Category Archives: Schlocky

Another Ballsy Tom Martino Low-Budget Comedy-Horror That’ll EVILLY Knock the Political Correctness Right Out of Your Body. “Fisted!” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD: Raw and Extreme)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Fisted!” is Guaranteed At Least One Laugh! Now on DVD!

Camp Counselor El Mo runs a camp of merciless sexual abuse and is driving his plaything campers to one their what’s sure to be an exploitational hike through nature but when the van suddenly explodes from underneath and a tire rod penetrates El Mo through the rectum and kills him, the seemingly resigned El Mo campers find their long-awaited plan for revenge has been circumstantially and unfortunately thwarted by chance.  Determined not to be deterred for vengeance, the campers hike El Mo’s corpse to an isolated clearing where they will cook, eat, and excrete his remains but before they can do so, in the woods is the once urban legend turned real-life serial killer wearing a human flesh-masked, named The Jerklin’ Boy.  With an angry fist that can explode someone in a single punch and a knack for ripping off their scrotum and attaching them to his mask, The Jerklin’ Boy is an unstoppable demonic evil force hellbent on destroying all in his path.  There are even giant flesh-eating ants running rampant.  With nowhere to turn, the campers are at the expertise mercy of a demon hunter disguised as a camper amongst them who was once tracking El Mo and has now changed course for The Jerklin’ Boy. 

If a fan of Tom Martino’s outrageous and politically incorrect, 2012 science-fictional horror-comedy schlocker, “Race Wars:  The Remake,” you might also want to check out another Martino indie feature filmed around the same time, a pseudo-SOV release that’s a horror-comedy with a punch!  “Fisted!” is the Martino written-and-directed independent production produced shortly after “Race Wars: The Remake: and just like “Race Wars: The Remake,” it aimed to offend all without an apologetic backpaddling for its lack of decorum.  Flagrant homosexuality stereotypes, raunchy cock-and-ball grotesqueness, off-color race tropes and gags, and much, much more lineup scene-after-scene in Martin’s indelicate and indecent return to the indie market.  Once again, Martino produces his own film, as I’m sure no other company wants to touch it with a 100-foot pole, under his horror bust and mask-making company DWN Productions, which he shamelessly plugs in the middle of the story for good comedic measure. 

Pulling form his pool of acting talent and making their returning are the Martino entourage actors Jamelle Kent and Howard Calvert.  The “Race Wars:  The Remake” lead actors find themselves out from the alien fast food and zombie-inducing drug trade business and into being assaulted and hurt campers DL and Dick looking to eat-revenge their abusive counselor.  Joining them and also trading in his “Race Wars:  The Remake” supporting character badge for a principal character badge is Kerryn Ledet as Schindler, the mastermind behind the rape-revenge plan.  Ledet does the job but doesn’t hold a candle to Kent and Calvert’s dynamic duo in “Race Wars” with their a little extra something expressions compared to Kerryn’s over-the-top and crooked eyelevel facial stances.  Joe Garcia plays a seriously unsettling and verbally aggressive molester in El Mo with other campers alongside Calvert, Kent, and Ledet in comedian Joking Jolly Rogers as the stachy Tiny, Liz McCarty as the lesbian Butch, Sam Rivas as the wheelchair bound Kurt, and Martino as sleepy Charlie.  Martino doesn’t sleep the entire picture as he takes on the main antagonist role of The Jerklin’ Boy, who supposedly has dynamite running through his veins and gives him a punch that can knock your socks off and more!  Danny McCarty, husband to Liz McCarty, is not only the co-editor of the film but dons the emo-gothic sheath of The Lords Palm Slayer, a demon hunter on an on-going fight to destroy evil.  The Black Kreecha, aka Kreech Kreecha, makes his ode to the “Creature from the Black Lagoon” return from “Race Wars” to “Fisted!” with the simply named Steve, (voiced by Tynell Addison) as the beer drinking, slightly incestuous big brother to Kerryn’s Schindler.  “Fisted!” rounds out with a few other colorful characters with Flamey the Bear (Tynell Addison), the pussywillow scientist (Joe Grisaffi), the drug-addicted blood pisser (Kevin Choate), the Groucho Marx bench perv Rodrigo Pena, and a profanity-loaded prologue and epilogue by legendary Clarence Reid in his iconic rapper identity Blowfly. 

“Fisted!” is pansexually raunchy at its core and tapes into the same genre fan-living practical effects vein to the likes of Jeff Bookwalter’s “The Dead Next Door” minus the cut-and-paste visual effects that make Martino’s film all the more special in the eyes of the eccentric and underground indie film-loving beholder.  Off the wall and off-color, “Fisted” doesn’t hold back the unglorified gags and is not trying to win any morality and ethical awards or honors anytime soon.  The narrative is also divergent of any conventional narrative by be-bopping between the rape-revenge of the creepy molester El Mo, the scrotum snatching and wearing serial killer Jerklin’ Boy with an inexplicable powerful fist, the unexplained origin of large flesh-eating ants, and a demon hunting sect crusader who strays off the path of good.  There’s a lot going on and a lot of vulgarity and a lot of fun happening here under the umbrella of ultra-low budget, underground cinema.  “Fisted!” will not win the majority over and its niche comedy and contribution to science fiction horror doesn’t distill new and improved results into the genre but if you can relax from the high-strung conservative values and be open to a shoddy veneer and house made special effects ran through a VHS filter, “Fisted!” is a psychotic ass-punch of ridiculous fun with absurd practical and visual effects.

Coming in as the 92nd title for Wild Eye Releasing Raw & Extreme label, “Fisted!” is one insane grotesque death after another and this death punch of a film lands onto a new DVD with a MPEG2 compression encoding and an upscaled 720p albeit you wouldn’t be able to tell since there’s a heavy VHS filter that creates the impression of interlacing lines, tracking lines, and macroblocking as if watching a low rung SOV.  The single layer DVD5 has a negligible effect since, again, the VHS filter puts the picture quality through the wringer but that’s Maritno’s intended veneer at a 90’s inspired grindhouse picture with the hot new tech of the era.  My only complaint is the censored tracking lines overtop the plot critical moment where the lesbian action is not definitely simulated!  A riveting scene that certainly made my brow sweat, profusely.  The English language Stereo 2.0 suffers significant from poorly placed equipment and user error that often fights the natural elements, aka wind, and can also sound a bit boxy.  With the gusts on the creek of an alligator-infested Missouri shore, ambience noise drowns out select dialogue scenes of exposition and performative utterances.   There’s not much in the way of a memorable or killer soundtrack but the sound design to match the every aspect of the special effects lands with comedic flair, when there is actually audio synched with the action as occasionally it’s missed due to the 5-year post production change of hands.  Bonus features include a Wild Eye produced commentary featuring director Tom Martino and actor Joe Garcia and the feature trailer plus other Wild Eye Releasing films.  The DVD comes in a clear Amaray with uncredited, illustrative cover artwork of all its psychotronic insanity.  The reverse side depicts a blown-up image of an outrageous death moment.  The region free Wild Eye Releasing has a perfectly paced runtime of 71-minutes and is, of course, unrated.

Last Rites: Wild Eye Releasing continues to live up to their moniker with another wild, uncouth, and not rated story that barely has any narrative flesh hanging from the bone. “Fisted!” truly fights the conventional cinema power and doesn’t pretend to pull any punches as it takes on race, sexuality, and perversion without shame or any moral high ground.

“Fisted!” is Guaranteed At Least One Laugh! Now on DVD!

White Space Men are the EVIL Captains of the Zombie-inducing Slave Trade and Intergalactic Fast-Food Industry! “Race War: The Remake” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing: Raw & Extreme / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get Caught Up in the Middle of a “Race War: The Rmeake” on DVD

Drug dealer Baking Soda is feeling the peddling pangs of dropped traffic for his crystal pure PCP.  With no one buying his smack, he and his friend G.E.D. reside back home to drink with their close fish-headed friend Kreech and sleep off the day’s failure to try again tomorrow.  Their persistence to sell puts them on the radar of a white supremacy group vending a new drug on the street, the cause for Baking Soda’s drop in sales, but their product isn’t just going to get users high, it will turn them into flesh-eating zombie slaves.  When G.E.D. is kidnapped by the group, Baking Soda and Krrech have to run through the list of suspects – Jews, Hispanics, Chinese, and others – for the source of his sale woes and to rescue his friend, guns blazing if necessary or if unnecessary, but there may be more extraterrestrial motives that haven’t yet been unearthed. 

“Race War: The Remake” is a 2012 politically incorrect, ultra-offensive spoof comedy and blaxploitation horror from writer-director Tom Martino.  A Tom Savini school graduate, te special effects artist Martino (“Dead of Knight,” “Return to Nuke ‘Em High Volume 1,” “Doll Factory”) takes helm in the director’s chair for his debut in indie feature productions with one of the wildest, crudest, and tactlessly funny comedy-horrors I’ve seen since Troma’s “The Taint.”  Set in and around Houston, Texas and the greater surrounding area with guerrilla filming in locations such as the Houston Space Center and shooting with permission at the Darke Institute’s Phobia Haunted House, “Race War:  The Remake” doesn’t have an originating film despite the title in what is considered a spoof sequel – think of examples “Dude Bro Massacre III” and it’s standalone release or the non-existent second sequel between  “Thankskilling” and “Thankskilling III.”  Martino produces his own work under his outside of Houston-based company DWN Productions that doubles in making horror theme masks, busts, and props.

Thick-skinned actors comfortable with the narrative’s uncomfortable themes begin with Howard Calvert and Jamelle Kent as Baking Soda and G.E.D.  Calbert and Kent have become regulars in the Tom Martino catalogue of cast members for his more recent films and their humble beginnings in “Race War:  The Remake” proved their longevity to stay with the director, who is white, who wrote extensive race, gender, sexuality, and fart jokes in the context of a comedy-horror with cringy stereotypes and genuine tributes.  Calvert and Kent have great comedic timing to pull off all the zany editing, sound bites, and practical effects distaste Martino has flaming axe tosses at them to achieve his vision.  The two are joined by Danny McCarty, who would become another regular and be the visual effects supervisor for the film, dressed head-to-toe in loose-fitting urban attire to match the theme of Calvert and Kent’s black A-shirt and do-rags but his hands and face are masked to become the Creature from the Black Lagoon, aka Kreech.  Martino’s “Race War:  The Remake” isn’t just about the terrestrial races but intergalactic ones as well and we soon see that later on with the intentions of neo-Nazi white drug suppliers, led by Matt Rogers’ vulgarity in the horseshoe mustached Tex.  There are various other encountered gross stereotypes in the trio’s urban quest, such as a large nosed, greedy Jewish lawyer, Mexican luchador bodyguards, and a Pai Mei-esque Shifu speaking gibberish har har sounds and listing off popular Americanized Chinese dishes in attempt to be derogatorily funny.  With a film titled as “Race Wars:  The Remake,” the cast is mostly white and black actors poking uncouth fun with a big unconcerned and insensitive stick with Corey Fuller, Kerryn Ledet, Sam Rivas, and Coady Allen listed in the cast.

“Race Wars:  The Remake” isn’t funny, it’s stupid funny!  Having grown up in the 1980-2000s, consciously I might add, Martino’s politically incorrect and his brand of juvenile humor resonates with me, reminding me how cinema has become numb to the spoof humor.  Granted, Martino’s humor is over the top cutting, gross, and full of jest bigotry, traits that would trigger many in today’s sensitive awareness, and while cringy after a tasteless joke may result, there’ll likely be some a side of the mouth chuckle to go along with it.  On the opposite side of the spectrum, Martino tributes to references of certain popular culture icons, though slightly bastardizing some for laughs.  From Peter Jackson’s “Bad Taste,” to “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” to even “Mortal Kombat,” “Race Wars: The Remake” integrates the best parts of each these staples of pop culture and that gives his film a leg up on other offensive spoofs of the same crass caliber.  Th one negative story structure item to  highlight is the act one narrative takes a while to work the gears and get going as it attempts to setup the 40oz-drinking chumminess of Baking Soda, G.E.D., and Kreech but lags to a stagnant stall for hot second while still surround with the here-and-there gags, themed with G.E.D. homosexual tendencies and Baking Soda’s drug peddling woes on and off the streets, but once the antics pickup, there’s no stopping Martino and his filmic entourage from raining down an assault of insults. 

If you’re easily offended or put off by off-color race comedy, then Wild Eye Releasing’s “Race War:  The Remake” DVD is not for you!  For me, and those like me, unaffected by the type of uncouth spoof, Tom Martino’s debut is for you!  The Raw & Extreme sublabel’s DVD is MPEG2 encoded, 720p resolution, on a DVD5.  Presented in widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, there is a breadth of visual presentation not confined within’ pillar and letterboxing but is stretched vertically that affects the already par level resolution.  Guerilla filmmaking also involves no production lighting and natural lighting is more than used here in Martino’s run around the Houston area, but one thing good about Martino’s naturally lit cinematography is its neutral set, avoiding under and overexposure.  The lesser used interiors have some tint lighting and key lighting to avoid total flat, dark outcomes but give the image a haze of hue, especially inside Baking Soda’s living room scene in the first act that sees a thin layer of red and green.  The English PCM Stereo has inconsistencies in volume.  Some scenes discern quieter than others because of the guerilla filmmaking constraints as well as just using commercial recording equipment.  However, the dialogue does land well enough for the jokes to hit and overlayed sound effects greatly lift the sound design where needed, such as with the Mortal Kombat video game sequence or with the array-spray of gunshots throughout and soundboard gag effects.  There are no subtitles with this release.  Included in the special features is Tom Martino director’s commentary, a gag/blooper reel, a behind-the-scenes reel of the gory moments, and Wild Eye Releasing trailers that include “Race War:  The Remake.”    The clear, ECO-Light Amaray DVD case houses stellar covert art illustration work by Belgium graphic artist, Stemo, with the inlaid narrative intensity and characters in collage.  The reverse side includes a gory still from one of the scenes.  The disc is pressed with the same front cover image but there are no other physical materials.  The unrated DVD runs for 95 minutes and is region free.

Last Rites:  Wild Eye Releasing re-unleashes another outrageous title on their Raw & Extreme label and the Tom Martino film is every ounce of the sentiment in it’s indie underground hokum of gore, racism, homosexuality, and aliens! 

Get Caught Up in the Middle of a “Race War: The Rmeake” on DVD

Who Would Have Thought Something So Tiny Could Create So Much EVIL! “Cannibal Tick” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get Bit by the “Cannibal Tick” Blu-ray! Now Available!

Jeb believes his late father’s purloined gold is stashed underground in his densely wooded backyard.  What’ Jeb unearths is not gold, but barrels of chemicals Jeb believes to be just as valuable.  What Jeb doesn’t know about the pinched drums is the ooze inside leaking from them turns the local tick population into diseased carriers, transmitting a sickness upon biting their hosts and transforming the hosts into ravaging flesh eaters that continue to spread the disease with one single bite.  All hell quickly breaks loose amongst a sleepy backwoods around Big J’s outdoor food truck until a retired vampire hunter, Alec, turns his skillset onto the zombified undead when twin brother Roscoe becomes patient zero.  Big J’s famous menu items pig dicks and beer won’t save the rustic hillbillies from a fast-spreading contagion but one kilt wearing son of a bitch aims to take on all of them with a help of local and his vampire slaying colleague.  

If Lyme disease wasn’t already bad enough, chemically diseased ticks being the parasitic harbingers of the zombie apocalypse might just be the worst.  Like a premise straight out of Valve Corp.’s Half-Life series, co-directors Ross Carlo and William Long’s low budget, running zombie-comedy film, “Cannibal Tick” will leave more than just a bull’s eye symptom in its bloody, outrageous wake.  Mostly derivative from other running undead features, the 2020 feature length film is the debut and first collaboration efforts of the Eastern Ohio-Western Pennsylvania filmmaking duo with Long running solo in penning the screenplay of rednecks running rampantly through a serious case of tick-induced rabies.  “Cannibal Tick” is a production of indie companies Poo House Productions located in Youngstown, Ohio and of William Long’s Dark Long Productions of Northern Cambria, Pennsylvania.  William Long and Ross Carlo retain the producing credits as well as taking on principal characters as per standard in the microbudget, everybody-pitches-in productions.

In the spirit of low-budget creativity, Ross Carlo (“Rotten, Welcome to the Freak Show”) accepts his dual role fate playing twin Scottish brothers Roscoe and Alec.  Carlo invests himself into the accent while getting physical when the ticking timebomb explodes and all zombie hell unfolds in the armpit of Nowheresville, Pennsylvania.  His presenting of Alec and Rosco couldn’t be more different but still oddly the same as Alec’s has more of an interesting background as a retired vampire hunter visiting his brother, or rather just dozing off on Roscoe’s couch.  Roscoe, on the other hand, is purely just a boondock alcoholic without much of anything else going on other than the next pint and a handful of used tissues from his personal pleasuring.  William Long (“The Devil’s Wasteland”) also has a role in the film but just one as the gold feverish Jeb looking for his late pop’s buried treasure.  Jeb’s quiet nature is not imposing and he’s terribly forgetful or just doesn’t listen to his wife but neither scenario is really relevant to the story, much like most of the carrier scenarios and backgrounds other than Alec’s vampire killing skills translating over to zombie dispatching.  So many characters are quickly tossed into the mix of a 73-minute story that they’re unfortunately not well fleshed out nor provided enough substance to even instill an impression upon and what they reduce to is simply just fodder for the carnage for the sake of a high body count.  John Catheline (“Deadly Numbers”) is and plays a forlorn former wrestler Curtis lost in beer and solitude for his prime fight days and has become a local mechanic, Maurandis Berger (“Chronicles of a Serial Killer”) and Sheneefah Johnson (“3 A.M”) are a black married couple who find themselves broken down in a white hick town, and Lena Devinney and the late Jimmy Barber Sr. (“Deadly Numbers”) are the couple who arrive at the wrong place, wrong time as they drive up to Big J’s for some pig dick and beer.  The aforesaid descripts don’t go any further with no progressive dynamism that usually establishes either a love or hate development with audiences.  “Cannibal Tick” also feeds upon Greg Bailey, Allison Devinney, Donnie Lawrence, Tene Gossard, RahZhee Emmaunel, Lisa Dapprich, Iesha Guzzo, Jana Ferris, and Michelle Dominique Buxton to be bigger in the slaughter and in the slaughtering. 

“Cannibal Tick’s” concept is sound – a tick becomes affected by a barrel of leaking toxic chemicals that causes their bite to inject the zombie creating substance directly into the bloodstream.  Yet, the problem is there is only one scene with a tick bite and the Rosco-Long production goes from interesting to run-of-the-mill zombie chaos with zero principal protagonist power.  Another knock down is the substandard traits of an extreme indie production that relies heavily on the character captivation and special effects caliber to be successful in a demanding market driven by those factors.  The former has been touched upon in great detail, but the special effects pull ahead as Michelle Dominique Buxton, who not only has a character role but is also the special effects makeup artist, is able to pull off a few interesting prosthetic monster looks as well as a decapitation death that in all honesty is really well done in framing and effect.  While the solid zombie carnage infects survivors left and right with a ferocious appetite, the narrative then evolves with Jeb’s direct ooze contact, transforming him into some similar to a zombie king that sets up “Cannibal Tick” to a potential sequel in the future.  However, that sequel hasn’t crawled its way to fruition just quite yet.

The blood thirsty arachnid with a zombifying bite buries itself onto a new Blu-ray release from SRS Cinema.  The AVC encoded, mastered 720p resolution, 25 gigabyte BD-R with the purple underbelly.  While typically unusual for a Blu-ray to be in standard definition, SRS Cinema’s certainly no stranger to their films being filmed in 720p, thus the format, but video, as well as audio, suffer quality buckling, especially when encoded onto a one-time writable disc that has its own technical limitations.  “Cannibal Tick” sees quite a bit of those technical woes in its compression codec from banding, splotchy macroblocking, and loss of overall finer details.  Many of the action scenes are done at night with little lighting and decoding struggles with delineation and details, especially when the use of commercial filming equipment was used.  The film is at least presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  The English audio isn’t written or displayed on back cover, but this does render through the receiver output as an uncompressed 2.0 mix that channels a dialogue and ambience stream through to another channel of a stock score.  Obvious lack of refinement housed in a lower bitrate captures less isolation efforts on the dialogue, leaving disruption to run interference that spike and subdues pitches and tones, but the dialogue strength has solid recorded quality from a well-placed boom.  Other than that, there’s not a good dynamic range other than zombie growl and gurgle to give “Cannibal Tick” a semblance of audio body.  Special features include raw footage of behind-the-scenes of stunt sequences and makeup effects without narrative context, the original trailer, the official SRS trailer, and trailers of other SRS Cinema catalogued films.  The standard Blu-ray contains original artwork of a large, translucent, yellow tick overtop a blood smeared, presumably, zombie woman that speaks greatly to and has intrigue appeal of an ultra-indie film.  With a runtime of a little over an hour, marking at 73-minutes, SRS Cinema’s release comes region free.

Last Rites: Ultra low-budget, rough-and-ready, and imitative in a rustic sense, “Cannibal Tick” drains interest and captivation with the film’s throwaway moonshine characters caught and released in the throes of a backwoods zombie outbreak.

Get Bit by the “Cannibal Tick” Blu-ray! Now Available!

The Golden Ninja Warrior Turns Good Ninja Masters to EVIL! “Ninja Terminator” reviewed! (Neon Eagle Video / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The Golden Ninja Warrior is the corrupt Ninja Empire’s most valued and powerful artifact with mystical powers to whomever posses it’s three pieces, granting them near invincibility against enemy attacks.  The Supreme Ninja leader displays the power of the golden bust, resembling a beastly torse and head wielding a katana, to three of the Empire’s Ninja Masters – Tamashi, Baron, and Harry.  The three Ninja Masters betray their supreme leader, each stealing a piece of the statue for their own intent and purposes.  With one piece back in the hands of the Supreme Ninja leader after Tamashi’s demise, the now crime boss Baron seeks Tamashi’s piece and will do anything, and kill anyone, to get it with the aid of his cruel right hand man Tiger Chan.  Meanwhile, Harry resigned from the Ninja Empire to reform the organization’s criminality but has been unearthed by the Empire’s Supreme leader with an ultimatum to return the pieces of the Golden Ninja Warrior.  With the help of his cocky and confident partner, Jaguar Wong, Harry and Jaguar investigate into Tamashi and his brother’s death, try and protect their surviving sister from those looking for Tamashi’s piece of the Golden Ninja warrior, and defeat any Baron or Empire warriors that stand in their way.

One of the numerous released Godfrey Ho productions in which the director shot new scenes with Caucasian, abroad actors and edited them into an pre-existing film his company owned the international rights.  “Ninja Terminator,” a bestowed title at the height of James Cameron’s highly popular cybernetic, time-travelling thriller “The Terminator,” is the 1986 Hong Kong feature that breathes new life into the South Korean,1984 released, martial arts gangster film “Uninvited Guest” as Ho splices new additional footage to create his own, half-cocked storyline for a cost-effective ninja themed film starring a recognizable white actor.  Ho writes and directs the IFD Films production that’s produced by Ho’s makeshift Ninja feature team of Betty Chan (“Ninja Strike Force”), Joseph Lai (“Full Metal Ninja”), and Steve Kam who regularly took popular U.S. tiltes and integrated them into their own for advantageous marketing.

Where to start with actors and actresses?  Two films shot in two completely different times with renamed characters and additional characters in a jumbled-up mesh of a ninja film.  Lets start with Richard Harrison, an American actor with muscles and good looks who couldn’t quite land the parts he wanted in his home country but found lead man success in other parts of the world, especially in the filmic industries of Italy (“Orgasmo Nero,” “One Hundred Thousand Dollars for Ringo”) earlier in his career and, in this case, Hong Kong (“Inferno Thunderbolt,” Diamond Ninja Force”) later in his career collaborating a handful of times with filmmaker Godfrey Ho.  For “Ninja Terminator,” Harrison isn’t a stealthy cybernetic ninja master but rather an idealistic, benevolent ninja master sporting a unique camo ninja-yoroi to, I guess, blend in around his home and urban environment…?  Still, the camouflaged attire has to be more clandestine than the hot red ninja-yorois of the Ninja Empire.  At least fellow western actor, Jonathan Wattis, as one of the three ninjas who stole a piece of the Golden Ninja Warrior statue and became a crime lord himself, donned a near traditional, black-dyed ninja garb.  Harrison and Wattis do the best they can being spliced into Jack Lam’s film “Uninvited Guest.”  Reconstructed or replayed to be named Jaguar Wong, for his character’s Jaguar fighting style, Jack Lam bests Wattis and levels with Harrison for screen time as a fellow principal lead despite the 2-3 year difference between principal photography but Jaguar fits in aptly enough into an inept chaos of a near nonsensical ninja narrative that jumps to inconclusive subplots with little connective tissue to the core plot.  Maria Francesca, Jeong-lee Hwang, James Chan, Simon Kim, Phillip Ko, Keith Mak, Tae-Joon Lee, Nancy Chan, Gerald Kim, Andrew Lee, and Eric Leung costar.

Cheaply made knockoffs and spirited, gung-ho capitalizing on popular film titles saw fists-of-fury in Hong Kong circa 1970s through the 1980s, much the same way the Italians also didn’t believe the copyright laws when they too took advantage with unofficial sequels, especially in the horror genre.  “Ninja Terminator” is obvious one of those projects and the sly Godfrey Ho manipulated the international market to garner new public interest in what is basically an old film with additional scene, a scheme done pretty much on the regular in various countries, even in the United States.  However, “Ninja Terminator” is not a good movie but rather a hilariously bad one weighed down by irrelevant offshoots to flesh out a scantily structured half-script.  With the additional scenes of Richard Harrison and the others spliced in, plus Jack Lam’s one-man army showdowns against henchmen and sub-bosses, the combat saves “Ninja Terminator” from full frontal embarrassment with competent choreographed fights, plenty of sword, ninja star, and ninja trickery play, and a fair amount of acrobatics, even if some of the scenes are just gratuitous cartwheels and flips in an ostentatious display of skill and of trying to raise the value of a low-budget production.  Granted, there are no cartwheels or flips in Jack Lam’s storyline, nor is there a single ninja, but Lam’s take-on-the-world scenes are confidently hip for the period and that is the jelly to the bold Ninja peanut butter that makes “Ninja Terminator” work on an amusingly bad level. 

Neon Eagle Video, a subsidiary label of Cauldron Films that focuses on the best of the worse of Asian cinema, scour the globe and deliver the best and authorized reproduction of “Ninja Terminator” on Blu-ray in North America, restored from a 4K scan of the original negative and presented in its proper anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio of CinemaScope 2.39:1. I must agree with Neon Video Eagle that this transfer renders the cleanest and clearest reproduction to date, likely ever, in this compilation of source materials to render a corrective, singular 4K scan. The AVC encoded, 1080p high-def resolution, BD50 offers ample storage to limit or squash any compression indelicacies on an already delicate Godfrey Ho production that’s been bootlegged to bastardization for decades. Corrected color timing sizes up the landscape, the mise-en-scene elements, and the characters too with a diffused scheme that holds firm vibrancy across an early 1980’s hip and preppy Japanese fashion. The audio is a forced English dub with an encoded LPCM 2.0 mono. The ADR definitely is seen and sounded as expected with total unsynchronized lips and dialogue, especially when the story is forged from splitting two films into one. What’s also evident amongst the three-prong, rough-and-ready sound design is the unrealistic fighting sounds, overzealous and overexerted to be more like the Hong Kong Kung-Fu movies of the decade before. The last element is the soundtrack that’s got some funk and groove in its ninja-yorois that likely borrowed and repurposed from another Godfrey Ho production to fit this particular need. Optional English subtitles are avaialble.. Special features include brand new material, including an audio commentary by Kenneth Brorsson and Phil Gillon of the Podcast on Fire Network, a second audio commentary by Asian film expert Arne Venema and Mike Leeder, an interview with director Godfrey Ho Ninja Master discussing the popularity of ninja films in the United States and the appropriation of the “Terminator” title as well as touching upon Richard Harrison and his onboarding onto the film, a second Godfrey Ho interview alongside separately dubber Simon Broad Golden Ninja Dubs discussing the quick and loose ADR of Hong Kong cinema, an interview with “These Fits Break Bricks” co-author Chris Poggiali Ninjamania, and the trailer. Neon Eagle Video’s standard release, showcased inside a clear Blu-ray Amaray, presents new artwork by graphic artist Justin Coffee. The reverse side of the cover holds the still capture composition of the original one-sheet. No insert material included, and the disc is pressed with the same Coffee illustration. The region free disc has a runtime of 90 minutes and though not listed as unrated, the film is surely such.

The First Authorized Blu-ray of “Ninja Terminator” Now Available!

The Apex Predator of the Sea is Now the EVIL From Beyond the Stars! “Space Sharks” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Your Daily Dose of Sharksploitation with “Space Sharks” on DVD!

Interstellar scientists voyage home after discovering and retrieving a new species of shark and carnivorous plant from the planet Crypt-X.  When a rogue meteoroid field strikes the hull and sends their ship careening toward the Nevada desert, only one human survivor emerges from the wreckage to face off as the only resistance against a deadly combinational species of highly technological and predatory sharks and the piranha-like swarm of hungry vegetation.  At the same time, a group of recovering addicts are led onto a scenic desert trail for a spiritual nature hike while a conspiracy theorist, toyed with by clandestine organizations, makes his way west to locate the crash and uncover the truth connecting the space sharks with every other conspiracy theory known to man.  Man versus space shark versus killer plant in an extraterrestrial showdown on Earth’s terrain and only one will survive in what’s surely be a massive Government coverup.

Tornadoes whip man-eating sharks through the air in “Sharknado.”  Engineering virtuosos yet undead World War II Nazi soldiers ride monstrous, flying sharks to wreak havoc on modern civilization in “Sky Sharks.”  Now, outer space is no longer quiet and safe as a newly, deadly breed of predator is brought to Earth in “Space Sharks.”   Director Dustin Ferguson, a director with an oeuvre of low-budget horror going back as far as 2010, pens and helms the adjunct indie horror-comedy under his pseudonym of Dark Infinity and his latest is to infinity and beyond being right up there at the top of the schlockiest of sharksploitation.  Filmed and around Burbank California, doubling with no much likeness to the deserts of Nevada near the Grand Canyon, the team behind “5G Zombies” and “Amityville in the Hood” SCS Entertainment in a co-joint effort with Wild Eye Releasing, who also distributes the title, releases “Space Sharks” with Wild Eye Releasing’s founder Rob Hauschild producing and associate produced by Julie Ann Ream and Joe Williamson.

For all of roughly five minutes and a couple of lines of dialogue, Eric Roberts secures top bill on this what’s sure to be lost in the sharksploitation pit of nonsense.  The once formidable 1980s and 1990s star, and brother to the high-powered and elegant Julia Roberts, “Best of the Best” and “Runaway Train” star has ebb-and-flowed vertically between mainstream Hollywood films and the lowest-of-the-low indies.  “Space Sharks” is definitely in the latter category and doesn’t showcase much of Roberts’ given talent that has in recent years strayed to the more eccentric in a countless number of Dick, Jane, and Harry productions.  Longtime scream queen Brink Stevens is another familiar who you’ve might not even known existed in the film if it wasn’t for the credits.  Playing the nature hike leader but enveloped under the shade of a large sun hat, hidden behind large black sunglasses, and, too, with very little screentime, Stevens comes and goes like the snap of a finger.  Other cult film actors are added to this ridiculous recipe with Mel Novak (“Game of Death,” “RoboWoman”) and Scott Schwartz (“A Christmas Story,” ‘Café Flesh 2”) folded into a cheap, B-movie run cast batter of Ferguson regulars to give this tasteless schlock some spice.  If “Space Sharks” had to select a true principal lead, Allie Perez (“Amityville Emanuelle”) would be the closest as the lone surviving scientist with arms training to fend against the upright and muscularly athletic sharks while trying to make her way home to dad, Mel Novack, but tasked to protect desert lost civilians Nick Caisse (“Apex Predators 2:  The Spawning”), Traci Burr (“Death Bitch”), Janet Lopez (“Liza: Warden from Hell”), Ben Anderson (“Witchblossom”), Breana Mitchell (“Cocaine Couger”), Daniel Joseph Stier (“The Clown Chainsaw Massacre”), Christine Twyman (“It Wants Blood!”) and Joshua Mooney (“Axed to Pieces”) from being chum. 

An “Alien” and “Predator” rip-off integrated into the multifaceted farce that has become sharksploitation.  As premises go, “Space Sharks” has a promising plotline of a newly discovered, extraterrestrial species of shark being returned to Earth for scientific, governmental weaponization or examination and then runs amok the desert when things go terribly South.  That story is far more lucid than previous low-rent, quick-produced features of a supernatural shark emerging jaws first out of a toilet bowel.  Also, the way the trailer was cut had “Space Sharks” perk ears of interest with a very similar appearance to “Street Sharks,” a mid-1990s Saturday morning, animated television series of muscular man-eaters that were half-man, half-shark heroes running around beating up bad guys on a weekly basis.  Then, we see the film and we were wrong, dead wrong.  “Space Sharks” is a half-cocked mashup of too much, too little of unwanted knockoffs and crisscrossing ideas.  Computer-generated designs of the brawny tech-sharks are not terrible for budget but do borrow quite an uncomfortable bit from our favorite jungle and urban hunter, the Predator, with heat vision, cloaking ability, and the methods of skinning and suspending corpses upside down.  The pull from “Alien” is more subtle with an opening credit title that comes about in the same gradual style as the Xenomorph films.  Ferguson is no stranger in his cache of flattery and audiences likely wouldn’t have minded the echoes that entail if it wasn’t for the nonsensical chasing of conspiracy theories, a space mission stemmed with little-to-no details, explanation of tiny alien sharks grown to be elite hunters, man-eating plants, giant spaceship crash that befell no concern, zero character developments, dynamics, and arcs, and a story edit too perfunctory to keep focus.  

“Space Sharks” invades retail shelves with a Wild Eye Releasing DVD. The MPEG-2 encoded, upscaled 1080p, DVD5 houses essentially the encircling feature presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The upscale barely registers with a mid-range decoding rate at approximately 5 Mbps. Textures are not as defined inside the context of tangible captured frames whereas any post-production object, computer generated with commercial animation software, is about as backwards realistic as an early 90s source coded video games, such as the blockiness, square-pegged Doom or Duke Nukem 3D. “Space Sharks” has an ungraded, unpolished overlay that leaves colors desaturated or muted and the compression seizes control with blatant aliasing issues when characters run around like free range chickens evading foxes. The long opening through galaxy is the best “Space Sharks” will get that exposes colors, multi-shaped object, and an ease of poorly rendered animation burden with a rather decent composition of visuals and soundtrack to kick off the film. The English language stereo 2.0 mix too rides that sliding scale of independent filmmaking with a low-frequency, heavily saturated audio mix that can’t harness and real in isolated elements, and without that even diffusion of sound, every exterior noise maker attaches itself to the dialogue and the intended ambient sound. Dialogue renders through anemically but has enough strength to be heard and intelligible, even if what’s scripted is not. English subtitles are not available. DVD unfolds as a feature-only product with an al carte selection of Wild Eye trailers that are usually on every Wild Eye home video releasing, special features withstanding. A time warping 70-minutes runtime has this just over hour long feature feel much longer in is unrated, region free format.

Last Rites: Simply put, if you’re looking to watch something jawsome, “Space Sharks” is more space junk and not worth going anywhere near its orbit.

Your Daily Dose of Sharksploitation with “Space Sharks” on DVD!