benumbing unconcern of misanthropy is poignant amongst Ferrin’s soft-pedaling of horror with a whimsical manner within a gritty film that doesn’t feel as gritty as it should be considering the subject and subject material.  Another mitigating moment, one that’s more counterproductive to the Pickton storyline, is the parallel melodramatics of Wendy Eastman that eventually rendezvous with the titular “Pig Killer” and become the rendition of Wendy Eistetter supposed personal backstory and escape from death.  Wendy’s overdose and family issues provide reason for her subsequent run away from home, but the extent of the backstory unnecessarily rivals Willy Pickton’s and the whole destiny meetup enlists some deeper rooted significance that isn’t neatly fleshed out, turning awkwardly impertinent that waters down their entanglement. 

Arriving onto a Breaking Glass Pictures and a Darkstar Pictures collab, “Pig Killer” oinks itself onto an AVC encoded, 1080p, High-definition Blu-ray.  Presented in an anamorphic widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio, “Pig Killer” under the warm glow and desert dry eye of cinematographer Jeff Billings (“The Deep Ones”) sundries the shot types in various techniques, such as closeup slow motion to be inside Willy’s moment of divination, to provide Ferrin’s feature with comely appeal even in the vilest of moments. Details are sharp and delineated nicely albeit the quick editing for intensity purposes and to float Willy in and out of psychosis. Coloring is more natural than anything else with a few gels scatter about to spruce up the vibrancy. The lossless English DTS-HD 5.1 master audio renders clear dialogue without any distortions or other audible disturbances; however, the strength of the dialogue favors an infirm conveyance to grasp a few exchanges, especially in the exterior. A maximal Gerard McMahon soundtrack scores the entire biopic from start to finish with a range of 80’s power ballads to 90’s pop rock; the 76-year-old not only scores the project but also has a concert performance role with his band G Tom Mac. Depth and range supplement greatly as sound design cater to the surrounding atmospheres, such as the echo vibrations under the Eastside bridge or the pig-pen oinks and frenzies when feeding bits and pieces of sex workers to his farmyard swine. English SDH is optionally available. Packed with extra content, supplements included are an interview intercut with scenes with Ginger Lynn as well as a few of her clothed adult industry spreads/modeling, a behind-the-scenes footage with Michael Paré, deleted and extended scenes, and Q&A from Cine Excess, the making-of the Pig Mask, a making-of the film entitled Canadian Bacon, an introduction to Spunky the Pig aka Willy’s pig, a screen test of Kate Patel in the role of Willy, which was considered before Jake Busey landed the role, “Pig Killer” auditions, and the trailer. The clear Blu-ray Amaray case sports a dark-and-dirty gilt image of a half-naked Kate Patel and a menacing pig-masked person holding a clever overhead. Reverse side contains a still image of the insides of Willy’s pigsty camper while the disc is pressed with the same menacing pig and clever but more prominent. The collab release has a region A playback, a runtime of 122 minutes, and is not rated. The back cover also lists a 2000 production date, conflicting with the 2023 release states elsewhere, but the 2000 date would be before Willy Pickton’s arrest and so that might be a misprint. Chad Ferrin and Jake Busey jointly tackling the monster that is brutal serial killer Willy Pickton with an inkling of lighter material coursing through its arteries, style secreting through the madness, and, of course, gore, the most important ingredient to the likes of a film entitled “Pig Killer.” 

On This Farm There Was a “PIg Killer” now on Blu-ray!

Playboy Discovers Vengeful EVIL’s Hidden BDSM Room A Little Too Snug. “Emanuelle’s Revenge” reviewed! (Cinephobia Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Emanuelle’s Revenge now on DVD from Cinephobia Releasing!

A wealthy businessman philanders his way through woman in a pursuit of satisfactory conquest.  The formidable challenge of bedding a hard-to-get woman arouses him and the chase is all that more thrilling and erotic.  His persistence and perfect man act pays off with up-and-coming model Francesca, but for the playboy, Francesca becomes another notch in his belt and quickly implodes Francesca’s romanticized relationship after a sexual tryst in the public eye.  A year later, he begins his surmounting quest again with Emanuelle, a renowned writer in a lesbian relationship.  The beautiful and darkly seductive woman catches his eye and the game begins as he uses every excuse to rendezvous with her despite the Emanuelle’s partner standoffish opposition, but as his tenacity appears to be paying off as she leads him on, awarding his constant charm with favorable kittenish returns, Emanuelle is actually leading him straight into the jaws of a deceitful plan.

Italian co-directors Monica Carpanese and Dario Germani are copiously inspired by the heyday of Italian Eurotrash cinema.  The actress-turned-debut director Carpanese has starred in a handful of erotic and horror thrillers of the prolific trashy filmmaker Bruno Mattei, such as “Dangerous Attraction” and “Madness,” while also having a principal performance in the 2022 sequel to Joe D’Amato’s notorious cannibalism film “Anthropophagus.  Her colleague Dario Germani is also the cinematographer for the spaced-out follow-up as well as establishing himself in the genre not as a filmmaker behind the lens but also a director with genre films under the belt with “Anthropophagus II,” a dissimilar lover’s anguish in “Lettera H,” and a snuff-slasher “The Slaughter.”  Carpanese and Germani’s next collaborating venture continues with another D’Amato influence mixed with the popular erotic series, and its tangent spinoffs, of Just Jaeckin’s “Emmanuelle” that has official and unofficial sequels spanning all through Europe with enticingly, titillating erotic stimuli and thrills.  Their explicit explication of the near 50-year-old sexy-laced franchise comes in the form of “Emanuelle’s Revenge.”  Dropping the second “m” along with the choice of similar story and title moves the film closer to being a remake of the Joe D’Amato “Emanuelle and Francoise,” aka “Emanuelle e Francoise” or “Emanuelle’s Revenge.”  Carpanese pens the Marco Gaudenzi and Pierpaolo Marcelli produced script under the production flags of Flat Parioli, Haley Pictures, and TNM Productions. 

“Emanuelle’s Revenge” is carried by a small, four-person principal cast and half that for peripheral players within a dual-timeline story that provides the same cat-and-mouse game but with different, yet shocking outcomes on both of them.  At the tip of the spear is playboy Leonardo played by Gianni Rosato.  Sporting his best bandholz beard and pony bun, Rosato’s aggressive entrepreneurship extends beyond the working stiff hours and into the extracurricular activities of hunting down and dominating the opposite sex to sate his kicks for kink.  As the primary principal, Rosata receives the screen time that digs further into Leonardo’s psyche and what’s revealed about Leonardo’s nature is obvious trouble with an aggressive flirtation to the point where his whole game is akin to a stalker, showing up unannounced where he knows his targeted woman will be, obtaining their property that he has no right to, and essentially sucking their face with really bellicose kisses that look like they hurt.  Okay, maybe the latter is more overzealousness on Rosata’s part but certainly adds to Leonardo’s alarming behavior to which women seem to be attracted to as if giving into the idea that women prefer bad boys.  Such as the case in the first narrative with Francesca, a promising model with a now sex-relationship smart attitude after a previous relationship went terribly wrong with revenge porn.  Played by Ilaria Loriga in her own credited role, the young actress isn’t quite the epitome of innocence but is understandably weary to fall in love again with the persistent Leonardo but with all the foretell warnings of a disaster in the making, Francesca’s penned as sorely naïve and having learned not one single lesson of her past relationship with promiscuous men.  A year later, in the second act’s story, Emanuelle strolls into the picture under the olive-skin and deep eyebrows of Beatric Schiaffino who bats enticing eyes of the titular character’s hidden agenda. Schiaffino’s crafts a demeaner starkly different against her previous year counterpart as Emanuelle’s coquettishness doesn’t refrain from the fact she’s already in a hot-and-heavy relationship and matching Leonardo’s hot-to-trot escapade with a come-hither that’s just out of his reach. If a rake beckons a game of amorous desire, then Emanuelle enacts a game of her own, one of a lure to lead the blind right into her spider’s web and Schiaffino properly tightropes pleasure and purpose to a somatosensory stimulation level. “Emanuelle’s Revenge” rounds out with Luca Avallone as Leonardo’s licentious friend and business understudy, Ilde Mauri as Emanuelle’s lesbian partner, and Miriam Dossena as Leonardo’s 20-something daughter who suddenly pops into play in the Emanuelle story.

Even though “Emanuelle and Francoise” has never traipsed across my eyes, from what I’ve read the Joe D’Amato and the coproduction of Monica Carpanese and Dario Germani share a lot in common, but the modern-day version of this sordid tale of lust and revenge sticks to the venereal veneer only whereas D’Amato engages a cannibalism and other ghastly horrors. “Emanuelle’s Revenge” seduces with melodramatics, frisky fantasies, and contemptible thralldom because of one man’s wandering libido, focusing tremendously on the building game of mostly pavalar rather than diving into shock value. The narrative begins with a suicide of Francesca, jumping half nude off a busy passenger vehicle bridge, and this segues into Leonardo’s assertive activity into Francesca’s life and so the tale’s non-linear format is already incredulously fated with tossed in opening scene just to grab attention. When following Leonardo’s uncomfortable pursuit, and uncomfortable henpeck kissing, of Francesca, the audience is just along for the ride up to the point of incident where they’re abruptly blue-balled by cut-to a year later without knowing why Francesca decided to throw in her life towel. The brain and our movie-watching experience eventually catchup with the fact everything will be explained at the climatic, but the format jars the assimilating process a tad. Throughout the narrative, there’s plenty of a T&A to go around as I believe nearly every actress with speaking lines drops at least her top, living up to the long history of “Emmanuelle’s,” or “Emanuelle’s” fleshy affluence and erotic elements. Considering the plot twist, Carpanese’s approach doesn’t compel any creativity into the mostly remade erotic-revenger and makes contact with formulaic properties that poison any kind of novel ideas that might have been indited in the inner story layers.

Arriving at number 8 on the spine for Cinephobia Releasing, “Emanuelle’s Revenge” is now on DVD, presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The MPEG-2 encoded DVD9 has a sleek look albeit tumbling through a bitrate spread of 5 to 7 Mbps. Some surface coloring suffuse, especially on skin where similar tones seep into the adjacent due to block boundary artifact, but the amount is very little and doesn’t sully much to render the picture an admixed wash in the lion’s share of soft lighting. Details are okay here with the stunning urban landscapes and more opened metropolitan venues, such as a rooftop party, opening up audiences to the chic levels of high society’s profanation of control and sex. The release offers two Italian language audio tracks: A Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and a 2.0 stereo. If asked, I would suggest less channels as they are redundant and useless and go for the 2.0 stereo as there’s not much frequential range in what is essentially a talking head film with an exposition driven narrative. Dialogue is clearly and cleanly stated overtop other audio layers with a powerfully boosted stock file soundtrack in parallel unison to the theatrics. English subtitles are optionally available and the error-free translations keep up with dialogue pacing. Only other Cinephobia Releasing film trailers, including “Brightwood,” “The Goldsmith,” “The Human Trap,” and “Amor Bandido,” are available bonus content. The black background front cover delineates deliciously Beatric Schiaffino as the titular Emanuelle sitting open robed, in thigh-high laced stockings, and on her wicker chair throne. This image reminds me of a mistake in this revealing scene with the very first image of Emanuelle sitting in the oversized back chair resembling closely the front cover image, but the subsequent scenes have her once flesh exposed chest to midriff covered up with censurable continuity. Inside the DVD Amary case lie no insert and the same provocative front cover Emanuelle image more centrally cropped down and blow up to emphasize the seductive siren. The not rated, 83-minute feature is limited to a region one playback. “Emanuelle’s Revenge” spices up the contemporary franchise with erotic entails, exorbitant egos, and illicit indecencies despite its sacrificing of pacing and organization for sleaze, skin, and a side dish of kink.


Emanuelle’s Revenge now on DVD from Cinephobia Releasing!

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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