Category Archives: Sequels

EVIL Backwoods Cannibals Are Back for Seconds! “Butchers Book Two: Raghorn” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Ready to Eat? “Butchers Book Two: Raghorn” Available Here on DVD!

The abduction of a wealthy family’s daughter drives the four kidnappers onto the backroads of rural America toward their way to riches.  However, things turn south as their vehicle strikes a large raghorn, instantly dissolving their escape route and their previously teetering plan.  A festering betrayal and greed divide the group that leads them into the cannibalistic hands of the sadistic, backwoods inhabitant Clyde and his monstrous freak of a brother Crusher.  Always looking for a good piece of meat and with a brutal penchant for playing with his food, Clyde takes them hostage at gunpoint, ties them up, and has fun torturing and tenderizing his foraged prize before chopping them up to pieces on a bloody stump for stew makings.  Yet, the abducted woman refuses to be the victim and let terrible, awful atrocities happen to her, and not even let it happen to her kidnappers, by escaping her confines and managing to get ahold of a double barrel shotgun.  A standoff ensues but nothing gets in between Clyde and his food. 

“Butchers Book Two:  Raghorn” is director Adrian Langley’s 2024 standalone sequel to his lowkey breakout 2020 hit, the indie backwoods cannibal-survivor picture, “Butchers”.  The sequel doesn’t stray too far from the precursory film’s primary premise with a family of degenerate provincials with a taste for human flesh whisking away stranded travelers in some kind deranged version of roadside assistance.  Langley directs and writes the script for the film based off a story conceived by Langley and Kolin Casagrande, who previously collaborated with Langley as a producer on his 2010 crime thriller directed feature entitled “Donkey.”  More than a decade later, Casagrande and Langley are again making beautiful violence together with Blue Fox Entertainment’s James Huntsman (“Bunker”), a parent company of the film’s distributor, Red Hound Entertainment, and “Butcher’s” Doug Phillips as producers and another “Butcher” producer, Kevin Preece, as associate producer.

Aforementioned, “Butchers Book Two:  Reghorn” doesn’t subsequently follow the first feature and introduces new set of paltry protagonists versus a new set of insatiable and vile cannibals deep within the middle of the woods of Nowheresville, America.  The party forcibly partook in the cannibals’ cruelty isn’t necessarily all an innocent party as they’re mostly kidnappers looking to score big from their captive.  Dave Coleman (“Ghoul House”), Miguel Cortez, Sam Huntsman (“Bunker”), son of producer James Huntsman, and Hollie Kennedy portray the ensnared antiheros with the latter two being most of the focus amongst them, seeing that they are cousins that evoke more empathy than the less empathic former.  The wild car outside of that and who are not the viciously outweighing outliers is the girl in the trunk, who is actually a man named Corgand Svendsen.  The androgynous model from Canada hikes up a skirt and wears a tight top crop to become the damsel Ash but Ash is no damsel in distress.  The story shifts from Ash’s bagged head and wrists tied helplessness to become the infiltrating protagonist to take up Clyde and Crusher to do what’s right, even if that means saving the skin, literally, on a couple of her captors.  Svendsen gives a calm and subdued performance, especially as a hostage in the money scheme and in the bloody mitts of cannibals, but perhaps there’s more than what meets the eye for Ash.  Perhaps, Ash is a part of the kidnapping scheme in a theorized plot between Ash and Sam Huntsman character Josh who frequently tries to make Ash comfortable in the whole ordeal and Ash is just trying to salvage her investment, but the strength of that theory never fully materializes in Ash’s motivation to go against two ruthless killers rather than to flee free with her life.  Clyde and Crusher are the two mysteriously originated characters who live in the woods and eat people.  Their background is not specified or shared in any minute way but “What Lurks Beneath’s” Nick Biskupek plays a mean, man-eating son of a bitch in Clyde while Michael Swatton, who previously played one of the Watson brothers in original “Butchers,” compliments his “little” brother as a colossal, head-crushing freak of a nature left in the audience’s peripheral view.  The sequel’s casts ends with Mark Templin (“We Are the Missing”) as a moment of reprieve stopgap sheriff tracking down the vehicular accident victims who may not be victims after all.

Watching “Butchers Book Two:  Raghorn” is like watching in a déjà vu fog.  The similar premise to the 2020 film peruses familiar aisles of country-chic cannibals chopping careless characters who stumble into their killing grounds.  What the sequel drops is the perversive and family legacy angle, reducing the story to just two brothers living isolated on the outskirts and barbequing people as they happenstance wander by.  Langley also doesn’t up the graphic nature but sustains the same amount of gore and mordacious violence.  Even when cutting down the killer contingent down half its size, violence remains taut and palpable for shock effect as Langley does make the savagery purposeful rather than just gratuitous.  “Raghorn” is by no means a bigger, badder sequel, as most sequels tend to try and exceed expectations and outdo the first, i.e. more blood, bigger body count, detailed special effects, etc., but the indie roots that made the original film palpable are still firmly grounded with a, literally, grab-it-by-the-balls, suit yourself story without the poking and prodding influences of a rapacious producer or studio with flashing dollar signs in their eyes. 

Breaking Glass Pictures’ “Butchers Book Two:  Raghorn” would have been a perfect fit for the distributor’s short-lived extreme horror sublabel, Vicious Circle Films.  However, we’re still glad the sequel made the home video market under one of Philadelphia’s most prominent indie distributor labels with a DVD release.  The MPEG-2, single layered, DVD5 is presented in an upscaled 1080p with a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio.  While not receiving high-definition resolution, you’ll be fairly pleased with the quality of this release that retains some faithful reproductions in textural details, such as Clyde’s cutoff jean jacket and overall grimy attire that does highlight the jacket’s frayed ends and the outlined dirt patches or the engulfing variety of foliage that naturally exhibited innate green shades, but also the general appearance is soft in the more depth of details.  Langley, who wears multiple production hats between editing, directing, and writing, also is behind the cinematographer lens to create the space of depth and to be stylistic with a few pan and track occurrences.  The English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix is the only lossy option available that renders a traversable diffusion of sound throughout with balanced layers between dialogue, ambience, and soundtrack layers.  Clyde’s intelligent intelligibility under a twang tongue clearly finds the audio receptors with the remaining dialogue denoting clarity in the same fashion. English subtitles are available for optional use. While Breaking Glass Pictures’ releases do not have a wealth of bonus content, most have some content to peruse; however, this particular release is feature only. The region 1 playback DVD has a runtime of 89 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: From the book of Andrian Langley’s cannibal misfits, a second story lives and breathe in “Butchers Book Two: Raghorn,” a gruesome, miscreant fanned, survival of the hungriest for their cravings tale wrapped just a tad too lightly for proper consumption.

Ready to Eat? “Butchers Book Two: Raghorn” Available Here on DVD!

Nothing Will Stop Detective Belli from Bringing Down EVIL Heroin Traffickers!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Perhaps the Best Itali-Crime Film Ever!

A hot-headed and determined police commissioner will not stop his pursuit until all the drug trafficking in Genoa is annihilated but the insidiousness of the crime’s reach within society is proving to be difficult to root out.  With the help of one of Genoa’s long-in-the-tooth drug kingpins, living out the last of days before terminal illness overcomes him, the commissioner is able to put a dent into a rival organization’s trafficking schemes.  When a case-building chief commissioner, aiming to get the very head of the organization’s snake, is brutally gunned down in the middle of the street and his evidence files stolen, more pressure is placed upon the criminal syndicate with more arrests, more drugs seized, and a bigger impact is made by one resolute cop while attempting to build a more damning case file his predecessor had worked on for years but the drug traffickers will not be deterred and mercilessly go after the commissioner’s loved ones.

Enzo G. Castellari’s “High Crime” is quintessential poliziotteschi.  “The Inglorious Bastards” and “Keoma” director’s 1973 Italo-crime feature is about as fast-paced as it’s energetically loose-cannon of a principal protagonist.  The screenplay, under the original Italian title of “La Polizia Incrimina, La Legge Assolve,” is treated by a conglomerate of Italian writers in Tito Carpi (“The Shark Hunter”), Leonard Martin (“Tragic Ceremony”), Gianfranco Clerici (“Off Balance”), and Castellari himself based off a story by producer Maurizio Amati (“The Eroticist”) and shot on and near the story locations of Genoa, Italy and the French city of Marseille.  “High Crime” is actually a sequel to Romolo Guerrieri’s 1969 “Detective Belli” in which that titular character reappears in “High Crime” but more righteous and justice-prone compared to the corrupt background of Belli in antecedent film.  Both movies star the same actor in the main role but have little connective elements.  The feature is a production of Star Films and Capitolina Produzioni Cinematografiche and is coproduced by Edmondo Amati, father of Maurizio. 

The blue-eyed “Django” actor Franco Nero is that actor portraying Commissioner Belli in both films.  In “High Crime,” Nero is an exuberantly moral cop to the point he looks to be almost throwing a temper tantrum when in the face of his superior Chief Commissioner Aldo Scavino, played by American actor James Whitmore of “Them!” and “The Shawshank Redemption.”  The two characters resemble night and day of how they handle crime; Scavino’s reserved nature evokes a cautionary tale to run down crime slowly but surely in building a case that would settle everything all at once whereas Belli’s take is to chase with wild abandonment that’ll risk all that he holds dear as he chips away toward a heavily fortified crime lord.  Nero and Whitmore exact the personas down to the letter, nailing in the thematic message from Scavino that that the chair he sits in is hot, heavy, and full of responsibility, much the way Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker about great power carries great responsibility.  In Belli’s ear, working his way into the mind of a gung-ho lawman, is drug kingpin is Cafiero by Fernando Rey, who two years prior played in a similar story of William Friedkin’s American, lone-wolf cop story “The French Connection.”  Rey adds sophisticated demure to his really bad guy character to appear like an ally in not only the eyes of Belli, who really puts his trust in Cafiero, but also the audiences who will forget he’s an equal in the drug game.  What’s interesting and dynamic about “High Crime” is the woven character arcs and fats that quickly develop and quickly diminish through Belli’s investigation.  In the mix of this unsafe space for any character is Della Boccardo (“Tentacles”), Silvano Tranquilli (“The Bloodstained Butterfly), Duilio Del Prete (“The Nun and the Devil”), Mario Erpichini (“Spasmo”), Ely Galleani (“A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin”), Stefania Castellari (“1990:  The Bronx Warriors”), Bruno Corazzari (“Necorpolis”), and Luigi Diberti (“The Stendhal Syndrome”).

“High Crime” deals in high impact.  Car chases, shoot outs, foot pursuits, murder hits, and more that genetically makeup Castellari’s film with a centralized hero destined for tragedy spurred by his own ambition, texturing the character with an anti-hero wallpaper as he can’t see past his own objective and the direct danger that blind ambition poses.  Kneaded into this notion is Caastellari’s fantastic use of editing and scene transition that provides a seamless continuity as also misleading truths.  Editor Vincenzo Tomassi (“Zombie”) cuts and splices with great continuity care to arrange multiple shoots of one scene, such as the opening car chase between Belli’s squad car pursing a Lebanese drug supplier, to match every angle without losing track or bewildering audiences with implausibility.  The transition scenes also stun with zoom-in and zoom-outs that segue different scenes, a previous moment may bleed into another with deceptive infiltration of the next scene, and Castellari uses sounds too to transition to the next shots.  These on-your-toes transitions commingling with the ever-dynamic, fast-paced crime story with a high mortality rate, high character development, and high emotional roller coaster loop-the-loops whirling around the abundant and impressively rounded characters solidify “High Crime” as the holy grail of highly valued and highly entertaining poliziotteschi!

If you’ve ever wanted more out of Enzo G. Castellari’s “High Crime,” Blue Underground has you covered with a limited edition 3-Disc, UHD HD Blu-ray, Standard Blu-ray, and soundtrack CD set packed with content in the HVEC and AVC encoded double layers of the 2160p 4K UHD BD66 and 1080p Blu-ray BD50.  The brand-new 2024 Dolby Vision HDR 4K master stuns.  Image resolution connected with balanced contrast results in a vibrant, crisp-sharp quality rendered from a stellar original 35mm print, presented in the original aspect ratio of a widescreen 1.85:1.  There’s not an arresting softness to be had as details emerge in the various Genoa and Marseilles ship ports, manufacturing parks, and concrete city landscapes bursting with infrastructural texture.  There’s also plenty of minute detail on skin textures with a touch of technicolor process for a dash of properly installed pigmentation.  This sort of scrutinizing care translates also to the post-ADR English 1.0 DTS-HD audio mix with an uncompressed, lossless fidelity.  Dialogue is post-recorded with the original actor’s voices providing better authenticity in comparison to other voice actors, especially over the gruff American voice of James Whitmore.  Environmental ambience doesn’t miss an action with a complete and broad line of virtual city sounds coupled with in-scene ambient sound, all converted and individualistic defined through the single channel, supported by Oliver Onions brothers Guido and Maurizio De Angelis providing a catchy copper beat whether be car chase or foot pursuit.  There also an Italian dub 1.0 DTS-HD.  English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing are optionally available as well as French, Spanish, and English for the Italian audio feature.  Hours of bonus materials lined the encoded BDs, more so on the second disc, the Standard Blu-ray, due to capacity.   Disc 1, the 4K UHD, houses an audio commentary with director Enzo G. Castellari, a second audio commentary with star Franco Nero, a third audio commentary with film history Troy Howarth, Nathaniel Thompson, and Eugenio Ercolani, an alternate ending that fades to black rather than the original freeze frame, and the theatrical trailer.  Disc 2, the standard Blu-ray,, has all of the above plus interviews with Castellari and Nero The Genoa Connection, an separate interview with Castellari From Dus to Asphalt, an interview with stuntman Massimo Vanni Hard Stunts for High Crimes, an interview with camera operator Roberto Girometti Framing Crime, an interview with soundtrack composers Guido and Maurizio De Angelis The Sound of Onions, a Mike Malley directed featurette The Connection Connection featured in EUROCRIME!, and a poster with still gallery.  The double wide Amaray case also comes with its own special attributes, such as a rigid O-slipcover with compositional illustration of pretty much all the action you’ll see in the film.  The slipcover also contains embossed textile elements for a junior-sized 3D effect.  The set has a reversible front cover with the primary art the same as the slipcover’s while the inside contains an original poster art replica.  The insert side contains a dual-sided cardboard track list and soundtrack info on top of the back and red original motion picture soundtrack CD.  The 4K UHD and Blu-ray on the opposite side are staggered in individual push locks where you have to remove the top disc in order to get the bottom disc and they’re too pressed with the same art from the reversible front cover.  Blue Underground outdid themselves with “High Crime’s” first Blu-ray release, curated to perfection, in the U.S.  The Not Rated Blue Underground set is playable on all regions and has an uncensored, uncut runtime of 103 minutes.

Last Rites: To simply write positively about “High Crime” and Blue Underground’s merit 3-disc set is simply not enough. Fans of William Friedkin’s “The French Connection” and other moviegoing fans can find this Eurocrime thriller to be captivating from start to finish.

Grab this Limited Edition Set of “High Crime” Before Its Gone!

Happy, EVIL Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. Happy, EVIL Halloween, Silver Shamrock! “Halloween III: Season of the Witch” reviewed! (Via Vision / Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Halloween III: Season of the Witch” Available on Limited Edition Blu-ray from Via Vision!

Just days before Halloween, a man stumbles hurt and delusional rantings into the hospital of Dr. Daniel Challis.  Clutching a Halloween mask to his chest, Challis figures the man to be crazy before stabilizing his vitals for rest but when the man is heinously murdered in his hospital room and the murderer burns himself alive in the hospital parking lot, Dr. Challis doesn’t know now what to make of the man’s rantings about something or someone is going to kill us all.  In walks Ellie Grimbridge, the man’s daughter, who has been investigating her father’s mysterious death.  Intrigued not only by the case, but also by the lovely Ellie, Dr. Challis and Ellie’s investigative work leads them to the Silver Shamrock mask factory in Santa Mira, the same mask factory that created the mask Ellie’s father was clutching before he died.  What they uncover is a plot of sacrifice on Halloween night, spearheaded by an Irish toy maker in Conal Cochran.

With a novel concept in the hands of one of horror’s most promising filmmakers, John Carpenter, a script penned by an uncredited yet famed British science fiction writer in Nigel Kneale and touched up by Carpenter, and a young Carpenter protégé, Tommy Lee Wallace, at the helm, “Halloween III” attempted to be an off-the-beaten path of success new story for what would have an annual Halloween-themed anthology going forward.  Unfortunately, and regrettable, “Halloween III:  Season of the Witch” failed to connect with an audiences and Michael Myer fanboys too stubborn to let go of The Shape.  It wasn’t until years later that the 1982 feature, released on the coattails of 1981’s part II of the original Michael Myers saga, found footing with fans who now appreciate the unique story, its practical effects, and the bold, yet defunct, vision Carpenter and crew once envisioned.  Carpenter and Debra Hill returned to produce, alongside Joseph Wolf, Irwin Yablans, and Barry Bernadi, with Universal Pictures as the backing studio. 

Now, “Season of the Witch” just didn’t star a bunch of nobodies in this offshoot of a newly branded “Halloween” concept.  Before playing the quasi-alcoholic, deadbeat father Dr. Challis, Tom Atkins was already a rising star in the land of John Carpenter films with “The Fog” and “Escape from New York” In 1980 and 1981.  Atkins’s usual confident and charming qualities underneath the rugged good looks and trimmed mustache serve him the better part of man doing his bit part in a not-his-business investigation of a man’s death to please a good-looking woman that happens to be the dead man’s daughter.  That good-looking woman is Ellie Grimbridge, embodied by the Mad Magazine Production’s “Up the Academy’s” Stacey Nelkin, and if you blink, you might miss Atkin’s Dr. Challis being perhaps the worst father ever to his two children and ex-wife.  The subplot is so subtle and overshadowed by the Silver Shamrock Halloween plot that being invested in the crumbling family dynamics doesn’t even hold substantial weight and it truly works to subvert the subconscious and plant a destructive pipe bomb smartly into your moral compass because if you think Dr. Challis is the hero of the story, which in many perspectives he is, he’s also doesn’t keep up with his own children interests or current events, numerously bails on their planned care, runs off and sleeps with a much younger woman he hardly knows, is an active alcoholic, and is quite the handsy philanderer at that when he grabs his much older nurse’s bottom in a playful moment.  No, Dr. Challis is every ounce an antihero hidden in plain sight and in the guise of a potential savior of the children, the world, as he takes on Silver Shamrock and its founder, an Irish toymaker named Conal Cochran with tremendous evil genius and mastermind appeal by Dan O’Herlihy (“The Last Starfighter”).  “Halloween III:  Season of the Witch” rounds out the cast with Ralph Strait, Jadeen Barbor, Al Berry, Michael Currie, Garn Stephens and Essex Smith in key support roles.

Lots of previous opinionated chatter surrounding “Halloween III” collectively concludes to if the filmmakers decided to title the film anything else, maybe just the tagline of “Season of the Witch,” then the film would have won over audiences with a fresh take of science fictional horror and would not have been wrongfully panned by critics and moviegoers.  I call BS on this take.  The original intention was to deliver a new, Halloween-themed horror film year-after-year with John Carpenter attached in some way, shape, or form of bringing novelty terror to our eyeballs and brain.  Instead, public persuasion and studio submissiveness rendered the concept powerless and as a result, and no disrespect to any Michael Myers films that followed, was the departure of John Carpenter and Debra Hill and a string of mediocre and wacky Michael Myer sequels that went deep off the far end.  “Season of Witch” is not a teeny bit at all slasheresque, separating itself far from Michael Myers as much as possible by unconfining itself from location concentration by expanding the threat domestically, if not globally, with a parlor trick plot that involves special, laser-shooting masks that make kids’ heads melt into glop of crickets, snakes, and other creepy-crawly sui generis of the animal kingdom.  While strange in the cause and effect, the practical effects and superimposed visuals work to convey some taught gore and prosthetic knots that can be unraveled, even retrospectively critiquing them by today’s standards.  Wallace masters the film while, at the same time, hitting the ground running on his debut feature that has a look and feel of a graduate from the film of the John Carpenter. 

Halloween season may be months away, but Christmas comes early with Via Vision’s limited-edition Blu-ray set of “Halloween III: Season of the Witch.” The AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD50 presents the film in a widescreen aspect ratio 2.35:1. Much like the Via Vision’s companion release with “Halloween II,” “Season of the Witch” mirrors the same resolution picture quality and stellar package presentation. Dean Cundey’s delivers another smoky noir realism that definably hard-edged and hard-lit that while isn’t the most colorful contrast it does create an abundance of inky shadow to lost in and sink into. A cleaner picture does bring with a reveal of how obsolete some of the composite matte effects but, simultaneously, revives what once was, nostalgia and a more tactile truth in movie magic. Details come through within contour delineation and textural elements. The English language DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 has dual channel balance and strength with lossless fidelity. Dialogue retains saliency throughout from a rather middle-of-the-road strength ambience albeit a wide range of effects from explosions to laser beam bursts and its constructed, catchy Silver Shamrock jingle, often muted through the television programming, and John Carpenter’s and Alan Howath’s synth collaboration that’s tonally reminiscent of previous “Halloween” films but stands by itself in distinct measure to garner new-sound tension. English subtitles are optionally available. Also, like Via Vision’s “Halloween II” Blu-ray release, a 2024 commentary is recorded and encoded with film critic/historian Lee Gambin and a special appearance by “The Howling” director Joe Dante. Archival commentaries from Tommy Lee Wallace and Tom Atkins are also on the disc with all three commentaries in the setup menu. Special features content includes 2012 Scream Factory-Red Shirt productions with Stand Alone: The Making of Halloween III: Season of the Witch documentary surrounding a Micheal Myers-less picture, it’s critical shockwave, and its ultimate cult following and Horror’s Hallowed Grounds: Revisiting the Original Shooting Locations hosted by Sean Clark visiting a few of the locations used for the film. A still gallery, theatrical trailer, and television spots round out the rest. Of course, my favorite part is the lenticular cover on the limited-edition and numbered cardboard sleeve case of the three, silhouetted little trick-or-treaters with a crone-ish face coming down from above the fire red dusk sky. The slightly thicker Blu-ray Amaray case cover art is stark still image from the movie with another, different image on the reverse side. The black background disc has the skull mask and title across from each other in nice compositional juxtaposition. Next to the Amary case is an envelope with 6 art (picture) cards taken from the film. The Via Vision release is rated M for Mature for moderate violence and moderate coarse language, has a runtime of 109 minutes, and has region B playback only.

Last Rites: Who knew being the outcast looked so damn good. “Halloween III: Season of the Witch” deserved better and received the best on this Australian, limited-edition, lenticular Blu-ray set that’ll leave you whistling the Silver Shamrock jingle and fearing Halloween masks more than ever.

“Halloween III: Season of the Witch” Available on Limited Edition Blu-ray from Via Vision!

Classic Sequel Gets a Lenticularly EVIL! “Halloween II” reviewed! (Via Vision / Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Halloween II” Limited Edition Blu-ray + 6 Photo Lobby Cards! Order here!

The horrific Halloween night massacre in Haddonfield where a masked escaped mental patient named Michael Myers murdered the close friends of Laurie Strode has not yet ended.  Hurt and in shock after narrowly escape Michael’s relentless pursuit, Laurie is rushed to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital to receive treatment from a skeleton shift while Dr. Loomis, who shot Michael six times, continues his hunt for the hard-to-catch, hard-to-kill killer.  Frantic about the evil inside his former patient, Dr. Loomis will not stop at nothing to track him down with police assistant and try to puzzle together just why Michael had returned to his hometown in the first place.  As Laurie recovers from her injuries and copes with her friends’ deaths, The Shape arrives at the hospital, continuing his emotionless killing spree of hospital staff in order to get to Laurie, and with nowhere to run, Laurie’s only hope is in the hands of a determined Dr. Loomis. 

Picking up where the highly successful independent horror, John Carpenter’s “Halloween,” that changed the slasher genre to what we know it as today, “Halloween II” provides more illumination on The Shape, Laurie, and shuts the door on the significant open-ended and fear-inducing mystery at the finale of Carpenter’s masterpiece.   The 1981 sequel, released three years after the first film, was not helmed by Carpenter whose success skyrocketed post-“Halloween.”  Instead, Carpenter and creative producer Debra Hill agreed to the executive producer title with some creative control in penning the script that would be a what-happens-immediately-next continuation with newcomer Rick Rosenthal sitting in the director’s chair.  The director who would helm later the follow year’s “Bad Boys” with Sean Penn had a goal to retain the same Carpenter stylistic choices to make the sequel seemingly seamless.  Alongside Carpenter and Hill in the melting pot of producers, the more narratively opinionated Moustapha Akkad and Dino De Laurentiis served as executive producers along with Joseph Wolf (“A Nightmare on Elm Street”) and Irwin Yablans (“Tourist Trap”) in what became a coproduction between Universal Studios and Dino De Laurentiis’s production company.

“Halloween” converted the then unknown Jamie Lee Curtis into a couple of things.  She instantly became a household name that at the same time also made Laurie Strode a household icon.  Curtis also became what was a relatively new coined term at the time of a scream queen, propelling her career in the horror genre with “Halloween” subsequent films such as “The Fog,” “Prom Night,” “Terror Train” and, of course, the more recent titular television series “Scream Queens” and the contemporary “Halloween” sequels.  What also emerged post Lee’s performance is the actress was eager for the role and effortless to work with making the 23-year-old daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis a treat to work with, malleable toward her role, and enthusiastic about returning as Laurie Strode for the sequel.  Curtis falls right back into the role as if filming didn’t stop rolling with Strode in a confounding state of shock and injury from her the relatively short scuffle with Michael Myers until Dr. Loomis intervenes with six gunshots into The Shape at the key and climatic moment, saving Strode from being strangled.  The difference in the sequel is Curtis’s instilled knowledge for her frightened character.  It’s that kind of touch that doesn’t hesitate to react to a force of evil.  Returning as Dr. Loomis, and again as if he never stopped performing as the paranoid and fervent good psychiatric doctor, is the iconic and late Donald Pleasence tracking down his former patient with trench coat sagacity, an understanding that no one else shares except for maybe Myers’ ultimate prey, Laurie Strode.  A new cast of relegated kill fodder magnifies part two’s grislier death count with Lance Guest (“Jaws: The Revenge”), Pamela Susan Shoop (“The One Man Jury”), Leo Rossi (“Maniac Cop 2”), Tawny Moyer (“Looker”), Ana Alicia (“Romero”), Gloria Gifford (“Virgin Paradise’), Hunter Von Leer (“Trancers III”), Cliff Emmich (“Hellhole”), Ford Rainey (“The Cellar”), and Dick Warlock putting on the mask as The Shape with Charles Cyphers and Nancy Stephens returning in their respective roles as Sheriff Brackett and Marion Chambers.

What new can be said about “Halloween II” that hasn’t been already said?  Dichotomously, “Halloween” and its sequel share a single narrative that emanates the same stylistic tone; however, both films couldn’t be more different in their surface level and underlying intentions and that gnaws raggedly on the connective tissue that binds them.  Carpenter’s original embraces the mystery enshrouding Michael Myers motivations with a merciless, yet nearly bloodless, killing spree of horny hopped-up teenagers who wiggle themselves out of responsibility for a little trick-or-treat fun under the sheets or for just being alone in their house.  Myers unneeded and unheeded explanation formed The Shape as evil personified, an incarnate force compelled to return home where the light switch was flipped to an expressionless compassion for human life.  Rosenthal’s part two subverted the unknown by providing Michael reason and that reason being Laurie Strode, anyone else who gets in his way, could foil his plans, or are just in the vicinity of the hunt are eliminated with extreme prejudice, and that leads into the ramped-up gore with large pools of blood and other gratuitous displays of damage to unsuspecting soon-to-be stiffs.  Despite the different strokes, the sequel is not bad by a longshot.  In fact, “Halloween II” is just an extension spiraling in intensity and terror, a product of its time when everyone and their brother had directed gore-ladened slashers during the steep beginnings of the slasher renaissance. 

Though a many number of “Halloween II” video media exists between the current formats, the collaboration of Via Vision and Lionsgate release from Australia is beyond reproach for any kind of transfer print woes, lackluster bonus features, and drab packaging.  The limited edition and numbered 2-Dsic Blu-ray set is a physical media thing of beauty with an AVC encoded, full high-definition 1080p, BD50 on both discs.  Disc one houses the theatrical cut of film, presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, from pristine print, likely the original negative licensed through Universal Pictures for this very release, with the Via Vision caveat of every effort has been made to produce the highest quality on the back cover.  Not a single reason comes to mind on that statement being false as the Dean Cundey’s cinematography retains an undiluted facsimile of the original “Halloween,” represented here with phenomenally suitable contrast that can presumably hide Micheal Myers in every shadow and create the apprehension in every darkly lit scene with minimal key lighting in various, sometimes neon, shades of red, yellow, and white.  The 35mm film grain has a pleasant consistency of a low-to-medium low visual viscosity that never reaches levels of blotting out picture quality, presenting no issues with zoomed in images or any other touchup enhancements to note for that matter.  Perceptible details sanction The Shape’s tactile and weathered look of a rough night in Haddonfield.  Colorfully warranted scenes, such as the Nurse Alves on a gurney in the middle of a pool of her blood, are robust to display the carnage whereas other, more minimalistic approaches detail just enough for the imagination to take over.  Disc two contains the standard-definition, upscaled to 1080p, television cut of the film, presented in a made-for-TV 1.33:1 aspect ratio, that omits some of the gorier moments, suitable for broadcast viewers.  Audio options include two lossless English language selections with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.  The audio codec distributes punchier ambiences of Myers’s rhythmic breathing through the mask, the jarring alert of a hospital room buzzer, and the impactful moments of Myers slamming his fist-loaded weapon into the skull, back, and….a pillow with the cringe-worthy associated crunch and thud.  No impediments on the dialogue track that’s free of crackling, hissing, and popping and is consistently prominent and mixed well within more chaotic, milieu-mania scenes, such as with the finale with hissing air tanks and scalpel swoops.  Optional English subtitles are available.  Special features are consolidated to the theatrical cut disc only with Shout Factory’s inaugurated 2012 documentaries – The Nightmare Isn’t Over:  The Making of Halloween II and Horror’s Hallowed Grounds:  The Locations of Halloween II – featuring cast and crew interviews with director Dean Cundey, Tommy Lee Wallace, Dick warlock, Leo Rossi, and more as well as visiting locations in a modern time with host Sean Clark, and two commentaries featuring director Rick Rosenthal and Leo Rossi in one and stunt man/The Shape Dick Warlock in the other.  There’s a brand new 2024 commentary with author Dustin McNeill, co-author of Taking Shape:  Developing Halloween from Script to Scream.  The encoded features round out with the alternate ending with more explanation on the fate of a certain left ambiguous character, deleted scenes, a theatrical trailer, TV and radio spots, and a still gallery.  What makes the Via Vision a limited, numbered set is the neat package and physical goodies inside.  The rigid lenticular cardboard sleeve of the skull pumpkin has eyes that follow you at every angle.  Inside is a slightly thicker Blu-ray Amaray casing with reversible cover art displaying notable stills from the feature.  The extra disc, disc 1 likely, is in a clear push-lock, page-turner disc holder.  Six photo lobby cards featuring stills from the movie come alongside the Blu-ray.  Via Vision’s release has a region B playback encoding, a runtime of 93 minutes on both cuts, and rated R.

Last Rites: Michael Myers has been slashing away in the cinema for nearly half a century and “Halloween II” has been a staple entry that, to this day, is a memorable fan-favorite in the grand scheme of most of the franchise’s sequels. Via Vision’s limited edition, lenticular Blu-ray packaging just sweetens the deal with a crystal clear and top-tier quality release worthy in any physical media collection.

“Halloween II” Limited Edition Blu-ray + 6 Photo Lobby Cards! Order here!

EVIL Has Now Been Digitized. “August Underground’s Penance” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“August Underground’s Penance” on Blu-ray/DVD Combo Set. Purchase Here!

Armed with a digital camcorder and a dark desire to kidnap and brutally torture, rape, and murder random people, deranged serial killers Peter Mountain and his girlfriend Crusty are now a gruesome twosome after the demise of Crusty’s brother Maggot.  The couple’s documentarized carnage continues forward near Pittsburgh where fooling around in metal clubs and on the isolated outskirts of city is balanced out with a healthy dose of basement snuff as body after body after body begins to strain their warped relationship.  What unveils is a descent of their paired destruction as Peter’s rage and undying fascination with female flesh, and internal organs, gaslights Crusty’s simmering and unhinged toxicity.  During the stretch of the Christmas holiday season, the gift of gory packages will be unwrapped and sexualized cookies will be enjoyed before the festive filleting of body parts and December dismemberments trail off into a tale of grim totality. 

Fred Vogel’s third and final film to shut the book on the story around the atrocious Peter Mountain and his extreme exploitation and degrading of people is back on limited-edition physical media for snuff salivating audiences as “August Underground’s Penance.”  Nothing short of gratuitous ultraviolence, the final chapter of “August Underground” marks another successful viscerally visual installment in a clearly digitized effort, elevating the graphic nature with ooey-gooey detail in a vividly discernible image resolution.  A reuniting four years later between Fred Vogel and his cowriter/costar Cristie Whiles after their collaboration on “August Underground’s Mordum,” the second sequel provides a level of continuity, a very low level at that, not seen between the 2001 series starter and “Mordum.”  Under Vogel’s Toe Tag Pictures banner, the company behind the trilogy, the shock realism filmmaker co-produces the film with wife, Shelby Lyn, and Cristie “Crusty” Whiles and special effects artist Jerami Cruise servce as associate producers. 

Aforementioned, Peter Vogel and Cristie Whiles lace up yet again for the Peter Mountain and Crusty show of sadism.  Vogel returns as the mania screaming and overall brute Peter Mountain, a juggernauting maverick amongst murderers with no moral principles, a cynical constitution, and a weak-ish stomach that can’t handle his own gutting of bodies as Mountain, like in the first two features, wretches and coughs and nearly loses his lunch in most graphically intense scenes of spilled blood and guts and other appalling perversities.  Whiles’s Crusty is a carbon copy counterpart, a demented love interest under a loveless veneer, but the Crusty character certainly has evolved between “Mordum” and “Penance” as the coquettish amoralities at the beginning devolve shown in an unconventional narrative way with rough-hewn rough cuts that avoid structuring time and guiding in segues.  It also doesn’t help that the two often have screaming matches or are yelling at their lifeless victims to get a better understanding of melting down mutual relationship based on common callousness and, probably, rough sex, just the way they individually like it.  This is how Peter Vogel circumvents a “Mordum” repeat; not that “Mordum” was terrible as it did convey a Mountain, Crusty, and Crusty’s on the suicidal brink brother Maggot breaking down whatever threadbare bond that kept them for killing each other, but “Mordum” departs with uncertainties surrounding the characters in that memorably haunting final sequence.  “Penance” then takes the two remaining nihilists out in the backyard to basically shoots them, figuratively speaking, to put them out of their misery in an artistic way, as if to say, “that’s it.  I’m done.”  Like previous “August Underground” films, killers are centrically focused with not a lot of repeat characters popping in and out (because they’re all being snuffed out by the killers)  but those played victims round with Selby Lyn Vogel, Jeremi Cruise, Anthony Matthews, Rob Steinbruegge, Ed Laughlin, Matt Rizzutto, Autumn Smith, and Trevor Collins.

While Vogel and Whiles psychopathic performances will make your skin crawl, the real star of “Penance” spurts onto the floor, oozes from the entrails, and has a nasty crunch sound when being sawed into.  I’m speaking of none other than Jerami Cruise’s nauseating blood, guts, and all the colorful viscera in between practical effects that extinguish any kind of comfortability you might have had going into the scene.  Animal intestines are once again used to for seamless builds.  The lines between what’s real and what’s not has no definition, is smoothed over well into the folds, or is vaguely blurry at worst that when the cutting, gouging, severing, perforating, slicing, or whatever other harmfully human puncturing wound words come into the scene, your mind is your greatest enemy unable to tell the differences in the gruesomeness acts all of which are accentuated by Vogel’s dry heaves.  While the story itself begins to shutdown “August Underground’s” pseudo snuff run, the third entry is as much as a regurgitation of the previous two installments peppered with noticeable yet minor differences that less often than more separate themselves from each other.  One of the biggest, advantageous differences in “Penance” is the move away from the fuzzy standard definition analog tape and into the digital world with a widescreen ratio camcorder that details more of the ghastly dissections and without any modifications to the camera, a cleaner sense of raw realism is better conveyed. 

I remember a time, not too long ago, when the “August Underground” films were nothing more than rumor, urban legends of the physical media world, lost archetypes of extreme horror seemingly nonexistent to the everyday joe, like me, and only those who are close to Vogel and his Toe Tag family or willing to fork over large amount of money for a long out of print and rate copy were the lucky ones to ever experience the trilogy. Yet, now, we’re living in the golden age of physical media, paradoxically smackdab at the height of new age and ever-growing streaming platforms, and Unearthed Films has released all three films onto a 2-disc Blu-ray and DVD limited collector’s set. The Blu-ray is an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, 2K scan on a BD50 while the DVD is a MPEG2 encoded, dual-layered, DVD9. Obviously, switch from tape to digital video makes is a tremendous step for image processing and clarity as “Penance” tops the trilogy with a better pixel resolution, a wider angle (1.78:1 aspect ratio), and much less quality degradation than analog. All the nasty bits and pieces are visual described in great realistic detail in what is an ungraded showing of a full-on display not for the weak of stomach. The raw image, even with all it segued pauses in between scenes, punctuates practicality over the conceptual nihilistic serial killer construct. Unearthed Films preserves that through the looking glass, unfiltered video with more than sufficient capacity. The English language uncompressed PCM 2.0 stereo mirrors the same caliber with a home video disharmony of an onboard camera mic that manages well to create distance where needed also while capturing every innate surrounding sound element, such as the whooshing of passing cars, Mountain’s echoed screams in a confined basement, or the overburdening decibels of daunting death metal. There’s a steady amount of low-level interference too that doesn’t hurt the variable levels of dialogue depending on where the principals are and what they’re doing. Between the Blu-ray and DVD, the hi-def format has more capacity for bonus features with most of the new bonus material on the Blu-ray. What’s on both formats are a new audio commentary by special effects artist Jerami Cruise, producer Shelby Lyn Vogel, director Fred Vogel, and Ultra Violent Magazine editor Art Ettinger, a second commentary with Vogel and editor Logan Tallman, a third commentary with the Toe Tag Team, and a fourth commentary with just Fred Vogel. Also included of both formats are a behind-the-scenes documentary Disemboweled and the feature’s very own commentary track, deleted and extended scenes, music video Poppa Pill – “The Murderer is Back,” music video Rue – “The Locust,” original trailer, and new extended photo gallery and teaser outtakes. Exclusively to the Blu-ray is a conversational interview with editor Logan Tallman, going through the nuts and bolts of the most disturbing scene with Peter Vogel, superfan Rob Steinbruegge’s experience and bit role in “Penance,” a new Zoë Rose Smith, creator of “Zobo with a Shotgun” and editor-in-chief of Ghouls Magazine, interview with Peter Vogel, a second new interview with Peter Vogel Voyage to Perdition with Severed Cinema’s Chris Mayo, a discussion roundtable with Peter Vogel, wife Shelby, Logan Tallman, and Ryan Logsdon moderated by Dave Parker, and Unearthed Films’ Stephen Biro’s new interview with Peter Vogel to wrap it up. The physical presence of the release clearly states its homicidal intentions with the thin cardboard O-slipover of Peter Mountain caressing power of his bound and bloodied victim. The clear Blu-ray Amary case displays new, religious art spoofed cover illustration by San Diego artist Paul Naylor; the religious art also continues on the reverse side of the cover with a marred icon of the Virgin Mary being engulfed by the darkness. With the DVD punch-locked at the right and Blu-ray at the left, there’s really no room for an insert to be crammed in but the silver lining there is the pseudo data-cast captures of notable scenes that are the disc pressed art. Unearthed Films’ release is region A locked (region for the DVD is not listed but assumed to be region 1), is not rated, and has a runtime of 81 minutes.

Last Rites: While ever so slightly different from the previous films, “Penance” is more of the same snuff but in its truest, purest form legally allowed on video. Unearthed Films are match made in a human abattoir, like the tacky peanut butter and bloodred jelly. Their collaborated, limited collector’s set release of “August Underground Penance” is nothing short of phenomenal and, if you’re lucky and quick enough, grab all three before they disappear back into obscurity.

“August Underground’s Penance” on Blu-ray/DVD Combo Set. Purchase Here!