Category Archives: serial killers

EVIL’s Beauty is in Her Catwalk Madness! “Nothing Underneath” reviewed! (Rustblade / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Nothing Underneath” 40th Anniversary Blu-ray Available Here!

Bob Crane, a Wyoming park ranger, suddenly sees visions of gloved hands wielding long, sharp shears entering his supermodel, twin sister’s hotel room in Milan, Italy.  His  psychic experience with his sister sends him packing frantically to Italy, specifically to the Hotel Scala, where his sister, amongst many other gorgeous supermodels, reside when working in Milan.  Unable to locate her and without a sign of disturbance in her hotel room, her disappearance is seemingly nothing more than that – a disappearance – but an aging police detective, Commissario Danesi, is willing to investigate the disappearance which will be his very last case before retirement.  Without any leads, Crane and Danesi don’t have much evidence to go off of until another supermodel is brutally murdered in the same hotel and a pair of scissors is the forensically determined cause of death.  The once case of disappearance now turns into a murder investigation and goes deeper into the ugliness of the fashion world with a deranged killer targeting supermodels. 

Considered to be a prominent gem of the giallo genre but not entirely considered to be a full-fledged horror by the filmmakers is Carlo Vanzina’s “Nothing Underneath.”  Known natively as  “Sotto il vestito niente,” inspired by the title only written by Marco Parma, a pseudonym for journalist Paolo Pietroni, Vanzina cowrote the novel extraneous story alongside brother Enrico Vanzina (“Call Girl”), who are siblings more suited in the measures of comedic premises initially, and the prolific horror writer Franco Ferrini’s, whose screenplays of Dario Argento’s “Phenomena,” “Opera,” “The Card Player,” and amongst others, as well as Lamberta Bava’s “Demons”, gave the writer formidable cult status and creditability amongst the international horror fan base, not to forget to mention regular work and collaboration with a master of horror, Dario Argento.  “Nothing Underneath” is shot on location in Milan under the Faso Film productions with executive producer Raffaello Saragò (“The Witches’ Sabbath”) and producer Achille Manzotti (“Beyond Darkness”).

What’s interesting and more infrequent for this Italian production is that it’s entirely shot in English and not dubbed in post-production ADR.  Reason for this was for “Nothing Underneath” to be a synch-sound production with the image and to market it better internationally because of the main cast comprised of American and English actors.  The American actor, starring in his debut feature film, is Tom Schanley (“Savage”) as Wyomning park ranger Bob Crane and the way the story is structure really homes in Crane as the principal lead with a complete credit setup and character follow-through of the Yellowstone National Park.  Schanley’s blonde hair and muscular toned good looks embodies a likeness to his on-screen supermodel sister, played by Nicola Perring, who, as the story displays her, is not in the business of acting with very little dialogue and is only used for her short platinum blonde hair and thin figure for narrative form fitting.   The other native English speaker in a cooperative lead role is “Halloween’s” Donald Pleasence as an investigator on the verge of retirement.  Pleasence is no stranger to Italian cinema, seeing his fair share in the 1980’s psychotronic pictures, including Dario Argento’s “Phenomena” released prior.  The prolific British actor still manages to produce mountains of charm even in his most rubbish Italian accent as the long in the tooth comminssario eager to solve one more exciting, mysterious case and buddying up with young, handsome, and outdoorsy Bob Crane with twintuition.   The love interest falls upon real life model and Denmark native, then 19-year-old Renée Simonsen who is absolutely stunning with her looks and with her debut into acting in what is a significant role that involves a lot of screentime, a lot of dynamic and interactive dialogue, and does show some brief nudity with intimate sexual situations with Schanley.  “Nothing Underneath” has a roster that fills out with Catherine Noyes and Maria McDonald as Milan models, Paolo Tomei as a coke-head jeweler and model philanderer, Cyrus Elias as Comminssario’s Danesi’s assistant, and Phillip Wong as the peculiar fashion photographer Keno Masayuki.

“Nothing Underneath” isn’t a skimpy, loose garment with nothing going for it.  Instead, Carlo Vanzina offers more with his giallo by making it less giallo in terms of its cinematic style and with Pino Donaggio’s score which is in the style of, much like the rest of the filmed and narrative structure, a Brian De Palma erotic thriller.  With plenty of sexy sashaying from beautiful models, a balance between sex and sadism teeters as the alluring aspects of a promiscuously titled are dissected and interspersed with a long sheer psycho engrossed by a theme rarely explored and depicted, but certainly skimmed, during those times of 1980’s Europe and completely disconnected from Paolo Pietroni’s story with keeping only the fashion world and the murder mystery as core elements and adding a supernatural flavoring with the brother and sister telepathy.  Donaggio’s suspenseful brass orchestration and conduit synth-infusion score separate itself others in the subcategory that deploy synth-rock, haunting discord, and, perhaps, even a late 70’s swanky cop thriller piece typically layered alongside.  The composition, coinciding with the temporary expat cast as most giallo’s permit, often feels more westernized while still striking notes of unnerving tension and having collaborated with De Palma on “Dressed to Kill” and “Body Double” years prior, Donaggio imports those arrangement qualities for the Italian market and reaping success amongst the rest of the frayed giallo conventions. 

Italian boutique label Rustblade extends their release of “Sotto il Vestito Niente,” aka “Nothing Underneath” to the North American market with a new region free, 40th anniversary special edition Blu-ray release as well as releasing deluxe releases that come with accompanying limited edition lobby cards postcards, a polaroid, a poster, a colored vinyl, a book, CD soundtrack, a tote bag, and even, yes you’re going to read this correctly, underwear.  The standard release isn’t that supplementally sexy but does have great standalone supplementals in its AVC encoded, 1080p full hi-def, BD50.  The newly restored version stems from the original 35mm negative and presented in 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio.  The negative print looks to have been in pristine condition that rendered an impeccable transfer that fully provides depth and detail accentuated by well-adjusted and put together color grading that elevates the pop of the natural hues.  No signs of compression issues or smoothing over with sharp detail textures on skin and fabrics alike as well as the metallic shears having reflective qualities as it sheens and shines in mirrored property.  Two audio options are available, an Italian DTS Master Audio 2.0 Mono and an English DTS Master Audio 2.0 Stereo, the latter comes from the English living synch recording mixed in Dolby Stereo.  The English track is preferred here as its natural with innate reflections and tones of the actors on screen.  I noticed brief moments of Italian actors being English dubbed as a mismatch in the A/V synchronization as well as a disturbance in the aural consistency.  The dialogue track has prominence but has intermittent hissing and crackling, likely from the video-synch recording.  English, Italian, Spanish, and German subtitle are available.  Special features include interviews with co-writer Enrico Vanzina and composer Pino Donaggio, plus a film analysis by Francesco Lomuscio, the theatrical trailer, and a still image gallery.  For the standard packaging, the clear Amaray encasement has the supermodel in sheer and blood artwork used in previous DVD and Blu-ray versions and the reverse side as a still image with the opposite a black and red silhouette of shears and blood drop splatters.  The disc is pressed with the same cover art image.  Rustblade’s release is not rated and has a total runtime of 94 minutes.

Last Rites: Rustblade’s 40th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray of Carlo Vanzina’s “Nothing Underneath” is a great leap toward a go-to less giallo that’s tragically overlooked and underappreciated but ranks high above the bar and near the top sure to please in seduction and in murder.

“Nothing Underneath” 40th Anniversary Blu-ray Available Here!

Are You Ready for EVILLLLL! “Visceral: Between the Ropes of Madness” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Step Into the Ring with “Visceral: Between the Ropes of Madness” On Blu-ray!

A low-ranking boxer is set up with a match of a lifetime.  Quiet but confident, his manager doesn’t exactly have a faith in the underdog, constantly questioning his training with gambled money on the line.  When the boxer is beaten to a pulp in the ring, he’s immediately disowned by the unsympathetic manager and spirals out of his training and into darkness, finding murdering young women to be more pleasurable than the pain of loss and rejection.   His darkness in death incites a demon, perhaps even the Prince of Darkness himself, if the form of a half-naked woman with a distorted face and places him under her ward, forcing him into submission of pain and suffering while also commanding him to collect souls for her through his own tasting menu of torture.  The boxer’s life is told in three different stages of time on how he becomes evil’s most prized champion.

Accurately titular described, “Visceral:  Between the Ropes of Madness” pushes deviant instinct over everything else, a formidable urge to listen and adhere to those intrusive thoughts, especially after one’s lifelong goal, their most prized position, is creamed and squashed for good and forever in a humiliating way.  Writer-director Felipe Eluti uses hopelessness as pure evil’s plaything, turning a dedicated fighter being managed by Hell for the sake of not only revenge but also to fill the emptiness of the Netherworld with tortured souls.  The Chilean born and film schooled Eluti debut feature also enacts him to star as the demented boxer in a gore-soaked, ringside performance that moderately excites and intensifies with rope bondage as one of his character’s key motifs.  The extreme exploitation thriller is under the producing team of Sebastián Amenábar, Cristóbal Rivera, Andres Palma, and Daniel Vivanco.

Felipe Eluti is a one-man steamroller as the unnamed boxer leaving a laid-to-waste corpse trial in his wake.  Going virtually pantomime through the entire quasi-plotted narrative, Eluti conveys an apathy through blood and body language as well as utilizing his unsettling glare underneath different stages of head and facial hair growth from his time as a slimmed down, smooth-shaven boxer to a Curly-do’d, five o’clock shadowed, and expressionless shell of a human being.  From an outsider’s characteristic perspective, the boxer can be considered pathetic by preying down upon and torturing to kill smaller women in what is almost a result of retaliatory motivation after his brutal loss and he literally uses their bodies as his personal punching bags of stoic anger and hate.  The demon also presents itself in the form of a woman named Judas (Carolina Salles), cladded in bondage ropes, speaks in a whispery, omnipotent voice and visits him with a twisted face to represent the evil, or even the ugliness, she embodies, or the boxer sees in all his feminine victims.  Personified as a woman who tortures, beats, and verbally belittles him into a pacifistic submission only amplifies his dark crusade of soul collection.  Other than the boxer’s manager, a porn addicted, condescending loudmouth by José Manuel García, the remaining cast is filled with fleetingly visited torture victims, mostly women who are also voiceless and have little-to-no fight in them until the boxer works up to courage near the end for revenge which he can call his own, and Gabriela Aranchibia, Valentina Varela, Tamara Zuñega, Daniela Pardo, Pia Cardenas, Claudia Mena, Carolina Palacios, and Felipe Ruiz fill in those fated roles. 

While Felipe Eluti’s boxing themed gory shocker and exploitation rope-a-dope is definitely not a Rocky Balboa prime time fight film, “Visceral:  Between the Ropes of Madness” favors severe mental deterioration over an underdog beating the odds with glorifying the ultra-violence.  The strange-faced Judas pertains only to the Boxer’s vision or presence, conjured by feeding off the fighter’s anguish and indoctrinating him through pain, suffering, abuse, torture, and the most horrible like to do the demon’s bidding without resistance or fear.  The boxer’s kidnap and slasher traits shows a motif dominance over women that could possibly stem from most of the Freudian theorized root of a lot of evil doing, mother issues.  Supporting this scenario is the boxer’s visit to his mother.  Face never shown within the thicket of a deep shadow and directed toward a glowing television set, the avoided boxer seeks self-satisfaction approval and support from presumably his one and only blood relation on this planet, but the attentive mother denounces him, rejects him, and belittles his existence as the worst thing to ever happen to her just before his big match.  Eluti’s arthouse direction focuses on the boxer’s lack of love, support, and concern for his wellbeing and uses that the-world-vs-me detestation as a fuel and resupplied by his submission to Juda’s verbal and physical abuse to carry on his hate-filled and apathetic tear of women.  

Unearthed Films, a leader in producing and distributor extreme, ultra-violent and gory movie content brings “Visceral:  Between the Ropes of Madness” into the squared circle with a new Blu-ray release of Chilean production.  The single layered BD25 is AVC encoded and presented in a high-definition, 1080p resolution, with a widescreen 1.77:1 aspect ratio.  Cinematographer Tomas Smith’s approach to the content serves up stark and severe drab with a lifeless parallel to the apathy spree of the Boxer’s dark undertaking.  Heavy on grays and browns, there’s hardly any pop of aesthetic style or color but is counterbalanced by some interesting just obscure or to the side framing that ignite more imagination than having the scene spelled out for you.  There are also other interesting visuals with Judas and inside the Boxer’s mental state that don’t allow much in the way if finer details but allure to and speak of motivation and context.  The divided darkness through provides plenty of opportunities for compressions issues on a lower capacity disc compression but there’s not a whole lot to speak in way of artefacts.  The Spanish PCM 2.0 mix plays the familiar tones of an arthouse gore film by giving more stock to the soundtrack than to the dialogue.  While the dialogue is apparent despite the Boxer saying very little and Judas’s voice done in post, composer René Roco has free reign to be industrially glum above the whimpers, cries, and screams of the Boxer’s tortured women.  Ambient action is perceived post-product separation as the sounds don’t necessary match or synch in frame with the carnage and the environmental ambience is reduced to near nothing with low levels murmurs of city life stock sounds in the exterior scenes.  The English subtitles appear accurate and match well with in-scene prattle.  Extras include a commentary with director Felipe Eluti, a post-showing speech at the Cineteca Nacional’s Massacre in Xoco, Mexico City circa 2013, a behind-the-scenes gallery, and a teaser trailer.  The reverse cover liner art inside the clear Amaray case has barely safe for work primary of the mad Boxer and a bloodied woman bound in rope and a not safe for work cover that focuses on a bare-chested and rope bound Judas, both in contrasted to a deep inky void background.  There are no insert liner supplements and the disc is pressed with the same NSFW cover art image.  The not rated, region A encoded release has a runtime of 76 minutes.

Last Rites: Glorifying hopelessness through violence, “Visceral: Between the Ropes of Madness” is a round-for-round degression from failure through the dreary lens of director Felipe Eluti and his kink for rope bondage that sets forth an unstable champion amongst the maidenly defeated.

Step Into the Ring with “Visceral: Between the Ropes of Madness” On Blu-ray!

After EVIL Was Executed, A Movie Was Released! “Monster” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own Second Sight Films’ Blu-ray of “Monster.” Order Here!

Aileen had big dreams and big ambitions to be someone in life.  Growing up, she did what she had to do to get ahead, even if that means selling her body at a young age when she had no advantages unlike her peers.  Now getting longer in the tooth, Aileen still unhappily hooks to live hand-to-mouth, day-by-day, just to survive cruel circumstances.  When she meets Selby, a young, lonely lesbian looking for friend, the two become attached at the hip becoming exactly what each other need at that moment.  The two become intwined was not only friendship but passion as Aileen promises to quit the streets and make a better life for her and Shelby but when one of the last nights of prostitution winds up almost killing her and her unloading bullets into attacker, Aileen succumbs to a taste for murdering sleazy men in order to satisfy Selby’s love.  How far will Aileen go to achieve her dream?

The sad story of Aileen Wuornos life is much more than the serial killer segment she’s most infamous for.  Wuornos unlucky dealt hand could be considered the archetype of white trash narratives being born to teenage parents, practically raised without role models or stable parents, sexual and physically abused by those close to her, impregnated during the middle of her high school teen years, kicked out of her grandparents’ house, and learned to survive through the old profession of prostitution.  Yet, all that tragedy is not in the story that is about to unfold before you in “Monster,” the 2003 biopic thriller from “Wonder Woman” director Patty Jenkins.  Mostly authentic with bits and pieces adjusted to protect individuals from the public eye, “Monster” accounts for what Aileen is responsible for, the multiple slayings of clients who were accused by Aileen as rapists and abusers during their sexual transaction.  Also touch upon, and in a very heart-rending sense, is Aileen’s love for another woman and how their relationship crumbled under the stress of life’s tremendously unfair hard knocks.  Jenkins writes-and-directs the film with Wuornos’ blessing under the multiple production umbrella of Media 8 Entertainment, New Market Films, Denver & Delilah Films, K/W Productions, DEJ Productions, and, in association with, MDP Worldwide. 

To play labeled America’s first female serial killer, Patty Jenkins sought after Charlize Theron who, at that time of the early 2000s, was hitting the height of her career having starred alongside Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino in “The Devil’s Advocate,” Johnny Depp in “The Astronaut’s Wife,” and Mark Wahlberg in the remake heist film “The Italian Job.”  Theron, a stunning woman who became the epitome of glamour and beauty in the eyes of Hollywood, put herself through a transfiguration for the role of Aileen Wuornos.  Gaining weight and capturing Wuornos mannerisms and thoughts-process to play, as close as possible, the woman who would go on to murder 7 men in late 80s, early 90s.  Play is perhaps too broad of term for Theron who depicts a drastic overhaul of her looks and her idiosyncrasies to recreate Wuornos in the flesh and in the mind, creating a lifelike illusion of Wuornos on screen that garnered her an Oscar.  Theron’s costar, however, did not dress the part of Aileen’s real-life lover who opted to remain in the shadows of a private life, disconnected from her past sordid by true life crime.  That costar is none other than Christina Ricci.  The “Addams Family” and “Sleepy Hollow” star adds a slender, petite, fictional companion as lonely-lesbian Selby Wall against, who we know more about today, was a heavier set and butch woman that was Aileen’s romantic partner, Tyria Moore.  Jenkins invokes a sense of loneliness between the two women who find each other when they need each other the most, at the lowest point in their lives, and when their journey together seems hopeful, bright, and prosperous, life’s muck and judgement comes raining down life hellfire.  Aileen’s series of johns make up the rest of the cast and a few have familiar faces, such as Pruitt Taylor Vince (“Identity,” “Constantine”), Scott Wilson (“The Walking Dead”), Marc Macaulay (“Wild Things”) and Lee Tergensen (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre:  The Beginning”) with Tim Ware, Brett Rice, Marco St. John, and the Oscar winner Bruce Dern (“The Burbs’) rounding the cast out. 

Having been released over two decades ago, “Monster” still retains relevance even when the real-life Aileen Wuornos no longer breathing after her execution in 2002.   “Monster’s” focus isn’t about the episodic killings of a laundry list of varietal behavioral clients who either seek sex out of loneliness or seek it for other devilish, wicked means as Patty Jenkins hones in on a more strung along motif of loneliness that connections not just our principal characters but, in a way, most of the Aileen’s men, the clients.  Baked and weathered by the hot Floridan sun and about as vocally turbo-charged as they come, Aileen isn’t the most beautiful street girl, and not even the most pure and refined soul, but provides a service, a service of warm skin, closeness, and pent-up relief.  In turn, that same service becomes her jailor and her undoing, shackling and imprisoning her growth form an early age, stemmed by a childhood she didn’t have, that didn’t allow her to become somebody and to make something of her downtrodden existence.  The murders are in a backseat, second fiddle to that blossoming love story between her and Selby that engulfs and drives the violence that seeks no end.  Itty-bitty details shine through into Aileen’s humanity, as a perk of the person rather than the monster she’s perceived after the fact, after the trail, and after her capitalized death.  Patty Jenkins sought to make an homage as the reason rather than just the basic news coverage of Aileen Wuornos and achieved eye-opening success.

Second Sight Films invests into a new Blu-ray release with new content encoded onto AVC, 1080p resolution, 50-gigabyte disc, scanned in 2K from the original 35mm film and presented in a 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio.  What’s impressive about the Second Sight release is retaining the natural looking grain of celluloid film.  Hues are approached organically without an overabundance of grading and this release sees to preserve “Monster’s” hard-edge and enough definitional nooks-and-crannies, especially around the weathered skin and fibrous features of Aileen Wuornos biological appearance.  The Blu-ray comes with two lossless, English audio options:  DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and a LPCM stereo 2.0.  Both offers true fidelity through the layers of range and depth but whichever A/V setup you have will dictate the format you choose.  However, the Stereo option is a good, well-rounded, full-bodied option for all as “Monster” is more a talking narrative than a caffeinated spear of action, but the rear and side channels due funnel a nicely diffused environmental ambience of highway traffic and some supplementary crowd noise underneath a well-verbose and amply clean and clear dialogue track.  New, exclusive content line the special features option on the fluid menu, such as a new interview with Patty Jenkins Making a Murderer that goes into depth about her relationship with muse Aileen Wuornos through conversation and letters as well as Charlize Theron’s transformation and performance, a new interview with producer Brad Wyman Producing a Monster, and a new interview with Director of Photography Steven Bernstein Light from Within that captures a late 80s-early 90s without infusing artificial concealer.  Other supplementals available are an audio commentary with director Patty Jenkins, actress Charlize Theron, and producer Clark Peterson, the evolution of the score featurette, deleted and extended scenes with Patty Jenkins commentary, a making-of featurette that bases the film out of being a true story, and the original theatrical trailer.  For a standard Blu-ray release, Second Sight provides a ton of content; however, there are no physical goodies, nor does the standard release come in a rigid box.  Inside a green Amary case, the single sided front comes, in what has become a prolonged motif amongst Second Sight releases, with a two-tone of black and blue or black and purple and austere cover art of Theron’s portrayal of Wuornos looking worn down.  The UK certified 18 release for strong violence and sexual violence has a runtime of 109 minutes and is hard encoded region B locked so you’ll need either a region B or region free player for playback in the Americas.

Last Rites: A beaut of a Blu-ray for the now over 20-year-old “Monster” that sees new content and insights that cast less shade over a troubled existence that inflicted real life killer Aillen Wuornos. Patty Jenkins and Charlize Theron do the story justice and Second Sight Films just follows suit with enhancing its story told quality.

Own Second Sight Films’ Blu-ray of “Monster.” Order Here!

Josef’s Little One-Day Video Diary Bares Unnerving EVIL! “Creep” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / Limited-Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Creep” on a Limited Edition Second Sight Films Boxset!

Aaron, a videographer, travels to a lakeside cabin in Crestline, California after responding to an online ad for a single day’s worth of work.  There is where he meets Josef, a husband and soon-to-be father dying of terminal brain cancer who wants to film the entire day as a memoriam video for his unborn child.  As the camera rolls, Aaron captures Josef’s strange yet sad behavior in an outpour of unstable emotions that put Aaron in an uncomfortable spot.  When Aaron learns Josef might not be sane, he’s able to elude the creep’s attempts to hold Aaron captive, but the videographer hasn’t entirely escaped Josef’s obsession with video recordings and unusual gifts being sent to Aaron’s home address.  The call to the police proves pointless when Aaron can’t provide detail information about his former, one-day employer and he often feels not alone in his home, but Josef’s last recording shows a different, desperate side of Josef Aaron can’t ignore. 

What happens when two guys with a camera try to shoot a comedy about two strangers having an awkward encounter?  They end up making one hell of an awkwardly scary horror film.  That’s what happened to Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass on their 2014 found footage film “Creep.”   Brice directed the feature along with co-writing the unsettling dark human nature story with Mark Duplass that proved to be more than just another found footage folly as the original film spawned an expansive, 2017 sequel and this year’s Shudder series “The Creep Tapes” with both Brice and Duplass returning to fill their original, multi-capacitated roles in front and behind the camera.  When those close to Brice and Duplass had screened the originally intended comedy, the feedback was to pivot to an uneasy loner and a serial stalker and that’s where producer Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions came into play that secured additional shots and reshoots to recut and expand upon the creepy creeper.  “Creep” is also a production Duplass Brothers Productions with another “Creep” franchise regular, Christopher Donlon, serving as co-producer.

With a cast of two, the story must be engaging, interesting, scary, and above in order to continuously captivate or induce edge of your seat anxiety-riddled anticipation.  Brice and Duplass control the narrative by being on both ends of the camera that could only go in one of two directions – be a disastrous outcome of looping and stagnant underdevelopments really about nothing at all or could be evolve constantly, but slowly, to build upon, but not reveal to hastily, a slow burn of psychopathic tendencies toward one person.  Duplass as the dying Josef leaves a frightening, unsettling impression of a man glowing with mania and he’s ever effervescent in trying to playfully scare Aaron, played by Patrick Brice looking through the lens, anyway he can, such as running off into the wilderness to pop up and scream, put on a ferocious-looking wolf mask and do a song and dance act that pinches the nerves, and tell him secretive stories of his life that would disturb any listener.  Amid the craziness, we’re not sure why the character of Aaron would stay and film while being subjected to Josef’s impulses.  Yes, Josef pays him handsomely for a one-day gig but there’s no desperation in Aaron to warrant what seems to be frisky abuse at hands of a grown man on the verge of breakdown.  Audiences from the get-go will experience Aaron’s painful staidness of passivity while Josef just runs him like a high school track and while internally thinking how absent Aaron’s situational awareness is, this act of humoring another person can be totally plausible to a fatal flaw.

Found footage has been mostly overused, misused, and abused for the better part of 20-or-so plus years thanks to the global success of “Blair Witch Project,” but there are diamonds in the rough that stand out amongst the murky muddied subgenre and “Creep” is one of those sparkling few to emerge.  What’s fascinating about the design is it doesn’t try to do too much within the frame.  Simple jump scare gags, such as popping out behind doors, are heart-jarringly effective without all the razzle dazzle of visual effects or practical makeup effects.  Another star quality is the story’s music soundtrack, there is none.  Silence is golden.  One of my personal pet peeves with found footage is the use of a musical score that instantly eliminates the realism the subgenre naturally wants to perceive.  “Creep’s” longevity as a realistic scary situation within the unembellished optical camera nerve lasts because of the smaller things, such as having no soundtrack alongside the raw video recording that creates a deafening, shivering quietness and enhances those basic jump scares to a pee-your-pants level.  There’s no overcomplication of material, no unnecessary enhancing, just two guys with a camera trying to make a comedy and come out with a “Creep” of a film. 

“Creep,” the small film that could, receives a new limited-edition Blu-ray set from UK label, Second Sight Films.  The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD50 is collaborative product with Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment and denotes a picture-perfect home video quality found footage always strives to reflect with a 24 FPS run and an image decoding that averages in the mid-30s.  A wide variety of healthy raw-for-realism shots from a Panasonic AG-DVX100 B version digital handheld that allowed to shoot in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Darkened shades, contrasting variables, and an ungraded finish is a part of the found footage game, but the way Brice handles the camera is less shaky than most of the subgenre, completed with steadier, tracking shots or left-in-place recordings.  Details are not always going to be defined but for this subgenre, a subtle interlacing effect is appropriate and welcoming.  The lossless English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo mix is recorded from the DVX100’s onboard external microphone that captures the natural elements as well as a softer dialogue track for those in front of the camera compared to behind, creating an organic depth where needed, such as when Josef runs off into the woods we hear the fading crackling of brush under running footsteps.  There are some added elements into the sound design for long shots that need more than what the microphone can offer and those are meticulous placed to work with the images.  The softer dialogue does not give away to intelligible or obstructed dialogue as conversation, whether at a slower speech delivery or a heighted yell or scream, maintains prominence and, occasionally, does feedback slightly into the external microphone, adding to the realism of found footage.  English subtitles are optionally available.  Second Sight boxset are jammed packed full of succulent, exclusive content and “Creep” is not exception to the rule.  The set houses a new audio commentary with director Patrick Brice, editor Christopher Donlon, and actor Mark Duplass, an archival commentary with Brice and Duplass from the initial home video release, a new interview with Patrick Brice Peachfuzz, a new interview with Mark Duplass Into Darker Territory, a new interview with editor Christopher Donlon Expand the Universe, a live Q&A with cast and crew 10 Years of Creep, and deleted and alternate scenes and ending that hark back to the “Creep’s” original intention of an awkward and sad comedy.  The limited-edition contents include a rigid slipcase with new artwork by Luke Headland that plays into the fuchsia coloring motif we’ve seen lately with Second Sight front covers, 6 collectible art cards, and a 70-page colored book with additional Headland art and new essays from Kat Ellinger, David Kittredge, Amber T, Sarah Appleton, and Blu-ray acknowledgments and credits.  The release comes region free with an open licensing and so the 78-minute film, which is UK certified 15 film for strong violence, and references to sexual violence, can be enjoyed globally.

Last Rites: “Creep” will definitely creep you out. Second Sight’s highly anticipated and supplemental heavy set contends to be the last best physical release of this calendar year, closing 2024 by showcasing a troublesome and quirky sociopath and his unforgettable aberrant fixations.

“Creep” on a Limited Edition Second Sight Films Boxset!

EVIL Doesn’t Take Rejection Well. “Village of Doom” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Collector’s Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Village of Doom” now on Unearthed Film’s Collector’s Edition Blu-ray!

Tsugio Inumaru is considered the smartest young man in his village.  Illness took the life of his parents, and he raised by his grandmother and lives off her land’s income, looking after him and dreading the day Tsugio becomes drafted as a soldier in war service, which bestows great honor from the villagers.  While husbands are away serving their country, bored and lonely housewives and bachelorettes desire the carnal company of the men remaining and with Tsugio’s youth and his own sexual yearnings bubbling to the surface, he’s prime Kobe beef for the hungry village women.  When Tsugio’s health examination reveals a tuberculosis diagnosis, he’s acutely shunned by the villagers, drying up his sexual escapades, as well as potential betrotheds.  Rejection by his village, and even his country, sends the young man into plotting a massive killing spree, targeting all of those who’ve forsaken or scorned him to a life not worth living. 

In the Tsuyama outskirt village of Kamo of 1938, 21-year-old Mutsuo Toi cut the village’s electricity, strapped flashlights to the side of his head, and took a mini arsenal that included a Browning shotgun, a katana, and an axe to 30 villagers, including his grandmother, in an act to revenge killing for being rejected socially and sexually because of his tuberculosis diagnosis.  What is known as the Tsuyama Massacre, Mutsuo Toi’s cold and merciless act of carnage was the basis for Noboru Tanaka’s “Village of Doom.”  The pinkupsloitation director of “Rape and Death of a Housewife” and “Angel Guts:  Nami” helms the Japanese, semi-biographical tale, penned by Takuya Nishioka (“Tattoo,” “Female Teacher:  Chain and Bondage”), that follows closely the bullet point events of Mustuo Toi but with different named characters and a strong pink eiga touch.  “Village of Doom” is one of Kazuyoshi Okuyama’s (“R100,” “Self-Bondage:  All Tied Up with My Own Rope”) first produced ventures and is a production of the Fuji Eiga and Shochiku Eizo Companies. 

While Mutsuo Toi is not directly portrayed, his downward spiraling steps are indirectly followed by Tsugio Inumaru, played by the late Nikkatsu actor Masato Furuoya.  Furuoya’s relationship with director Noboru Tanaka is well established within their director-actor collaborating context with Furuoya having roles in Tanaka’s previous credits of “Rape and Death of a Housewife” and “Angel Guts:  Nami.”  There’s a blanket of comfortability within Furuoya who must treat his character as one-part pink paramour and one-part biographical massacrer, seducing with a tantamount tease of fantasy and authenticity.  Furuoya’s beleaguered performance is a jagged mountainous range of emotions from confidence and compassion to hormonal desires, to the stressed misgivings from cold shoulders and bad fortune mishandled by Tsugio’s own sense of worth to his himself and the village that has turned its back on him.  In keeping with the simulated practice of Yobai, the night crawling sexual escapades amongst young men and women, typically unmarried men and women, Tanaka portions heavily toward Tsugio’s internal grievances with the suddenly thrusted into the primitive and stimulated needs of a young man’s novice sex drive awaken with a morsel nude photograph.  Furuoya’s costars are the collective antagonist from the perspective of Tsugio with their geniality turned hostility of the TB diagnosis.  Sexualized warmth and freedom run rampant, peppered in between with subdued duty to village and country, that cradles an shy Tsugio’s into his manhood but when his manhood is threatened and the village neglects and rejects his contributions, Tsugio’s acute ostracization from within the only community circle he’s ever known disfigures his rationality into revenge.  The cast is surprisingly pink vet lite with the actors coming from other Japanese oriented popular subgenres like samurai films, erotic but tasteful comedies and romance, and horror with Misako Tanaka, Isao Natsuyagi (“Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion,” Kumiko Ôba (“Hausu”), Shino Ikenami (“Evil Dead Trap 2”), Midori Satsuki, Yashiro Arai, Renji Ishibashi, and Izumi Hara (“Island of the Evil Spirits”).

“Village of the Doom” is a two-toned down spiral to build up only to crash down the hopes of an impressionable young person.  Similarly seen in later works like Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant” where the visually intense, raw, and viscerally slicing culmination of enough-is-enough points back to the series of occurrences that significantly mile mark every step lead to the slaughter.  Set inside a valley surrounded by green mountains, the idyllic and rural riverside village impresses more backdrop tranquility than doom with slower pace and dutiful lifestyles but like most cutoff societies, the slow, insidious corruption of morality courses with infectious infidelity under the guise of Yobai, upends rightful justice and trades in for lynch mobs, and wanes promises for easy streets and exploitation run out dates that run its course for one but not the other.  All these aspects have relevant translatability to today’s cliques and inner circles that oust the unusual to where a sense of belonging feels hopelessly frustrating.  The isolation is so engrained that it highlights, in a very matter-of-fact way but does speak to it quite a bit, is the incestuous relationships between related villagers with the instances of Tsugio and cousin Kazuko’s flirtatious meetups and talk of marriage as well as Tsugio accidental arousal around his cousin’s aunt.  This adds to the tension and the corruption of that old idiom of don’t shit where you eat and the evident sourness spoils relationship ties when family is important to lessen the blows of life’s subsidiary problems.  For Tsugio, who is already dealt a bad hand with both parents deceased and his illness, the whole village rots what’s left of his innocence and ambitions and, in turn, aims to exterminate those who’ve foiled his purity.

A wicked, notorious true crime story now for the rest of the world to visual in “Village of Doom” on Blu-ray, courtesy of Unearthed Films on their Unearthed Classics sublabel.  The new Collector’s Edition Blu-ray is format encoded onto an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50.  The picture is tempered with the muted colors, or rather the scaled grays, of an archaic Japanese village coupled by the browns and straw hued housing set amongst in and surrounded by a sea of green foliaged valley, and while objects are delineated nicely without any saturation bleeding or compression issues, the colors don’t necessary pop.  What does pop are the textures of the same articles mentioned above.  The groves of thatched wooden abodes are remarkable deep, the greens, though seamless, are nicely touched upon in the foreground, and skin consistencies vary person-be-person within idiosyncratic personal brackets with dynamic sweatiness and emotion-delivery contouring to accentuate.  The Japanese LPCM 1.0 mono has no problem discerning elements.  Though all funneling through a single channel, the dialogue and ambience works together thanks to the clean, more immersive ADR.  Mashanori Sasaji’s tests the soundscapes of traditional Japanese drum rhythms of Oo-daiko with then modernized synthesized notes to create a forebodingly, entrancing composition.  With any post-production voiceover work, dialogue is very robust, and the synchronized English subtitles offer an error-free and organic translation.  The original audio file is compressed cleanly with no issues with crackling, hissing, or any other damage for noting. Unearthed Film’s 17th spined Classics title supplements with an audio commentary by Asian film experts Arne Venema and Mike Leeder, a look at the Tsuyama Massacre in Dark Asia with Megan: Case #57 Japan’s Darkest Night, a promotional gallery, and the theatrical trailer. The Amary Blu-ray case is housed in a cardboard O-slipcover featuring Mutsuo’s iconic night-crawlin’ getup on Masato Furuoya’s Tsugio in colorless black-and-white. The case has the same image used for the cover with no reversible sleeve and the inside does not contain any tangible inserts or materials. The disc is pressed with not the same image but the same head flashlight Tsugio, this time looking right at you in unison with his shotgun barrel. The not rated feature has a runtime of 106 minutes and is region A locked.

Last Rites: “Village of Doom” depicts the same sad story that strikes the hearts of today’s mass shootings, spurred by the dispel from those in proximity, intimate, and friendly. “Village of Doom” is a true classic of casted out carnage relit by Unearthed Films to retell the notorious narrative of Japan’s deadliest mass killing ever.

“Village of Doom” now on Unearthed Film’s Collector’s Edition Blu-ray!