Category Archives: Slashers / Survival

Anything and everything Slasher/Survival.

EVIL’s the Bacon, the Pork Roll, and the Scrapple All Mixed and Slashed together! “Butcher’s Bluff” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Butcher’s Bluff” on DVD from Breaking Glass Pictures!

Film students Rodger, Nicole, and Derrick decide to head to the rural Texas town of Emerald Falls and make their class project documentary around the 28 missing persons over the years and the Hogman, an urban legend of an escaped killer now roaming the woods of Butcher’s Bluff.  Bringing along their friends to make it concurring party getaway at Rodger’s family vacation cabin, the trio conduct interviews with the eccentric town locals to build a story around the Hogman myth, even ascertaining the original location for the mask Hogman wore during his first kills before escaping psychiatric prison.  The more they investigate into the Hogman, the more the locals warn them to stay away from Butcher’s Bluff but in a case of curiosity killed the cat, the documentary film students and their drug-fueled, sexed-up friends find themselves being hunted with no cell service, no help within miles, and no way out of the Hogman’s kill radius. 

Co-directors William Instone and Matt Rifley helm their first collaborative feature “Butcher’s Bluff,” a 2023 small town slasher reminiscent of the renaissance slasher movement of the 1980s, packed with practical gore effects, odd backwoods characters, a campy party of vice-riddled youth, and, moist importantly – excuse me – most importantly, T&A.  Instone, whose all-in director, writer, and producer debut horror “Jon” from 2012 brings one man’s delusions into horrifying reality, cowrites his latest grim story with writer, painter, and overall liberal arts connoisseur Renfield Rasputin.  Filmed in Texas with principal locations taking place in Bastrop, New Braunfels, and San Marcos to composition a story set in the fictional town of Emerald Falls and its rural woodland of Butcher’s Bluff.  The film is a crowdfunded venture that raised an approximate $60K to cover principal shooting and post-production costs with Instone and Rifley serving as primary producers amongst an amalgamation of crowdfunded producing backers   Instone’s Thunder Mountain Films, in association with Dull Knife Productions and Spicey Ramen Productions, go hog wild with their slasher horror. 

As if he doesn’t have enough on his plate writer, directing, and producing “Butcher’s Bluff,” Instone also portrays the main antagonist Hogman, masked with a stitched together pig head complete with cockeyed tusks and garbed with a dingy mechanic jumpsuit and tan jacket.  The Hogman is a walk-and-run chaser with a duel-sided axe and rusty, broad curved knife as main melee weapons though he’ll get his bare hands dirty from time-to-time.  Instone’s not flashy with the villain and doesn’t key-light any iconic poses, stances, or stares to incite a nerve coursing fear.  Hogman’s victims are anyone and everyone who enters the Butcher’s Bluff forest, from necking lovers (Jacqueline Hays and “Mallrats’s” Jeremy London), to lost pot farm thieves (“You’re Next’s” L.C. Holt, “Scare Package’s’” Christopher Winbush, “Girls Gone Dead’s” Shawn C. Phillips), to finally, but not limited to, the Rodger’s friends and classmates on their excursion investigation and party.  Fortunately, the group displays different caricature tropes without going full-blown cliché.  Between them you have the exuding sexy yet overly bitchy duo of Sam and Tina (a cut pixie cut but broodingly built Samantha Holland and a slender yet high-end platinum blonde Kayla Anderson), Rodger’s sex-driven, dweeb cousin Bobby (Dakota Millett) who Sam and Tina torment, the polar opposite to Bobby stud with Jake (Santiago Sky) and of course the three documentarians:  Rodger (Michael Fischer), Derrick (Johnny Huang), and Nicole (Paige Steakley), each reside in their own attribute world consistently, dying the way they live, that’s very telling of their moral fiber.  In additional to Jeremy London and Shawn C. Phillips, who have worked themselves into being staples of the indie genre films, other notable names to mention for their brief but key roles are Brinke Stevens (“Nightmare Sisters”), Paul T. Taylor (“Hellraiser:  Judgement”), Bill Oberst Jr. (“3 From Hell”), and Bill Johnson (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II”) peppered into the rest of the supporting cast to draw in fandom.

“Butcher’s Bluff” has the necessary bone structure to be a digestible slasher, checking all the elemental boxes, and Instone and Rifley manage to technically pull off a nearly 2-hour film on a crowdfunded budget.   The problem is “Butcher’s Bluff” has a hackneyed routine about it.  Instead of creating something new and wonderfully, gory and diabolical, under a distinct flag of novelly progressive storytelling, every scene feels all too familiar, a telltale sign to horror fans that we’ve seen this kind of story before.  From Hogman’s stony silence and indiscriminate aggression bores him as a Michael Myers carbon copy, a family in cahoots with a s flesh-stitched maniac plays the tune of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and there’s even a character moment of yelling What Are You Waiting For? aimlessly into the dark forest while spinning around with arms wide apart that oozes Jennifer Love Hewitt vibes.  Add in some rather uninspiring frame, shot design, and editing and “Butcher’s Bluff” very much embodies the crowdfunded costs rather than the intended crowdfunded spirit.  Now while all of this portion of the review sounds grossly negative, don’t just run for the hills to the next slasher film in line just yet as Instone and Rifley still manage to keep an engagement lock on what makes the slasher film enjoyable to behold with some decently inlaid practical gore effects, including a pleading head being sliced horizontally through from mouth to hair or a posthumous, lawn chair display of one fine girl’s nipples and eyes plucked from her body and posed on her eye-gouged out person as if giving a blood offering to the audience Gods.  There’s also the inviting gratuitous T&A from Samantha Holland, Kayla Anderson, and Jacqueline Hays that keeps the old theme motif alive within the campy slasher genre as well as keeping young boys’ dreams from becoming dry.

Breaking Glass Pictures distributes the archetypical slasher “Butcher’s Bluff” onto DVD home video.  The MPEG2 encoded, 720p upscaled standard definition, DVD9 really has a tough go with the compression capabilities as there’s quite a bit of data to encode/decode within a near full-time night shoot picture and color accompaniments that blend right into the darkness, melding out of a clean definition.  Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, banding and splotching render a difficult deciphering of data in inkier fields.  When colors do contrast or arise into lighter hues, there’s a pop of demarcation with its full potential held back by an ungraded layer.  Textures are extremely fluid throughout with the prominent skin scenes offering a decent, natural look but most scenes are fuzzy as if the upscale fights the downscaling for supremacy.  The English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound offers an adequate compression for a routine slasher with mid-level range with clear and clean dialogue overtop eerie forest soundscape of breaking branches, tree knocks, and leave crunching footsteps.  The mix doesn’t convey much depth with dialogue and ambience hanging around the front channels while medium shots and some tree knocking flirt with the side channels.  A mainstay slasher should have a memorable, tense-riddles soundtrack for the chase or create omnipresence fear but “Scream, Queen!  My Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Dinner with Leatherface” composer’s Alexander Taylor’s insipid inspiration can’t be held in the memorable bank and fails to elevate the Hogman’s imposing sheer terror.  English closed captioning is available.  Special features include a proof on concept trailer for the crowdfunding campaign that stars a handful of the actors from the feature film, such as Michael Fischer and Paige Steakley, and a behind-the-scenes music video that contains behind-the-scenes footage.   The DVD presence is standard fair for Breaking Glass Pictures with a DVD Amaray and a one-sided front cover art, which subjectively pleasing in its retrograde mockup of an illustrated Hogman looming over a scared, running Steakley (supposedly) in her white tank top and high cut shorts.  There is at least one noticeable error on the back cover that spells Paige Steakley’s name incorrectly in the credits, listing her last name as Steakely.  The Not Rated release is hard encoded with region 1 and has a two-hour runtime which can appear quite long, but the pacing was not terrible and the long runtime for an indie slasher didn’t feel overly immeasurable. 

Last Rites: “Butcher’s Bluff’s” has little to offer as far as the next novel and generational slasher but scratches the genre itch with a large body count, solid kills, and campy campers looking to buy, sell, and trade their vices for being violated.

“Butcher’s Bluff” on DVD from Breaking Glass Pictures!

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EVIL Wants the Industry Hot and Desired Jana Bates to be in His Movie! “The Last Horror Film” reviewed! (Troma / Tromatic Special Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Last Horror Film” is Now Available on Blu-ray to Obsess Over!

Obsessed with horror scream queen Jana Bates, New York City cabby Vinny Durand heads to France’s Cannes Film Festival to cast her in his own horror movie, “The Love of Dracula.”  Halted at every entry point of the private, star-studded events that include Jana Bates and being intercepted and rejected by Bates’s producer ex-husband, a rival producer, current boyfriend-manager, her agent, and a director, all of whom are in an intergroup conflict concerning the starlet, Jana, nothing will deter Durand from his perfect star.  When Jana walks in on the decapitated corpse of her ex-husband, a series of murders and missing persons involving her close friends and colleagues ensues in the days after and in all the while, Durand tries every attempt to meet the actress, stalking her with a video camera to film the perfect leading lady in his secret horror movie, invasively stepping into her life in the same instance the murders began to occur. 

A deranged NYC taxi driver flying to Europe for an aggressive meet, greet, and casting of a totally unaware horror actress to be in his own B-picture is the plotline everyone could, should, enjoy!  What’s not the love?  “The Last Horror Film” takes us from the grimy streets of the Big Apple to the exquisite sights and sounds of the seashore Cannes along the scenic French Riviera.  Helmed by London-born David Winters (“Thrashin’”) and penned by Winters, Tom Klassen, and Judd Hamilton (“Maniac”), “The Last Horror Film,” also known as “Fanatic,” is one of the best obsessed fan thrillers out there, such as containing the same context of the Clint Eastwood picture “Play Misty for Me,” but is lesser known to mainstream audiences because it features genre icons Joe Spinell and Caroline Munroe and has been primarily distributed under the unconventional indie picture and filmmaking risk taker, Troma Films, who at times isn’t everyone’s cup of tea distributor.  David Winters’s Winters Hollywood Entertainment and Shere Productions with Judd Hamilton and David Winters producing the 1982 American feature. 

Fans of Joe Spinell (“Maniac,” “Rocky,”) already know this but those who haven’t experienced the New York City-born and bred actor, “The Last Horror Film” role of Vinny Durand is one of his best.  Spinell obviously suits psychosis well, but Vinny Durand takes it down a different path and, believe me or not, Spinell finesse with the character is beyond magnificent in all his mannerisms, expressions, and intonations, in addition to his egg-shaped physical, slick greasy hair, and thin black mustache, that make Vinny Durand a likeable and infatuated with obsessed crazy.  “The Last Horror Film” is the third costar collaboration with female lead, and genre icon in her own right, Caroline Munroe behind “Starcrash” and “Maniac.”  The “Dracula A.D. 1972” and “Captain Kronos:  Vampire Hunter” Munroe essentially plays herself in the role of Jana Bates but with a role that comes with more glamour and prestige as horror actresses rarely received such recognition in the major industry circuits.  Munroe equals Spinell in performance but in her own right as more of normie actress with accolades living it up at Cannes and eventually landing in the final girl trope, exceled into terror within the radius of her killer.  Being embroiled in a different kind of love triangle, one that includes her silver fox husband ex-husband Bret Bates (Glenn Jacobson, “Wild Gypsies”), current boyfriend Alan Cunningham (Judd Hamilton, “Starcrash”), and rival producer Marty Bernstein (Devin Goldenberg, “Savage Weekend”).  As the potential body count rises, so does the continued cast list with David Winters himself in a reflected cameo role as a horror director named Stanley Kline, Susanne Benton (“That Cold Day in the Park”) playing an orthographic variant of her namesake in Susan Archer, and Sean Casey as a rockstar lending his castle to Alan and Jana for retreating safety.  The cast rounds out with Spinell’s mother, Flilomena Spagnuolo, playing Durand’s mother in a convincingly nagging and comedic way that makes me it’s not terrible too far from the truth of their off-screen relationship. 

For a Spinell, Munroe, and David Winters production, “The Last Horror Film” is surprisingly vaulting with ambition for an unpermitted guerilla shot feature through the streets of Cannes.  Large parapet roof signs, gothic castles, the ritzy and beachy French Riviera, a score of happenstance and scripted extras,  and lots of topless women on the beach shots, Winters musters moneyed shots to coincide the well-dressed interiors of Durand’s apartment and hotel room and a slew of exteriors to play into the stalking fold.  Couple these manifested scenes of grandeur with the shocking moments of precision and effective gore and Spinell’s theatrically pleasing, creepy behavior performance and you got yourself a halfway decent meta slasher full of red herrings and a high body count, circling and overlapping itself within Duran’s directorial vision, the fake films within the critic panel and festival screenings and, as well as, the gotcha moment ending that gives one pause to think if what was just witnessed was actually the story, but while you’re scratching your head, perhaps feeling like a cinematic dummy of storytelling comprehension, there’s no doubt that David Winters successfully produced one hell of a horror picture starring Joe Spinell.

The new Tromatic Special Edition of “The Last Horror Film” is seemingly a repeat in some ways to the Blu-ray release from a decade earlier down to the exact cover art without the Tromatic Special Edition banner.  The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution and 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, is compressed onto a BD50, an uptick in format storage from the 2015 to warrant it a Tromatic Special Edition.  However, image refinement is not in this re-release’s repertoire with a mirrored result of a lightly anemic look that still fails to color pop the feature in its eclectic set designs.  Darker scenes are in and out based of contrast, losing definition, and are inclined to be grainer negatively in the negative spaces.  In the brilliance of light, details can rooted out, especially in skin textures as Spinell’s pot marked face is exhibited in great detail amongst the other casts’ individual facial features.  Winter’s diverse and organized framing, plus with a little editing garnish, elevates whatever kitschy content there might have been into a grade-A B-picture; yet that doesn’t go without saying that there weren’t any editing flaws in the print that was subsequently transposed to the Troma transfer as horizontal cut lines and breaks in recurrent cells kink the chain ever so slightly.  The release also features the same English Dolby Digital 2.0 mix, a fidelity lackluster that doesn’t reflect the power the action medley and the score, the latter from composers Jesse Frederick, the vocalist of the “Full House” theme, and musical instrument compliment, Jeff Koz.  Dialogue renders above the layers but is on the softer side of volume, diluting the more intense moments of chase and murder without that impact punchiness.  Troma, like in my instances, flaunt a noteworthy tidbit in their releases, if there is one to flaunt, and in “The Last Horror Film’s” case, Depeche Mode’s track Photographic is the quoted feature music, says in big white and yellow font on the front cover.  What primarily separates the 2015 and the 2025 releases are the special features.  Archived commentary with Joe Spinell’s assistant and associate producer Luke Walter commentary moderated by Evan Husney from 2009, “The Return of Dolphin Man” short film by director John Patrick Brennan, a segment entitled “Kabukiman’s Cocktail Party,” the feature scrapped “Maniac II:  Mister Robbie’s” promotional trailer, the theatrical trailer, and a Lloyd Kaufman intro that dresses him in drag in the streets of an uninterested NYC are included on the special edition that features additional supplements with two more, 2023 produced, re-used commentaries from 1) Caroline Munro moderated by FrightFest’s Alan Jones and 2) again with Luke Walter by moderated by Severin Films’ David Gregory for the label’s own 2023 release.  Also from the Severin vault is the Like a Father Figure:  Sal Sirchia Remembers Joe Spinell interview with Sirchia’s memories and phoned tape recordings of Spinel’s voice messages, My Last horror Film Ever audio interview with producer Judd Hamilton, and “The Last Horror Film” location revisit featurette from New York City to Cannes, plus additional trailers under the title “Fanatic” (2) and the main title (1).  There are additional Troma materials with trailers from “Return to Nuke ‘Em High Vol. 1” and “Vol. 2,” The Toxic Avenger,” “Class of Nuke ‘Em High,” and “#Shakespeare Shitstorm.”  Aforementioned, the physical properties of the release nearly identical aside from the special edition banner across the top and the additional bonus content.  The 2015 Troma release is region locked A but a decade later Troma realized region free is the smarter move with the single 87-minute cut defining the release that comes not rated.

Last Rites: Take “Maniac” out of the equation, “The Last Horror Film” is Joe Spinell’s finest performance not taken lightly and though the story’s lurching flashes the check engine light, David Winters is able to still cruise along in his fanatic slasher.

“The Last Horror Film” is Now Available on Blu-ray to Obsess Over!

EVILFormers: Robots in Disguise! “Crash and Burn” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Remastered Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Crash and Burn” on Blu-ray from Full Moon Features!

In the year 2030, the global economy has collapsed and the most powerful organization on the planet, Unicom, controls most of the national markets with scrutinizing oversight.  What makes matters worse is years of pollution and nuclear naivety is dissipating the ozone layer, exposing the Earth and its denizens to altering ultraviolet rays that scorch the Earth with thermal storms, turning much of the terrain into wastelands. Out in the middle of nowhere in one of those barren lands, Unicom errand boy Tyson Keen delivers freon to an isolated Unicom television station fabricated from an old powerplant.  An impending thermal storm forces Keen to stay overnight with the motley crew of station personnel and televised guests.  When the thermal storm knocks out the power, they discover the station chief has been murdered, revealing the chief’s involvement with the Independent Liberty Union, a rebellion group against the mighty repressive Unicom, and secret plot involving Unicom’s illegal use of synthetic people to infiltrate the station to stop dissident behavior. 

2030.  That’s only five years away, folks!  Get ready for the global financial downfall and fallout when the ozone also says peace out after years of abuse.  Giant robots and subverting T-800s, I mean synthetic androids, are exploited for corporate gain and power over the few who resist.  Actually, if you think about it, the premise of 1990’s “Crash and Burn” might actually be happening now, today, five years earlier by the sound of it!  The Full Moon production, helmed by company founder Charles Band, (“Trancers,” “Doctor Morbid”) and written by J.S. Cardone (“Shadowzone,” “The Forsaken”), is seemingly ahead of its time with the exceptions of mecha robots and a vastly dusty wasteland of the Earth’s surface, complete with temperature rising thermal storms.  Unofficially considered a sequel to Stuart Gordon’s “Robot Jox,” another Full Moon production released the year prior, “Crash and Burn” is produced by “Nightmare Sister’s” David DeCoteau and John Schouweiler with Band and Debra Dion serving as executive producers.

The futuristic dystopian thriller plays out much like a slasher with a group of people hunkered down safely in shelter until one-by-one they’re picked off.  Paul Ganus (“The Monolith”) acts as the Unicom outsider Tyson Keen, a motorcycle-riding delivery boy just needing cash to get by in turbulent times, inside an established dynamic of a reclaimed power station used for Unicom television broadcasting where Ralph Waite dons the station chief shoes of Lathan Hooks, Megan Ward (“Arcade”) in the role of Lathan’s tech expert, teenage daughter Arren, Bill Moseley (“House of a 1000 Corpses”) as the station’s handyman Quinn, Eva LaRue (“Robocop 3”) educating the children over the TV waves as Parice, and Jack McGee (“Rumpelstiltskin”) in the blowhard and perverse egotistical TV host role Winston Wickett.  There are also two Winston Wickett guests, flesh and blood adult actresses who came back into the business after Unicom banned robot porn star and are being roasted by Wickett for their licentiousness, played by Elizabeth Maclellan (“Puppet Master II”) in the non-nude role of Sandra and Katherine Armstrong (“The Arrival”) in the topless required role of Christie.  Sandra and Christie are opaquer when it comes to their purpose as the two seemingly nomad women obviously need the money Wickett promises them to do the show to continue moving from place-to-place, but they put up with Wickett’s pompous and chauvinistic degrading being, even sleeping separately in the same quarters as the television host without wearing clothes.  There are dialogue moments between them that suggest there’s more to their relationship than what’s in exposition but never fleshes out; instead, Christie fleshes out in a shower scene with Bill Moseley’s Quinn for a brief cleansing.  The above cast of characters set the same for a “The Thing” similar mistrust when one of them is suspected to be a sabotaging, murderous robot in human skin, they even do a blood test too.  Solid performances all around with Moseley outshining most and Megan Ward’s innocence really comes through in her debut as a teenager while Ganus can be a suitable leading man but lacks the presence where it matters.  Jon Davis Chandler (“Carnosaur II”) and Kristopher Logan (“Puppet Master III:  Toulon’s Revenge”) round out the cast as two wasteland gas attendants close to the isolated power station.

“Crash and Burn” is an enjoyably campy, science-fiction horror that derivatively cherry-picks from other films in the genre.  From “The Thing” to “Aliens,” to even Full Moon’s own production “Robot Jox,” “Crash and Burn” puts other sci-fi cult films’ best elements together to form something new that instills a sense of isolating tension and heart-racing thrills from the man versus machine narrative.  Charlie Band adds his localized flavoring of beautiful women, sometimes teasing to bare it all, to zhuzh it up in a different light.  Like most of Full Moon’s earlier productions, and what separates the company’s catalogue from the modern features of today, is the practical effects.  Greg Cannom (Francis Ford Coppola’s “Dracula”) and his assistant Larry Odien’s make up effects, plus “Terminator 2’” Steve Burg’s robot design with the puppeteering, have longevity over the decades rather than today’s fly-by-the-seams visuals that often look cheap and mismatch against the live action with no tangibility and hardly anything the actors can work off against.  The under skin, robot skull exposure looks phenomenal for the era and budget with multiple layers peeling off in its prosthetic application and makeup arrangement. 

Full Moon continues to remaster their catalogue into high definition with their 1990 title “Crash and Burn” next on the docket. Remastered from the original 35mm negative, that was recently unearthed, the image has greatly improved from the flat colored transfers of previous positive prints, AVC encoded with 1080p high-definition resolution on a BD25. Full Moon’s remastering adds richness to the color pallet and a fine texture point that discrete objects the internal boiler room of the television station and, in contrast, the arid desert of Alabama Hills, California doubling as the futuristic wasteland. Skin textures are filled with stubble, ridges, imperfections, sweat, and robotic skin peels in every frame without the softening or smoothing over process to work quicker rather than precise. Full Moon offers two English Dolby Digital audio tracks, a Stereo 2.0 and a surround sound 5.1, which has been standard fair with the re-released remastered lineup. As fidelity reproduction goes, the layers perceive repressed for a bigger approach, especially one that has giant mecha action and a whipping thermal storm that causes a giant satellite crashing into a building. There’s nothing innately substandard about the Dolby mix, it’s perfectly adequate to handle the action, ambience, soundtrack, and the forefront dialogue and exact clear prominence without the lift in its intermediate range. English SDH are optionally available. Charles Band and actor Bill Moseley launches off the special features portion with a feature parallel audio commentary that’s entertaining between Moseley’s quips and Band’s stories in relation to the “Crash and Burn.” Also included is the making of the film, a blooper reel, the original trailer, and other trailers from Full Moon. Housed in a traditional Blu-ray Amaray, the original VHS art is reiterated, again, for the Blu-ray that’s more mecha oriented rather than stealthy robot assassins. There are no inserts inside or other physical features with the release that has a runtime of 85 minutes, is unrated, and is encoded as region free.

Last Rites: “Crash and Burn” does not do just that, crash and burn, but has real world dystopian concepts underscoring a Full Moon slasher reanimated by remastering for high-definition fanatics.

“Crash and Burn” on Blu-ray from Full Moon Features!