Category Archives: ghosts

EVIL Just Wants Their Heads Back! “The House of Lost Souls” reviewed! (Cauldron Films / Standard Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Don’t Lose Your Head in “The House of Lost Souls” on Blu-ray!

A group of geological fossil hunters spend their time researching in what is supposed to be the ideal climate of the Italian mountains but inclement, rainy weather has produced all kinds of inconvenient havoc and challenges that have slowed down their darting research.  Mudslides caused by the constant rain makes mountain roads impassable.  They encounter such a mudslide impasse on the way to their next research grounds and do an emergency detour to a remote, vacant hotel to spend the night out of the cold damp night.  Greeted without a single word from their unusual host, they’re given room keys get some rest before the next day’s hike up the cleared mountain road, resuming course toward the fossil hunt, but the geologists quickly discover something isn’t right with the hotel that has a dark history.  Trapped inside the abandoned hotel, murderous spirits appear and aggressively seek more souls to fill the hotel’s vacancy.

The fourth and final entry in The Houses of Doom series produced from Italian television in 1989, “The House of Lost Souls” is the second Umberto Lenzi (“Nightmare City,” “Ghosthouse”) film of the Lucio Fucli and Lenzi stint from the coproduction of Dania Film and Reteitalia with producers Massimo Manasee and Marco Grillo Spina, behind Lenzi’s “The House of Witchcraft” and Fucli’s “The House of Clocks” and “The Sweet House of Horrors.”  Lenzi also created the story concept and wrote the script that feels like a blend of the American-produced, supernatural thrillers “House on Haunted Hill” and “13 Ghosts” but with more bloodshed, color encoded and has that Italian violence flair too graphic for public television.  Italian-titled “La casa delle anime errant,” the film is also a production of the National Cinematografica that produced other Italian Umberto Lenzi cult classics “Seven Bloodstained Orchids,” “Eaten Alive,” and “Cannibal Ferox.” 

Trapped inside the gruesome lore of the hotel’s deadly history and as the focus of the overall dilemma is the group of geology students and friends, plus one adolescent boy tagging along with his older brother.  Further more concentrated on inside the group is Carla who’s been diagnosed, yes – medically identified, as having clairvoyancy with her psychic nightmare visions, sporadic and jumbled frightening images that yet don’t make sense, but guess what?  To no surprise, they will soon! Stefania Orsola Garello, who went on to have a role in the Antoine Fuqua’s period epic “King Arthur,” played the third eye sensorial Carla investigating the hotel’s sordid past along with quasi-boyfriend Kevin, donned by “The Slumber Party Massacre” American actor Joseph Alan Johnson.  Johnson is the extent of international casting, unless you count the hotel host, or rather head ghost who we’ll touch upon later, and the distinct facial features and the significant height of Japan-born Hal Yamanouchi (“2019:  After the Fall of New York,” “The Wolverine”) as a zombified Hare Krishna ghost, one of his many Italian roles while residing within the country since mid-1970s.  The remaining fill out with Garello countrymen counterparts with Matteo Gazzolo (“Specters”) as the group leader, Constantino Melon (“Who Killed Pasolin?”i as the leader’s little brother Giancarlo, and young lovers Guido and Mary, played by Gianluigi Fogacci and Laurentina Guidotti (“Dark Glasses”), as the victimized geologists being hunted down and tricked into slaughter by, too, victims of a hotel proprietor madman, the key perpetrator to all this madness but reduced to only a reflected role through Carla’s flashbacks.  Aside from Yamanochi, there are a handful of former guests and voiceless ghosts, some stuck in a bloodied stasis at the time of their death, some pristine as if nothing happened at all, haunting and hunting down the warm bodies, including Scottish actor Charles Borromel (“Absurd”), Marina Reiner, Dino Jaksic (“Little Flames”), and Beni Cardoso (“Barbed Wire Dolls”).

A different ghost house picture than Lucio Fulci’s “The Sweet House of Horrors’ but still contributes the same inhuman intensity of one person (or one ghost person) can against another person.  Yet, for Umberto Lenzi, his story thrives through the house’s, or rather hotel’s, ability to dispatch the innocent with household items.  Decapitating dumbbell waiters, a cabinet with a ripping chainsaw blade, a head-eating washing machine, and almost even a walk-in freezer become the tools of fatal terror.  Lenzi depicts little in the way of person-on-person violence with only implied deaths at the hands of another person; instead, the personification of ghost house miscellany is definitely more exciting, very unexpected, and a lot of fun to watch the hapless have their heads fall prey to household items that are supposed to be helpful, not hurtful.  Perhaps, Lenzi’s intentions were to explore the negative dependency of gadgets or appliances and how easily we’re allured by their safe nature marketing and profound assistance to our daily lives that it makes us easy targets with our guard down.  Lenzi also doesn’t believe in nepotism when casting young actors as the two child characters become fair game for the house’s thirst for slaughtered souls, dooming them with an equal risk to a brutal death.  The storied hotel’s notoriety serves as the vessel that drives ghosts to go berserk but the story’s miss is bringing back to the killer hotel owner who chopped the heads off of his guests to rob them, stowing them away to hide his transgressions, only for them to be the root of the ghosts’ reason for revenge against any and all who trespass through the lobby.  As the origin of the ordeal, the omitted owner serves as just flashback fodder that fuels the floor-by-floor fiends. 

Spiders, skeletons, and severed heads make up, but are not limited to, Umbero Lenzi’s “The House of Lost Souls” now on Blu-ray as the last The Houses of Doom release from Cauldron Films.  Presented in the European widescreen aspect ratio 1.66:1, the new 2K scan was restored and released uncut from the original film negative, inviting a clean and beautifully vibrant pictures for a dark, haunted hotel feature.  However, like with many Lenzi pictures of the time, the final product has softer image detail that’s brilliant for producing color but relaxes the stringent textures to a still better than mild palpability that’s more than enough beyond the bar of image quality.  There are no compression anomalies to speak of as Cauldron Films, again, produces an excellent high-definition encoding, much like with the other three Houses of Doom installments.  Audio setup includes an encoded English and Italian 2.0 mono with optional English subtitles for the English track and forced English subtitles on the Italian.  The ADR hits and misses the mark with vocal ranges seemingly too mismatch with the actors, such as with Massimo who looks like a tenor but has a bass voice, or the boy Giancarlo with an unsettling falsetto and you can lipread those who are actually speaking English compared to those who are not native English speakers.  The overall track has no compression issues with a powerful dialogue projection and an adequate ambience that hits every keynote to bring the composition together.  “Demons” and “Tenebrae” composer Claudio Simonetti produces a charming little synch rock trap-threat and of a score that becomes essential to “The House of Lost Souls” snare and stalk of the geologists caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Special features include Cauldron Films’ exclusive interviews with FX artist Elio Terribili Working with Umberto and composer Claudio Simonetti The House of Rock along with two audio commentaries, one with Samm Deighan and the second with Rod Barnett and Adrian Smith, and bringing up the rear is a 2001 interview with Lenzi going through points in his lustrous independent career of exploitation, poliziotteschi, and giallo contributions to Italian cinema in The Criminal Cinema of Umberto Lenzi.  The not rated, region free Cauldron Films standard Blu-ray release, encased in a clear Scanova Blu-ray case with original Matthew Therrien and Eric Lee illustration cover art and logo design, has a runtime of 87 minutes.

Last Rites: That’s a wrap on the fourth and last film on The Houses of Doom collection from Cauldron Films and it’s a beauty scanned onto a new high-definition transfer that brings doomed television features back to life, to live again, to breathe its hot breath of death all over a new generation of viewer unfamiliar to Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, and even Italian horror!

Don’t Lose Your Head in “The House of Lost Souls” on Blu-ray!

Scarf Michael and the Fiddler’s Power that Draws Upon EVIL! “The Outcasts” reviewed! (Deaf Crocodile / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Outcasts” on Blu-ray Now Available Here!

Ireland 1810 – a small farming village sustains a livelihood off their crops, marital successors, and superstitious belief.  Widower Hugh O’Donnell and his three teenage-adult daughters find themselves in the midst of all three mechanisms with his eldest daughter forced to live with him into widowed spinsterhood, a middle daughter’s secretive betrothal to a neighboring farmer boy despite Hugh’s disdain for the family, and Maura, the youngest daughter, who acts strange and fearful making her an easy target for ridicule.  When the village crop faces blight, bad luck ensues many of the surrounding farmers, and a sudden, expected snow fall threatens harvests and income, Maura is accused of conspiring with witchcraft of a wraith fiddler known as Scarf Michael whose music invokes visions and creates mischief.  Nearly crucified by the fearful villagers, most of whom derided for her aberrating strangeness, Maura is saved by Scarf Michael to be taught his outlier ways that could lead the young woman to never return home again.

Through themes of folkloric belief, societal class structures, family, marriages, mental illness and how it’s ostracized in an early 1800s setting, “The Outcasts” is a cold, hard, and solemn look at daily affairs of a 19th century, poor Irish seaside village, fenced in with the unusual conducts of Maura whose mind is more curious and vastly hungry for knowledge than her peers’ and that creates an escapism component to try and be equal, or perhaps get even with, those that look down upon her.   English writer-director Robert Wynne-Simmons tackles his debut feature-length film with great understanding of tradition and human fear, elemental human nature bred from the uneducated and localized myth seen in his original devilish script from 1971’s “The Blood on Satan’s Claw” by director Piers Haggard.  “The Blood on Satan’s Claw” was certainly far better suited for success with Haggard’s additional scenes of brackish deviltry aesthetics, plenty of full-frontal nudity, and visible vibrant and rich blood.  “The Outcast” is a return to the slow born of an eventual decline and degradation of not just Maura but her family and her village.   “The Outcast” is part of an Irish production conglomerate of companies, including Arts Council of Ireland, The Irish Film Board, and the Toymyax Company with Tony Dollard producing.

Mary Ryan is the centerpiece of the fantastical and fraught tale because of her teenage character’s childlike innocence that’s deemed unusual, weird, and, eventually, in bed with a spiteful spirit, labelling her character, Maura, as a cursing occultist.  Ryan, who would go on to have minor roles in “Rawhead Rex” and “The Courier,” brings a balance of beauty and blamelessness to Maura’s undesired disposition, one that allows her no friends and is even on the edge of displeasure from her older sister Breda (Brenda Scallon) and father Hugh (Don Foley) whom both found love and lost them over a rough course of untimely death.  There’s still obvious love between them, but Maura likely reminds them of mother, especially from Hugh, and sees a same early grave fate for the youngest and adrift daughter.  Middle Daughter Janey resides on the opposite side of the spectrum with unconditional love and support for Maura only to be intertwined with her own serendipitous affairs with local farm boy Eanon (Máirtín Jaimsie), finding themselves rushed into proper marriage when Janey comes home expecting.  And while Maura made faultless inconsequential ripples through the family and the village, she was initially not on the forefront of everybody’s concern as Janey and Eanon became a jovial celebration that sought the joining of two well-known families and farms until Scarf Michael reappeared to play his fiddle.  Mick Lally fiddles as the musical wraith casting his violin strokes against those essentially bullying Maura with trickery that led to subsequent fears and accusations of agricultural assassination and magical maligned mischief that turn the rural villagers away from Janey and Eanon’s blessed marriage to an acute decline of rationality that put Maura in the crosshairs of suspected supernatural conjuring.  Scarf Michael’s intentions are not to whisk Maura away into what she sees and believes is as blissful freedom from those nasty looks and mocking that surround her as well as Michael’s tenderness to which she falls in love for the first time, like a child growing into adulthood.  “The Outcasts” round out with Tom Jordan, Cyril Cusack, Gillian Hackett, Brendan Ellis, Hilary Reynolds, Donal O’Kelly, James Shanahan, and Paul Bennett.

Not ever story about the loss of innocence from growing up is portrayed in a good light.  Maura wants to hurry grow up and be free of her childish qualities without realizing the consequences.  Falling in love with Scarf Michael proves to be perhaps folly of Maura who gives into the dream, or fantasy, of a man who quickly enters her life and charms her with the mystical fiddle.  By the end, indications of Scarf Michael nothing more than a rake leaves a sour and sad aftertaste that shutters Maura from the rest of her family as she willing joins him on the other side, practically begging him to free her from an unforgiving reality.  Perhaps Maura was also led to believe in no other choice, condemned to a watery grave, the same fate that befell Scarf Michael, by her fearful village peers and elders.  Robert Wynne-Simmons is often playing devil’s advocate by building up Scarf Michael as a savior and a romantic, but Maura drinks the Celtic Kool-Aid because, frankly, she knows no better and received no beneficial direction from those who surround her, leaving the alluring fiddler to warn her of the choices she desires.  Wynne-Simmons and Seamus Corcoran’s soft-and-dreamy fairytale indulges a bit of surrealism through soft-lighting, soft focus, and crude yet effective editing tricks to create a specter’s intermittent visibility amongst other slight of sight practical effects. 

If ever a time to be totally physical media inclusive toward all the obscure outliers, now is the time with “The Outcasts” arriving onto a newly restored 2K transfer for the first ever Blu-ray in the U.S. courtesy of Deaf Crocodile.  Presented in an European widescreen 1.66:1 aspect ratio, the AVC encoded, 1080p high definition, BD50, plus the restoration efforts conducted by the Irish Film Institute – Film Archive, retains that airy softness of a daydream inlaid to suggest a surrealism surrogation but the story is rooted in reality, the reality of early 1800s Ireland to be exact, and so this impoverish, austere, and salt of the Earth land and it’s people are often absorbed by superstition belief that’s awfully real for them but to the audiences, it’s bordering the illogical.  Details are generally soft but the upgrade increases the contours and create a nice layer of depth between foreground and background, bathed in the muted and ascetic green, brown, and tan color scheme of a traditional period piece wardrobe and materials, leaving behind any ounce of hue pop to not spoil the intended grading that lives and dies by somewhere between the RGB and the average grayscale, but there are times of an eerie dressed lighting of added backlit blues and bright whites to secure a fantasy, or spooky, flare.  The fidelity reproduction on the Irish-English DTS-HD mono track diffuses distinct aspects through the single channel without any vague overtaking.  The brogue English did, at least for me, require the optional English subtitles to be turned on for my untrained ear to decipher certain antiquated period terminology and the strong Irish accents that would drown out an entire sentence; this is not an issue concerning the quality of the audio track as it’s nicely achieved without any damage to note or crackling, hissing, or other obstructions to interfere.  The dialogue is also fairly robust and prominent.  Steve Conney’s lyrical and guitar score enchants with traditional Irish folk and is ascertains the mix of commonplace and otherworldly mood Wynne-Simmons seeks to create.  Bonus content includes a new video interview with writer-director Robert Wynne-Simmons, a new video interview with composer Steve Conney, producer and film professor Rod Stoneman, former head of The Irish Film Board, and physical media expert Ryan Verrill provide a video essay, and concludes with five Robert Wynne-Simmons’ short films:  “L’Eredita di Diavolo,” “The Greatest All-Star Advertial of All Time,” “Bomb Disposal,” “The Scrolls,” and “The Judgement of Albion – Prophesies of William Blake”  These shorts include appearances/cameos by Charlton Heston, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter O’Toole to name a few.  The clear Blu-ray Amaray has an appearance that’s about a stark as the film’s aesthetic with a gray coverart composition of celebration fiddlers in their straw masks overtop an isolated Maura.  An insert advert with a QR code offers to access transcribed bonus content.  The disc is pressed with the same front cover image and the reverse side of the primary cover has a still from the film.  The unrated release has a runtime of 105 minutes and is hard-locked with region A encoding.

Last Rites: An obscure gem of Irish cinema, a folklore and social explication of “The Outcasts” outlives antiquation with a new Blu-ray release from obscure aficionados Deaf Crocodile!

“The Outcasts” on Blu-ray Now Available Here!

Digging Up the EVIL Disentombs the Past! “Exhuma” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Open the Blu-ray Coffin on “Exhuma” Today!

A shaman and her assistant recruit a geomancer and a mortician to investigate the case of an American newborn boy’s distressing grave calling that has also haunted every patriarch member of the family for generations.  The large paying job sends them to remote forest where the unmarked grave of the boy’s great, great grandfather lies beneath the dirt.  For the geomancer, all signs point to not disturbing the grave but the father’s eagerness to cure his son’s troubles and the shaman’s persistence for a big payday goes against the wise geomancer’s better judgement.  All is seemingly well after exhuming and transferring the ancestral coffin to be cremated at a nearby hospital the next day until a greedy, hospital official pries open the sealed casket, releasing a long-awaited evil, and digging up out of the same burial ground another malevolent and mysterious ancient force that reaches far beyond the borders of Korea. 

Here as of late, ItsBlogginEvil.com’s last three reviews have taken readers on a genre-diverse tour of Asia, from Japan with Yu Nakamoto’s meta-slashers in “Ikenie Man” and “Harawata Man,” to Hong Kong with David Chung’s affrayed police actioner “Royal Warriors,” to conclude in South Korea with the supernatural horror in the realm of cultural superstitions of P’ungsu, or geomancy, in Jang Jae-hyun’s latest written-and-directed thriller “Exhuma.”  The 2024 film follows a string of religious related, supernatural themes Jae-hyun has put out in his prior two directed projects with “The Priests” and “Svaha:  The Sixth Finger,” and like “Ikenie Man,” “Harawata Man,” and “Royal Warriors,” a portion of Jae-hyun’s films are touched by Japanese culture.  “Exhuma” amounts to the same standard of crisscrossing the two cultures with dangerous results with “Exhuma” digging up a past better left alone.  Park Hyeong Jin and Kwon Ji Yong (“Ghost Mansion”) produce the spiritually turbulent story under Showbox Entertaiment and Pinetown Productions. 

“Exhuma” encircles four culturally inclined characters that entrench themselves into an unorthodox means of exhuming a disturbed essence for what is essentially an exorcism variant to alleviate living perturbation beyond the grave.  The superstition here revolves around the land temperament.  Geomancers find good sites to lay people to rest, ones that exert extrasensory, or grave call, troubles onto family members that place upon them a grief, anxious, and other mentally uneasy state, and it’s the “Exhuma’s” Geomancer who has story predominance, shared only with the young and beautiful shaman woman with tagalongs who resemble more of assistants than coequals.  In an age-old and cautionary tale of wisdom and inexperience, Choi Min-sik (“Oldboy”) and Kim Go-eun (“Monster”) play the respective roles of the reluctant and experienced Geomancer Kim Sang-deok and the naïve eager yet gifted shaman Lee Hwa-rim.  Receiving character voice over monologue introductions and becoming the ultimate deciding factors of this new job is worth the pay, they completely overshadow the Shaman apprentice (Lee Do-hyun,) and the mortician (Yoo Hae-jin) who works with the Geomancer.  Pivotal as these support characters are to the story, not only buffers for the evil that beleaguers them but also as latched on friends and family of the isolating weird and strange subculture to most but normalized in Korea, the shaman apprentice and mortician definitely take a back seat to the more prominent players to the point where they almost seem contributorily worthless to the task.  As a whole, the dynamic works because the shaman and geomancer alone would not be sufficient for diabolical misadventures of an exhumation gone wrong and supplement only when necessary to aid the fight against an ancient evil twice over.  The cast fills out with Hong Seo-jun, Jeon Jin-ki, Kim Jae-Cheol, and Lee Jong-goo.

The wafting back and forth between Korean and Japanese culture, the fraternization of beliefs and superstitions, tells “Exhuma” differently than most hilltop haunts and horrors.  Themes of a haunted past and inexplicable guilt riddle holes through family lineage, resulting rancorous ripples in the form of mental illness, and devised as a story vehicle device of supernatural subverting trauma from the sins of the father.  In America, Shamanism and Geomancy don’t exist, especially in the history, but for Korea and its people, the country is rich in transcendent ritual and mythology that shapes society, even in their cinematic culture as regularly do we see period films of feudal Korea.  History also dictates “Exhuma’s” need to be a representation of purging the long Japanese occupation of Korea for nearly three and half decades from 1910 to 1945.  The occupation was a disruption in Korean way of life with oppression and war machinations stitched into Korean’s fabric, hence the Korean plot of land being very spoiled with vileness in “Exhuma’s” tale of one historically troubled family’s course to remove that uneasiness that has plagued and followed them to America.  Yet, the past is rooted deep and Jang Jae-hyun’s understands the difficulty of eradicating a sullied ancestry by dichotomizing his darkly toned, folklore valued, and occult twisted story into two parts with sublayers as deep as the dirt surrounding the coffin, or rather, coffins with a formidable presence created and conjured by malicious Japanese Yōkai and represented in one of the most iconic Japanese figures as remnants of an Imperial Japan occupation.

Lying in wait underneath the high-definition terra firma is Well Go USA Entertainment’s “Exhuma” on an AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD25, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Accompanied by no information on the video vehicle, IMDB.com lists Jang Jae-hyun and cinematographer Lee Mo-gae shoot with an Arri Alexa Mini which offers the ease of use of multiple lenses, and that shows here with a vast stretch to encompass the Korean mountains into the frame as well as keeping tight on characters while keeping in focus the immediate surroundings. Details are sharp under a flinty tone of saturated grays and blacks with spot pops and glows of in-scene lighting and under the capacity’s umbrella, finer textural elements suffuse through the darkness and into the fold. Audio options include the original Korean language DTS-HD 5.1 and an English dub DTS-HD 5.1. Crystal clear dialogue runs through parallel with the visual counterpart and is well timed and potent, touching the side and back channels with the eerie callings of the grave and its inhabited spirits running rampant free while harnessing focus on the character on scene to create a ranging discarnate of deep, ominous sounds that stalk and haunt the principals. English translation paces well and appears to be translated grammatically and is error free. Well Go USA Entertainment releases are feature focused and this one too containing only a making of featurette in the bonus content along with the trailer. The interior of the traditional Blu-ray Amaray comes with a disc pressing of the four principal characters peering into a dug grave. The exterior has a two-tone, subsoil profile forming a face out of a grave with the four principals on the topsoil and the same image also graces the cardboard O-slip that has a pseudo-lenticular sheen. Authored to have a region A playback, “Exhuma” runs just over two hours long at 135 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: The addition of learning authentic, practiced rituals benefits “Exhuma’s” folklore frights tenfold and with neat, grounded performances and a superb blend of visual and practical effects, this original, supernatural thriller raises the Korean movie industry up a notch on the global scale.

Open the Blu-ray Coffin on “Exhuma” Today!

Weak Meekness Leads to One’s Own EVIL Destruction. “Catacombs” reviewed! (Imprint / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own Your Copy of Imprint’s “Catacombs” on Blu-ray!

Ellen Garth, a strong willed and wealthy but physically afflicted businesswoman devotes her all her love to an enervated doormat of a husband, Raymond.  When Ellen’s beautiful young niece, Alice, returns to London from Paris after a year abroad, Raymond is smitten by her flirtations for older men and strikes up an affair behind his very perceptive and sly wife’s back who catches them in each other’s embrace.  Tired of being a slave to his wife’s controlling behavior and wanting to be free to court Alice, Raymond kills Ellen and buries her in the potting shed behind their honeymoon house in a plot conceived with Ellen’s right-hand secretary and former con, Dick Corbett.  Believing he’s free of her and having been willed her fortune to share with Alice, Raymond suddenly suspects, after a series of strange events, that he’s being haunted by Ellen’s ghost, or even worse, the undead Ellen herself. 

Black and while horror from half a century or more ago always leaves a lasting impression that terror and suspense can be created by virtually story and acting alone instead of a heavily reliance of special effects and visceral coloring, such as with gore or grotesqueness of the unfathomable creature.  The British film “Catacombs,” or otherwise known as “The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die” in America, is one of those fear manufacturing films generated by pure acting talent and the managing cleverness behind the camera.  The 1965 film is directed by “The Oblong Box” and “Scream and Scream Again” director Gordon Hessler with American screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring (“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”) penning the script based off an American novelist Jay Bennett’s novel of the same UK title.  Shepperton Studios served as house of operations for the Parsons-McCallum production under Neil McCallum and Jack Parsons and distributed by the BLF, British Lion Films.

There’s no such thing as wasted parts or throwaway performances in Hessler’s murderous-revenge haunt with precision-acute actors and actresses chin deep in their characters’ cruelty, callousness, conformity, and control.  Twists and tension-riddle rods help elevate this nearly 60-year-old film to refrain from aging poorly.  Gary Merrill, former husband of silverscreen actress Bette Davis and star of “All About Eve,” plays the meek husband Raymond wed into money but at the cost of his manhood.  Merrill plays convincingly into Raymond’s submissive, passive nature under the more dominant but fair and kind mogul lady Ellen Garth, a hip-afflicted women that doesn’t feel the ailment impede her wealth or attitude in life by way of British actress Georgina Cookson.  In the mix is Ellen and Raymond’s parentless niece Alice who has returned from her studies in Paris seemingly transfigured from a chubby child to a beautiful lady.  Jane Merrow, who co-headlines “Catacombs” with Merrill, finds her stride as the elder-entangling Alice secretly at-odds with her aunt by seducing Raymond behind her back.  Rounding out the principal foursome is Neil McCallum (“Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors’) as Ellen Garth’s sneaky secretary Dick Corbett who has a façade of a hard worker, but Corbett can’t keep up with boss’s demanding energy and is itching to subvert her.  When the story’s peak turning point hits, the expectation of character change recedes back to status quo as if Ellen’s death changed nothing other than open the door of opportunity for Raymond and Alice to connect without concern.  Yet, that inkling of shame, guilt, and fear, mixed under a plot of deception and murder, has the reverse effect of a now burdenless happiness, producing a very little capricious life-change, especially in Raymond who is still as amiable as ever.  “Catacombs’” fills out the intimate cast with Rachel Thomas and Frederick Piper.

The actual use of catacombs, or subterranean burial grounds, has little do in the film other than in its infinitesimal moment of being a key piece of evidence toward something amiss, a tell for foreboding or already doomed health, and serves as one playful, paralleling reason to Ellen’s resurrection, though not reflected in plain sight as playful or parallel by Hessler.  What’s intended the most is building the mysterious dread around Ellen Garth’s return in a semi-gloss gothic polish aimed to crack Raymond and Alice’s psyche in half.  Hessler breeds tension after tension to engulf the characters in an unrelaxing state of disgrace and distrust and what makes the matters worse for Raymond and unscrupulous company is while Ellen Garth may have held all the cards being an authoritative woman of status and wealth, she showed loyalty, humility, and adored her family, friends, and lover despite their flaws and circumstances.  That unjustifiable murder stings audiences the most, a straight shot to the sympathetic heart that creates a need to see those responsible punished by Ellen’s earth-soiled, grave-escaping, dead-cold hands with edge of your seat anticipation.  Is Ellen Supernaturally haunting her killers or is the guilt driving them mad? 

The only way to find out in glorious high-definition is to pick up a copy of Imprint Film’s definitive Blu-ray version of “Catacombs” on an AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50 presented in a 1.66:1 European aspect ratio. The black and white picture receives a 4K scan from the original nitrate negative for its worldwide Blu-ray debt and though not much to mention in regard to colorization and black levels, the monochrome remains sharp at all times in a pristine negative that sees no damage. Usually, black and white can issue fuzziness, heavy grain, and ghosting during spliced cell overlap but this print, or rather this scanned print, looks amazingly fresh, holding patterns and transitioning seamless to the highest of restorative care. The English language is a mix between American and British English encoded with an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mono, rendering a dialogue centric audio with composter Carlo Martelli brass band that’s minor keys taut tension to swell during the height of suspense. Dialogue is clean and clear with very minimal crackling; there’s no wispy or hissing detected. Although the mono feed vectors flatly, the range surrounding “Catacombs” is vast and timed to tackle distinction between the audio idiosyncrasies. Optional English subtitles are available. Special features include an exclusive feature-length audio commentary with authors Jonathan Rigby (“English Gothic: Classic Horror Cinema 1897-2015”) and Kevin Lyons, a new interview with co-star Jane Merrow on her experiences in “Catacombs” Merrow & Merrill, new interview with continuity supervisor Renee Glynne and sound designer Colin Miller The Glynne-Miller Story, a new interview with composer Carlo Martelli Martelli & Martell, and with a still gallery ending the bonus material. Housed in a Hammer blood red cardboard slipcase designed with a rendition of the original poster, the Imprint release is it’s 317th title. The clear Blu-ray Amaray case is even more colorful with a giallo-colored title and back cover, overtop a frightened scene with stars Merrow and Merrill. The reverse side of the cover has more of the psychotronic photo of Ellen Garth (Georgina Cookson) staring blankly into a pocket mirror to submit herself under a trance. The BD is pressed with the same red coloring and half-woman, half-death figure as the slipcase with no inserts included. One thing I will say on the negative side of the package is that the Amaray case is a bit difficult to extract from the slipcase; you kind of have to shimmy and shake it out enough to pull the case out. The 90-minute feature is unrated and did play on our region free player without having to setup flip to the desired region for playback.

Last Rites: Gorgeously macabre yet classic packaging, Imprint’s Blu-ray release of “Catacombs” is must-own Machiavellian umbra of greed and foul play, a timeless tale yarned to yield a megaton of shadow-lurking, supernatural suspense.

Own Your Copy of Imprint’s “Catacombs” on Blu-ray!

One Out of 7 Most Freaky, if not EVIL, Places on the Planet! “Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum” reviewed! (Second Sight / Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Become Engulfed by the “Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum” on Second Sight’s LE Blu-ray!

Horror Times, a web series dedicated to horror and hits, travels to the Gwangju providence for their next big event, a special episode aimed to rake in 1 million views worldwide as they explore the supposedly haunted, deserted, and derelict Gonjiam psychiatric asylum after midnight on its anniversary date of its closing.  Already buzzing with historical disappearances of those curious and brave enough to investigate the dilapidated corridors and rooms, Horror Times brings in four guests to join his three-man crew to record every second of what CNN labels one of the seven freakiest places on the planet.  Setup with wall-mounted motion activated cameras, harnessed with individual GoPros, and given a multi-layered script to follow on each of Gonjiam’s four floors, all is going as planned broadcasting live the strange atmospherics that slowly see climbing views from the director’s camped base outside the structure, pulling some fabricated strings to not only heighten his viewer pool but also get genuine frightened reactions from his guest team, but when the team and the cameras unexplainable paranormal occurrences, how far will a director go to reach his milestone goal.

Based off the actual CNN listicle of the top 7 freakiest places on the planet, “Gonjiam:  Haunted Asylum” was a real brick-and-mortar edifice committed to the committedly insane and one of the most suspected haunted places in South Korea until it’s demolishment shortly after the 2018 film’s release.  “Epitaph” writer-director Jung Bum-shik joins the ranks of the South Korean supernatural spookies, accompanying notable entries such as “The Tale of Two Sisters,” “Phone,” and “Cinderella.”  Cowritten by Sang-min Park, Gonjiam:  Haunted Asylum” refreshens the ramshackle mental institutionalized horror subgenre with a dash of social media influence and found footage that entangles grudging ghosts with cyber terror.  Historical thriller and drama producer Won-guk Kim spearheads the project under Hive Media productions and distributed globally by Showbox Films. 

Like a cable-aired, modern-day version of “Ghost Hunters” or “Kindred Spirits,” the vessel Horror Times exploits people’s spirituality beliefs by mingling the exploration of urban legends with gimmicky ploys to keep eyes glued to the show, run up viewership, and earn the root of all evil, money.  The Mystery Incorporated meddling kids might not have a talking Great Dane, but the Gonjiam ghost hunters are a dynamically doomed blend of greed and curiosity, helmed by their captain Ha-joon (Wi Ha-joon, Squid Game) and his on-the-ground, string-pulling marionettes Seung-wook (Lee Seung-wook) and Je-yoon (Yoo Je-Yoon) to conjure up not spirits but pranks under the guise of Gonjiam ghosts.  The unsuspecting portion of the team react as expected, believing the unexplainable as genuine articles of a haunted asylum, until the jokes bleed into the reality of the structure’s incensed force.  Other than Charlotte (Mun Ye-won), a Korean American who travels to Gonjiam to add the location to her lists of CNN’s freakiest places on the planet, there isn’t another mise-en-place character.  Perhaps the others’ backstories are lost in translation but Sung-hoon (Park Sung-hoon, “Hail to Hell”), Ji-hyun (Park Ji-hyun, “The Divine Fury”), and Ah-yeon (Oh Ah-yeon) lose sympathy points for just being there for the sake of being there.  If you haven’t caught on already, the characters and actors name match to add to the faux realism of found footage. 

Veritably surrounded by the actual notoriety of the former Gonjiam psychiatric hospital, the story adds to the established frightening folklore of the rundown building and though the filmmakers were not allowed to shoot inside or on the grounds of the restricted abandoned building, Gonjiam blueprints were used to reconstruction the grimy, trash-laden hallways and various rooms inside a high school.  The effect works like charm used to teleport audiences, along with the help of social media GoPros, selfie sticks, and the like, right into the crumbling ruins; you can almost smell the mold and stank of beyond putrid chemicals and filth.  Yoon Byung-Ho’s cinematography plays with the signal disruption touch, often deploying randomized and intentional interference to convey signal disruptions or, perhaps even, the foreshadowing with the wraithy wrath of spirits; yet “Gonjiam” never truly feels like a found footage film due to its radical differences in video media being implemented and there’s often the unexplainable, no camera-in-use angle that dilutes the subgenre medium.  “Gonjiam” falls into this unquantifiable realm of storytelling that’s hard to digest.  The chaos that ensures in the third act is more palpable, geared toward developing a heavily reliant, hard and fast tension and trembling fear without needing bloodshed for the crowd-pleasing shock factor.

Second Sight sees through the dense barrage of found footage films and spots the pearl amongst the muck with “Gonjiam:  Haunted Asylum,” curating a limited edition, big box, Blu-ray release.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50, presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, nears 24 FPS and has flawless technical recording in its digital capturing.  Blacks are dense and rich to create that unknown void apprehension, the neglected belongings of a forlorn hospital have palpable consistency that’s grimy and rusty, and skin textures appropriate lose definition but maintain quality to the extent of equipment limits with GoPros, cell phones, and camcorders in low and hazy key lighting, onboard camera lighting, and some night vision for authentic found footage grip.  There’s not much in the way of diverse color for what is a graded tone of tenebrous obscurity throughout.  I’ve already touched upon Byung-Ho’s purposeful transmissive trouble that impresses more of an annoyance than an integrated factor of fear.  The Korean DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 delivers on the need-to-hear atmospherics that shudders in echoes and the frantic churn of survival.  What there is not a ton of, and gratefully kept to a minimum, was the eerie wails of the dead as their moments are kept mostly visual in a virtually scoreless runtime that focuses on the surrounding milieu rather than building tension artificially through minor key notes.  Dialogue comes through clearly and clean, especially when muzzled by video camera audio band transmissions.  English subtitles are translated well and synch fine enough with the rapid procession.  Special features include an feature-length audio commentary by Mary Beth McAndrews (Dread Central editor-in-chief) and Terry Mesnard (Gayly Dreadful editor-in-chief), UK’s Zoë Rose Smith’s Fear the Unknown visual-essay on the Gonjiam’s origin, history, and what makes the Korean film scary, and archived featurettes with interviews, including with director Jung Bum-shik amongst various crew, that explore the rumored beginnings of Gonjiam’s notoriety that fuels the production into recreating Gonjiam nearly identically, live recordings of the film’s sheer eeriness told through the images captured by the camera harnesses and phone footage, the new faces of fear that circles around the cast and behind-the-scenes table reads, The Sanctum of Horror that aims to explore the connection between the actual freaky locations and their cinematized yarn to create a legacy of folklore for the now demolished Gonjiam hospital, The Truth of the Ghostlore explores Gonjiam’s history and urban myth and how that forms the ghosts in the film, Korean press conference film launch, and the film’s trailers.  As much as we love Second Sight’s authored special features, which from films of the East are rarely produce, there also plenty to be excited about with the physical attributes of the limited edition set, including a rigid and thick sleeve box with a Luke Headland designed Gonjiam building in red and black.  The inside contents include a 6 collector’s art cards in the same red and black color scheme, a 70-page book with new essays from Sarah Appleton (“The J-Horror Virus”), James Marsh (“Wisconsin Death Trip”), film critic Meagan Navarro, and horror content creator Amber T, and finished off with the film itself, encased in a green-colored Amaray with the same front cover artwork as the rigid slip box.  There are no inserts, and the disc is pressed simply with the title, English and Korean, splashed in red on a black background.  The LE set is hardcoded with a region B playback, has a runtime of 94 minutes, and is UK certified 15 for Strong Supernatural Threat and Language.

Last Rites: “Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum” is not just another shaky cam of paranormal activity. The film incorporates a component of reality, embellishing more on top an already suspected haunted building by giving the story teeth, and released with cultural purpose that binds fact and fiction with a terrorizing outcome of some really pissed off spirits.

Become Engulfed by the “Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum” on Second Sight’s LE Blu-ray!