Category Archives: Possessed

Protect Yourself from EVIL Because “Tonight She Comes!” reviewed! (Jinga Films – Danse Macabre – MVDVisual / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Tonight She Comes” is Now Available on DVD! Purchase Here!

Two women looking to spend quality debauchery time with their friend at her family’s rural cabin arrive find their friend is nowhere to be seen or heard from but they do discover a lost mailman asleep on the cabin porch on his first day.   As the trio yuck it up with plenty of booze and flirtation around the campfire, locked out of the cabin with still no sign of their girlfriend, the day turns to night and they’re eager to get into each other’s pants for an alcohol fueled fling.  Unfortunately for them, their lost friend just showed up naked out from the adjacent lake.  What usually would be an invitation for an extended good time, the naked friend is stained head to toe in blood and determined to kill anyone in her path.  In their escape, they run into a backwoods family of black magic occultists trying to fix their titanic satanic mistake before everyone dies.

If a campy, gory, backwaters horror engulfed in occult get your filmic scary movie juices flowing, then “Tonight She Comes” should be at the top of your must-watch list.  The 2016, American-made feature from writer-director Matt Stuertz takes the cabin-in-the-woods trope to the extreme to the likes of a farcical feat many have tried but only a few achieve.  “Tonight She Comes” is Stuertz’s sophomore picture behind the cleverly titled found footage horror “RWD,” or “<<RWD,” as in the rewind symbol you’d typically see on VHS players, and has since his bloodthirst for horror with the practical effects-driven and supernatural terrorizing of a young woman in this year’s “Human” and is currently in production with a gory vampire flick, “Wake Not the Dead.”  Gory is Stuertz niche tinged with a repulsive tone that’s not just splatter nor intestinal evisceration.  Cinematographer Chris Benson and sound designer Jamison Sweet, of the St. Louis-based production company Lamplight Films, and Twenty Eighteen Seventy-Six’s Stuertz produce the film.

What’s neat about the progressing script, acutely angling 90 degrees to keep the story fresh and unsuspecting, is the principal leads constantly change hands.   By conventional standards, the young, good looking, white male mail with a pleasant disposition in James (Nathan Eswine) places audiences on that path with a post title opening of the inexperienced, first-day-on-the-job James doing his route diligently despite difficulties locating an address.  Also, in comparison to his dimwitted and degenerate best friend Pete (Adam Hartley, “The Slender Man”), James is a pedestalled prince.  As the day turns to night, James begins to show cracks in his gallantry and the baton is roughly passed to the rough around the edges but tough as they come Ashley (Larissa White, “Charlatan”).  In another dynamic duo curiosity, her best friend in Lyndsey (Cameisha Cotton) drunkenly sluts her way to the end of the whiskey bottle and toward the inside of James’ pants, demarcating the horror tropes between the two pairings by sticking up and out the perverted goofball and the alcoholic promiscuous while keeping in protagonist good graces and staid James and Ashely up until the baton is passed along again inside the trio of an occult practicing backwoods family who messed up a reincarnation spell and inadvertently resurrected a powerful, murderous demon.  Between the family-first Pa, Frances (Frankie Ray, “Bad Haircut”), the near silent big brother, Philip (Brock Russell) and the rational sister, Felicity (Jenna McDonald), the protagonist shift lands in the lap of the younger sister who takes charge in a show of no nonsense command and force that deserves respect for a role that’s usually diluted or wasted in isolated cabin horror.  Each actor performs exactly on Stuertz given script with the cast rounding out with former model Dal Nicole in her full birthday suit for most of her screentime as the Kristy inhabited demon plodding to kill in a nonstop wrath.  

Most audiences and critics will pan “Tonight She Comes” as nonsensical drivel touting a gauntlet of gore and a fixed nudity to carry it into a favorable edge with fans.  All I have to say about Matt Stuertz script and vision is it breaks the conventional stereotypes into shattered shards and uses those shards as gouging, bloodletting weapons.  On it’s face, “Tonight She Comes” appears to be another run-of-the-mill cabin-in-the-woods horror with throwaway characters and many vague plot points that don’t have an encircling reference.  Stuertz purposefully throws cation to the wind and makes the movie he wants to see, a no-holds barred blood fest geared to obliterate the tropes and only provide slivers of important information, just enough to pass the bar to the next round of ironfisted thrashings.  The story never allows the sediment to settle between the character action and dialogue debauchery, the eclectic and interesting POV shots, the diabolical practical effects, the sparingly used but effective visual effects, the continuously guess where this story is heading and, of course, the unabashed eye candy that is Dal Nicole fully nude in full time.  The other thing that can bog down viewers, and rightfully so, is the time check title cards that are supposed to tick down to the moment the demon emerges into the fold, turning the events of youth fun into a grind of survival. Randomized and spelled out, literally, the interjected times don’t seemingly match the span of time passed on screen.  What should take a few minutes between scenes, the title card states hours had passed; I’m not positive if this is part of Stuertz’s trope lampooning or not but this portion excels as more distracting from its theme-bombing track.

Another great and gory to the extreme release from the collaborating collective of Danse Macabre, Jinga Films, and MVDVisual.  “Tonight She Comes” comes to a new DVD release that’s MPEG2 encoded, 720p standard resolution, on a DVD5 and presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Not peak image quality by any means of available formats out today, solidifying this DVD release a roll back to a lesser picture quality, but digital capturing goes without saying that DVD can still be a formidable format in regard to picture quality.  Likely, you will not see too much different between standard and high-definition but there are subtle areas of contrast, such as the black areas does contain faint banding and the details don’t inlay a zing of crispness like they should.  A film that starts off with a title card reading, THIS FILM SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD… AS HELL, the DVD does the statement and Stuertz’s film justice with an uncompressed English 5.1 surround sound mix that highlights on and hits upon the important sound effects, screams, and building discordance, tumbling minor tone, and spiny synth-rock and 80’s horror-inspired score of Wojciech Golczewski (“We Are Still Here”).  Dialogue lands with prominence amongst the clatter and chaos layers that gives a real sense and elevation to the dialect of Jenna MacDonald’s tough backwoods occultist.  Not much in the way of depth as mostly everything is taken to the extreme volume, actions far and near, but range is aplenty by spanning the innocent swashing of alcohol in a bottle to the splatter of brains on the wall, from the crackling of fire to the gnarly rip of flesh being torn apart, and the robust force of bullets being fired to the deluge of menstrual blood filling a cup.  Yes, it’s one of those movies!  English subtitles are available for selection.  Special features include a Matt Stuertz commentary track, deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes and raw footage look with cast and crew interviews with some still in character wardrobe, the Stuertz’s short film “Slashers,” and the teaser and theatrical trailer.  The DVD packing is about as generic as they come with the naked silhouette of the titular villainess standing in front of not the cabin the film in not the forest this movie takes place.  The arrangement is reminiscent of an “Evil Dead” knockoff.  The tall DVD Amaray case has nothing more to note in terms of physical prowess.  Aforementioned, this DVD is a rollback release in a few ways, and one is, unfortunately, the rating with a Rated R cut with a runtime of 84 minutes whereas previous releases were not rated clocking in at 90 minutes.  However, as far as I can tell, the Jinga Films, Danse Macabre, and MVDVisual does offer region free playback unlike early editions locked in at region 1.

Last Rites: If looking for something not too serious, checks all the gory and gross boxes, has decent practical and visual effects, and bares skin, “Tonight She Comes” is a fierce, ferocious, and fight-to-the-death option worth the viewing calories!

“Tonight She Comes” is Now Available on DVD! Purchase Here!

Rash Decisions Permeate EVIL’s Presence. “When Evil Lurks” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / 4K UHD Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“When Evil Lurks” 4K UHD Blu-ray for Purchase!

Two brothers in a small, remote community discover a neighboring man infested and rotting with a demon inside the body.  Fearing evil will spread once the birthed demon is free from the bloated and pus-oozing human host, they move the body miles out of town with the help of an impatient and bellicose farmer, but when they lose the body, a dark violent force spreads across their rural outlook, beginning with the horrendous death of the farmer and his pregnant wife.  Escaping to the city, the two brothers hightail out of town, picking up family along the way, only to unintentionally spread evil from contamination by the rotting body.  Local folklore has a set of established rules, seven rules in fact, when face-to-face with a demon and they enlist a reclusive woman, a proper cleaner of the rotten, to help them against the clinging evil determined to never let their family go unscathed. 

The 2023 released, heavy demonic and folkloric horror from Argentina, entitled “When Evil Lurks,” tells the whole story of a family’s past regrets, the road-splitting life choices they make, and the consequences that follow using graphic, unabashed violence and a campiness that’s corrosive to the soul.  Demián Rugna writes-and-directs “When Evil Lurks,” aka “Cuando acecha la maldad,” after his breakout hit “Terrified” from 2017.  The Buenos Aires filmmaker continues to push a singular amalgamate of wide-range tradition and horror to the extent the world has never seen, and he continues to shoot on location from his own country, mostly in or around his home municipality.  Fernando Díaz of Machaco Films alongside Roxana Ramos under her founded production company Aramos Cine with the support of the national cinema institute, the Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales or the INCAA, and the streaming horror service and productions, Shudder.

“When Evil Lurks” primarily follows Pedro and Jimi, two brothers living on the outs of their own lives stagnantly inside their rural family home.  Ezequiel Rodríguez (“Legions”) sports a grizzly beard as the lead, older brother Pedro who frantically and desperately needs to get his family away from the spreading evil while returning to collaborate with Rugna “Terrified” actor Demián Salomón tracks as a more youthful footloose, Jimi, not tied down by a family or even a girlfriend but rather is dialogued as free lover amongst women.  Every character they encounter exposes them to the evils that lie ahead, or generally around the vicinity, as the this rotten, as they label the formless rotten presence that is solely an inhabitant of people and animals alike, can jump to another host if the rules are not followed, with the most common rule being broken is using gun powder to kill the possessed rotten.  Up for to be demonic fodder is Pedro’s estranged family who have alienated him because of his ambiguities’ surrounding possible unforgivable crimes and family abandonment.  The latter speaks more specifically to his severely autistic son Jair (“Emilio Vodanovich, “Fever Dream”) Pedro once hated himself for spawning, per his ex-wife and restraining order enacting Sabrina (Virginia Garófalo, “La Vagancia”), but his Pedro’s pre-narrative occurred change of heart sends him frantically into the fire to save his children Jair and younger brother Santino (Marcelo Michinaux, “Fever Dream”).  Also demonically targeted is Jimi’s once city affair now turned socially isolated former cowwoman-turned-rotten cleaner Mirta (“Silvina Sabater, “The Wrath of God”).  Mirta pivotally provides audiences insight by solidifying what other characters only know by hearsay or try to understand intuitively about the rottens, or the possessed, and how it spreads and what rules to follow.  Without Mirta, a lot of the supernatural circumstances involving children, the insidiousness, and the mindset of evil.  Other cast members interlocked with the gruesome violence and gut-wrenched storytelling is Luis Ziembrowski (“The Rotten Link”), Paul Rubinstesztein (“Portraits of the Apocalypse”), Isabel Quinteros (“High Heels”), Lucrecia Nirón Talazac, Ricardo Velázquez, Desirée Salgueiro (“Luciferina”), Federico Liss (“Portraits of the Apocalypse”), and Berta Muñiz (“Plaga Zombie”) as the voice of the bloated rotten Uriel.

“When Evil Lurks” accompanies with it a strong theme of children replacing their parents or adults in a metaphorical, supernatural demon enriched context.  Children are drawn to the demon as the demon is drawn to children, a verbatim more-or-less statement said by Mirta about the rotten, or demon, that shows children as it’s bewitched devoted servants and protectors, like little underage Renfields, who try and trick adults off the rotten’s hidden location or carry out for more sinister acts.  One of those acts is literally devouring adults which becomes a regular theme throughout seen with Jair and Eduardo, and even in anecdote told by Mirta about a previous witness to a rotten’s case of regurgitation.  In a way, the demon is a child itself being birthed into the world under a swelling and oozing Uriel’s sinew and viscera and indulges in childish acts of fibbing, mischievous tricks, and playful portents that happen right under our noses and can be shocking to the system as we want to believe what our children, our flesh and blood, have to say but there’s always that inkling of untruthfulness in our minds. Rugna couples the manipulation with bold, visceral violence, even some on children, and a grotesque folklore inflamed by poor and naïve choices by those who don’t understand or are unwilling to fully comprehend the extent of consequences that follow because of their hastiness to act, solve, and be rid of a threat.  “When Evil Lurks” clearly points out our innate flawed existence and makes abundantly clear our mortality with our progeny to dominate the world. 

Second Sight Films emerges “When Evil Lurks” onto a 4K UHD Blu-ray.  The BD66 is HVEC encoded with an ultra high-definition, 2160p resolution and presented in the original widescreen aspect ratio 2.39:1.  Second Sight Films produce the high dynamic range with Dolby Vision, approved by director Demián Rugna.  The result is immense image immersion that inarguably has the wherewithal for a fluently stable color timing, a range of depth, and phenomenal detail.  Every aspect of what is on screen is crisp to the bone and Rugna’s violence, under Mariano Suárez’s eclectic cinematographer eye that builds toward suspense, benefits from the grisly faced display.   Audio fidelity through a Spanish DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio holds and delivers exact reproduction.  Plenty of back and side channel clinks and clunks to establish a presence created coincidingly with the image.  Dialogue is unobstructed, confidently paced, and above the layers whenever appropriate with Pablo Fuu’s score sneaking int folkloric tones and a despairing timbre and tempo there in the mix but subconsciously eats away the soul of the viewer.  Optional English subtitles are available and accurate but in moments of great hasty dialogue, the rhythm of display can be quick.  Special features include a new audio commentary by cinematic academic Gabriel Eljaick-Rodriguez, four new interviews with director Demián Rugna It Was Always There, actor Ezequiel Rodríguez Tragedy is Inevitable, actor Demián Salomón We Made a Movie, and actress Virginia Garófalo Stripped to the Bone, and a video essay by UK film podcaster Mike Muncer Terror and the Unknown in When Evil Lurks.  There are no during or after credit scenes.  The 4K UHD Blu-ray release comes in a black UHD Amaray with a new monochromatic art rendition of young Vicky holding the leach of the French Mastiff, same as the pre-release promo still for the film.  There are no internal supplements with the region free release that has a runtime of 100 minutes and is UK certified 15 for Strong Horror, Bloody Violence, Gore, and Language.

Last Rites: There’s no stopping death. Our children will replace us no matter how hard we try. A seemingly evil accursed death will come for us all and the choices that are made will be the design to our destruction. Director Demián Rugna sees the path and knows “When Evil Lurks” it has us completely encircled with no escape, no hope, and no compassion. How soon we choose to parish depends on how rash and unwise our decisions are in the grand scheme of life.

“When Evil Lurks” 4K UHD Blu-ray for Purchase!

The Holidays Are Over, but the EVIL Remains With Us in this Cookie-Cutter Classic “The Gingerdead Man” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get Ready to Chomp on this Cookie! “The Gingerdead Man” Blu-ray Available Here!

Cold-hearted, mama’s boy killer, Millard Findlemeyer, brutally gun downs Sarah Leigh’s father and brother before wounding during a diner robbery.  Two years later, Findlemeyer is executed with the help of Sarah’s damning testimony and the traumatized survivor attempts to pick up the pieces of her life by keeping her crumbling family bakery business afloat.  With her mother a raging alcoholic and a competing business threatening to shut the business down, Sarah doesn’t realize the gingerbread seasoning dropped off at her doorstep is actually the ashes of the evil Findlemeyer.  Thrown in a gingerbread mix and baked to live again, Findlemeyer returns to continue his carnage but as a delectably devilish cookie sporting candied buttons and wielding a knife.  Trapped inside the bakery, a handful of survivors are being more-than-gingerly picked off one-by-one by Findlemeyer’s possession of a pint-sized cookie and Sarah must face again the evil that destroyed her family.  

“The Gingerdead Man” is one of Full Moon’s more contemporary repeat villains this side of the century.  Christmas may be over, but the holiday cookie carnage doesn’t just pack on the pounds, it also can shred and cut the waist, literally, with guts spilling out everywhere.  The Charles Brand directed, 2005 film that kicked off the icing for not one, not two, but three sequels and a timeline intertwinement with Full Moon’s “Evil Bong” series.  Pot and cookies, a perfect combination when blazed.  The script was penned by Full Moon regular and “Night of the Living Dead” remake actor William Butler, under the pseudonym of Silvia St. Croix, and fellow Full Moon regular Dominic Muir (“Critters,” “Doll Graveyard”), under the pseudonym of August White.  Filmed in Los Angeles, the indie horror-comedy is a Shoot Productions and Full Moon coproduction venture with Band producing and Dana Harrloe serving as executive producer. 

Adding to “The Gingerdead Man’s already zany resurrecting the evil dead into a baked good concept (there’s nothing good about this cookie monster), the untamed energy and distinguished voiceover from Gary Busey is better than self-rising flour for this doughy production.  The “Predator 2” and “Lethal Weapon” actor headlines as the despicable killer Millard Findelmeyer but only in the flesh for the opening diner sequence that establishes Findelmeyer as a coldblooded murderer.  The backstory of his apprehension, trial, and execution is whisked into a frothy afterthought after the title credits to establish more of Robin Sydney’s Sarah Leigh character of rebuilding her life.  Sydney, who would become Charles Band’s wife nearly two decades later after debuting in this role, reserves Sarah into a stasis of plugging along into a woe-as-me state as a setup for her to be heroine nemesis to Findlemeyer’s flaky, killer crust.  What’s neat about her character, along with a handful of other principal characters, is they’re subtly and smartly named after notable cookie making companies.  Sarah Leigh is an obvious rework of the frozen desserts company Sara Lee, Ryan Locke, an unlikely Sarah Leigh love interest cladded and carried by all things from early 2000s, is Amos Cadbury, a mixed play on Famous Amos and Cadbury confectionary, and Jonathan Chase as commercial wrestling enthusiast Brick Fields lends to believe the character’s name pulls inspiration from Mrs. Fields soft baked cookies.  There’s also the corporate-commercial takeover statement with an adjacent restaurant that threatens to put Sarah’s bakery out of business and the owner’s name is Jimmy Dean, as in the sausage company, with Larry Cedar (“The Hidden,” “C.H.U.D. II”) in the role.  Alexia Aleman, Margaret Blye, Daniela Melgoza, and James Synder fill out the cast.

Kitschy personification horror is all the rage in the independent genre circle.  Murderous dolls at are dime a dozen, but a few outliers stray into something more risking and adventures, like an evil llama pinata in “Killer Pinata,” a wicked snowman in “Jack Frost,” or even a killer unicorn standing figure in “CarousHELL” that make the niche subgenre fascinatingly tacky for all the right reasons.  Charles Band and team tap into that peculiar ripe vein to extract their own usually joyous, kid-friendly object and transfigure its G-rated image to a hard R with death, sass, and a whole bunch of mischief and what better wholesome inanimate object to vilify than a scrumptious gingerbread man?  Voiced by Busey and animated by the always preferred practical means, “The Gingderdead Man” evokes promises of a so-bad-its-good composite, especially since the antagonist for this franchise starter fits right into the Full Moon small things come in killer packages niche, and while half of “The Gingerdead Man” delivers on a havoc-wreaking spiced cookie, the execution, as a whole, leaves much to be desired by whirling through a two year story gap of the capture and execution of Findlemeyer and how and why his malevolent essence is mixed into the batter for resurrection.  The slapdashedly before and after title credits causes a brief loss of thought as the brain frantically tries to catch up and fill in the gaps as much of the images and exposition haphazardly piece together.  The Gingerdead Man isn’t also quite as quippy as his human form counterpart, but a ton of appreciation goes into the multiple renditions of the distorted faced Gingerdead Man character from hand puppets, to animatronics, to full size human suit provides that breadth of range in angles, perspectives, and appearances that shape a personality package to where dialogue can nearly be neutralized altogether.  “The Gingerbread Man” lives and breathes as its marketed image, a mediocre kill possession-slasher with a bunch of characters scratching their heads instead of building upon who they are and what hurdles, figuratively and literally, to jump, the latter mostly falls into the hands of Sarah Leigh and her depression-induced fear, an aspect she has to face when being revisited by the man who killed her father and brother. 

An all-new transfer and remastered from the original 35mm elements, Full Moon Features re-bakes “The Gingerdead Man” onto a new physical media cookie sheet.  The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD25, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, had elevated some lower resolution complications with better definition appeal but the overall package isn’t an epitome showcase of the format possibilities with softer contrasts that leaves voids and shadows milkier, textures fluctuate during decode that sways in a range between 15 to 25 Mbps, and minor damaged portions, such as light scratches and speckling, are not touched up in the restoration.  Skin tones and other colorist applications appear organic and, when reaching peak performance, displays a nicely diffused sweat sheen in the lighting.  Two English, lossy audio options are available, a Dolby Digital 5.1 and a Stereo 2.0.  A clean and clear presentation on all layers with an amalgamated cast that just as good as any other solid sound design with powerful forefront and intelligible dialogue, an above par ambient dispersal that has suitable depth and range, and a Roger Ballenger carnivalesque score that isn’t from Richard Band but is a great mimic.  English subtitles are available.  Extras include an archival behind-the-scenes featurette with interviews with cast, crew, and Charles Band with some BTS-footage in creating the cookie monster, a blooper reel, the original trailer, and trailers for other Full Moon features.  Front cover on the Amaray Blu-ray is an illustrated composition of characters that clue in a sense of what to expect but other than that, this standard re-release has physical bare bones.  The region free release has a runtime of 71 minute and is not rated.

Last Rites: Though doesn’t reinvent the recipe nor does it not make this naughty killer cookie stale, “The Gingerdead Man” has come a long way with a new, revitalizing release onto a high-definition format pulled from the extensive and vast Full Moon catalogue that’s slowly but surely updating the filmic cache. This schlocky bad baked good should surely be in everyone’s holiday horror collection.

Get Ready to Chomp on this Cookie! “The Gingerdead Man” Blu-ray Available Here!

Dolly Deadlies Exact an EVIL Revenge! “Doll Graveyard” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Doll Graveyard” Available for Purchase Here!

In 1911, little Sophia is accidently killed by her verbally abusive stepfather.  He buries her lifeless body in the backyard dirt along with her favorite toy dolls that were the subject of his current tirade.  Nearly a century later and in the same house, Deedee, a teenage high school girl, throws a small party with friends while her father is out for the night.  Her action figure-enthusiastic little brother Guy discovers one of buried dolls in the backyard.  When a couple of older high school boys bully Guy, the spirit of Sophia emerges and pendulates possession of Guy’s mind and body, resulting in the turning of inanimate dolls into killers come alive to protect a hurt Sophia.  Drugs, alcohol, and teen sex quickly come to an end by a seize of small, dangerously armed toys hellbent on spilling blood just to protect a hurt little girl.  Those left still standing must find a way to reverse Sophia’s revenge.

Charles Band’s obsession with toys, dolls, dwarfs, goblins, or a sundry of the mix has yet to slow down his 50-year-career in making independent movies.  The now 72-year-old Band can sit on top of his Full Moon empire and enjoy his repertoire of ravenous rascal horror, including “Doll Graveyard,” the 2005 standalone doll slasher that’s not too dissimilar from the likes of Band’s foremost and unremitting doll franchise, “Puppet Master.”  Band directs the film based off his story and a screenplay treatment by the late director Domonic Muir, credited under the pen name of August White, in what would be one of his first few films with Full Moon in the first decade.  Muir also wrote “Critters,” “Evil Bong,” and venture into the “Puppet Master” series before his untimely death with pneumonia.  Band would produce the feature alongside Jeremy Gordon and Jethro Rothe-Kushel, filmed in Hollywood, California.

A small cast is all that’s required when the dolls resurrect and begin their assault on the youth with their individual ability.  At the story’s core is Guy, an action-figure enthusiast played by Jared Kusnitz (“Dance of the Dead,” “Otis”), and his older sister Deedee, an angsty, boy-hungry, rule-breaker played by Gabrielle Lynn.  Guy and Deedee play the trope fatigued dynamic of a feuding brother and sister complete with blackmail attempts and lots of name calling, opening the door of opportunity to connect in a time of great adversity – in this case, a living doll assault.  Then, of course, no slasher can go without the kill fodder and “Doll Graveyard” has a group of partying teens who come over after Guy and Deedee’s single parenting father, played by Ken Lyle (“Foreseen”), goes off on a date.  Their sneaky, adolescent transgressional gathering of beer drinking, pot smoking, and foreplay into possible copulation is driven by Deedee’s promiscuous best friend Olive (Kristyn Green, “Evil Bong”), a tagalong, morally incorruptible Terri (Anna Alicia Brock), and party-crashing jocks with the insatiable horny Rich (Brian Lloyd, “Candy Stripers”) and Deedee’s lover boy Tom (Scott Seymour, “Garden Party”).  Muir’s story does attempt to branch out from the conventionally themed pathway of authorized partygoers meet their doomed fate with sidebar weaving of past, present, and future relation connections.  Olivia and Rich once had a casual romp that has faded and Rich seeks more difficult challenges with the more prudent Terri while Terri has puppy dog interests into the younger Guy as they share some similar interests.  Meanwhile, Deedee and Tom take their relationship to the next level with precuring steps toward the bedroom that signals the beginning of he end, as the old recurrent theme goes.  The “Punk’s Dead: SLC Punk 2” and “The Amazing Spider-Man” actress Hannah Marks, who makes her film debut in the Charles Band’s film, rounds out the cast as young and unfortunate Sophia.

Eventually, one must ask themselves how many times can someone reinvent the wheel and still think it’s new, innovative, and fresh?  With Charles Band’s proclivity for small malevolence, especially in dolls or puppets, the one of the faces in venerable horror filmmaking has, in a broader sense, regurgitated the same movie over the decades now, tweaking bits and pieces here and there to make it ever so delicately unique.  Yet, “Doll Graveyard” feels very much like an extension of “Puppet Master” without bringing new elements to the table or even really linking “Doll Graveyard” to Full Moon’s more popular, longstanding franchise “Puppet Master,” which is essentially the face of the Band’s company.  We see Blade, we think Full Moon.  We see Six-Shooter, we think Full Moon.  We see Tunnler, we think Full Moon.  But if you show me “Doll Graveyard’s” rustic Samurai or The German with spear tipped helmet, coming around to Full Moon may not be the first to pop into the old thinker.  The story also feels a bit half-baked with the dolls coming to life by unexplained means and audiences would really need to put effort into surmising a reason, such as my own theory that Sophia’s departing soul, trapped beneath the dirt, absorbs into the dolls, giving them animated life and loyalty to Sophia.  None of that hypothesis is authenticated and we’re stuck with little-to-no answers in a film created for the sake of creepy dolls doing creepy things to creep out some cretin kids.

Those suffering from pediophobia probably should stay far away from “Doll Graveyard.” For everyone else, “Doll Graveyard” is now available on Blu-ray home video from Full Moon Features with AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, single-layered BD25. Presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, back cover states transfer elements were remastered from the original 35mm negative. The original negative print has withstood the test of time with no visually acute damage, granted the print is less than 20-years-old; however, there is noticeable dust and dirt speckles, some of which measure more toward a vertical tilde. Textures are softer than expected for a rather young film in the grand scheme of cinema with rounded and smoothed over contours, especially around defining facial features, that create more of a splotch than an edge. A bright spot is the palette with a diffusion and delineation balance around stock lighting. The lossy English Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is difficult to distinguish between the other audio option available, a Dolby Digital 2.0, as there’s not enough atmospheric or ambient rampage in the side and rear channels when dolls go deadly, which is mostly in the medium closeup to extreme closeup range. Taking hold of the audio reigns, mostly, is the District 78 soundtrack. Likely where the remastered elements come into play with its gothic rock opening credits score, this Charles Band production trades the jaunty carnivalesque for reinforced horror theme elements of isolated piano and electronic notes the musical production has accolades for and this translates throughout when presenting the dolls ominously and when they strike and into the coda credits with a full-on instrumental rock and wordless vocal background piece that’s very circa 2000s. English subtitles are available to select. Special features include a making-of featurette with snippet interviews from the cast with an introduction from Charles Band, a blooper reel, and the trailer amongst other Full Moon prevuews. There are no after or during credit scenes. The traditional blue Amaray goes along with the current Full Moon remastered trend of their horror catalogue with yellow-green primary art, no inserts or tangible features, and a disc press cropped of the focal primary cover art. The region free release has a brisk runtime of 73 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: A pedestrian, pale comparison to Full Moon’s maniacal line of moppets, “Doll Graveyard” stands far too short being the lower rung runt among giants in the company’s lineup.

“Doll Graveyard” Available for Purchase Here!

An EVIL Cult Summons Back “The Hangman” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Hangman” Now Available on Blu-ray!

Turbulent connecting father and teenage son, Leon and Jesse, retreat to the West Virginia wilderness for a little rekindling before Jesse goes off to college.  Still reeling after his mother’s death five years ago, Jesse blames his father’s inactivity and his rebuff mismanagement of their family’s pain.  The next morning, Jesse has disappeared, the car has been sabotaged, and Leon fears his son might be in the hands of a pair of racist rednecks encountered the day before.  However, what Leon finds himself in the middle of is much worse when a demon summoning cult retrieves The Hangman from the depths of one of Earth’s seven gates of hell and needs a fresh, young, and angst-riddled body to continue his unharnessed hell on Earth.  Jesse becomes the unfortunate soul at stake and it’s up to his father, and a few local God-fearing allies, to try and stop The Hangman’s noose from gripping tighter.

New York City-based director Bruce Wemple has teamed up again with Dread Production to bring another terrifying tale.  The “Monstrous” and “Island Escape” director cowrites the script with frequently collaborator, actor LeJon Woods (“Baby Oopsie:  The Series,” “Island Escape,” to deliver “The Hangman,” a demonic horror thriller that catapults a father and son’s dysfunctionality into the throes of Hell.  Filmed in the rural regions of upstate New York, doubling as the rural Appalachian wilderness of West Virginia, which makes filming having occurred likely around the Adirondack Mountains instead, “The Hangman” carries with it a longstanding racial infamy attached to a father’s supernatural pickle, being the middle of a demon conjuring cult and the lynching-loving demon itself.  Traverse Terror productions, a division of executive producers Cole Payne Traverse Media, in association with Dread Presents sees executive producer Patrick Ewald from the Epic Pictures Group back “The Hangman” feature while Daniel Booker and Vincent Conroy coproduce.

LeJon Woods not only cowrites the script but the actor for Cleveland, Ohio essentially customizes the role of the father, Leon.  What starts as a man looking to just escape into the great outdoors quickly closes in around him as he feels the pressures of latent hostility when son Jesse (Mar Cellus, making his feature film debut) accuses him of running from his past after the death of his mother, Leon’s wife.  What exactly happens to her is not yet apparent other than an offscreen gunshot but the palpable tension between Woods and Cellus is worth noting in a handwringing moment of enmity around the first night’s campfire; a good tall tale sign that this camping trip is going to be doomed from the start.  This tension sets the stage for what’s to come, a missing son, aggressive bigots, murderous cultists, and a Netherworld lyncher, showcased with an awfully underutilized purpose and screentime appeal, especially being the titular villain.  “An Angry Boy’s” Scott Callenberg gets his chance to shine as an inhuman character, prosthetically made-up with burn scars, greasy strands of hair, and cladded darkly in country chic, but doesn’t have the room to spread havoc or really build the character who’s mostly reduced to lurking the background and letting the telekinesis-driven rope to asphyxiate those not in the know of cult activity.  There’s also a slew of throwaway characters that either are too short-lived to really flesh out their role, such as the eye-gouged, bedridden clairvoyant and the tied-up local Leon saves and becomes a flirtatious love interest/gun-toting assassin (see what I mean by not really understanding the character?) in Lindsay Dresbach (“Pitchfork”).  Except for LeJon Woods, the rest of the cast is comprised of mostly short film or background actors and actresses given the opportunity for an expanded principal performance, including Kaitlyn Lunardi, Rob Cardazone, Jefferson Cox, Daniel Martin Berkley, William Shuman, Ameerah Briggs, Jessy Holtermann, and Richard Lounello.

Riding parallel to “The Hangman’s” resurrected demon on Earth, a father and son’s struggle to grow in postmortem of the only woman in their lives, and the fact that there is one of the gates of Hell located in the West Virginia’s Appalachians premise, the story entails a rather barefaced, as well as slightly overtone, racism theme coursing through its veins.  The Confederate flag sporting rednecks and the all-white, Southern accent contingent of white people against a black man and his son shout bigotry as louds as possible through your personal media setup.  Yet, the Hangman himself is the very representation of lynching, a heinously taboo act that has become a stain on America history, typically executed by racially prejudice Southerners on black people when that simmering, seething hate turns red and vigilante justice rears its ugly head.   Though the villain doesn’t don a white hood and gown or perform any gesture of white power, to say Leon, a black man, who must stop the evilly monikered hangman from taking his son’s soul to Hell, is too big a coincidence to not call a spade a spade.  Wemple and Woods make it clear that Leon’s calling is to be a savior, the chosen heroic that can destroy the Hangman, but while the first two acts climb the ladder of an naïve hero, all the indicating signs point to arbitrary means met with arbitrary characters for Leon with no concrete reasoning why his being deceived into the gateway to Hell area is more than just serendipitous destiny, turning the last act of “The Hangman” into just a one man wrecking ball of hillbilly hell spawn that loses that fate-driven connotation.

“The Hangman” nooses a high-definition, 1080p Blu-ray from Epic Picture Group, the at-home distribution label of Dread Presents.  The AVC encoded, single-layered, BD25 has good curb appeal with negligible compression issues in the feature’s 2.00:1 widescreen aspect ratio, so we get a deeper, broader picture with less resolution flaws.  While the certain background or tree-top scenes present a good visual intake of a bird’s eye views, the grading resides to just above a flat overlay, likely within the 10th percentile of grading possibilities, resulting in a more natural tone.  Details are generally fine when in focus or out of the shadows, which is where the Hangman lurks most of his screentime.  The presented audio options are a lossy English Dolby Digital 5.1 and a Dolby Stereo 2.0.  Dialogue has clear and prominent staying power throughout the stock soundtrack that slightly chintzy the ambience audio works of self-acting rope and other mystical milestones whenever the hangman comes calling.  There’s not a ton of spatial volume to diffuse the audio with balance, leaving a lot of the milieu and action resonances as lopsided near the foreground.  English and Spanish subtitles are optionally available.  The Blu-rays special features include a Bruce Wemple commentary track, a making of featurette with interview snippets with LeJon Woods, a lengthier interview with writer-star LeJon Woods, and a deleted scene.  Physically, the deep scar recesses of “The Hangman”s” white-eyed face and long, unkempt hair becomes the front cover face of Dread’s conventional Blu-ray with a disc pressed with more fascination of a coiled hangman’s noose working down the center ring.  There are no tangible bonus materials included. The region free release comes not rated and has a runtime of 90 minutes. 

Last Rites: “The Hangman” won’t snap the neck of novelty and wanders off the path of the tangent, but does instill a strength of cause, a father-son bond that’s being challenged and motivated when threatened, backdropped by systemic racism.

“The Hangman” Now Available on Blu-ray!