The Mountains are Filled with Evil! “Killbillies” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on October 28, 2016

Cynically unimpressed Zina agrees to partake in a friend’s nature photo shoot with idyllic mountains and forest splayed in the backdrop. Soon as the shoot begins, two disfigured and armed mountain men abruptly interrupt the foursomes’ serene surroundings, kidnapping the city folk by brute force, and holding them hostage in the basement of a ramshackle distillery. Confused and scared, Zina takes action, fighting back for her life against a family of hillbillies yearning to mix their victims’ organic essences into a fine, smooth-tasting, down-the-hatch liquor that recently become popular in the region.

Horror has finally found a home in Slovenia with Slavic writer-director Tomaz Gorkic’s freshman feature, the whimsically titled film known as “Killbillies! ” Alternatively known also as “Idila” originally and “Idyll” world-wide, the hillbilly survival horror-thriller is an unique feature in it’s own right, being the first horror film to be produced out of the European nation bordered by Italy, Austria, and Hungary. “Killbillies” savagely pits the entitlement of urbanity against the underprivileged and judged rural community who will kill for what they desire in an intense tale plastered with unforgiving violence and human rancidity. Gorkic’s film rivals America’s “Wrong Turn” series containing murderous, inbred mountain people and sets the foundational work for a potential “Killbillies” franchise to put Slovenia on the map and instead of rehashing the cannibal market, “Killbillies” can go out on a tangent by turning terrified victims’ brains in a tasty homemade brew.

Gorkic decisively also lays the solid groundwork of separating the two classes of characters with the beautiful and sensible urbanites in the models, the photographer, and the apathetic assistant, and the deformed and unhinged states of the no nonsense hillbillies played convincingly, and terrifyingly enough, by the bear-framed Lotos Sparovec and the gangly Jurij Drevensek inside the detailed workings of some gnarly prosthetics to sell the hillbillies from hell. The ugly twosome seek to extract their moonshining secret ingredients from a tough Zina, a role executed well by Nina Ivanisin, a prissy up-and-coming model Mia, played by Nika Rozman, a quiet photographer named Blitcz in Sebastian Cavazza, and a middle aged hair, makeup, and wardrobe assistant named Dragica given to Manca Ogorevc. Each role tackles a unique persona that’s vital to their characters’ survival and Gorkic writes clearly the characters’ purpose in how they interact when pressured upon.

While the visually visceral “Killbillies” requires a minor tweak here and there to only fine tune upon character development and to be slightly more forthright into the intriguing backstory with the liquor and even with Zina’s life struggling puzzlements, Gorkic ultimately captures the bones and soul that genetically makes up that mechanisms of bona fide horror as when the hillbilly duo proceeds through the extraction process with one of the victims, a montage of scenes, sold with composer Davor Herceg’s romantic gothic score, delivers a living, breathing machine of unspeakable mad science without ever divulging a word, without ever being gratuitously gory, and without ever being overly or explicitly taboo. The gore is just enough to sate with head bashings, decapitations, and even a “Walking Dead,” Negan style overkill with a very large, very nasty axe.

“Killbillies” is the latest brazen DVD release from Artspolitation Films and the release is presented not rated in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio that gorgeously and cleanly contrasts the beauty of the trees, mountains, and blue skies with the vicious ugliness that quickly grounds you back to reality in an epic struggle of life and death. Aside from a simple static menu, chapter selection, original trailer, and an option for English subtitles and English SDH subtitles are only available. Raw and acute, “Killbillies” fears nothing by dipping it’s bloody Slovenian toes into the horror pool for the first time and able to tread water for the full length of the story that ultimately becomes a deadly cat-and-mouse game.

Get your Killbillies on DVD and streaming video at Amazon!

Family’s First Night in an Evil House! “The Purging Hour” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on September 9, 2016

Providing his dysfunctional family with new hope of rekindling, Bruce Diaz ditches the hectic grind of the city for the quiet surroundings of a mountainous Californian resort town. As they settle into their new abode, Bruce tries his hardest to piece together a shattered family. From his scared younger son Manny, to his angst-filled teenager daughter Kacie, to his distraught wife Jennifer, Bruce can only find solace in his daughter’s coasting through life boyfriend Mark. After the first 24 hours, nobody really knows what had happened to the Diaz family until an anonymous source leaks a distorted and violence recorded video tape from the dark corners of the world wide web. With new evidence at the table, a documentarian interviews family and friends of the Diaz family, local residents, and officials associated with the case in hopes to determine the whereabouts of the Diaz family that seemingly went through a violent disappearance and expose that disappearances like these can’t just be quickly covered up.

Vicious Apple Productions and Ruthless Studios add their entry amongst an overcrowded found footage market. More recently in the golden age of independent cinema, found footage films have incorporated faux interviews to add upon an artificial authenticity, but, in reality, these one-on-ones with the closest people to the victims just fill the voids to compensate for a lack of story and “The Purging Hour” plays right into that shortfall story mold. Director Emmanuel Sandoval’s sophomore 2015 feature leads into being a first time venture into horror for the young California director and Sandoval’s potential needs refinement from his also co-authored feature with Robert Trezza and Zaidal Obagi.

Developmental pacing puts the hurt on the story. I’m not sure how much more Steve Jacques moving of Bruce’s lowbrow attempt to lightheartedly get this family to bind together over this new home I could stomach. If I was Bruce with all of Jacques’ beefiness, not one smart and ugly remark from his ungrateful daughter Kacie would be taken lightly. Kacie’s family trampling is the biggest elephant in the room to the point that’s an exploited archetype in many independent projects. On top of Kacie’s entrenched battle with her family, she’s able to sustain a firm grip over her weak parents by letting her boyfriend Mark stay with them way after the move was completed. Through the muffled sidebar conversations, Mark’s fixture status amongst the family, and an unclear picture of a the family between their personas on the video tape and the their personas through the eyes of the interviewees, which creates a totally different family, speculations fly wildly toward the next steps into what happens next.

About a little over an hour after being subjected to interviews and multi fits of family bickering, Sandoval begins his HI-8 fright flight and thats where the director soars slightly by casting a muddled look into the family’s last known status. Purge, by the very definition, is to physically remove completely and “The Purging Hour” stays true to that moniker with one hour of purging and 23 hours of family turmoil and in the midst of that hour of purging, either a supernatural force or a violent bunch of heathens do the so said purge. One theory for the latter, a loose one at that, falls upon the introduction of a local resident spooking upon one of Kacie and Mark’s muddled conversations in the outside darkness. The local proceeds to explain that he’s meeting up with friends, which he does every year, and to do what, is not explained. Could this be part of a purging group? Perhaps, but there’s more of an malicious supernatural force at work upon the Diaz family that includes no physical body ever in the scene with the main characters who become main victims.

Ruthless Studios is the same production studio that also delivered “All Hallows Eve” and, frankly, nothing has tickled the distinctive quality from either film. “The Purging Hour” is a low end rental that fails to blend suspenseful drama with suspenseful thriller. Dabbled with touches of key fear elements that does not rendition a bold new of horror, “The Purging Hour” waits until the very last hour to divulge into the subject matter with anything prior to being a waste of reel. The MVDVisual distributed widescreen 1.78:1 presentation has great retro coloring through the purposefully installed Hi8 format while being clear, with little electronic interference, through the interviews and the 2.0 audio mix is muddle through the Hi8 experience, but should be cleaner for more subversive effect. No bonus material included on the static menu. The DVD cover makes you believe the film centers a supernatural entity with a dead cold hand with razor fingertips upon gnarled fingers grasping a door through the jamb. “The Purging Hour” raises too many questions to satisfy a complete and coherent story that relies too much on fake interviews to provide infamy amongst the characters and instead of letting the characters conjure a force reconstructed through their imbalance, an unknown entity, human or otherwise, randomly select their residence to even more obliterate their family coherency.

Buy “The Purging Hour” on DVD at Amazon.com!

A Romantic Getaway Turns Evil! “The Perfect Husband” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on August 11, 2016

Nicola and Viola attempt to escape their dismal past involving losing their child at birth, traveling to an isolated cabin in the woods to rekindle and reconcile their bitter relationship. Once there, Viola feels a menacing presence lurking amongst the trees ever since arriving. As the strain on their past and present union becomes nearly too much to bare, tensions overflow with jealously and bewilderment that turn the delicate situation into an explosion of violent behavior. A cat and mouse game of carnage and death follows the couple through the dark woods toward a bizarre and psychological ending that reveals the true nature of their disturbing affliction.

Director Lucas Pavetto’s “The Perfect Husband” is an Italian psychological horror film from 2014 starring “Nightmare Code’s” Bret Roberts and Gabriella Wright and based off Pavetto’s short film of the same title. Even though “The Perfect Husband” is an Italian birthed film from Italian production company DEA Films, “Il Marito Perfecto,” the Italian title of “The Perfect Husband, has a crew, aside from Pavetto hailing from Argentina, that maintains the country’s native ethnicity. London born Gabriella Wright, who masks her English accent very well, co-stars alongside the Alaskan-American Bret Roberts; both actors could certainly pass having Italian heritage with their olive skin tone and dark features elsewhere and with filming location set in Catania, Sicily, the actors fit right amongst the rugged and mountainous Sicilian landscape. Roberts has a low-raspy articulation that makes him seem always out of breath that transitions beyond the catalyst, but Roberts plays villainy insanely well. Wright maintains a cryptic temperament from start to near finish. However, the duo’s dynamic is quirky at best as the couple treat themselves more a boyfriend and girlfriend than husband and wife, which might be a product of the writing.

Lucas Pavetto and Massimo Vavassori go fairly formulaic with their script, writing about strife-stricken couple working out their marital issues alone in a remote cabin surrounded by a dense forest. The setup screams horror premise clockwork and attempts to shift gears after lengthy character development that takes some time to build into something concrete, or at least halfway tangible. The shift in disposition is, however, so rapid and so sudden with unwarranted ferocity, that the effect goes from a scale of a tense filled two to a run-for-your-life ten in a matter of microseconds. The series of events portray Bret Robert’s character Nicola as a jealous misogynistic ready to snap at any given moment while Viola’s mysteriousness and her unconscious readiness to break with reality puts an undisclosed strain on her psyche that what she experiences may or may not be real. A twist ending tries to fill in the Nicola and Viola omissions, but misses the mark that still leaves gaps here and there, especially conveying more about the events that took place at the refugee station between Viola and the Ranger, played by “Apocalypse Z’s” Carl Wharton. Perspective becomes surreal; a fantastic journey that terminates toward a twisted unveiling, leaves more questions than answers about Viola and Nicola prior to their weekend getaway.

Plausibility. Probably “The Perfect Husband’s” fiercest enemy as the story tries to turn itself upside to throw the audience for a loop. The disillusion feels cheaply thrown together to try and wrap up, what could have been, a thoughtful psychological thriller and that’s where plausibility doesn’t formulate, frustratingly feeling like an square box with only three sides and a gap left carelessly open. I wanted to like “The Perfect Husband” because I thought the mayhem was present at the beginning moment of the snowball effect. Everything went down, fast and furious style, with unforgiving brutality that was surprisingly gory at times.

“The Perfect Husband” has been honored an unrated Blu-ray release in a 1030p transfer presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio from the ever bold Artsploitation Films. The video has a slight grayscale imbalance that contrasts scenes a bit heavily, but other than that minor issue, the image looks solid. The English 5.1 surround with optional English subtitles is also solid with a balancing the appropriate tracks. Bonus features include a behind the scenes segment that exhibits the takes of scenes in and outside of the cabin. The original short “Il Marito Perfecto” is included along with trailers for upcoming films from Artsploitation Films. Turns out “The Perfect Husband” wasn’t perfect, but raw, exploitive barbarity is a must see for any violent hound in need of a good scratch.

Own “The Perfect Husband” on Blu-ray. Available at Amazon.com!

DVD Announcement! 6 Plots on October 4th!

Posted by Steven Lewis on August 10, 2016

Lionsgate Home Entertainment presents “6 Plots” starring Andrew Clarke, Alice Darling, and Ryan Corr (Wolf Creek 2) onto a Rated-R DVD, On Demand, and Digital Download this October 4th!

Synopsis

After passing out at a party, Brie wakes up to a strange phone message: a lunatic has abducted her six friends and buried them in boxes around the city. Each box has its own deadly terror — water, gasoline, insects — waiting to kill its occupant. To add to the sadistic thrills, the killer is streaming footage of the trapped kids on the Internet — and to each other. Forbidden to call parents or police, Brie must use her wits to locate her friends’ six death traps before their time runs out.

DVD Special Features

· “The Making of 6 Plots” Featurette

Pre-Order your copy of 6 Plots over at Amazon for slightly cheaper!

Starting digging into your Pre-Order for 6 Plots today!

Evil is Episodic. “Hell Town” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on August 4, 2016

Debbie Rochon presents a primetime television series event thought to be forever lost from the consequences of the utmost mysterious reasons, but buried beneath the Earth in a 6-foot grave laid to rest three surviving and untarnished episodes of Hell Town. Only episodes 7, 8, and 9 from the second season survived to tell the chilling, melodramatic macabre tale of Hell Town’s high school students in the throes of assorted teenage angst and in the epicenter of murder. One by one, the Letter Jacket Killer strikes the Hell Town’s fame football players, slaughtering them methodically, and ripping the embroidered letter from the victim’s team jacket. In the midst of dramatic backstabbing and popularity bouts, a crazed killer lives amongst the student body and deducting whom the killer might be is no easy task with motives stemmed from raging teen hormones and unquenchable greedy thirst that can mask any unasked villain.

Reading this review’s “Hell Town” introduction synopsis might have you scratching your temple wondering if you’ve somehow, someway, missed the small screen series that is “Hell Town.” Don’t worry, you sure enough didn’t. “Hell Town” is a faux series, the ambitious brainchild of Steve Balderson and then 15 year-old Elizabeth Spear, that aims to mock the daytime soap operas and the high school melodramas of life growing up, peppering the spoof with moments of slasher-genre attributes that pleasantly tone down the over exaggerated high school trope characters while, in the same instance, not diluting the ridiculously natured narratives, and their far reaching tangents, of the soaps.

“Hell Town’s” hostess Debbie Rochon mirrors a likeness to late-night TV ghoul Elvira sans the heavy theatrical makeup, sleazy-horror themed wardrobe, and large bosom. Rochon is in her true and natural dark humor state by thriving with a lively and grotesque-themed conversation in the introductions for each of the three episodes. The episodes themselves are smartly written to follow the episodes’ logic with an incorporated “previously on” background introduction from “season 1” and bits and pieces from scenes of the first six episodes of “season 2” which helped the story organically filter into the intricacies of the viewers mind, plugging up just enough of the story’s gaps where it needed to continue. Though by the time episode 9 comes to the climatic moment, that moment where the killer is revealed and the final showdown ensues, director Balderson writes in the archetypes of a soap opera and director Spear unleashes the adolescent angst to prolong “Hell Town’s” antics in a fabricated preview for episode ten, an episode that’ll never see the light of day from it’s claimed “vanished” existence.

Schematically, “Hell Town” is an anthology of sorts. A low rent anthology that speaks highly of the outlandishly creative and inventive crew behind it working hard on a microbudget production, especially with the keen eye of cinematographer Daniel Stephens. Casted perfectly with relatively unknown actors and actress to pull off an elaborate fake television series with such enthusiasm and confidence in their performances, the fictitious Hell Town’s fantasy world becomes one messed up reality. The only hiccup, if unintentional, was the noticeable cast change of the character Laura, who was originally portrayed by the thin and broad shouldered Beckijo Neill, and replaced, as a “special gust star,” with an opposite body image and fierce stage-like actress Jennifer Grace. To not wonder too much off topic, “Hell Town’s” cast comprises of actors and actresses whom run together in films before such as Matt Weight, Amanda Deibert, Pleasant Gehman, and Chris Pudio in Balderson’s 1014 film “Occupying Ed.” Toss in the recently discovered talents of Blake Cordell, Ben Windholz, and the super bitchy sassiness charm of Krysten Day and, by golly, you got yourself a horror comedy of self discovery.

Dikenga Films brings this independently funded 2015 indiegogo.com production to fruition that’s unique, purposefully corny, and unstable in all types of ways. With twists and turns and a sizable amount of gawky teenage anxiety, the direction of “Hell Town” will keep you guessing around every corner and make you feel good about your socially awkward teen years. I’m unable to review and critique the video and audio quality with a DVD-R screener, but I can say that the vibrant, natural coloring, from an only slightly noticeable trembling camera, greatly displays the triple episode drama saga and the audio’s crystal clarity shows no sign of distortion. In conclusion, “Hell Town” doesn’t quite feel like a series event, but dotes well as a three-act miniseries spawned out from raw flamboyant talent in front and behind the camera.