Category Archives: Sequels

To EVIL It’s Only a Game! “Truth or Dare: Legacy” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / 3-Disc, 5-Film Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own All 5 Films on Blu-ray From SRS Cinema!

Truth or dare is the game that can be played by all.  Children will dare each other to do eat dirt or spill the beans on who ate the last chocolate chip cookie.  Teens and adults will be riskier in their sexualized dares and their truth sought questions.  For Mike Strauber, the longstanding game is life and death.  When Mike stumbles upon his wife and friend’s bedroom affair, his dormant psychotic childhood surrounding the game awakens into delusions of playing the game with a woman he hallucinates, ultimately hurting himself enough to be placed in Sunnyville Mental Institution.  As Strauber spirals deeper into his madness, he inflicts his truth or dare game on mental patients who cut off their limbs and explode their heads with a grenade Strauber snuck inside.  Strauber also mutilates his face and comes to wear a copper mask but his time at Sunnyville is cut short when he escapes his confines and goes on a murderous rampage back to where his breakdown started, with his cheating wife and unscrupulous friend that sets Mike Strauber’s story to influence others to follow in his footsteps and even give Strauber another chance to work the killing field once again.

SOV filmmaker Tim Ritter is renowned amongst hardcore horror fans for his VHS and budget films that ambitiously and thoroughly executed with gory effects accentuated with a sleazy dressing.  Select filmic highlights include “Killing Spree,” “Day of the Reaper,” and even a segment in the Hi-8:  Horror Independent 8 Films” horror anthology, but his flagship film and franchise stems from the 1986 “Truth or Dare?  A Critical Madness” that spurred four sequels stretching from 1994 to 2017 under an array of non-sequentially titled projects, such as “Wicked Games,” “Screaming for Sanity,” “Deadly Dares,” and “I Dared You.”  If you haven’t noticed already, the multi-player required game of truth or dare is at the core of the franchise.  Ritter wrote and directed the films with Scott Tepperman (“Cruel Summer” franchise) co-directing “I Dared You” as well as starring in the picture, Kevin Lindenmuth (“Vampires and Other Stereotypes”) and SRS Cinema’s Ron Bonk cowriting “Screaming for Sanity,” and Kermit Christman cowriting “Wicked Games.”  The original film is an extenuation of a short film of the same subject matter in Ritter’s “Twisted Illusions” anthology.  Twisted Illusions would become the name Ritter and Joel D. Wynkoop’s small band production company to finance and shoot the first three films along with Peerless Films, Wynkoop Productions, and Los Bastardz Productions sneaking in here and there in the series as association coproductions with Ritter, Joel D. Wynkoop, Ron Bonk, Scott Tepperman, Yale Wilson, Denise Blackwell, and Reaper M. Jones are the credited producers across the five films.

Other than the centerpiece killer Mike Strauber in all five films, only one other character returns to the storyline and only in three out of the five, although Hess’s profession changes from psychiatric doctor to police detective.  One other principal support character from Part IV makes a brief appearance in Part V but has seemingly zero tether to previously film, making his character more confusing in the cast scheme.  While there have been many actors to have portrayed Mike Strauber, from John Brace being the first to give it his all as a scorned lover and a broken mental case to more the stereotypical slasher-stoic demeanors of Kevin Scott Crawford (Part II), Bill Cassinelli (Part III), Joel D. Wynkoop (Part IV), and Part V uses the character by notorious legend only, Dan Hess is essentially played by one actor, Joel D. Wynkoop in Parts II, III, and V and this would mark the character as the anthesis against Strauber, much like the Laurie Strode and Michael Myers embattled relationship of intertwined fates.  However, unlike Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, Ritter’s plots flare out to mostly not give Strauber all killer credit and gives Strauber’s inspired lot a chance to flourish in his all-encompassing infamy with copycat killers and even killer’s he’s made up in his own demented mind.  Like any Ritter production, there’s a slew of sultry, scantily-cladded women show a bit of flesh but their flesh is filleted.  The hot bods of Mary Fanaro (“Demon Queen”), Patricia Paul (“Creep”), Lara Stewart, Jessica Cameron, Krista Grotte Saxon (“The Day of the Living Dead”), and Ashley Lynn Caputo are just some highlights that’ll put your sweat glands into overdrive.  The 40-year stretched between the first film and the last film offers a variety of styles, culturally inclined for the decade, so nothing between styles and transitions carry over the same from film-to-film but that gives “Truth and Dare” it’s non-commercial edge, right?

“Truth or Dare?  A Critical Madness” is unusual proof of how mighty a small production with a lot of can-do attitudes can be with it’s tremendously vast cult following that has reached the likes of Frodo himself, Elijah Wood (“Maniac”) as well as to the casual horror fan bored on a Friday night and decides to rent the movie, digitally unfortunately nowadays.  There is a certain crude charm in it’s development of a killer as Tim Ritter evolves the mental state of the man, Mike Strauber, before he turns into a copper-faced killer whereas other slasher kings, like Jason Voorhees or Michel Myers, who are introduced to audiences in the deepest throes of their instable mental state and that is perhaps one reason why the original film works and connects with audiences who can empathize a killer instinct after being bluntly cheated on by their significant other or some other relatable, emotionally vulnerable, traumatic event.  The sequels from the 90s, “Wicked Games” and “Screaming for Sanity,” are the only two sequels that are back-to-back and still keep that aforesaid charm of encapsulated brutality surrounding the legacy of Mike Strauber in the form of copycat killers.  Strauber never returns to the likes of an immortal juggernaut but his notoriety feeds inspiration and influence for sequels to come, something we haven’t really seen before prior to 1990 and many have now imitated, such as the “Scream” films.  This separate but the same idea continues into the more modern last two sequels from the 2010s but has evolved or morphed to accommodate the digital age of internet, online videos, and webcams to infect madness with the truth or dare game being at its very essence.   However, Ritter transitions from 16mm and SOV to digital for the latter two sequels, losing that warm and fuzzy glow in the color tones and the 480-interlacing resolution of analog video.  The last film “I Dared You” is more of a caricature comedy than it is a tale of severity that preys on themes of derangement, loneliness, and trauma, trading those key aspect of downtrodden humanity for campy kitsch that doesn’t work and alienates itself from the body of the snake by putting a bulgy-eyed frog’s head at the end head of it; it just doesn’t work.

All five films are now available on a “Truth or Dare? Legacy” 3-Disc Blu-ray set from SRS Cinema.  A perceptively definitive set, SRS Cinema’s Blu-ray comes AVC encoded with 1080p Hi-Def resolution on a BD50s.  Each film is visually exhibited appropriately according to its shooting decade and budget capacity.  For instance, the 1980’s “Truth or Dare?  A Critical Madness” is shot on super 16 but then scanned to VHS for ease of distribution so there entails the film stock grain and light bleeds as well as interlacing and tracking properties but with an overall and a definitively pleasurable watching experience with it’s extremely minimal wear, tear, and age issues.  The 90’s “Wicked Games” and “Screaming for Sanity” were directly shot on SOV and come with that warm, orange coloring as well as soft but intense glow of other color lighting tints used to extract emotion out of the scene.  The 2010’s “Deadly Dares” and “I Dared You” are digitally filmed that take away much of that analog aesthetic of indie cinema, trading the format favorites for a cleaner image that has no visual personality to it.  These films are not a stylistic artistically with a cinematic flare but there are some visual tricks with tints, composites, and distortions that make the imagery stimulating.  Prior to the 2010’s installments, which are displayed in a widescreen 1.78:1, the aspect ratios for the older works are a full screen 1.33:1 aspect ratio.  All five films have a Dolby Digital 2.0 audio spec with an unpolished innate recording that has a medium-strength dialogue and feeble organic action that’s naturally captured without the enhancement of an audio strengthening and touchup.  There’s voiceover dialogue that’s more robust that loses that in-the-scene spatial distance.  English captions are available for each film and all alternate versions.  Each disc comes with special features that are rounded around and inspired by each of the films on the disc.  Disc one is just the first film “Truth or Dare?  A Critical Madness” that contains two cuts of the film supervised by Ritter and Roy Damm and Susan Kapostasy,  both versions have an audio commentary featuring director Tim Ritter and actor Joel D. Wynkoop, a feature-length documentary “Celluloid Carnage” that has some behind-the-scenes and raw materials and photos, the original Italian language track is available for both versions, a snippet of the talk show interview between Craig Ferguson and Elijah Wood with Wood discussing “Truth of Dare” as his favorite horror movie, a Ritter short film with Joel D. Wynkoop audio commentary available, a promotional photo gallery, the feature trailer, and a Tim Ritter introduction from 2016.  Disc 2 contains “Wicked Games” and “Screaming for Sanity” and contain a parallel audio commentary for each film with Tim Ritter, Joel D. and Cathy Wynkoop, a retrospective interview with Michelle Macabre, the original 1993 making-of “Blinded by the Blood II,” a featurette on the alternate conception “Writer’s Block,” promotional art and trailers, and a secondary interview with Ritter with scream queen Katrina.  The third and final disc, “Deadly Dares” and “I Dared You,” also include Tim Ritter audio commentaries with the latter co-hosted with Los Bastardz’s Scott Tepperman and Jim O’Rear along with series staples, Joel D. & Cathy Wynkoop, and rounded out with promotional and crowdfunded extras and fundraiser videos, behind-the-scenes of Part V, an estate location visit with Tepperman and O’Rear, Tepperman’s reflection of making Part V, and Ritter’s short film “Hess” with Joel D. Wynkoop starring which comes with it its own two commentaries, one with Joel D. and Cathy Wynkoop and the other with Marcus Kempton  The traditional Blu-ray Amaray has the more contemporary artwork of Mike Strauber in a copper mask and slicing a machete through the air with the title sporting the original font of dripping blood just overhead Strauber.  The reverse side of the cover art contains a complete overview of each disc’s special features and transfer specs.  First disc resides on left side lock while the last two discs are stacked on a double disc push lock, leaving no room for tangible inserts.  With a total runtime of 450 minutes, each film is not rated and comes region free.

Last Rites: Like normal, the sequels slowly dilute the original “Truth or Dare” film until by the 5th film there’s barely a resemblance of Tim Ritter’s heart and soul. Times change, sure, but keeping that underground and spirited essence of “Truth or Dare” would have made more sense than the killer’s influence amongst the masses over the decades. In any case, SRS Cinema’s 5-film Blu-ray is the definitive edition, nonetheless.

Own All 5 Films on Blu-ray From SRS Cinema!

Invincible-Seeking EVIL Loves to Hide Behind Strip Clubs! “Decadent Evil 2” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The Sequel “Decadent EVIL II” Bites Hard! Check It Out!

After barely surviving Morella, Dex and Sugar, along with carrying around the homunculous Marvin, traverse across the country to find a vampire master.  Their plan is to take a drop of his blood needed for a resurrection ritual to bring vampire hunter and Marvin’s son Ivan Burroughs back to life after sacrificing himself to stop the deadly, megalomaniac Morella.  Ivan’s golden tracking cross brings them to midwestern gentleman’s club full of possible seedy suspects as the master vampire – the vampiric-attributed club owner Janos, the stern and scary club manager Burke, or even the club’s beautiful top dancer Lena are all suspects.  To uncover the master vampire, Dex and Sugar work their way to being hired at the club in order to snoop around.  Meanwhile, dancers and customers are winding up dead nearby.  As the investigation continues, Dex, Sugar, Marvin, and even the undead Ivan must work together to find the master vampire and stop him from continuing what Morella started. 

“Decadent Evil II” is a direct sequel to the 2005 original that returns Full Moon founder Charles Band (“Puppet Master”) to the director’s chair and writer Domonic Muir to pen the follow-up.  Same vampire tricks, more topless strippers, and a ragtag team of vampire trackers has this 2007 subsequent feature feel like a heel biter by keeping the story going without a lot of time lapsed.  Band retains his personal interest in pint size creatures and nude women in the sequel while keeping costs down as much as possible with limited locations and special effects fields filled in mostly with strippers doing their routines in between.  Band also returns as producer alongside Bill Barton (“Blood Forest”) and Joe Magna (“Dangerous Worry Dolls”) with James Synder, Jon Morrey, and Dana K. Harrloe serving executive producer under Band’s Wizard Entertainment, now Full Moon Productions.

Jill Michelle and Daniel Lennox return to their respective roles of being a vampire-human love story couple, Sugar and Dex.  No longer hiding secrets from one another and on-the-road together, going from one dingy hotel to the next, the carry around the corpses of Ivan Burroughs in hopes to one day resurrect him by securing master vampire blood.  Ivan Burroughs, unfortunately, is played by a new actor, one who in my opinion is an upgrade from the already great Phil Fondacaro (“Land of the Dead”).  Ricardo Gil replaces Fondacaro as the vampire hunter with a vindictive vendetta.  Gil does have similar features to Fondacaro but has more personality in his delivery, making Ivan Burroughs more sarcastic and rougher around the edges than the first subdued portrayal with less snarkiness, and that gives the sequel more notability against the first film.  The vampire lot doubles in villainy with a master vampire purposing sporting his beastly side of a red vampire bat head, complete with pointy airs, conical snout, and elongated fangs, and which, in all honesty, makes him look more like the Prince of Darkness of traditional appearance.  The master vampire hides amongst the human pool of the gentleman’s club to mist the air with mystery of who it is with a suspect list including a club owner Janos (Jon-Paul Gates, “Alice in Terrorland”), club’s top stripper Lena (Jessica Morris, “The Haunted Casino”), and club manager Burke (James C. Burns, “A Haunting at Silver Falls”).  Mike Muscat, Lillie Nyx, and Rory Williamson make up the rest of the cast.

“Decadent Evil II” is comparable to the original film with both being watermarked by Charles Band need for small creatures, campy horror, and substantial number of topless women, the latter being more prominently risky in the sequel with extra suggestive stripper poses that focus on the crotch area to lay gingerly into that filmmaking golden role of bigger and better for a sequel.  “Decadent Evil II” does teeter that idea with also a doubled antagonist pool and a higher body count but not necessarily containing, and also being a sorely lack of, gore that more-or-less stays the same from the original film with a rivulet trickles of blood running down necks and chins.   Band and Muir do take the vampire out of the Gothic setting, one that Morella had resided herself into living at a mansion of marble and stone, and they trade it for an automotive junkyard, an ill-fitting home for a well-dressed vampire whose lived centuries in human culture.  One locale that has remained constant throughout both Band’s films are strip clubs and channeling the success of such gentleman’s club with bloodsuckers as “From Dusk till Dawn, both films prominently display them with great grandeur for the B-roll stripper moves.  With being a sequel, I held quite a bit of disappointment for the story that follows the same thematics as the first, the main being a singular master vampire garnering souls to become invincible and there’s nothing to accentuate that idea even further as it’s surrounded by, again, much of the same – Dex, Sugar, and Ivan, the inexplicable homonculous and his strange attributes, and a strip clubs.  Even the final scene remains familiarity with instead of Marvin making love to another homunculous, he makes doggy love to a full-size person in a cringy and uncomfortable last scene moment.

Charles Band’s “Decadent Evil II” receives it’s Hi-Def Blu-ray as a part of a long and arduous of converting Full Moon’s films to Blu-ray.  The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD25 offers Full Moon’s catalogued 239 title a new pixel perspective of a saturated color palette inside its darker shaded tone.  The details are mediocre as much of the finer points are lost in low light, gel lighting, and haze but the compressions aim to be stable without any artefacts to note on lowest capacity Blu-ray.  Plenty of inky and less visible delineating contrast is a credit to the gaffing and director of photography Terrance Ryker for a soap opera-noir aesthetic.  For the first time ever, the film is presented in HD in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  The audio options are an English LPCM 5.1 surround and a stereo 2.0 that caters to District 78’s alternative, indie rock during the club sequences but elucidates and livens up the dialogue to where nothing obstructed with ambiguity.  Hardly any depth to the sound design as characters never wade beyond medium shots and range is limited to mostly the dialogue track along with imitation actions one would see in a low budget production or cartoon.  English subtitles are not available on the Blu-ray.  Extra features include a behind-the-scenes, a 42-minute featurette Battle of the Bands with a little stroll down memory lane for Charles Band as well as musical ventures for the film, stripper auditions for the Visions Night Club, the original trailer, and Full Moon trailers.  The physical presence is much of the same from Full Moon with a standard Blu-ray Amaray with relatively new artwork focusing on the homunculous rather than the vampires.  The sleeve is one sided with no inserts inside.  The region free Blu-ray has a runtime of 81 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: Like stuck on repeat, “Decadent Evil II” doesn’t offer a different type of narrative but ups the amount of nudity and vampires without much formidability in this lackluster sequel.

The Sequel “Decadent EVIL II” Bites Hard! Check It Out!

EVIL Dances Naked the Night Away! “Orgy of the Dead 2” reviewed! (MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get in on the “Orgy of the Dead 2” on Blu-ray!

The Emperor of the dead and his Princess of the Night return from the dead to behold entertainment from the beyond.  As the Emperor sits on his graveside throne, his lap-seated Princess announces the lineup of dancing deceased, half naked women in a seduction of debauchery and death.  If the Emperor is not entertained, nor turned on, he damns their souls to Hell forever!  Four teens, on their way to the graveyard for sex and drugs amongst the dead, crash their car after some distracting roadhead, killing one of them in absent of a seatbelt.  As they search the graveyard for a living soul for help, they stumble upon the Emperor’s variety of groovy vixen and are captured to witness their dance of the dead.  As the show becomes more and more sordid, not all of the prisoners feel turned off by the show that creeps closer to their doom and their dawn.  

If you’re deeply knowledgeable of cult movies, have a familiarity with Ed Wood Jr. films, and have a genuine affinity for really schlocky horror and eroticism, you may have once in your life experienced the 1965 nudie-cuties erotic horror “Orgy of the Dead” that danced the graveside night away with topless stripteases challenged to entertain the Emperor of the Dead to avoid eternal damnation.  “Plan 9 from Outer Space” and “Jail Bait” filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr. penned the then controversial and provocative script with Stephen C. Apostolof debuting his directorial effort, who then went on to do a number of exploitation pictures, such as “College Girls,” “The Snow Bunnies,” and “Five Loose Women.” The film’s rights were obtained from the Apostolof family by Andrew J. Chambers, who’s credentials followed a similar subgenre to his 1965 predecessors with “Babezilla vs the Zombie Whorde” and “Lust, Magic, and the Witches’ Sabbath.”  Chambers’s goal was to create a sequel, simply entitled “Orgy of the Dead 2” that brought back the Emperor, Princess of the Night, and a slew of scantily cladded undead women to burlesque the night away.  Chambers writes, directs, and produces the 2026 release alongside co-producer Stephen Apostolof’s son, Chrisotpher, under Chambers independent production company, HojBob Productions, and was partially crowdfunded under Indigogo.com, achieving an approx. $3,700 in pledges.

Obviously, the 60-year span between the two films doesn’t see the return of Jeron Criswell back as the Emperor (died 1982), Fawn Silver as the Black Ghoul (long retired and left pictures altogether), or Pat Barrington and William Bates as the stumbling lost couple Shirley and Bob.  Instead, the sequel features new talent in the principal parts as Mike Fantastik dons the undead ruler of darkness as the Emperor who sits on his throne to judge the decaying dancers.  Fantastik is no Criswell but the indie rapper from Nebraska brings his own licentious flair to the character by blatantly reading from cue cards just off screen.  Princess of the Night is played by pinup model Penny Aphrodite (“Pigshit”) that does resemble a bit of Fawn Silver’s Gothicism in looks and mannerisms.  The duo of Bob and Shirley are replaced with a quartette, or a pair of couples, who wreck their car after roadhead sends their car careening into the bushes near a graveyard.  Nick Somers, Adam Peltier, Jaymie Schroeder (“The Devil’s Dancers”), and Jessa Flux (“Debbie Does Demons”) are the new captured and witnesses to the Emperor’s sordid dance space of judgement.  Flux has established herself as a rising scream queen by integrating herself into any and all-types of horror films in a very unselective manner and with “Orgy of the Dead 2,” her character closely recalls other Flux’s roles of a sexed-up hot chick, making her Cindy performance not that stand out, but in contrasts, there’s an omission of emotional guilt and anger compared to the others tied to a staked crosses as they watch the perversion and death unfold.  The dancers a motley of alternate women and unabashed topless stripteasers between Stephanie Love, Bobbi Jo, Mercy Andersen, Tina Mazing, Katie Kadaver, Maia Thomas, Naomi Webb, Kaisa Neal, and Mae Devour with Michael E. Ross, Clint Beaver, Tony Kimball, Zdenek Voprada, and Morgan Molck as the Emperor’s creatures of the night. 

If any of you readers have ever seen the 1965 “Orgy of the Dead,” you’ll find the modern-day sequel to be not really a sequel in the traditional sense but more like a remake.  There’s no firm connection to the original production with Chambers bringing new nudie-cuties to the dance on the graves, a mixed soundtrack, and a totally different perverted vibe that’s cruder than it is implied to accommodate the time period in which the film is made.  Apostolof’s “Orgy of the Dead” had no plot in the traditional sense in what was more of an erotic, burlesque shindig in the middle of ghoulish-driven cemetery and, to be frank, the whole concept didn’t exactly leave an ecstatic and an aesthetic taste in my mouth with its boring static evolution further into the runtime.  I get it.  Times change, movies change, and taste change and Apostolof’s “Orgy of the Dead” might have been the hot ticket punched for some sleazy gawkers but in the early 2000s, when “Orgy of the Dead” made it to VHS, the novel idea just fell hard like a rock sinking to the bottom of a lake.  Chamber’s sequel, following the same design as the original, produces the same effect with its timeless homage to Apostolof’s original and, while that’s honorable, Chambers didn’t reinvent the wheel, he just bedazzled it with different kinks and coarser content.  Product looks even cheaper than the original on its measly $5-$7,000 budget that can only afford cardboard structures and tombstones, a glue on prosthetics, and simple in-laid practical effects.  Plenty of heart with really no soul, “Orgy of the Dead 2” is about as lifeless as the undressing undead. 

From Hojbob Productions and MVD Visual, “Orgy of the Dead 2” is a blast form the past done in contemporary times now on Blu-ray home video.  The unrated, region free release doesn’t have a lot of technical disclosure, but the release is AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, onto a 25GB BD-R with the bruised colored disc underbelly, suggesting a commercial writeable disc and muted colored, textured DVD label on top.  Presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, the indie production isn’t at the summit of quality and, in fact, is rather low with poor visibility (aka lighting), compression blights such as banding and splotches, and an anemic color saturation.  The former of the three can be accepted to work in the sequel’s advantageous favor that keeps the hazy graveyard cemetery dim as possible and not be evident of key lighting that’ll throw off whatever authenticity “Orgy of the Dead 2” may possess.  The audio is an English Stereo 2.0, uncompressed but not reigned in with it’s noise static when volume levels overload with intense decibels.  Dialogue is clear but varies in strength in part to recording mic placement that can’t capture more than one person standing adjacent to the person next to the mic. The soundtrack by Aaron Gum is perhaps the best with a variety of musical genres from carnivalesque to rhapsody that loosely fits the dance number.  Special features include a making-of featurette with Andrew J. Chambers, a behind-the-scenes featurette with raw footage of takes and setups, actor Adam Peltier’s ramblings, a director and actor feature length commentary track, and the original trailer.  Released in a standard Blu-ray Amray case, “Orgy of the Dead 2” homages its predecessor with a slapped together package design of a blown up still from the actual movie and used as the front cover face.  The sleeve art is also one-sided.  Inside in the insert section, there’s a slick and nicely illustrated retroesque comic book front cover insert of the main characters.  It’s unfortunately uncredited.  The narrowly hour film, coming in at 65 minutes, is the perfect size for the BD-R capabilities.

Last Rites: If a fan of the original “Orgy of the Dead,” the sequel doesn’t stray into new territory with dancing corpses and a killer soundtrack, but don’t expect a novel sequel in this ready-made remake.

Get in on the “Orgy of the Dead 2” on Blu-ray!

A Trio of EVIL of Italian-Inspired Violence. “Gialli, Guns, and Gore!: The Brutal Films of Darren Ward” reviewed! (Treasured Films / 3-Disc Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The Brutal Films of Darren Ward Are a Must See! Buy the Set Here!

Walker, a former SAS turned hitman mercenary, accepts a job by a white-collar narcotics kingpin to snuff out a rival organization for control over cocaine distribution territories only to be betrayed by his employee, targeted himself for elimination.  Going into hiding to recover after narrowly escape with injuries, Walker’s best and only friend is caught, tortured, and slaughtered to draw him out.  There’s nothing left for Walker to do other than to mercilessly wipe them off the face of the Earth.  In another thrilling tale, low-level hoodlum Mitchell steals 100K from another low-level hoodlum holding the money for a mob boss.  Planning to use the money to fund his daughter’s return from a comatose state, Mitchell must first outrun and outsmart the mob who are hunting him down, but nothing will get in the way of saving his little girl.  Lastly, Walker returns to the fold having retired permanently from the mercenary life and is now living the married life with a child on the way.  When a group of lowlife henchmen decide to joyride murder and posthumously rape his wife and leave him for dead, all Walker wants is thoughtless vengeance and he must go through an entire crime syndicate to get to those responsible for destroying all that he loves.  Unfortunately, the underlings of a ruthless Russian mob boss, who is trying to tie up loose ends before the police and investigators come after him, are protected by a small arsenal.

From 1997 to 2019, British filmmaker Darren Ward produced the Fury Trilogy, a 3-film series of violent crime thrillers that harked back to the days of the Italian poliziotteschi subgenre, a brutally violent series of crime thrillers released between 1960 and 1980 that saw themes of cruel hearted antagonists, a justifiable hero hellbent on revenge, and the up-close-and-personal violence and, often times, gore.  “Sudden Fury” (1997), “A Day of Violence” (2010), and “Beyond Fury” (2019) are the titles and while not all three wholeheartedly connect in the series and in story, they share the cruel characteristics and the visceral animosity that has lurked in the Italian shadows for way too long.  From Italy to the United Kingdom, Ward resurrects the short-lived classic exploitation subgenre having written-and-directed all three years over the course of 20 years, and maybe even before that as Ward wrote-and-directed the 1994 short film “Bitter Vengeance” that preluded the Fury Trilogy with a foundational base concept for subsequent feature films.  Ward produces the films under his company Giallo Films.

The 1997 “Sudden Fury” is a showcase of mid-90’s nostalgia propped up by vast, electric, and eccentric cast and characters that spin a web of complexity between two gangs, one hitman, and a whole lot of vengeful vendettas.  Nick Rendell plays the sought after former SAS soldier turned mercenary hitman Walker with full zeal for the 80’s action star by carrying a reputation that proceeds the character.  Rendell’s portrayal is often aloof as Walker stands in between two gangs and their lack of integrity as they squabble over the cocaine dominion, but when the last standing gang tries to hunt him down, killing his one and only friend in the process, Walker takes the fight to them guns blazing.  Rendell also carries over his performance to the 2010 film, the unconnected “A Day of Violence,” but in different shoes as Mitchell, a father, husband, and hoodlum in desperation mode and doing whatever he can to live and breathe inside the context of mob land complexity for a large sum of money.  Rendell goes form lone wolf to a man with dependent in a totally different side of character in Mitchell when compared to Walker when considering how the compassion attribute.  Now, Walker returns for “Beyond Fury” but Nick Rendell does not return to the role as the 2019 film sees Nick Roberts filling the mercenary shoes.  Also, this time around, Walker is given compassion, compassion for revenge!  In his retirement, his family is murdered arbitrarily – as if ill-fated living a previous life of violence and death – and vows revenge at his own expense to harm taking on an entire organized criminal organization, ran by the unforgiving “City of the Living Dead” and “Cannibal Ferox” actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice.  Radice is also one of the only other connective tissues between the last two films but in different roles with opposing significance with more prominence as the chief villain in “Beyond Fury” as well as Victor D. Thorn in various capacities in each three films.  Other notable cast members from across all three films include David Warbeck (“The Beyond”) in “Sudden Fury” and Dani Thompson (“Axe to Grind”) with Andy Ranger, Paul Murphy, Christopher Fosh, Steve Humprhies, Tina Barnes, Helena Martin, Tina Barnes, Joanna Finata, Harold Gasnier, Gary Baxter, Dan van Husen, Glenn Salvage.

Darren Ward’s Fury Trilogy is roughly the same model copied over one another at roughly a decade and half apart, yet each individual storyline evokes a different impression as each has unique attributes.  “Sudden Fury” surrounds itself in sociopathy, drug trade, and gang war.  “A Day of Violence” has themes of devotion, parenthood, and blinding greed.  “Beyond Fury” spores retribution, justice, and loyalty.  Other than the reprisal of the Walker character in the first 1997 and last 2019 film, the real only aspects that connect the series together is the unflinching and visceral violence fueled one major motif in all of Ward’s movies, organized crime syndicates versus the single willed warrior.  Ward has no qualms with showing violence front and center in the most graphic way possible and without it being overly gratuitous or at least blending the excessive blood and gore action into the moment that it hides in plain sight.  The effects on all three films go hard under Alastair Vardy who did the SFX work on all three films.  Vardy is a major effects artist as of today, having worked on such films as “World War Z,” “Kick-Ass 2,” and last years “28 Years Later” and that speaks volumes to his dedication toward director Darren Ward and his three films produced on a lesser budget with mostly genre and cult actors.  Ward’s scripts are heavily dynamic and can become complex with betrayals, twists, and a fair amount of unpredictability in the grand schemes of either drug wars, money disputes, and damage control.  “Sudden Fury” and “Beyond Fury” has an easy, 2-part character arc for Walker but there often feels like a missing piece to his character backstory, especially when his stories are over 20 years apart and Ward doesn’t profoundly piece those missing years together with much effort.  Yet, through Ward’s camera cleverness and storytelling, there is plenty to like and easily digest through multiple camera angles of a scene, interesting shot setups, and the close and personal nature of strong violence.

UK distributor Treasured Films rolls out the bloody red carpet for Darren Ward’s Fury Trilogy with a brand new 3-Disc Blu-ray set entitled the “Gialli, Guns and Gore” set that is region free for all to enjoy the carnage.  The limited-edition boxset comes with newly remastered and graded scans for its grand worldwide Blu-ray debut on “Sudden Fury” and UK Blu-ray debut for “A Day of Violence” and “Beyond Fury.”  “Sudden Fury” is scanned from the original SOV material and into a 720HD, leaving a lot of room for unfortunate and unable improvement but this transfer is pretty damn good that retains that shot-on-video, interlacing aesthetic and muted colors.  There are no evident issues of overly heated color tones or tracking lines from magnetic tape deterioration and presents the best possible image with soft details in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, though the back cover states all features are in a widescreen.  “A Day of Violence” and “Beyond Fury,” having been digitally filmed over 13-years later, are in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio with cleaner image resolution that looks neat a pin with granular details surrounding skin and textures, a slight slate color grading with hues being diffused and saturated in balance, and offers a focal depth to enhance quality.  The English language audio format is an uncompressed DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 that packs a wallop front and center.  The Fury Trilogy has immense range of gunfire, fisticuffs, explosions, and car races that run the onomatopoeia length of an action bundle with clear dialogue that’s more vital in the last two films with isolating features and more muted in the first with more integration around surrounding elements and electronic interference from the implemented equipment.  There’s not a ton of depth in either film that relies heavily on making an impact with the ultraviolence and caffeinated action in the front role of a dual channel that does have a decent separation and isolation of dialogue and action.  English subtitles are available on all three releases.  “Sudden Fury” special features include an audio commentary by Darren Ward and star Nick Rendell, a retrospective documentary Sudden Fury:  12 years On, a retrospective making-of interview with Darren Ward The Crime Trilogy:  Part 1:  Sudden Fury, deleted scenes and outtakes, a BTS special effects make-up reel, Ward’s 1994 precursing short films “Bitter Vengeance,” 1993’s “Blue Fear,” and 1992’s “Paura Il Diavolo,” an image gallery, and archived trailers.  On “A Day of Violence,” a feature length documentary of Making-Of a Day of Violence, an interview with actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice, an audio commentary with Ward and star Nick Rendell, the second Darren ward retrospective documentary on the making-of The Crime Trilogy Part 2:  A Day of Violence, The Crime Trilogy:  The In-Between Years looks at Darren Ward’s short film “Nightmares” from 2004, deleted scenes and outtakes, the hardcore trailer, a no-so-hardcore soft trailer, a Soprano trailer, short film “Nightmares,” an audio commentary for ”Nightmares” with Ward, and an image gallery fill out the special features for the second feature.  The third feature’s special features conclude with another audio commentary with Darren Ward and Nick Rendell, The Crime Trilogy Part 3:  Beyond Fury retrospective documentary of the making-of the film, Chainsaw Fun featurette, the Gasworks Visual Effects reel, The Crime Trilogy props used in the film tour, the Ward 2025 short film “Passion,” an audio commentary for “Passion,” trailers, and an image gallery for that short film.  While the encoded special features are impressive, the physical presence of the Treasured Films release is equally as eye-catching with a rigid slipbox containing frontal artwork by Uncle Frank Productions, three clear Blu-ray Amaray cases, each with new, reversible sleeve art for all three titles, and snug inside the slipbox with them is a 31-page booklet with color stills, release acknowledgements, and essay by Tom Lee Rutter – Furious:  The Story of the John Woo of Southampton..  All films are UK certified 18 for strong bloody violence, gore, sexual violence, very strong language, and strong sex.  The runs are as followed:  “Sudden Fury” 103 minutes, “A Day of Violence” 116 minutes, and “Beyond Fury” 117 minutes. 

Last Rites: The “Gialli, Guns, and Gore” set is Darren Ward’s unflinching frenetic violence now glorified in a beautifully curated Treasured Films package!

The Brutal Films of Darren Ward Are a Must See! Buy the Set Here!