Category Archives: foreign film

Trapped Inside His Own Body While EVIL Buries Him Alive! “Short Night of Glass Dolls” reviewed! (Celluloid Dreams / 4-Disc 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Collector’s Run to Grab Celluloid Dreams’ “Short Night of Glass Dolls” on 4K UHD and Blu-ray!

Gregory Moore’s body is found motionless and wide-eyed in a Prague Plaza and is confirmed deceased by local doctors, but Moore is actually alive, paralyzed and trapped inside with only his inner voice able to cry for help.  As his mind races about how to communicate with those around him, Moore must recall the previous days events to see how he ended up this way.  Days before, the American journalist, currently stationed in Prague and soon to be relocated in another European country once his assignment comes to term, is visited by his beautiful girlfriend Mira and they attend an affluent party hosted by socialite Valinski.  Soon after, Mira disappears from his apartment late a night, leaving all her belongings behind in his apartment and as the police begin to suspect Moore as primary suspect, the journalist uses his trade to discover a powerfully mysterious and sexually depraved organization, known as Klub99, may be behind her disappearance.

Aldo Lado’s written-and-directed murder mystery goes by many Italian and English names:  “Short Night of Glass Dolls,” “La Corta Notte Delle Bambole di Vetro,” “Malastrana,” “La Corta notte delle Farfalle,” “The Short Night of the Butterflies,” and, finally, “Paralyzed.”  Doesn’t matter what you call it, “Short Night of Glass Dolls” needs very little title nomenclature as Lado, a dark sided and rich yarn spinner of Italian cult cinema with credits like “Who Saw Her Die?” and “Last Stop on the Night Train,” debuts his 1971 tale of mystery with precision and style that speaks global themes of affluent power for the sake of retaining that power as well as their youth.  The Italian production is a cross-country affair being filmed in not only Italy but also in Croatia, Slovenia, and Prague and is a production of Doria Cinematografica, Jadran Films, and Dieter Geissler Filmproduktion with Enzo Doria (“Beyond the Door,” “Tentacles”) and Dieter Geissler (“Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!,” “The NeverEnding Story”) as producers.

“Short Night of Glass Dolls’” American protagonist was actually not played by an American but by French actor Jean Sorel with a handsome stached face, bronze swagger, and whose taste of giallo carried into the Lado film after acting in “The Sweet Body of Deborah” and Lucio Fulci’s “A Lizard in Woman’s Skin.”  It’s not surprising or even uncommon for a 1970s through the 1980s Italian production to cast non-native Italians to star and perform as Italy sought foreign talent to be highly marketable abroad and “Short Night of Glass Dolls” is bursting with international talent from America, Yugoslavia, and Sweden to perform alongside Italians.  The only American in the film is the petite and lovely Barbara Bach whose career was mostly a decade and half of Italian films, including “The Great Alligator,” “The Humanoid,” and “Black Belly of the Tarantula.”  Bach’s short stint as Moore’s girlfriend, Mira, is the epitome of innocence and cherished love, an quality lost by Moore because of his work blindness and his philandering with colleague Jessica, “Salon Kitty’s” Ingrid Thulin entrenched into Jessica’s passion for Moore but also keeping a stark low-profile on her looks against Mira with Thulin’s naturally blond hair contained in a colorful headwrap for most of the film.  The love triangle is downplayed from the early revealing signs that Moore may be playing both sides but from the moment Mira vanishes, Moore and Jessica, along with fellow journalist Jacque (Mario Adorf,  “What Have You Done To Your Daughters?”) become a single unit of vocation to find Mira and they bitterness drains from Jessica to just despair by the shocking finale when all the cards laid upon the table.  Lado neatly keeps a tight lid on Klub99’s patrons with only the assures of Valinski as the organization’s ringleader of undisclosed purpose.  José Quaglio (“The Eroticist”) dons well as the oligarchal head keeping a low profile that emerges out like sordid serpentine of perversion and wickedness.  Daniele Dublino, Fabijan Sovagovic, Relja Basic, Piero Vida, and Semka Sokolovic-Bertok are the Croatian and Italian support actors that fill out the cast. 

Aldo Lado’s debut film pins him as a productional prodigy with a naturally gifted cinematic eye and a phenomenal storyteller.  “Short Night of Glass Dolls” sallies forth in an untraditional, nonlinear narrative through the perceptive procession of a paralyzed man’s thoughts and recollections.  That man being journalist Gregory Moore who audiences are first introduced lying motionless in the bushes of the plaza morning and, from the start, Moore is at the mercy of bystanders, medical professionals, and friends who mostly believe he’s dead but, on the inside, is in his thought’s echo chamber screaming for help.  Every frame captures the act and emotion, amplified even more so when Jean Sorel is absolutely still, eyes open, and withstanding forces upon, such as chest compressions, to which he doesn’t even flinch.  Lado finds beauty in the macabre imagery when dead women are laid out nude, splayed with an arrangement of flowers or juxtaposed wet against a dry paved ground.   Lado also doesn’t cater to a fixed position and, instead, tracks the characters with smooth movements, coalescing at times a back-and-forth or side-to-side to get lengthier, more dialogue and dynamically enriched, scenes with director of photography, Giuseppe Russolini (“Firestarter”), achieving a naturally dissemination of lighting and color.  “Short Night of Glass Dolls” is not a film without flaws as Moore’s investigation takes the easy pickings route as if briefly glancing over the reported missing, naked women list is an automatic ladder to the winner’s circle for unearthing mostly everything of an deprave inner circle of the powerful rich and so Aldo cheats a little to give his story’s theme of flightless butterflies some much needed wings.

Following up on their definitive, carefully curated, stunning release of Giuliano Carnimeo’s 1972 giallo “The Case of the Bloody Iris,” Celluloid Dreams doesn’t pump the breaks delivering their latest “Short Night of Glass Dolls” with an all-encompassing, 4-disc collector’s edition set that includes 4K UHD and Blu-ray. Scanned and restored in 4K from the original camera negative, the UHD is an HVEC encoded BD100 with 2160-pixel resolution and the Blu-ray is AVC encoded BD50 with 1080-pixel resolution. It goes without saying that both transfers are impeccable in their damage and blight free form for those who might have owned or once owned the cropped, VHS-sourced release under one of its many titles, “Paralyzed.” The grading blends a natural, dynamic pop with peppered psychedelic trips down the dark rabbit hole with Klubb99 is open for business and the color is diffused with balanced, natural saturation, adapting to lighting of all varieties. UHD offers a richer depth of focus with the increased pixel Dolby Vision seizing better delimitation around objects, but that doesn’t mean the Blu-ray doesn’t do the same, the UHD just enhances it by a quarter approximate percentage, while still keeping healthy, transpicuous grain. Two fidelity-true 1.0 DTS-HD offers mostly a dialogue entrenched mix that, audibly, has an imbalance against a rather omitted ambience and that’s not the release’s doing but rather a lack of Foley work amongst an ADR English or Italian track. Ambience hits where it counts but there are times when establishing shots or slow pans of Prague go nearly into a coma state, letting the dialogue and the renowned Ennio Morricone’s piano, triangle, and melodic vocal score take flight through the course of the mystery. English subtitles are available for the Italian language track. Disc one and two not only contain the feature but also contain identical extras with writer-director Aldo Lado & and Freak-O-Rama’s Frederico Caddeo feature-running commentary, a second parallel commentary track with Celluloid Dream’s founder Guido Henkel, an assortment of trailers labeled as grindhouse, Italian, English, and the Catalepsis, with an isolated score that pedestals Ennio Morricone’s score. Disc three delves into the Italian-language, English-subtitled feature documentaries and featurettes with a 2015 archived interview The Nights of Malastrana, clocking in over 100 minutes, that have isolated discussions with Aldo Lado and actor Jean Sorel, All About Aldo is another archived interview with the director circa 2018, The Quest for Money is an interview with producer Enzo Doria, To Italy and Back touches base with producer Dieter Geissler’s perspective and historical context, The Most Beautiful Voice in the World interviews Italian singer Edda Dell’Orso’s haunting vocalizations on Morricone’s score, Cuts Like a Knife speaks to editor Mario Morra, the Flying Maciste Brothers’ video essay The Man on the Bridge: Philosophy, Perception and Imprisonment in Aldo Lado’s ‘Short Night of Glass Dolls,’ the alternate title Malastrana’s German export credits, and an image gallery. Finally, disc four brings the encoded special features home with not one, but two alternate cuts of the film, a 35mm Grindhouse version and the cropped Paralyzed VHS version. If you thought the encoded special features weren’t hefty enough, Celluloid Dream’s physical presence is certainly imposing with a rigid slip box with newly designed cover compositional cover art on back and front, a massive 64-page color picture and poster booklet features a retrospective essay from Andy Marshall-Roberts as well as reprinted column and magazine reviews from the film’s initial release, and, of course, the thick Amaray case, which is surprising in the traditional Blu-ray blue rather than the 4K UHD black. The cover art is an original rendition that brings all theme elements of giallo into the illustrated fold in circling chaos of catalepsy with the reverse side displaying the same image but titled in Italian. Inside, an advert for “The Case of the Blood Iris” and their upcoming third title “La Tarantola dal Ventre Nero” is inserted. The 4K is region free while the Blu-ray is hard coded region A. The unrated main feature has a runtime of 97 minutes.

Last Rites: Celluloid Dreams pursues excellence and strikes twice achieving it with a heart-and-soul poured release that by far has blown all other limited-edition copies, collector sets, definitive releases out of the water and “Short Night of Glass Dolls” deserves every bit of the attention.

Collector’s Run to Grab Celluloid Dreams’ “Short Night of Glass Dolls” on 4K UHD and Blu-ray!

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An EVIL Taxi That Requires Your Baby for Payment! “Black Cab” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Anne has lingering reservations about getting back together with cheating boyfriend Patrick but half-heartedly agrees to take him back and even merry him.  The announcement comes as a surprise to dinner friends, including Anne’s best friend Jessica, but before talking out the situation that clearly has the two women upset, Anne is eager to leave and return to her home.  The embattled couple jump into a cab driven by Ian, a gabby cabby prying into the couple’s heated discussions.  When Ian drives down a dark alley and stops to retrieve a map from the trunk, Anne and Patrick realize they’re locked inside the cab.  A returning Ian reveals his true intentions with a purpose still ambiguous why the couple has been abducted but a desperate Ian will do anything, even kill, to get what he loves back from a wistful countryside spirit, and he needs disordered Anne for a trade. 

Should have taken an Uber.  “Black Cab” is the 2024 British abduction and supernatural horror-thriller from serial television and made for TV movie director Bruce Goodison, with a career credits that specializes mostly in tales of international military conflict and British murder mystery, and a screenplay by “Reawakening” writer-director Virginia Gilbert, incorporating into the relationship couple’s discordant flame a sliver of kidnapping, electrical prodding torture, and a desperate act inside the context of an old ghost tale as well as inside the English’s famous hackney carriage of black taxis, using the popular public mode of transportation as a device to market the film’s story for the sordid cab driver.  Filmed in the city of Manchester and the surrounding greater area, the Shudder exclusive presented film is produced by Jan Roldanus of Stolen Pictures and executively produced by Sony International Pictures’s former strategic producer Lucy Robison and current producer Michaela Fereday.

When a moviegoer familiar with actor Nick Frost runs through a mental checklist of the actor’s filmography, comedies like “Hot Fuzz,” “Shaun of the Dead,” “Monster Family,” and “Paul” come to mind with the often lighthearted, sometimes heart wrenching or darkly humorous, storylines in the presence of physicality and fun, done nearly most of the time alongside Frost’s usually entourage and friends, actor Simon Pegg (“Star Trek,” “Run Fatboy Run”) and director Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Last Night in Soho”), but Frost has been frequently rooted at the base in horror, science fiction, and, well frankly, genre films in general, with the perfect examples being the aforementioned with shoot’em up polizias, zombies, classic monsters, and an Earthbound alien features.  Frost’s comedic genius is all about timing and the way he carries himself jovially and nonchalantly through tough situations, but Frost can also use those same qualities and twist them to enact a man of deeply troubled anguish behind a masked funny face and viperous wit.  That’s his role in Ian, a cab driver with the gift of gab but turns on a dime with forced aggressive intent to take what he needs from Anne, emoting her character’s already internalized troubles with now a threatening abduction conflict from actress Synnove Karlsen (“Last Night in Soho”).  While Anne is poised as can be in the situation, her disagreeing fiancé Patrick has little-to-no merit as a character being a bit of a bully, cheat, and coward.  Luke Norris (Poldark) gives his best unpleasant rendition of a dirtbag white male with misogynistic issues, but the poorly written aspects of Patrick never fully amount to anything but a weighted towline and an extra body to do what what Ian thinks best with.  Tessa Parr and Tilly Woodward make up the rest of the cast. 

“Black Taxi” subsidizes good suspense over the supernatural calling cards that slowly, yet continuously, shows Anne through an emotional struggling, involving a rather vocally rambunctious boyfriend in Patrick, as well as building the tension inside the cab by hinting at its unusual state of tinted windows, child locked doors, and a more than nosy driver, mostly gone unnoticed by Anne and Patrick due to their bickering and heated love life, or lack thereof.  The first two acts slowly feel out where this story is aiming to drive the audience as Ian’s true intentions are well covered and contained and not fully delineated by the baby clues Ian hints at along the way.  There’s an elemental theme of family and protection, loss and heartache, and how that torment is divergently depicted by both the lead principals Ian and Anne, with the latter being more at a crossroads of choices whereas Ian has already made his choice and it’s one he won’t or can’t come back from.  The third act is mostly where the supernatural factors come into play with the infamous haunting of Mabel Hill, a fiction road supposedly paranormal charged with the ghost of a woman who lost her baby fleeing an abusive relationship and continues to search for the child through bypassing passenger vehicles.  The third act is also where things get murky under the black and white essence of Ian’s motivations as the Ian, Anne, and the ghost are nebulously intertwining on Mabel Hill in some sort of supernatural netherworld dimension that plays mind tricks and is foggy with phantom, falling apart at the seams to support a porous ending.

“Black Cab’s” fare is prenatally pricy in this new release from Acorn Media International and presented as a Shudder exclusive. The UK release is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25 that renders a softer image quality that, in all fairness, was already foggy and murky being set in the darkness of the English countryside, presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Lots of shadows and silhouetted surroundings drowns out the delineated city structures that blend to the spooky forest as the focus is significantly on the interiors, the cab and the abandoned hotel, and not even those highlighted inmost sets solidified specifics. There’s quite a bit of banding from compression and that’s not to be surprising given the format size and the profound amount of tenebrous tone. Textures along Frost’s dressed-in-black casuals or in contrast to Karlsen’s cocktail outfit that’s more nightgown than ritzy, they’re just not there to extensively define Ian and Anne other than being the epitome of differing the dark and light of loss. “Black Cab” has more of a cityscape than a landscape though the story heavily hits upon Mabel Hill as ghost central and yet lacks the elucidation as well as the finer points to flesh out the haunted area. The ghost too is more a cheap visual effects trick than the implementation of palpable practical patience with an overlaid layer of overexposed blues and whites over top the actress to be then augmented into the scene for ethereal effect. The English language DTS-HD 5.1 surround mix is a better outfit, more so in the clean and clear dialogue exchanges between the trio of Nick Frost, Synnove Karlsen, and Luck Norris but does whittle down to the Nick Frost exposition hour when his vague maligned venture is made with more understanding through his broken man diatribes and Anne just sitting and listening as any good abductee would do to avoid saying or doing the wrong thing. Light atmosphere hubbub caters to just that with the night, likely late, shoots inside the city and rural settings but the localized car actions, taser zaps, and character efforts are effective enough to entice a palpable action. English subtitles are optionally available. Acorn’s releases are not chockfull of special features, and “Black Cab” harbors the same slimmed down supplements with a behind-the-scenes gallery. The UK release has a slightly thicker than normal Blu-ray Amaray with an encompassing composition of a rearview mirror peering Frost and a shadowed Karlsen in the fear of the mirrored frame while a ghost hovers above the presumed Mabel Hill Road. UK certified 15 for strong threat, horror violence, domestic abuse, and very strong language, “Black Cab” is hard encoded for region B playback only and has a runtime of 87-minute runtime.

Last Rites: “Black Cab” starts off as an unpredictable ride of mystery and suspense that quickly loses gas to keep up with the swerving supernatural vehicle.

Black Mamba Wriggles Only for EVIL! “Venom” reviewed! (4K UHD and Blu-ray / Blue Underground)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Slither into “Venom” on 4K UHD and Blu-ray Combo Set!

American family, the Hopkins, live in London and while Mr. Hopkins travels the globe to attend to his international hotel business, Mrs. Hopkins and son Philip, live wealthy in their three-story row home along with visiting, Safari-expert grandfather Howard Anderson.  When Mrs. Hopkins plans a trip to see her husband after a month a part, she’s worries for Philip’s severe asthma attacks but with the assurances of the grandfather, the housekeeper, and Philip’s rudimentary zoo in his room, full of furry creatures in vivarium cages, Mrs. Hopkins half-heartedly boards her international flight.   Not everything is going to fine, however, when the housekeeper schemes with the family chauffeur and an Interpol criminal Jacmel to kidnap Philip for ransom.  The foolproof plot commences to plan with departure of Mrs. Hopkins and the arrival of Jacmel but one little mishap causes the plan to quicky unravel when a Black Mamba, one of the most aggressive and poisonous snakes in the world, is mistakenly crated and provided to exotic animal enthusiast Philip instead of his harmless ordered common variety garden snake and when the Black Mamba gets loose, it slithers in the house’s ventilation system, the house they’re all hold up in when the police swarm the outside perimeter. 

What was once going to be a Tobe Hooper (“Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) directed production before his eventual and sudden departure from the film after a few weeks, the 1981 crime-thriller with a creature feature twist, “Venom,” is then picked up by the late director of  “The Blood on Satan’s Claw,” Piers Haggard, to finish the Robert Carrington (“Wait Until Dark”) adapted screenplay off the Alan Scholefield novel of the same title.  The American screenwriter Carrington writes nearly a faithful iteration of the Scholefield novel but with more emphasis on the serpent’s over-lurking presence as an important reptilian character to the story, serving as a catalyst for the upended kidnapping plot and determining the fate of certain characters.  The UK film is American produced by Martin Bregman, the spear runner for “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Serpico” as well as “Scarface” and “The Bone Collector” later in his career.  Morison Film Group served as production company on the mostly LLC entrusted venture.  

If the American Tobe Hooper did helm this picture, directing Leatherface as an actor would been child’s play in comparison to what would had been if he had to corral a pair of strong-willed, A-type personality Europeans in Germany’s Klaus Kinski and Britain’s Oliver Reed, both with well-known and formidable career of not only in genre films but also to be problematic and difficult to work with.  The “Nosferatu the Vampire” and “Aguiree, the Wrath of God” Kinski was perhaps mostly misunderstood for his not understanding of inflections, innuendos, and gestures of the English language that made him often sounds gruff and antagonistically questioning the director’s every choice whereas the “Paranoiac” and “The Brood” Reed was plagued with alcoholism and was equally gruff in his own right as a dedicated actor saturation with austere method stratagem.  Yet, on screen, Piers Haggard manages to get the two hurricane forces to be on-the-edge cooperating, backed-into-a-corner kidnappers without cutting any tension when interacting with each other.  Distinct in demeanor, Kinski as a calm, trench coat KGB-type and Reed as an anxiously and trigger-happy, hotheaded brute put on a good show in their respective performances and beat the odds of two notorious personas colliding.  Haggard doesn’t coddle them either and lets them loose to exact the carrier in their own right even if off-book and they’re even more vilified by taking hostage a young boy Phillip, the introduction of Lance Holcomb (“Christmas Evil,” “Ghost Story”), his Safari-seasoned grandfather Howard Anderson, played by beard-laden and serial gesticulating Sterling Hayden (“Dr. Strangelove,” “The Long Goodbye”), and a zoo toxicologist named Dr. Marion Stowe who is caught in the middle when checking up on the mishap switcheroo of the snake, played by Sarah Miles (“Blow-up”), neither in shape or in vigor to be a proactive hero.  The no-nonsense Police Commander William Bulloch, shoed with “The Exorcist III” actor Nicol Williamson, a brazen candor and stoic expression with Williamson offering frank wit and a sarcastic dryness that barely gets him one step into the house; instead, it’s the Black Mamba that’s the real and unintentional hero that seemingly only has a fork tongue and fangs for villains, leaving the other hostages alone.  “Venom’s” also has Susan George (“Straw Dogs”) as the traitorous housekeeper, Mike Gwilyn, Paul Williamson, Hugh Lloyd, and the first Butler of the 1980s-1990s Batman quadrilogy Michael Gough playing real life snake wrangler David Ball in tribute. 

From the pages of Alan Scholefield’s novel to the big screen, “Venom” has a slithery way about slipping into between the crosshairs of a crime-thriller and a venomous creature feature.  Leading “Venom’s” charge is an undoubtedly great, if not iconic, cast giving their all to a farfetched plot of bad luck Ophidiophobia.  While the snake seems to have heat vision eyes only for the Klaus Kinski, Oliver Reed, and Susan George trio of kidnap-for-ransom criminals, who amongst themselves are in a deceitful love triangle that’s doesn’t quite come to a head as one would expect, there’s no animal kingdom peril to the other victimized threesome who, on a physical, first glance surface, are less equipped to handle a dangerous snake with a young, asthmatic-plagued boy, an elderly grandfather, and a nerve-bitten woman but, in reality, Phillip Hopkins, Howard Anderson, and Dr. Marion Stowe are respectively the best equipped to handle the black mamba as an small animal atrium hobbyist, a former African safari survivalist and animal expert, and a venomous snake toxicologist.  Perhaps, this is why the Black Mamba avoids these three at all costs and never interacts with them on a perilous level.  The fantastical mist that’s sprays us lightly with a crimefighting snake has comical properties that standout against what is a palpable thriller involving an international criminal, cop killing, child abduction, and the mutilation of a corpse. 

Blue Underground continues to update their catalogue with a 2-disc, 4K UHD and Blu-ray combo set of ‘Venom.” The UHD is HVEC encoded, 2160p ultra-high-definition, BD66 and the Blu-ray is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50. In regard to picture quality, both formats are nearly identical transfer that’s stems from an all new 4K 16-bit restoration from the original 35mm internegative, with the UHD receiving Dolby Vision HDR. UHD is slightly sharper around delineation when gliding between dark and light, which is often inside a merge of a half-lit house to draw more tension toward the potential presence of a deadly snake. The 1080p presentation also provides a pleasing clarity that offers little to negatively note. Color grading and saturation between the two formats show signs of varying quality by a thread with the 4K saturating that much more intently across the board with a better control over the grain levels with the Blu-ray appearing a touch thicker for the pixels to flare optically. The native 4K and 1080p come with an English Dolby Atmos as well as options for either an English DTS-HD 5.1 or a DTS-HD 2.0 stereo. Speaking only to the Atmos, the all-encompassing mix shepherds in a clean, discernible quality without any audible seams. Skirmishes, dialogues, and all the commotions in between find isolated channels of distinction that can put you immerse you into the action. And there’s plenty of action to be had coupled with a Michael Kamen’s brass horn and string score that’s both memorably building with excitement and thrilling that preludes Kamen’s orchestrated composition work of “Die Hard,” starring Bruce Willis. Despite the circumference of sound spaced mostly in interiors with a hodgepodge medley of a street full of police, reporters, and gawkers, the dialogue is equally distinct, discernible, clean, and clear without signs of hissing and crackling strains. Subtitles included are in English, French, and Spanish. The 4K special features include a new audio commentary with Film Historians and Blue Underground commenting regulars Troy Howarth, Nathniel Thompson, and Eugenio Ercolani, an archived commentary with director Piers Haggard, and film trailers. The Blu-ray disc contains the same commentaries and trailers but extends further with new exclusives in an interview with editor-second unit director Michael Bradsell Fangs For the Memories, an interview with makeup artist Nick Dudman A Slithery Story, a film historian point of view interview with British critic and author Kim Newman, and an interview with The Dark Side’s Allan Bryce providing his in-depth two cents and historical surveying. TV Spots are finish out the encoded extras. “Venom” 4K and Blu-ray combo set is physical appeasing to hold and behold with a muted black slipcover with tactile elements on both sides of embossed letters and stark coloring that’s striking in its simple snake fang design arraignment. The black, thick Amaray case has the original “Venom” artwork with the optional reverse cover art. I’m not a fan of the inside design that houses a disc on both sides as there is no room place for 18-page collectible, color picture booklet which just floats inside. The booklet features an essay by Michael Gingold, cast and crew acknowledgements, and chapter selection on the back. The discs are pressed with one or the other cover arts. This gorgeous-looking release, on the outside and inside, comes region free, has a runtime of 92 minutes, and is Rated R.

Last Rites: “Venom” might have been snakebitten back when selling book adaptations of crime capers stopped by a single snake might have seemed farfetched but, today, the 1981 film remains a cult classic of the ophidian nature being one of the earliest serpentine creature features with an imposing, impressive cast. Blue Underground proudly presents the film with a new, and improved, ultra high-definition release.

Slither into “Venom” on 4K UHD and Blu-ray Combo Set!

The Next WWII Hero to Tommy Gun Down Nazi EVIL Experimenters is “Dick Dynamite: 1944” reviewed! (Epic Pictures Group / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Dick Dynamite: 1944” is actioned-packed and now on Blu-ray!

In an effort to extinguish and conquer the American people during World War II in 1944, depraved Nazis develop a transatlantic bomber to plane a devastating, zombifying,  nuclear weapon to the U.S. shores.  A special operation is devised by the U.S. command and intelligence to send their most prized, as well as disgraced, Nazi killer, Sargent Dick Dynamite, to be released from military prison and head a motley crew of rough and ready soldiers to destroy the bomber before taking off from Germany.  Under heavy fire and losing already a couple of soldiers, Dick must make contact with a British operative and an enemy infiltrating dame to root out the details and whereabouts of SS Colonel Schtacker’s diabolical plan for Hitler.  A score of bullets and blood wash over an already bloodied European battlefield as Dick Dynamite will stop at nothing to kill every single Nazi he can get his hands on to complete his mission.

“Dick Dynamite:  1944” is the first of possibly a string of blackly satirical, gory, and horrors of war and of creature World War II films to the uncouth tune of “Dirty Dozen” and “Inglorious Basterds,” or “inglorious Bastards.”  The 2023 released Scottish-made feature is written-and-directed by Robbie Davidson as the musician’s first feature film following a pair of shorts from the last decade in 2012’s “Vamplifier” and 2017’s “Radge Land.”  “Dick Dynamite” is a much larger film full of practical and visual effects, multiple locations, props, voiceover work, large cast and a lot more to create a mockup of wartime Europe of the mid-1940s.  The indigogo crowdfunded campaign accumulated $3500+ from 74 backers but that total may have increased to approx. $7500 per external review of the budget costs; either way, crowdfunding backed Davison, Ian Gordon, Alexander Henderson, and Adrian Smith cofounded Square Go Film production, produced fully by Davidson and Jeffrey J. Ellen, a serial campaign contributor.

So, whose to play the titular hero filled to the brim with machoism?  That role would fall upon Snars.  Snars?  What the hell is a Snars?  That would be the very large stature of Gary Snars Allen channelling his best Scharzenegger voice for the bomber jacket-donning, punch first ask questions later role of Dick Dynamite.  Dynamite’s an extremely faced-value character with not a lot of depth and Snars doesn’t bring much to the character in a way that makes the war action hero that remarkable, especially amongst the clandestine missions behind enemy line characters in war films, like Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine with a noose neck scar and his idiosyncratic way of saying Nazi.  Dick’s surrounded by a bunch of off-color, off-beat, dirty-dozen types that beam their leader tenfold but, in themselves, are a beacon of curiosity and comedy.  Between the wise guy, motormouth of Brooklyn (Mark Burdett), a pyromanic with a flamethrower in Naplam Jeff (Andy Moore) and a loud and overconfident British Agent in Dash Dalton (Shaun Davidson), there’s support dialogue and action to take the edge off of Dick Dynamite being the sole primary muscle and that’s a good thing because while Snars is okay as the role, he’s not exactly charismatic and having backup characters keep Dick Dynamite from a lot of wear and tear of being in every frame or sequence.  Unfortunately, there is a downside of an ensembled cast in an action war film and a few will be quickly axed off before being unraveled, even some of your favorites from the character’s title card rundown at command operations, such as with drug-addicted, old timer medic (Robert Williamson) as well as Lukas from Tuchus (Brian Jamieson), Tam the Bam (Leftie Wright), and, fan-favorite who gets a little more action, Motherfucker to say only say Motherfucker through the entire time.  Valerie Birss and Adam Harper deserve to be separated from the pack because of their broader arc with Harper playing timid war photographer Officer Wakowski popping his combat cherry after being pushed to the extreme limit and Birss in covert clothing as Agent Jennings pretending to be a Nazi socialite and though not explicit, she serves as potential love interest for Dick without a fling of amorous to be had.  Irvine Welsh, Graham Scott, Athol Fraser, Nigel Buckland, Erik Grieve, David R. Montgomery, and Colin Mcafferty, as the notorious war crime Nazi leader Hitler, rounding out the cast.

“Dick Dynamite” is modern day grindhouse that pays homage to the days over-the-top, suicide mission carnage.  Visual effects and practical gore elements are compositely tied but for the budget, VFX is surprisingly sound to match up against the layered objects or landscapes in the pith of grindhouse.  I found balloon toss squibs an effective choice for bullet-riddling, bloody body shots that explode with gusto and the editing is on point to not show the moment of balloon impact.  A large cast with extras in full Allies and Axis uniforms and weaponry, plus military vehicles, such as Ford GPWs and German vintage aircraft, are garnered and used to add not only to the realism side of the World War II film but also adds to the scale of Robbie Davidson’s debut feature.  Davidson’s story is uber lean for a very cut-and-dry shoot’em up, zombie-laden, Nazisploitation film with not a ton of depth by relying solely on black comedy gags that either hit or miss comedic marks but the gags that do land are outrageous and warrant laughs.  The finale definitively sets up the return of “Dick Dynamite” for a sequel with the hope this film generates enough revenue in conjunction with, perhaps, another crowdfunded campaign to see Dynamite back to smashing the faces of swastika-heiling goons again.

My first Epic Pictures release that isn’t a Dread sublabel, “Dick Dynamite:  1944” is released on standard Blu-ray, encoded AVC, 1080p high-definition in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, onto a BD25, which is nothing new in comparison to the Dread catalogue.  Filled in with plenty of composite, visual effects shots, the feature has a plastic pulpy profile, especially in its plastique explosions overtop real and artificial layers, but the detail leveling, despite some smoothed-out areas of posterization, rides the cohesive imaging with singularity, keeping true to the grindhouse or pulp look all way through.  All the real scenes have a raw touch with not a ton of filters, gels, or distinct lighting techniques and that surfaces and houses skin tones and granular textures a lot more.  No issues with aliasing, ghosting, banding, or other compression eyesores on this lower capacity Hi-Def format nor anything that affect the deep black areas.  The English language audio mixes are either a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound or a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, both of which are lossy formats for a machine gun heavy, explosion-laden, exposition and dialogue-saturated, and war-atmospheric-envelope ranged film.  Depth struggles with long shots and wider scenes inside the context of post-production sound effects where everything audibly comes to the front and the lossy format has pale gunfire renditions and ambient uproar but there’s also a lot of Scottish or UK English yelling and screaming with caricature German accents accompaniments to ] add to the already amplified bangarang.  English subtitles are optional but for one Scottish character, they are forced for comic, translation effect.  One of the few Epic Pictures’ releases to be packed with extras, including a Robbie Davidson director’s audio commentary, a nearly hour long making-of documentary with cast-and-crew interviews, raw footage behind the camera, bloopers, and production stages, and post-production footage with ADR and visual effects, an interview with Leftie Wright,  an Adam Harper audition tape, a slew of deleted scenes, an F/X breakdown around explosions, a faux ad for Dick Dynamite action figures and toys, a Zombie Child ad, the Indigogo.com campaign ad, Dick Goes to Japan, Dick Dynamite & Company go to the Isle of Butel, Gloirous Basterts gungho advert, the official “Dick Dynamite:  1944” trailer, and the production trailer.  The standard Blu-ray Amaray keepcase depicts Snars in soldier gear with a BAR across his back shoulders and a lot of explosive chaos behind him.  Inside the disc pressed with faux bullet holes and there are no other physical extras.  The region free release has a runtime of 95 minutes and is not rated. 

Last Rites: “Dick Dynamite: 1944” is the World War II grindhouse picture that gets in your face and doesn’t let up. Robbie Davidson renders fans expectations by turning their contributions into a bloody, visual effects blitz of zombies, Nazis, and kickass allies with the hope for a sequel to follow.

“Dick Dynamite: 1944” is actioned-packed and now on Blu-ray!