Category Archives: foreign film

EVIL Inspires a New Concert. “Nightmare Symphony” reviewed! (Reel Gore Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Nightmare Symphony” is a Falsetto of Praise for Lucio Fulci.  Purchase the Blu-ray Below!

Unable to cope with another large box-office failure, the American indie horror director, Frank LaLoggia, is in the travails of a make-or-break psychological thriller overseas in Kosovo.  With an executive producer forcibly pulling LaLoggia’s creative marionette strings and the film’s screenwriter displeased and disapproving LaLoggia’s arm-twisted version of the story, the struggling director finds himself frantic and in the middle of a breakdown caught between a rock and a hard place with a postproduction from Hell.  Those around him, the conceited producer, the upset screenwriter, the pushy wannabe actor, and more, are being hunted down and brutally murdered by a masked killer and the imaginary line between Frank’s reality and paranoia grows in intensity coming down the wire of completing his career-saving, or rather lifesaving, film.

Long time since I’ve heard the name Frank LaLoggia enter the dark corners of my brain as it relates to the horror genre.  The director of 1981’s “Fear No Evil” and 1995’s “Mother” had seemingly vanished from the director’s chair spotlight and more-or-less, or rather more so than less so, vanished from the broader film industry altogether.  Then, Domiziano Cristopharo’s “Nightmare Symphony” suddenly drops on the doorstep and there’s Frank LaLoggia, starring in the lead role of an Italian horror production.  Domiziano, known from his entries of extreme horror, such as with “Red Krokodil,” “Doll Syndrome,” and “Xpiation,” engages LaLoggia to act in an unusual role, as himself, and turns away from the acuteness depths of uber-violence and acrid allegories to a toned down, more conventionally structured, narrative inspired by the Lucio Fulci psychological slasher “Nightmare Concert,” aka “A Cat in the Brain.” Co-directed with first time feature director Daniele Trani, who also edited and provided the cinematography, and penned by the original screenwriter of “A Cat in the Brain,” Antonio Tentori, “Nightmare Sympathy” plays into questioning reality, the external pressures that drive sanities, and weaves it with a meta thread and needle. The 2020 release is produced by Coulson Rutter (“Your Flesh, Your Curse”) and is an Italian film from Cristopharo’s The Enchanted Architect production company as well as companies Ulkûrzu (“Cold Ground”) and HH Kosova (“The Mad MacBeth”).

Much like “A Cat in the Brain,” Frank LaLoggia depicts his best Lucio Fulci representation as a horror filmmaker whose storyline production mirrors the individual slayings surrounding him. As a character, LaLoggia is not entirely aware of the murders as the peacock headed slasher’s string of sadism runs parallel to LaLoggia’s post-productional workload. Cristopharo pays a simultaneous tribute to not only Fulci but also LaLoggia with a built-in brief, off-plot moment of the editor, Isabella, a good friend and longtime partner of LaLoggia, running a reel of “Fear No Evil” to reminisce over his debut picture. Antonella Salvucci (“Dark Waves,” “The Torturer”) plays Isabella but also LaLoggia’s pseudo film lead actress Catherine in a dual role performance with the latter marking Salvucci’s topless kill scene that hits and sets up the giallo notes. Isabella denotes the director’s only real friend with everyone else, from the screenwriter to the executive producer, push their own self-gratifying wants onto the American filmmaker from all angles. A vulgar herd of personalities descend upon LaLoggia to exact their strong-willed ideas on how the film should appear and be marketed. From the screenwriter Antonio (Antonio Tentori, ‘Symphony in Blood Red”), the imposing desperate actor David (Halil Budakova, “Virus: Extreme Contamination”), to the uncultured and pushy executive producer Fernando Lola (Lumi Budakova) and his aspiring actress Debbie (Poison Rouge, “House of the Flesh Mannequins”), they all look to exploit LaLoggia’s modest career for their own benefit. Performances vary with a range of experience, and we receive more noticeably rigid recites and acts from the Kosovo cast in a clashing pattern with the Italy cast that has worked with Cristopharo previously. Ilmi Hajzeri (“Reaction Killers”), Pietro Cinieri, and Merita Budakova as a chain-smoking lady stalker that has glaring eyes for Frank LaLoggia.

While not necessarily thought of as a remake, “Nightmare Symphony” is certainly a re-envision of the Fulci’s “Cat in the Brain.” What Cristapharo and Trani don’t quite well connect on is connecting all the pieces of the psychotronic puzzle together into what is meant to be expressed. The giallo imagery is quite good, a praise of the golden era period in itself, with a mask and glove killer, the closeup of gratuitous violence, most of the score, and the stylistic visuals imparted with ominous shadow work, foggy and violent dream sequences, and with congruous cinematography and editing of earlier giallo. Plus, audiences are treated to not only the aforementioned Antonio Tentori, screenwriter of “Cat in the Brain,” but also have composer Fabio Frizzi score the opening title. Frizzi, who has orchestrated a score of Lucio Fulci films, such as “Zombie,” “The Beyond,” “Manhattan Baby,” and even “Cat in the Brain” just to select a few notable titles, adds that proverbial cherry on top to evoke Fulci directing “Nightmare Symphony” vicariously through Cristapharo and Trani. There are some questionable portions to reimagining’s take on the original work that are more the brand of the contemporary filmmakers. The presence of death metal prior to one of the kill moments puts the overall giallo at odds with itself in a fish out of water aspectual scene composition. Another out of place component are the external characters that are not directly involved with LaLoggia’s peacock-head themed slasher; the ironical venatic of an animal hunting down people is the reversal of a Darwinism theory that instead of sexual selection, the beautiful and elegant peacock forgoes using grace to attract and aims to survive by natural selection and thus the killer kills to remain alive. However, the story and the directors never reach that summit of summation and with the oddball characters adrift from the core story – such as the stalking woman and the eager actor – “Nightmare Symphony” flounders at the revealing end with its severe case of blinding mental delirium.

With a cover art of an upside skull overfilled with film reels and unfurling celluloid through the soft tissue cavities, “Cat in the Brain” continues to be reflected in “Nightmare Symphony” up to the release’s physical attributes on the Reel Gore Releasing’s Blu-ray. Presented in on a AVC encoded BD25, with a high definition 1080p resolution, and in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, the Reel Gore Releasing espouses the Germany 8-Films’ Blu-ray transfer for a North American emanation, which might explain some of the complications with the bonus features that’ll I’ll cover in a bit. Situated in a low contrast and often set in a softer detail light, “Nightmare Symphony” doesn’t pop in any sense of term with a hazy air appearance and a muted color grading that goes against the giallo characteristics, especially when the clothing and set designs have the same desaturation or are colors inherent of low light intensity. Despite appearing like a slightly degraded transfer on a lower BD storage format, compression issues are slim-to-none with artefacts, banding, or blocking and this results in no tampering edge enhancements or digital noise reduction. The release comes with three audio options: A German DTS-HD 5.1, German DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio and an English and Italian DTS-HD Stereo 2.0 all of which are Master Audio. The German audio tracks are a dub from the 8-Film Blu-ray and the 5.1 offers an amplified dynamics of the eclectic soundtrack and limited environment ambience. Dialogue remains outside the dynamics on a monotone course but is clean and clear with good mic placement and a neat, fidelity fine, digital recording. The German dub has a distinct detachment from the video because of its own layer environment, sounding a little sterile than the natural English or Italian, but works well enough as expected with the supplement multi-channel surround sound. English SDH and German subtitles are optional. Bonus contents feature a behind-the-scenes which is entirely just a blooper reel, an English language interview with co-director Domiziano Cristopharo whose secondary language is English, the original soundtrack playlist, and the teaser and theatrical trailer. I mentioned an 8-Films’ transfer complication with the bonus content because there’s is also an interview with Italian screenwriter Antonio Tentori that’s only in German dubbed and subtitled with no option for English subtitles or dub. When you insert “Nightmare Symphony” into your player, an introductory option displays to either pick German or English and I considered this to be the issue for the German only interview with Tentori; however, that is not the case as both country options are encoded in German for the interview, so at the beginning option display, I would recommend the German selection because the setup will have contain all audio options for the feature whereas the English selection will only contain the English 2.0. Reel Gore Releasing’s Blu-ray comes housed in a red snapper case, the same as the company’s release of “Maniac Driver,” and has a less tributing reversible cover art with more revealing and illustrated aspects of the narrative. The release is region free, unrated, and has a runtime of 78 minutes. Another little fun fact about the release is the incorrect spelling of the director’s name on the back cover that credits his surname as Christopharo instead of Cristopharo. Influenced by Lucio Fulci beyond a shadow of a doubt, “Nightmare Symphony” proffers the Horror Maestro’s less notable credit with a companion piece that punctuates both films love for the giallo genre, love for the violence, and love for the morbidly unhinged human condition.

“Nightmare Symphony” is a Falsetto of Praise for Lucio Fulci.  Purchase the Blu-ray Below!

EVIL Embarks with Cons and Cops in “Project Wolf Hunting” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Project Wolf Hunting” on Blu-ray and Available for Purchase by Clicking the Cover Art!

After a disastrous Philippines-to-Korea extradition processing of criminals that resulted in an airport suicidal bombing with multiple casualties, the procedure to transport dangerous criminals moves to a decommissioned Cargo ship known as the Frontier Titan.  The 3-day journey is expected to be a safer option to extradite Korea’s most wanted as highly trained and experienced detective accompany the criminals as armed escorts.  Every contingent has been covered except for what lies in the belly of the cargo ship.  Hidden in the bowel, underneath the engine room, a top secret biological weapon, involving an ancient wartime prisoner’s chromosomes commingled with the agility, strength, and prowess of a wolf, being transported across the sea.  When the criminals plan an elaborate seizing of the ship, the monstrous hybrid man known as Alpha is also inadvertently released and kills his caretakers, leaving him free to roam the ship and engage the good and bad guys alike as fair game to hunt.

Only a handful of times in my life have I’ve seen a film with so much blood.  “Project Wolf Hunting” is one of the bloodiest, most violent, Korean films to come out of 2022.  The hybrid action-horror with a genetically hybrid superhuman is the latest effort from writer-director Hongsun Kim, sticking with the horror genre after his positive reviewed 2019 evil spirit family drama “Byeonshin.”  The title, in reference to the operation of transporting Alpha through to East China Sea, into the Korean Strait, and dock at Busan, is the international marketing title for the Korean name “Neugdaesanyang” and is a film I can confidently and merely describe as “Predator” meets “Con Air” on a cargo ship.  Seasoned civic officers of the law, hardened criminals with sordid pasts, a special op consisted of superhuman soldiers are up against the odds to stop the Alpha, the original specimen.  Film between the ports of Busan, Korea and Manilla, Philippines, “Project Wolf Hunting” is the Korean venture production from Content G with Gu Seaon-mok serving as producer and is presented theatrical by The Contents On in association with CJ CGV.

What’s interesting about Korean cinema is what you know what you’re getting with the characters who are greatly upfront, unpretentious, and full of attitude.  There are not a lot of false veneers with the cast of characters, something that can be said with most films spawned out from the Asia Pacific industry.  I might dangerously be overgeneralizing but from my viewings and writeups, but I’m fairly locked into my statement with confidence as “Project Wolf Hunting” paints a stark contrast of who’s who from the beginning without casting any doubt or even suspicion. Even with the some of the ship’s crew, Hongsun Kim clearly delineates their allegiances despite not coming right out with it initially and the cast immerse themselves into the appointed role with well-designed idiosyncrasies that seeing them out of character can be a bit of shock. Park Jong-doo perhaps is the most archetypical with Seo In-Guk, in his first feature performance, becoming the despot amongst the thieves. Guk transforms his appearance with full body tattoos to denote mafioso status and even takes that extra step with a few naked from the rear scenes to establish a conspicuous nonchalance for what anyone else has to think, say, or do. When many of the insurrectionary inmates take the ship, Jong-doo’s counterpart, Lee Do-il, isn’t so easily intimidated but is reserved and quiet in his strong posture. Dong-Yoon Jang offers a less violent option only to bide time for what’s ahead of them, the Alpha. Gwi-hwa Choi, who been hot right now in Korean cinema with having roles in “Train to Busan” and “The Wailing,” is the extraordinary and mysterious monster prowling to kill every single person on and off the ship’s manifest. With Alpha’s eyes stapled shut, maggots feeding off the festering tissue inside his mouth, and has a near spartan approach to liquidating, Choi completely transforms into the silent hunter with unstoppable and wild violent mode, but Alpha is only a name and the implicit meaning of the name does change hands throughout the course of the film that makes “Project Wolf Hunting” all that more the interesting. Female principals are not meek, weak, or helpless in his all-out brawl in a confined space with Jung So-Min as an eager cop with acumen and Jang Young-Nam as the dangerously uncouth companion to one of the mafia’s leadership and the fact that none of them are a love interest, or become even remotely involved romantically, sexually, or even innocently, speaks volumes on “Project Wolf Hunt’s” no room for romance rampage. The large cast lends to a high body and the acting pool rounds out with Dong-il Sung (“Byeonshin”), Park Ho-San (“The Call”), Chang-Seok Ko (“Lady Vengeance”), Lee Sung-wook (“Spiritwalker”), Jung Moon-sung (“The Cursed”), and Son Jong-hak (“Thirst”).

There’s so much blood. That statement was worth repeating. “Project Wolf Hunt” is reminiscent of the Japanese samurai films of yore or the absurd comedy gore film with geyser sprays of red with every blow.  Literally, tons of fake blood was used to coat the sets crimson in an impressive feat of movie magic carnage.  I’m also doubly impressed how the special effects team was able to achieve multiple sprays from out of the nostril cavities in what might seems small, insignificant, and simple looks amazingly palpable on screen that stopping to think about the difficulty in how that effect can be accomplished can be easily overlooked.  The blood sprays are only a fraction of the wide variety of violence and gore put on display and we’re treated to an abundance of slaughter and a superb, choreographed melee in each and every tightly confined skirmish that makes “Project Wolf Hunting” captivatingly adrenalized.  Production design creates the illusion of a cargo ship without question and the visuals, though soft in some scenes, sell the nautical voyage through clear skies and a storm rough patch.  Much of a part of “Project Wolf Hunting’s” success is cinematographer Ju-Hwan Yun’s framing.  The example I like to use is the post-elevator attack when the hoisting cord snaps that sends the lift plummeting down the chute with Alpha inside.  Yun then sends the shot from the top down the chute to the exposed opening of a mangled lift to see Alpha turn his eye-stapled face upward toward the narrowly escaping prey.  The shot gets the heart pumping and relays, in one sequence, the unkillable nature of Alpha.  If “Project Wolf Hunting” isn’t already thrilling enough with the brimming, cutthroat tensions spilling onto every deck between the police detectives and the criminals in their custody, the evolutionary plot twist that welds the age-old divide between the two frictions is a bloodbath you don’t see coming and one you’ll enjoy experiencing. 

Action, horror, human experimentations, and with a complemental nod to the hard-hitting Asian cop films of 90’s, “Project Wolf Hunting” has teeth and stamina for 123 minutes of knockaround bloodshed. A winning Blu-ray release for Well Go USA Entertainment, the film is presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. The AVC encoded BD50 offers a topnotch 1080p resolution that translates well to the big screen with granular detail in the interior and exterior of the cargo ship set and displays the stylistic choice of a warm color scheme consisting of prominently yellows and greens, providing less shadowy, higher contrast areas to suggest there is nowhere survivors can hide. Though quite a bit of CGI throughout the film, the end result doesn’t appear half bad with more fleshed out textures built into the renders to make them less gummy-looking. The release offers four audio options – a Korean and dub English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and a Korean and dub English 2.0 stereo. Obviously, you receive more bang for your buck with the amped up surround sound option and don’t have to contend with dubbing if you go the original Korean language route. A high velocity range sounds strong through the rear channels with gunshots, the ship’s indiscreet hum, and the overall ricochets, clinks, and skirmish shuffles submerge an enveloping blanket of directional sounds right in your ears. The Korean dialogue is clean, clear, and vociferous in Korean inflections. English subtitles are optional and available well synched and error-free. Like status quo with other Well Go USA Entertainment releases, bonus features are an ornately produced, one-sided interview vignettes with the cast and crew and of the behind-the-scenes making of the film as well as a making of Alpha which was more actor Gwi-hwa Choi’s excitement about this different kind of role per his usual. The trailer is also available in the bonus content. Physical features include a traditional Blu-ray snapper with latch with the grisly, dirty face of Alpha blended into a black background. The film is unrated and is coded region A for disc playback. Despite minor convoluted expounding, “Project Wolf Hunting” kept the attention at high alert with a high body count, an indomitable super soldier, and a cargo ship load of blood.

“Project Wolf Hunting” on Blu-ray and Available for Purchase by Clicking the Cover Art!

Sometimes, You Can Feel EVIL Tightening Around Your Throat. “Death Knot” reviewed! (Well Go USA / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Death Knot” Hangs Loose on Blu-ray! Purchase Your Copy Here!

Hari and his sister Eka receive the tragic news of their mother’s suicide.  They return to their rural childhood village home to attend her funeral and prepare arrangements for the family home, but the siblings are met with a cold shoulder as the locals have shunned their mother, fearing her as a black magic practitioner who made a pact with the Devil himself.  The suicide and the village distress illicit different responses in both children – Eka wants to put everything behind her and live her life in the city of Jakarta. While Hari drowns himself of guilt over his mother’s death as he hasn’t visited his mother in years and wants to cherish the time left of his mother’s house, despite the not so pleasant childhood memories of his mother’s descent into mental instability.  When a upcoming storm makes leaving the village impossible, in what the superstitious locals note as The Harvest to claim souls, Hari, Ek, and Eka’s husband, Aldi, are forced to stay the night and that’s when strange visions and odd behaviors evoke the presence malevolent entity, an ancient deity, to beleaguer Hari and Eka into submitting to its will.   

Not too many Indonesian horror films see the light of day, buried beneath the massive manufacturing machine from the West, such as North America and Europe, that churns out films about every 8 seconds, the same rate in which babies are born at in the U.S, but that doesn’t mean the country known for its idyllic 17,000 islands and Buddha temples doesn’t have a repertoire of horror. In fact, obscure cult celluloids like “Lady Terminator” and “Satan Slaves,” known to those with indie horror running through their veins like crack cocaine, are the exemplar of the scarcely noticed Indo-horror collective and now that modern technology provides streaming servies far and wide from every corner of the world and advances in filmmaking make accessibility and recording film considerably cheaper and easier to complete, getting exposure becomes greater to other titles mostly hidden gems from the rest of the narrowed focused general population. Point in case, Cornelio Sunny’s “Death Knot” debuts his occult thriller that incorporated the grimly prophesized myth known as the pulung gantung that speaks of a great, fiery meteor being a harbinger of suicide and in Indonesia, the most common suicide method is by gantung aka hanging. “Death Knot,” also known as “Tali Mati,” isn’t the only film based on the myth, but what separates this film from other myth-based works is that the pulung gantung is still relevant today with highly resolute belief amongst the underprivileged and poorer neighborhoods. Sunny co-wrote the script with Ike Klose and is produced by Ismail Basbeth under Sunny’s company banner Matta Cinema in association with Kathanika Entertainment, SRN, and Umbara Brothers.

To ensure his debut directorial goes without a hitch, Sunny slides into the lead role of Hari and how Sunny and Klose write the character counterintuitively to screenplay 101 by not building him up, providing background, or instill preconceived notions through the acts. Hari’s a clean slate from start to near finish from scene one that involves him waking out of a horrible dream about his mother after briefly texting his sister. Written to have no depth in existing or having interests in anything, Hari’s hyper-focus is his mother’s legacy and commorancy, leaving his current mundane left in Jakarta to worry about his decease mother he hasn’t seen or talk to in years. Sunny is swarthy handsome, strong in subdued stubbornness, and limits his range toward his character in being the nondescript nonbeliever of occultism that innately scares the dickens out the poor village people. Hari and sister Eka (model/actress Widika Sidmore, “May the Devil Take You Too”) toss crumbs of background about growing up with an absent father and a community abhorred mother but appear unruffled by a broken home and, for the most part, shrug much of that rich backstory from their tabled history. Sidmore does a better job bottling Eka’ fear and loathing of a place that dejects her existence as villagers shun them for their devil pact bloodline and, eventually, the ooze of unwantedness seeps out of her to the point of being an emotional mess. Only when her loveable and amenable goofball husband, Adi (Morgan Oey, “The Deadly Love Poetry”), suddenly grows an obstinate backbone and refuses to leave the village, acting strange with an uncomfortably warped smile on his face as he fixates his glare deep into the forest, does Eka’s emotions pour toward a direction and hone in on a purpose until she, herself, falls into the same possessed-like predicament that befits her more than Adi but would be two perfectly ear-to-ear, Chesire cat-grinning candidates for Parker Finn’s horror-hit, “Smile.” The entity that has dominion over them isn’t so subtle, but Oey and Sidmore’s performances are, in a good way, awkwardly creepy and perfectly executed. Oey’s mimicking of a twist on the Balinese dance Hari’s mother performed in the opening scene before her demise and with what looks to be Hari’s mother silhouette impelling the dance in the shadows is “Death Knot’s” eeriest moment that lands traditionalism and supernaturalism into a single scene of shadows and visitants.

“Death Knot” is a slow burn, dread building, culture integrating, ambitious debut feature from actor-turned-director Cornelio Sunny.  Performance driven with little-to-no special effects, the surrounding morose atmospherics of “Death Knot” relies on the cast and it’s portentous, jump scare score to deliver a palpable fear without a perceptible villain, keeping very much in tune with one of Indonesia’s notorious folklores.  The limited budget constrains Sunny to character exposition and pursuance of self-selling the concept of an entity inhabiting friends and family with only their God-given talents and appearances to construct ominous opposition.  Descriptively, the notion sounds monotonous in tone, substandard in achieving a certain level of jitters, and gridlocked from a story perspective, but Sunny and his counterparts are able to feed the idle monster with energetic enthusiasm that turns the notion on its head with menacing and foreboding results, amplifying to one of the story’s other themes of paralyzing guilt that affects Hari from moving forward in life because of that equivocal estrangement between him and his mother.  However, one of the biggest problems to come out of “Death Knot” is the ambiguously fated ending for Hari, surrounded by a 50-yard radio of melee weapon-holding villagers like he’s been suddenly dropped in the middle of the Resident Evil 4 video game.  Perhaps not making the connection more evident, Sunny and Klose do faintly paint the picture of social class tensions with big city Hari, Eka, and Adi being met with aversion by the lower-class, rural village who have a strong belief system in the supernatural but is not a major clash or even an apprised motif represented only by a few aloof moments.  I was also hoping to see the myth’s harbinger of death with a great fireball in the sky to signify the beginning of The Harvest, aka hangings to usurp soul energies to feed the devilish deity, but that didn’t happen considering the budget for limited-to-no visual effects. 

“Death Knot” has this somber quality in its characters who are dropped into an unwelcoming village on a dark and stormy night scenario that puts a very Plutonian stamp on what kind Hell-crafted mark an ancient, malevolent God has left on forgotten land.  Well Go USA Entertainment picks up and distributes the home video rights to Cornelio Sunny’s debut hair-raising feature with a Blu-ray release. Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the cinematography by Gunna Nimpuno captures the elemental beauty of rural Indonesia with rolling fields as far as the eye can see and the integrated towns built into hills becomes one seamless graft of spartan man living humbling on nature. Night shot continuity is Nimpuno’s weakest link in the arrangements of shots between the house at night and the forest at night. Outside the house is a natural pitch black with little lighting other than a green gel or another warm color in the house exterior but the forest scenes, every single one, are glazed with blue tint during day shooting to fabricate night sequences. The reproduction compression on this AVE encoded BD25 is rather good with little-to-no signs of banding, artefacts, or other lossy content issues. The Indonesian DTS-HD 5.0 Master Audio is digitally a solid track with a lamentably fine, back of the mind, sound design harmonized with an intense summitting score. There are also no issues with the digital tracks, any audio compression, and each track plays its role in sundered channels, creating an omnidirectional biodome that immerses you into the Sunny’s intimate family curse. English subtitles are option and are well-synched with grammatical accuracy. Aside from the opening previews of other Well Go USA titles, there are no other bonus features with this release. The physical features include the traditional Blu-ray latching snapper with a creepy enough illustrated cover art of a small smiling evil figure standing and surrounded by an engulfing forest. Inside is a leaf insert advertising other new Well Go USA distributed films. The film is not rated with a region A coded playback and has a runtime of 101-minutes. Cornelio Sunny first efforts don’t go unnoticed as “Death Knot” hooks with a mystery that slowly unravels the ugly truth of material myth and renders a stagnant guilt out of a powerfully, paralyzing combination of estrangement and loss.

“Death Knot” Hangs Loose on Blu-ray! Purchase Your Copy Here!

This Relationship is a Complicated EVIL! “Blood-Red Ox” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Purchase “Blood-Red Ox” on DVD home video!

Writer Amir and his boyfriend Amat, whom have a hot-and-cold, off-and-on relationship, travel down to Bolivia on behalf of Amir’s friend seeking an expose on protecting the local endangered rainforest from land developers.  Upon arriving and settling into Amir’s friend’s childhood home set on the outskirts of town, Amat begins to experience reoccurring vivid nightmares that used to plague him prior to meeting Amir.  Disorienting, blood-soaked, and with a vicious-looking therianthropic beast – half-ox and half-human, Amat slowly begins to lose memories and even the memory of Amir fades.  Amir struggles to reconnect with Amat who’s continues his spiraling decent into paranoia and also struggles with juggling timelines as events of the past and present intersect in a surreal pattern of irrepressible madness.

For someone like me who has married into a Bolivian family and culture, you would think I would have been exposed to the entire cache of Bolivian cinema that could utilize the Earth-centric culture, a rich yet tumultuous history, and the vast number of landscapes that stretch from the Andes Mountains to the lush Rainforests to the desert plateaus.  However, the Bolivian film industry is microscopically small, and I’ve only ever experienced two Bolivian produced films in my 10+ years of marriage and my 39+ years of living on this Earth.  Both from 2021, the first was Kiro Russo’s “El Gran Movimient” aka “The Great Movement” about the destructive city life and how an unprincipled young man is saved by connecting himself back to mother earth by way of a Brujo, a male witchcraft practitioner living disconnected from modern society and living off the land.  The second was this film we’re about to cover, “Blood-Red Ox,” that was written and directed by Rodrigo Bellott, co-written alongside Nate Atkins (“Sinister Savior”).  Bellott bounces between native Bolivia and New York, having graduated from Ithaca College, and regularly uses the two locations in a broader sense in his films.  Bellott is also a part of the queer community and reflects a queer theme in much of his repertoire, including “Blood-Red Ox” where the two central characters are gay men in a relationship.  “Blood-Red Ox” is a production of Narrative Engineer, presented by Media Luna New Films, and is produced by Bellott, Andrea Componovo, Rodrigo A. Orozco, Kaolin Bass, and Yasser Casal Moreno with Nate Akins and Bernardo Ratto serving as executive producers.

Lebanese American Mazin Akar stars in his breakout feature length film as journalist Amir whose been called to write a story about the threat of an oil company deforesting and disrupting one of Bolivia’s natural and beautiful preservations, the rainforest.  Akar is accompanied by producer Kaolin Bass in what would be Bass’s debut feature film as well, playing Amir’s complicated love interest Amat.  Akar and Bass make a handsome couple, natural in on screen affections, and there’s a fair amount passion, compassion, and cathartic emotions to understand not only their love for each other, but also their surface issues of trust.  Bass provides an engaging performance as lover moving backwards in time in regard to his relationship with Amir while Amir remains the constant, stuck in the now but disoriented by his consciousness of Amat’s seemingly erratic actions but not conscious of the settings and timeframes that change and only noticeably by the audience.  All the while, Amir is encountering Bolivian and New York-based characters, some strange to them, some with changing personas, and others not terrifyingly abstract, such as the ox-headed naked man huffing and puffing like an ox.  Side principals Amancaya (Andrea Camponovo, “The Shades”), Amaru (Vitorio Lema) and Amro (Julián Mercado) have a parallel story of their own that becomes shadowed by Amir and Amat’s, leaving the story imbalanced by its perhaps narrowed focus on the queer aspect that relates better to Bellott, which the director had mentioned that “Blood-Red Ox” is a personal story to him in other articles.  Performances are raw with intimate and bold love scenes as well as makeup heavy and continuity intense details that really impress from the actors that requires of them full or partial nudity and to be able to be in the mindset of a swirling narrative.  If you haven’t noticed by now, all the character names begin with A that’s either a fun little characteristic or a far more trouble clue about characters as the cast rounds with Miguel Michel, Ana Dominguez, Idalmis Garcia, Shawn Brown, Toto Vaca, and Mary Ellen Liepins.

Atmospheric, surrealistic, and elevated horror, Bellot’s “Blood-Red Ox” feels like a labyrinth of the mind that’s partly eco-horror with the motifs of a looming ox figure reoccurring in and out of reality and the backdrop of Tarija’s rainforest threatened by industrial outsiders.  In 2017, Tarija suffered a large-scale forest fire that resulted in 3 deaths. many injured, and severe loss of ecosystem crucial vegetation, a fact that was incorporated into the dialogue and becoming the very foundation for the story built around it with a subtle theme of dependency that translates to the Amir and Amat relationship and we can see how that is all folded together when the finale reveals the truth. Before then, the seemingly straightforward mystery narrative following a rocky-at-best same-sex couple deep diving into the South American jungle, surrounded by unfriendly, perhaps slightly appalled locals that are either wary about outsiders or, what’s typical of South American culture, troubled to see two men in a relationship because of the male-dominated society. Much of the reactions are indirect and ambiguous but there, a hidden jab against noticed only by those being pelted by side-eyed glances, disapproval gestures, or curled lips of disgust. Bellott doesn’t chiefly focus on this nagging undertone but rather takes the narrative off road onto rocky, perilous terrain that increasingly becomes abstract and is riddled with conundrums. Timelines cross over one another as we’re teleported seamlessly, effortlessly back and forth between upstate New York and the colonialized-esque villas and mountain country of Tarija, Boliva. Bellott deconstructs Amir and Amat’s relationship by keeping Amir constant in the current and Amat moving backwards in time, creating friction as well as non-linear disorder leading to something just isn’t right with the whole situation. “Blood-Red Ox” descends into a lurid state that works until Bellott’s envoi of explanation that splits the story unevenly and without sensical justification as the story becomes too wrapped up and complicated where a less is more philosophy would have perfectly sufficed.

Provocative and boundary-pushing independent home release film distributor, Breaking Glass Pictures, strikes a deal with Media Luna New Films to release “Blood-Red Ox” onto DVD.  Presented in an unmated 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the wall-to-wall image is hotly lit gel and tinted for most of the fever dreams and hallucinations with the ox-irritating color – a deep shade of red or otherwise known as oxblood red.  However, there are obvious compression issues with fanned out dithered banding on the primary color and on certain negative spaces.  The feature, shot in 2K on a RED camera, is housed on a DVD5 and while a quite few scenes appear unfazed with measured detail, a DVD 9 would have better suited to render the sizeable color use and enhanced the textures, such as a skin to which there is plenty of in the film.  With any digital recording, the transfer is free from any kind of deterioration, wear, age, and other miscellaneous plights.  The audio is track is a lossy Spanish/English Stereo 2.0.  For a dual channel audio output, the result is reasonable enough with the ancillary ambience and dialogue is clear and clean.  The English subtitles are synched well and flawless up until one spelling error late in third act.  There are no bonus features included with this release and there are no bonus scenes during or after the credits. The physical DVD comes in a standard snapper case with a composite of the two principal men embracing each other from one scene with a large, augmented ox head with glowing red eyes and smoke coming out from the side looming above. Locked in a region 1 code, the DVD runtime is 94 minutes and is not rated. “Blood-Red Ox” can be labeled many things – a mental health story, a queer story, an eco-activist story, an avant-garde psychological thriller story – but what the film really symbolizes is the constant day-to-day struggle, in the thick of surrounding horrors, to live a normal life.

“Blood-Red Ox” on DVD home video!

Never Tour Mistakenly into an EVIL Murder Bar! “La Petite Mort” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“La Petite Mort” is Orgasmically Gory and on Blu-ray!

Vacationing to Mallorca should have been a relaxing getaway for Simon, his blind girlfriend Nina, and their longtime friend, Dodo, but their flight layover in Frankfurt leaves down idle town to explore the city that’s only a mere two hours from home. Tension between them begin to bubble to the surface when uncertain emotional steps to take relationships to the next level arise and they become inadvertently scammed by a local grifter. Exhaustion sets in and forces them to take refuge in a local dive bar with a specialty for S&M play. The bar is actually a front for the Maison de la Petite Mort, an underground snuff house owned a sadistic woman named Maman who livestreams kink-murders and sells hapless victims to wealthy businessmen with whimsical and perverse deviancies. The flight to Mallorca will be indefinitely delayed as the three friends are now a part of the bloody basement decor awaiting the horrors before them.

“La Petite Mort,” translated from French as literally the little death, is also known as the post-orgasmic sensation, such as a weakness or loss of conscious, that serves as an analogy to death. The phrase is also the title of the 2009 torture-gore film written-and-directed by the German-born Marcel Walz more than a decade before the formation of his now Neon Noir production company. Walz, who later in his career went on to remake the Herschel Gordon Lewis 1963 film, “Blood Feast,” blossoms as a torture porn filmmaker as Walz’s directorial catalogue contains more blood than a blood bank and often stretches the subgenre range of plot machinations from cannibals to dark web to snuff. Made on a few thousand-dollar budget and shot in a real sex club in Mannheim, Germany, “La Petite Mort” touches upon all three plot devices to create a dungeon of splatter and sadism using elements of an unsolved true crime case of a couple gruesomely murdered in an underground murder house as the narrative base. Before Neon Noir, Walz and filmmaker Michael Effenberger, director of “Tortua,” formed Matador Films that became the company behind “La Petite Mort” with Thomas Buresch (“Unrated: The Movie”) and feature actor and director of photography, Andreas Pape (“Toxic Lullaby”) producing.

Films like “La Petite Mort” is a special breed not because of the torture and gore-porn element, which can be an acquired taste for consumers with dark thoughts, fantasies, and morbid curiosities (I fall into the latter category if you’re wondering), but rather the story caters to no singular principal lead nor does is the focus on an ensemble cast.  “La Petite Mort” transitions from one group, the naïve backpacking travelers, to the S&M snuff-makers in a flip-flop of point of view and storytelling.  All the relationship complexities between the out of concern love from Simon (Andreas Pape) to his even keeled blind girlfriend, Nina (Inés Zahmoul, “La Isla”) as well as the insignificant tiffs and spats between Simon and friend Dodo (Anna Habeck, “Popular”) to see who is in Nina’s favor are quickly swept aside when the trio is trapped and tethered to the S&M spider web of Maman’s Maison de la Petite Mort.  While the three travelers produce a mild interest spun out of frivolous dramatics to the like of the normal human population and very much up played by Walz for that very purpose to produce stark contrast against what’s normal for sadomastic pleasure-seekers, Maman, the orchestrator of pain and profit, is the most earnest of principals with a crone-like presence, played inexorably and ruthless by French punk-goth singer Manoush.  The certified gypsy and former bodybuilder has made a name for herself in a plethora of extreme, Germanic horror pictures over the last decade, but “La Petite Mort” came early in Manoush’s career and is exhibits why she’s so good at horror, especially at the sadism brand.  Maman’s schadenfreude business employs two lesbian dominatrixes, Dominique and Angélique, with strong-stomachs and a healthy bloodthirst.  The beautiful femme fatales serve Maman’s unquestionably, almost mindlessly, that only glimpses into possibilities of how the two women became betrothed to do Maman’s bidding.  Annika Strauss, who’s been in the screen queen business about as long as and has starred alongside with Manoush on a number of films, is also a Marcel Walz regular casted actress who fits and transforms into just about every character under the black sun of ghoulish and macabre material thrown her way.  As Dominique, Strauss is provided more depth to why and how the brunette basket case has come under Maman’s greedy and depraved thumb as the actress shows some slither of concern for the captives while explaining she had no choice just they like them and exhibiting more reserve than her blonde counterpart Angélique (Magdalèna Kalley, “Violent Shit 4”) when the cameras are rolling.  Conversations rooted into provocative thought, sympathy, or reason are often few and far in between the constant pleas for help and the screaming matches of pelting threats.  “La Petite Mort” finalizes the cast with Martin Hentschel (“Zombie Reanimation”), Tanja Karius (“Necronos”), and Thomas Kercmar (“Space Wolf”) as Klaus der Kobold, a Napoleon-sized elitist wealthy enough to buy people’s lives and enjoy seeing them horrifically mutilated.

One scene overwhelms the diagnostic side of my brain and that is why Maman is torturing Dodo with needles as Manoush delivers a surprising genuine villainous monologue about sadomasochists being judged by normal people and how her character has a liberated, uninhibited sexuality in a moment that is a powerful argument in favor for sadomasochism to exist without shame.  Thinking about this, I’m not aware of any publicized S&M clubs, especially those that aren’t criticized for being deviant, perverse, and secular.  After that one moment of vulnerability, “La Petite Mort” turns into a choke-down bloodbath with some great and some not-so-great special effects by one of Germany’s gore film greats, Olaf Ittenbach, director and F/X artist of “Premutos:  The Fallen Angel” and “Legion of the Dead.”  Ittenbach brings me to another overwhelming scene, one that churns the contents of your stomach, involving a meat grinder, a hand, and a chalice.   “La Petite Mort” has other notable grisly moments of scalping, castrating, eye-plucking, and disemboweling, all of which are in great gooey-gory detail.  What takes away from the gore scenes is Walz fluttering effect or grindhouse-esque edited framed overlay that, in my wildest guess, is supposed to enhance the extreme acts of violence, torture, and death in conjunction with composer Michael Donner’s industrial rumble and pulsing synth score. Instead, the effect becomes nothing more than a cinematic nuisance, an eyesore that dilutes Ittenbach’s best handywork because that scalping scene is the chef’s kiss of tactual realism. Based on a true story that I can’t seem to find any record of, “La Petite Mort,” for a brief few minutes, becomes a promulgating champion for alternate sexualities and is also a showcase for Olaf Ittenbach to shock and disgust but for what the feature is worth, “La Petite Mort” offers only emptiness in both character conviction and story narrative.

A fitting entry into the shockingly weird and grotesque “Unearthed Films'” independent film catalogue, “La Petite Mort” arrives onto a high definition, 1080p Blu-ray home video. Presented in a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio, Walz bookends his callous-cladded cult film with a yellowish-tan tint while the girth of the story is laced with more gel coloring under no hinderance of tint. Low lighting with low contrast markers, mixed with tropical-warm gel coloring and strobe flashing fabricates the sunless and dank murder basement but any exterior shots, even the bookend act one and act three are rendered with poor resolution for digital recording. Only a single audio track is available with a German LPCM 2.0 with burned-in English subtitles and what’s rendered is likely the best quality to get from the masters from the lossy format. Dialogue is often unrefined, and the levels vary, but for the most part clean and free from obstruction. The track has limited ambience and harps heavily on the gory moments while Michael Donner’s dark industrial score takes the brunt of the overall soundtrack. Subtitle synchronization varies as well with millisecond flashes of translations that are impossible to read or even pause perfectly on, but the translations appear flawless and consolidated from the dialect for easy reading. The Unearthed Films’ bonus content is aplenty with a new commentary and interview with director Marcel Walz. Also included is a feature-length making of “La Petite Mort” with raw handheld camcorder footage, shot by The Bad Boy character in the film, behind-the-scenes footage, and even some 16mm footage that go reel deep into the effects and life of independent filmmakers. An archived interview with special effects artist Olaf Ittenbach, deleted scenes, photo gallery, teaser trailer, official trailer, “La Petite Mort 2” trailer, and the VHS intro that’s essentially a Marcel Walz introduction of the VHS home video release round out the bonus content. The physical attributes are a clear, Blu-ray snapper case with reversible cover art with the inside sleeve containing a more graphic torture not suited for retail shelves. The region A encoded, 77-minute feature is not rated. If invested for the kills, “La Petite Mort” pleases to overindulge the desire and is a solid first torture-porn effort from a then young Marcel Walz who continues to rise in the niche market.

“La Petite Mort” is Orgasmically Gory and on Blu-ray!