Category Archives: Slashers / Survival

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This Serial Killer Clown is Nothing More than an EVIL Romantic. “100 Tears” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“100 Tears” Extended Director’s Cut Available Here!

Mark Webb and Jennifer Stevenson are two tabloid journalists looking to cover something more substantial than chasing cheap thrill information for quick cash.  When Jennifer raises the topic of covering serial killers and their cases, she focuses onto the Teardrop killer, a local serial killer who savaging murders and leaves behind a blood-stained mark in the shape of a teardrop as a calling card.  The deeper they dig into older and new cases, some of the incidents cross reference with a circus act was in town, believing the killer to be somehow involved with the travelling carnival but their investigation leads them to Gurdy, a deranged maniac dressed as a clown, fueled by a wrongfully accused of crimes past that resulted in the separation of him and the woman he loved.  Decades of slaughter culminate to the journalists’ confrontation with not only the killer clown but also his estranged, equally demented, daughter. 

A reconfigured inspiration of John Wayne Gacy, “100 Tears” is the extreme blood-soaked and vehemently violent killer clown picture from ultraviolent special effects artist and filmmaker Marcus Koch.  The 2007 feature is directed by Koch from a script penned by writer-actor Joe Davison (“Experiment 7,” “The Bell Keeper”) and more-or-les solidified Koch and Davison as independent artists in their own right, launching Koch orchestrating behind the camera instead of hands deep in practical gloop and glop of special effects as well as giving Davison a voice as a writer and a chance as an actor to which continues onto this day.  “100 Tears’ is a coproduction between Manic Entertainment, Pop Gun Pictures, and Starving Kappa Pictures initially released under the now defunct Anthem Pictures, but a legal issue with Unearthed Films eventually landed the extreme horror boutique label the rights for at-home release and would be not the only Marcus Koch film to be distributed by Unearthed Films under founder Stephen Biro as the two entities would reteam for the American Guinea Pig series with Koch directing “Bloodshock” and supervising special effects on the Biro-directed “The Song of Solomon.”  Davison would produce the film with Melissa K. Webb.

Not a direct replica of John Wayne Gacy, who’s modus operandi was to lure men and boys to his home to force unspeakable acts on them before eventually killing them, the Teardrop Killer, Luther Gurdy, shares with Gacy a large and portly frame, a full clown getup with makeup, and an indeterminable coldness when whacking and slicing into victims with an oversized cleaver.  Whether or not actor Jack Amos (“Unearthed,” “Experiment 7”) channels Gacy’s black heart spree is not exactly clear, but Amos does fashion Gurdy’s black-and-white patchwork bag of tricks when it comes to molding a formidable facade and approach to an unstoppable killing machine of malaise, hence the teardrop calling card soaked in blood.  Gurdy’s a sad, angry, and vengeful clown, the very antithesis of what the usually zany circus performance is supposed to be, and the gothically stitched macabre of an empty shell man is ultimately what Amos can strive to make of it as Gurdy is completely mute and exacts very little-to-no emotion other than an occasional smile when interacting with estranged daughter Christine (Raine Brown, “Nightmare in Shallow Point”) as they merrily slaughter, catching up for lost time after two decades.  Gurdy and Christine’s bond doesn’t quite reach a level understanding or development to quench ties of nature over nurture when it comes to their sociopathic tendencies in what is a more happenstance run that’s not fleshed out fully by the script.  A better, more robust duo, but still lacks the finer details is journalist colleagues, best friends, sexually pressurized roommates, or however they define their living arraignment and relationship status, Mark Webb (Joe Davison) and Jennifer Stevenson (Georgia Chris, “Vampire Biker Babes”), the tabloid founders chasing the Teardrop Killer story for more substantial, worthwhile content.  Their motivation is clear after a minor conflict of what to investigate and publish next and as they hit the streets, cross-reference facts, and interview persons of interest, Mark and Jennifer effectively become well-oiled investigators under the table of an ongoing police case that has seemingly hit dead-end after dead-end by clueless detectives Spaulding (Kibwe Dorsey, “Dead End”) and Dunkin (Rod Grant, “Noxious”).  “100 Tears” fills out with mostly with a kill fodder cast of adults playing troubled teens or rave party revelers but there’s Norberto Santiago as the carny connection to Gurdy’s baleful past that made him who he is now and the tabloid investigators looking to score substance.

Rooted by its sought after extreme gore, “100 Tears” is not just a simpleton story gorged with guts and blood.  Davison does his due diligence building character backgrounds, especially around Gurdy, despite his clown’s marginal motivations for going maniacally murderous the last 20 years in what was essentially unsubstantiated gossip that got out of hand with retaliation real quick under the circus tent in a black-and-white filtered backstory of carny love and loss.  Marcus Koch, however, didn’t want to make a drama about hurt feelings and harsh reactions of a melancholic clown but rather a melancholic clown that hurts people in a show of extreme prejudice and in an arbitrary, randomized course of mass murder for the sole purpose of our viewing pleasure, and when I say “our,” I mean viewers with visceral responses to decapitations, dismemberments, and spewing blood splatter.  The opportunity for Koch to show off his special effects talents are then delivered tenfold as a charcuterie of cuts, literal slice and dice cuts of Gurdy’s cleaver and the editorial process of cut and taping footage, not only excel Koch into the world of underground practical gore effects but also certifies him as a filmmaker-director that can be cohesive, coherent, and a challenger against censorship and convention, as we see later in his career with the American Guinea Pig films amongst others.

As far as killer clown movies go, “100 Tears” is pleasingly brutal in a stoic maniac manner in its less than spirited, disjointed story.  In a continuing effort of updating their DVD catalogue to high-definition, Unearthed Films release “100 Tears” onto AVC encoded, 1080p, 50 gigabyte Blu-ray.  Barebones information regarding the transferring process on the back cover doesn’t shed any light on the upgrade but the film, the extended director’s cut presented 1.77:1 widescreen aspect ratio and dropping the NC=17 rating, retains a lot of the grittiness inside a lack of color saturation, likely a Koch stylistic choice rather than a print concern, but this also retains a darker, indefinable image that becomes murky around low-lit scenes.  Even the lit scenes have a paleness about them, almost twinning the black and white clownish trappings and makeup of Gurdy’s jester attire.  There are miniscule posterization issues in the deeper negative spaces that makes me think the BD50 is not enough space to handle the feature plus all its bonus content, which includes the original NC-17 cut of the film.  The English language LPCM 2.0 track has lossless fidelity culminating through the front two channels.  Dialogue is clean and clear, but commercial grade equipment and unfiltered sound design does product a consistent buzz or hush of electro-interference.  Not a ton of range or depth to note in shots that are limited to closeups and mediums but a great amount of dominating squishy hacks when the big cleaver is brought down on limbs and heads with a blunt force hit that sounds, well, blunt.  English subtitles are optionally available.  Aforementioned, extras include the NC-17 original cut  as well as a feature length audio commentary with director Marcus Koch and Unearthed Films founder Stephen Biro, a lengthy online video interview with Koch, the making-of “100 Tears” in Blood, Guts & Greasepaint, the original and raw behind-the-scenes footage, bonus behind-the-scenes footage 16-deleted scenes, outtakes or goofed takes, Marcus Koch’s childhood short films, and a pair of “100 Tear” trailers.  Physical package is not much different from the DVD with a standard Amary with the same front cover image of Jack Amos in full Gurdy attire, holding a giant clever, and a tied-down body at his feet.  Disc is pressed with a similar image of Gurdy, and no other bonus material included.  The extended director’s cut Blu-ray has runtime of 95 minutes and is region A locked for playback.

Last Rites: “100 Tears” is all special effects, moderately dialogued, and feeble in story and this upgrade dominates more so with encoded special features with an A/V staying the course in the jump between formats.

“100 Tears” Extended Director’s Cut Available Here!

The Holidays Are Over, but the EVIL Remains With Us in this Cookie-Cutter Classic “The Gingerdead Man” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get Ready to Chomp on this Cookie! “The Gingerdead Man” Blu-ray Available Here!

Cold-hearted, mama’s boy killer, Millard Findlemeyer, brutally gun downs Sarah Leigh’s father and brother before wounding during a diner robbery.  Two years later, Findlemeyer is executed with the help of Sarah’s damning testimony and the traumatized survivor attempts to pick up the pieces of her life by keeping her crumbling family bakery business afloat.  With her mother a raging alcoholic and a competing business threatening to shut the business down, Sarah doesn’t realize the gingerbread seasoning dropped off at her doorstep is actually the ashes of the evil Findlemeyer.  Thrown in a gingerbread mix and baked to live again, Findlemeyer returns to continue his carnage but as a delectably devilish cookie sporting candied buttons and wielding a knife.  Trapped inside the bakery, a handful of survivors are being more-than-gingerly picked off one-by-one by Findlemeyer’s possession of a pint-sized cookie and Sarah must face again the evil that destroyed her family.  

“The Gingerdead Man” is one of Full Moon’s more contemporary repeat villains this side of the century.  Christmas may be over, but the holiday cookie carnage doesn’t just pack on the pounds, it also can shred and cut the waist, literally, with guts spilling out everywhere.  The Charles Brand directed, 2005 film that kicked off the icing for not one, not two, but three sequels and a timeline intertwinement with Full Moon’s “Evil Bong” series.  Pot and cookies, a perfect combination when blazed.  The script was penned by Full Moon regular and “Night of the Living Dead” remake actor William Butler, under the pseudonym of Silvia St. Croix, and fellow Full Moon regular Dominic Muir (“Critters,” “Doll Graveyard”), under the pseudonym of August White.  Filmed in Los Angeles, the indie horror-comedy is a Shoot Productions and Full Moon coproduction venture with Band producing and Dana Harrloe serving as executive producer. 

Adding to “The Gingerdead Man’s already zany resurrecting the evil dead into a baked good concept (there’s nothing good about this cookie monster), the untamed energy and distinguished voiceover from Gary Busey is better than self-rising flour for this doughy production.  The “Predator 2” and “Lethal Weapon” actor headlines as the despicable killer Millard Findelmeyer but only in the flesh for the opening diner sequence that establishes Findelmeyer as a coldblooded murderer.  The backstory of his apprehension, trial, and execution is whisked into a frothy afterthought after the title credits to establish more of Robin Sydney’s Sarah Leigh character of rebuilding her life.  Sydney, who would become Charles Band’s wife nearly two decades later after debuting in this role, reserves Sarah into a stasis of plugging along into a woe-as-me state as a setup for her to be heroine nemesis to Findlemeyer’s flaky, killer crust.  What’s neat about her character, along with a handful of other principal characters, is they’re subtly and smartly named after notable cookie making companies.  Sarah Leigh is an obvious rework of the frozen desserts company Sara Lee, Ryan Locke, an unlikely Sarah Leigh love interest cladded and carried by all things from early 2000s, is Amos Cadbury, a mixed play on Famous Amos and Cadbury confectionary, and Jonathan Chase as commercial wrestling enthusiast Brick Fields lends to believe the character’s name pulls inspiration from Mrs. Fields soft baked cookies.  There’s also the corporate-commercial takeover statement with an adjacent restaurant that threatens to put Sarah’s bakery out of business and the owner’s name is Jimmy Dean, as in the sausage company, with Larry Cedar (“The Hidden,” “C.H.U.D. II”) in the role.  Alexia Aleman, Margaret Blye, Daniela Melgoza, and James Synder fill out the cast.

Kitschy personification horror is all the rage in the independent genre circle.  Murderous dolls at are dime a dozen, but a few outliers stray into something more risking and adventures, like an evil llama pinata in “Killer Pinata,” a wicked snowman in “Jack Frost,” or even a killer unicorn standing figure in “CarousHELL” that make the niche subgenre fascinatingly tacky for all the right reasons.  Charles Band and team tap into that peculiar ripe vein to extract their own usually joyous, kid-friendly object and transfigure its G-rated image to a hard R with death, sass, and a whole bunch of mischief and what better wholesome inanimate object to vilify than a scrumptious gingerbread man?  Voiced by Busey and animated by the always preferred practical means, “The Gingderdead Man” evokes promises of a so-bad-its-good composite, especially since the antagonist for this franchise starter fits right into the Full Moon small things come in killer packages niche, and while half of “The Gingerdead Man” delivers on a havoc-wreaking spiced cookie, the execution, as a whole, leaves much to be desired by whirling through a two year story gap of the capture and execution of Findlemeyer and how and why his malevolent essence is mixed into the batter for resurrection.  The slapdashedly before and after title credits causes a brief loss of thought as the brain frantically tries to catch up and fill in the gaps as much of the images and exposition haphazardly piece together.  The Gingerdead Man isn’t also quite as quippy as his human form counterpart, but a ton of appreciation goes into the multiple renditions of the distorted faced Gingerdead Man character from hand puppets, to animatronics, to full size human suit provides that breadth of range in angles, perspectives, and appearances that shape a personality package to where dialogue can nearly be neutralized altogether.  “The Gingerbread Man” lives and breathes as its marketed image, a mediocre kill possession-slasher with a bunch of characters scratching their heads instead of building upon who they are and what hurdles, figuratively and literally, to jump, the latter mostly falls into the hands of Sarah Leigh and her depression-induced fear, an aspect she has to face when being revisited by the man who killed her father and brother. 

An all-new transfer and remastered from the original 35mm elements, Full Moon Features re-bakes “The Gingerdead Man” onto a new physical media cookie sheet.  The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD25, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, had elevated some lower resolution complications with better definition appeal but the overall package isn’t an epitome showcase of the format possibilities with softer contrasts that leaves voids and shadows milkier, textures fluctuate during decode that sways in a range between 15 to 25 Mbps, and minor damaged portions, such as light scratches and speckling, are not touched up in the restoration.  Skin tones and other colorist applications appear organic and, when reaching peak performance, displays a nicely diffused sweat sheen in the lighting.  Two English, lossy audio options are available, a Dolby Digital 5.1 and a Stereo 2.0.  A clean and clear presentation on all layers with an amalgamated cast that just as good as any other solid sound design with powerful forefront and intelligible dialogue, an above par ambient dispersal that has suitable depth and range, and a Roger Ballenger carnivalesque score that isn’t from Richard Band but is a great mimic.  English subtitles are available.  Extras include an archival behind-the-scenes featurette with interviews with cast, crew, and Charles Band with some BTS-footage in creating the cookie monster, a blooper reel, the original trailer, and trailers for other Full Moon features.  Front cover on the Amaray Blu-ray is an illustrated composition of characters that clue in a sense of what to expect but other than that, this standard re-release has physical bare bones.  The region free release has a runtime of 71 minute and is not rated.

Last Rites: Though doesn’t reinvent the recipe nor does it not make this naughty killer cookie stale, “The Gingerdead Man” has come a long way with a new, revitalizing release onto a high-definition format pulled from the extensive and vast Full Moon catalogue that’s slowly but surely updating the filmic cache. This schlocky bad baked good should surely be in everyone’s holiday horror collection.

Get Ready to Chomp on this Cookie! “The Gingerdead Man” Blu-ray Available Here!

This EVIL Thanksgiving Bird Has Been Overcooked. “Amityville Turkey Day” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Amityville Turkey Day” – That’s No Cranberry Sauce! Check Out the DVD Here!

Rocco, a sleazy indie film director, is given one last project to director with the stipulation of not to squander the funds and to make a competent hit movie without completely making principal photography a nightmare for the cast and crew.  Having landed a large estate to shoot his film, the house comes with a manservant named Bram to take care of their needs and see to the estate grounds.  When a man-eating Turkey from Hell, embodied by the evil soul of once infamous doctor, comes home for Thanksgiving dinner, Bram aims to curate a fine feast for the abrasive, wicked bird from the indie film production.  As cast and crew begin to dwindle down and disappear, the show-running producer takes charge to motivate and take care of the slipping through the cracks mess of, yet again, another Rocco botched production.  Yet, the turkey still hungers and when all the excess meat is consumed, he will then find a human mate to reincarnate himself for human form. 

After promising myself, swearing up and down, that I would never, ever watch and review another Amityville titled infused film again, “Amityville Turkey Day” had sucked me right back in, like a moth to the flame into another mindless and pointless, could I even call it this, money-grabbing exploitation of the Amityville title letdown of a holiday-comedy horror film.  The 2024, microbudget Thanksgiving themed sequel to “Amityville Thanksgiving” brings back the writing-and-directing duo of Will Collazo Jr. (“Amityville Shark House,” “Amityville Apocalypse”) and Julie Anne Prescott (indie film scream-queen of “The Amityville Harvest” and “Amityville Thanksgiving”) to add a little more sanguine stuffing in their continuation of a terrorizing wild Turkey.  Alternatively known as “Amityville Thanksgiving 2,” the feature is an indiegogo crowdfunded campaign that raised the $10,000 goal and became a Will Collazo Jr.’s Cult Cinema production.

The sequel doesn’t return most of the cast from the film.  Most sequels don’t, right?  Instead, a whole new batch of rough puff principals are basted over the story to try and moisten the flavor of a rather rough-and-ready follow-up.  Amongst the medley filled in with B-movie talent, there doesn’t seem to be a one standout lead role to take charge in what is more of convergence of counterproductive parts that overlap and overstep each other’s storyline.  Characters also disappear and reappear without context to about where they were and where they go, for example the sleazy director Rocco (Michael Ruggiere) vanishes for most of the story’s midriff and then just reappears in the third act without a sense of where he’s been.  Erica Dyer (“The Town Without Halloween,” “Attack of the Corn Zombies”) plays one of the few characters with an actual intact arc as the pissed off producer Ivy who storms in and takes charge of Rocco’s quickly deteriorating production, proving to be a competent leader to quickly organize the film crew into action, but as cast and crew begin to drop like flies and vanishing from the estate set within the Thanksgiving week, Ivy’s honed in focus doesn’t register the killer Turkey, voiced by Steven Kiseleski (“Amityville Karen,” “Amityville Bigfoot”), and it’s righthand caretaker Bram (Dino Castelli, “Screamwalkers”) slowly filleting the filmmakers for feasting.  A large portion of the character pie is throwaway fodder for the Turkey with only a couple of others to stand out with pointed out substance, that also point back to “Amityville Thanksgiving, with Kevin (Tim Hatch, “Amityville in Space, and the other actor to return from “Amityville Thanksgiving) on a mission to find out what happened to his sister from “Amityville Thanksgiving,” and his planted actress friend Jessica (Jen Elyse Feldy, “The Elder Hunters,” “Camp Blood 666 Part 2”), but their roles do get lost in the fray of the frenzied packed, plot hole-riddled storyline that crams in too much too hastily inside a jerry-built and unnecessary tale.  David Perry, Clint Beaver, Amanda Flowers, Shannon Hall, Jeff Webb, Thomas J. O’Brien, Ralph Rey, James Janso, Stephen Bloodworth, and the late Mark C. Fullhardt, to which this film is dedicated to, fill out as the at will Turkey fodder. And I hope all my listings of “Amityville” named films has brought awareness to this exploitative issue!

“Amityville Turkey Day” is no “Thankskilling.”  Jordan Downey has mastered the smack-talking, rude-with-tude, killer Turkey in style, substance, and outrageous kills.  Will Collazo Jr.’s film feels more like a cheap knockoff to the likes of the Italian unauthorized remakes, sequels, and spinoffs of American films of the 1980s, attaching the Amityville name to draw attention and sponge off the legitimate franchise that has now become a disgusting and disheartening running joke and parody of unoriginality. “Amityville Turkey Day” mirrors every ounce of that last sentiment with a shoddy, low rent feature that not only drags the Amityville title deeper into the overkill mud but also hurts the exposure of Jordan Downey’s “Thankskilling” to those viewers who do get their unsuspecting hands onto Collazo’s film first and leaves a residual bad taste toward more competent Turkey trot terrorizers.  That bitterness is contributed by the lack of story structure and coherency, a lost sense of unique personality and entertainment, and a brutal monotone flow that stagnates upon just one setting over the course of a few days, which is a major gap considering the film crew disappearing here and there during that time and no one happens to care or even hardly notice.  Comedy elements fall flat, reduced to fart and sexual gags and missing-the-mark cheap insults surrounded by dull kills, especially for a Turkey that goes for the juggler.  Very few moments of levity and intrigue can be pulled from “Amityville Turkey Day” with the puppeteered evil Turkey lobbing an occasional humorous one liner – “Look at all that blood!  She’s a squirter!” – and the manifested closet gimp is too strange of a guilty-allure to ignore, and these few and far in between bright spots add a layer of color to what is dull overall. 

The crowdfunded clucker had arrived just in time for this year’s Thanksgiving courtesy of indie film friendly distributor SRS Cinema.  “Amityville Turkey Day” is housed on an MPEG2 encoded, 480p resolution, 5 gigabyte DVD-R.  According to the crowdfunding page, Collazo offered an all-around bigger and better experience from the bareboned, nearly no-budget, precursor, yet the sequel didn’t live up to expectations and appeared to be more of the same slapdash as the first and this translates to a writeable DVD disc with a fuzzy picture, smoothed edges, and plenty of posterization and banding that digs the grave deeper for this overdone bird.  The ungraded picture produces unnatural lighting from a series of gelled flood lights, more so with deep red, aimed upward to evoke thicker upper shadow positions.  What the result constitutes with the unhelpful lower resolution camera is an overly hot and overly diffused image in what would be Turkey and Bram basement scheming scenes that renders any leftover details washed away from the effect.  The English LPCM 2.0 mono track is a flat fixture via the onboard microphone on the digital camera that creates an anemic dialogue presence with subtle distortion.  Range consists of post-production sound effects and the close quartered rooms of the “estate” has depth pretty much nonexistent.  I will say dialogue is prominent and clear though higher decibels overtake and clip the microphone’s volume intake.  English subtitles are optionally available. The release’s special features include a director’s commentary, a making-of behind-the-scenes, the original trailer, and other SRS Cinema prevuews. Aside from an enticing illustrated cover art, the DVD has no other supplemental cover art, inserts, and etc. “Amityville Turkey Day” has a runtime of 93 minutes, is region free, and comes not rated.

Last Rites: “Amityville Turkey Day” is difficult to gobble up. In fact, “Amityville Turkey Day” is much like having to go to your great Aunt’s house for a third Thanksgiving dinner of the day, the one that is the family’s black sheep, wears a muumuu, and her house smells like cheap cigarettes and cat dandruff, it’s a hard no thank you.

“Amityville Turkey Day” – That’s No Cranberry Sauce! Check Out the DVD Here!

The Jack-O-Lantern of EVIL Curses! “The Pumpkin Man” reviewed! (Scream Team Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Don’t Accidently Curse Yourself by Not Owning “The Pumpkin Man” on DVD!

The town of Cromwell lives and breathes off the demonic urban legend known as Pumpkin Man during the town’s full embracement of the Halloween season. College student Catherine, the town’s biggest savant of Pumpkin Man lore, has been given a tidbit of information of where to look for clues in discovering the lost book of spells that can summon the demon. After Catherine incantates the book’s passages, the frenetic young woman receives the intended reaction out of her friends, to scare the living daylights out of them with a legendary prank, but as true legend goes, those who read the words and summon Pumpkin Man back from the depths of Hell will become cursed to die by the demon’s elongated claws. Now, Catherine and her friends are haunted while they sleep, and their reality is twisted while awake as the Pumpkin Man toys with them until those who evoke his name is dead.

Halloween may be over, Thanksgiving too, but the spirit and the fear will always remain, especially when we all embark into the jolliest times of year.  There would be no shame in watching “The Pumpkin Man” while drinking hot cocoa and basking in the warm glow of your red, white, and green tree lights as you sit in the dark.  The glow of the television setup will keep you cozy and warm as a tall, pumpkin-headed demon literally rips the faces off cursed kids in director Ryan Sheets’ first feature-length film based off his short films series of the titular, iconic character.  Sheets’ inconspicuous indie franchise has spawned 5 short film sequels from the original 2016, 4-minute short, including a versus pitted against another Ryan Sheets’ regular character Kreepy the Clown.  Sheets cowrites the feature with Nick Romary, the original Pumpkin Man actor Jeff Rhodes, and his wife Janae Muchmore, pieced together by the central Florida team’s production company South Ridge Films with Sheets’ daytime colleague, fellow attorney Jason P. Herman, footing most of the bill as executive producer. 

Unlike the shorts, the feature features a whole new cast of carefully crafted victims for the demon to shake up and slaughter.  Even the Pumpkin Man himself is not played by Jeff Rhodes, who previous played the titular villain by more slasher-esque means with a butcher’s knife and a slow gait.  Instead, Ryan Sheets reimagines Pumpkin Head’s supernatural aesthetic and bearing by playing the demon gourd himself, in stilts, with less Michael Myers essence, and providing a proper name for the demon of Fall known as Kürbis.  The holiday spirited demon with a Cromwell history of whomever summons him will be cursed to die by him plagues a new set of fool-hearted conjurers nearly three centuries after a supposed Cromwell witch took her own life to stop the demon.  The film introduces the first-time principal role for Barbara Desa, a social media influencer and Orlando-based actress with a ton of a spunk, as Catherine Quinn, a quirky, Kürbis-obsessed Cromwell denizen with no real substantial motivation for finding the lost book of Kürbis other than to play a Halloween trick on her friends and be heedless to the consequential power it holds.  This makes Catherine dangerously unstable, and she feels more like a villain than the Pumpkin Head when irresponsibly meddling with something she truly doesn’t understand, compromising not only her own life but her friends too for fun at their expense.  The development of supporting characters outshines the simpleton needs of the principal Catherine as her friends, and outside the clique but stay in close proximity, find themselves having to make choice, such examples lie with Catherine’s best friend Jenny (“Stephanie Kirves) who chooses the demise of another just to save her own skin while Cather’s cop older brother Tim (Estaban Abanto) can’t ignore the gruesome facts of his little sister’s involvement in a couple of Cromwell murders and disappearances.  There’s also Michael (Matthew Beaton), a potential love-interest for Catherine being pulled from out of the friend zone and into more flirtatious foundations but is quickly blocked by the presence of Pumpkin Man’s uncanny ability to enter dreams and stir their existence into an unbalanced waking nightmare.  “The Pumpkin Man” rounds out with more local Floridian casting with Ariel Taylor, Krysti Reif, and Josh Rutgers.

This isn’t the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. “The Pumpkin Man” doesn’t start off super strong with a tattered accumulation of characters and backstory that barely carve out the shinier surface’s meatier pith that provides traces of sympathy and capability for situations and characters before the turning point turns dour.  Yet, if you stick around through “The Pumpkin Man’s” missteps, what you get is a progressively better reconstruction of a supernatural slasher that sees some decently gore-soaked effects for an independent production.  The added bonus being the cost-saving aspects of Sir Henry’s Haunted Trail, a Florida Halloween walk-through attraction that provides the spooky atmospherics and ghoulishly made-up cast of jump-scare actors as background or pop-in macabre aesthetics.  What starts as a demon resurrecting, potentially unleashing Hell on Earth represented by Halloween synecdoche, the story hits a turning point and switches gears toward slasher properties that work more ideally with a Freddy Krueger inspired killer, embodying the spirit of Halloween in a different and welcoming way than other Samhain-centric killers with a high seasonal watch repeat and an unforgettable antagonist.

Scream Team Releasing shows what happens when the pumpkin smashes back in “The Pumpkin Man” on DVD home video.  Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the MPEG2, upscaled 1080p, single-layered DVD5 has lower image resolution because of the single layer compression that’s encoded with not only the feature but also a fair amount of bonus pumpkin batch content.  Black areas are not as clean and void with some noticeable posterization, details and overall picture crispness are not as sharp with a smoother contour between interior and exterior scenes, and coloring is often muted with missed opportunities for a punchier palette as the cinematography is completely ungraded, appearing as mostly raw, jittery footage underneath a more dynamic audio layer.  The lossless English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo levels range from an anemic muffled to just at the edge of overextending the audio capacity but keep in line for better precision.  The diverse band soundtrack livens up downtime sequences to evoke a Halloween and rock or rockabilly mood and the sound design digs into the atmospherics with bug chirps, floorboard creaks, clock ticks, and the intertwinement of the brief ominous minor keys.  Dialogue is clean and clear, but Pumpkin Head’s post-added dialogue doesn’t ride parallel to the actor’s which is slightly isolated and boxy but is not terribly sync to make an audible make-or-break difference.  Extras include a director’s feature accompanying audio commentary with Ryan Sheets, a making-of featurette Carving a Pumpkin, Tales from the Book of Kürbis an 8-part short horror anthological series directed by Ryan Sheets, and two trailers.  The DVD comes with a Casey Booth designed cover art that’s yells diabolical autumn harvest with a disc pressed with a more traditional, evil-cut pumpkin head overtop the orange-colored, rough-carved, and spikey “The Pumpkin Man’ font.  The not rated DVD has a runtime of 91 minutes and is region free for all.

Last Rites: Could “The Pumpkin Man” be worth exploring deeper into the mythos? After many successful short films in the last decade, Ryan Sheets has perfected the formula for his own temporal-traversing, gourd-headed demon and with a little more refining and stamina, we wouldn’t mind seeing “The Pumpkin Man” more on screen, or in our nightmares.

Don’t Accidently Curse Yourself by Not Owning “The Pumpkin Man” on DVD!

Dolly Deadlies Exact an EVIL Revenge! “Doll Graveyard” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Doll Graveyard” Available for Purchase Here!

In 1911, little Sophia is accidently killed by her verbally abusive stepfather.  He buries her lifeless body in the backyard dirt along with her favorite toy dolls that were the subject of his current tirade.  Nearly a century later and in the same house, Deedee, a teenage high school girl, throws a small party with friends while her father is out for the night.  Her action figure-enthusiastic little brother Guy discovers one of buried dolls in the backyard.  When a couple of older high school boys bully Guy, the spirit of Sophia emerges and pendulates possession of Guy’s mind and body, resulting in the turning of inanimate dolls into killers come alive to protect a hurt Sophia.  Drugs, alcohol, and teen sex quickly come to an end by a seize of small, dangerously armed toys hellbent on spilling blood just to protect a hurt little girl.  Those left still standing must find a way to reverse Sophia’s revenge.

Charles Band’s obsession with toys, dolls, dwarfs, goblins, or a sundry of the mix has yet to slow down his 50-year-career in making independent movies.  The now 72-year-old Band can sit on top of his Full Moon empire and enjoy his repertoire of ravenous rascal horror, including “Doll Graveyard,” the 2005 standalone doll slasher that’s not too dissimilar from the likes of Band’s foremost and unremitting doll franchise, “Puppet Master.”  Band directs the film based off his story and a screenplay treatment by the late director Domonic Muir, credited under the pen name of August White, in what would be one of his first few films with Full Moon in the first decade.  Muir also wrote “Critters,” “Evil Bong,” and venture into the “Puppet Master” series before his untimely death with pneumonia.  Band would produce the feature alongside Jeremy Gordon and Jethro Rothe-Kushel, filmed in Hollywood, California.

A small cast is all that’s required when the dolls resurrect and begin their assault on the youth with their individual ability.  At the story’s core is Guy, an action-figure enthusiast played by Jared Kusnitz (“Dance of the Dead,” “Otis”), and his older sister Deedee, an angsty, boy-hungry, rule-breaker played by Gabrielle Lynn.  Guy and Deedee play the trope fatigued dynamic of a feuding brother and sister complete with blackmail attempts and lots of name calling, opening the door of opportunity to connect in a time of great adversity – in this case, a living doll assault.  Then, of course, no slasher can go without the kill fodder and “Doll Graveyard” has a group of partying teens who come over after Guy and Deedee’s single parenting father, played by Ken Lyle (“Foreseen”), goes off on a date.  Their sneaky, adolescent transgressional gathering of beer drinking, pot smoking, and foreplay into possible copulation is driven by Deedee’s promiscuous best friend Olive (Kristyn Green, “Evil Bong”), a tagalong, morally incorruptible Terri (Anna Alicia Brock), and party-crashing jocks with the insatiable horny Rich (Brian Lloyd, “Candy Stripers”) and Deedee’s lover boy Tom (Scott Seymour, “Garden Party”).  Muir’s story does attempt to branch out from the conventionally themed pathway of authorized partygoers meet their doomed fate with sidebar weaving of past, present, and future relation connections.  Olivia and Rich once had a casual romp that has faded and Rich seeks more difficult challenges with the more prudent Terri while Terri has puppy dog interests into the younger Guy as they share some similar interests.  Meanwhile, Deedee and Tom take their relationship to the next level with precuring steps toward the bedroom that signals the beginning of he end, as the old recurrent theme goes.  The “Punk’s Dead: SLC Punk 2” and “The Amazing Spider-Man” actress Hannah Marks, who makes her film debut in the Charles Band’s film, rounds out the cast as young and unfortunate Sophia.

Eventually, one must ask themselves how many times can someone reinvent the wheel and still think it’s new, innovative, and fresh?  With Charles Band’s proclivity for small malevolence, especially in dolls or puppets, the one of the faces in venerable horror filmmaking has, in a broader sense, regurgitated the same movie over the decades now, tweaking bits and pieces here and there to make it ever so delicately unique.  Yet, “Doll Graveyard” feels very much like an extension of “Puppet Master” without bringing new elements to the table or even really linking “Doll Graveyard” to Full Moon’s more popular, longstanding franchise “Puppet Master,” which is essentially the face of the Band’s company.  We see Blade, we think Full Moon.  We see Six-Shooter, we think Full Moon.  We see Tunnler, we think Full Moon.  But if you show me “Doll Graveyard’s” rustic Samurai or The German with spear tipped helmet, coming around to Full Moon may not be the first to pop into the old thinker.  The story also feels a bit half-baked with the dolls coming to life by unexplained means and audiences would really need to put effort into surmising a reason, such as my own theory that Sophia’s departing soul, trapped beneath the dirt, absorbs into the dolls, giving them animated life and loyalty to Sophia.  None of that hypothesis is authenticated and we’re stuck with little-to-no answers in a film created for the sake of creepy dolls doing creepy things to creep out some cretin kids.

Those suffering from pediophobia probably should stay far away from “Doll Graveyard.” For everyone else, “Doll Graveyard” is now available on Blu-ray home video from Full Moon Features with AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, single-layered BD25. Presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, back cover states transfer elements were remastered from the original 35mm negative. The original negative print has withstood the test of time with no visually acute damage, granted the print is less than 20-years-old; however, there is noticeable dust and dirt speckles, some of which measure more toward a vertical tilde. Textures are softer than expected for a rather young film in the grand scheme of cinema with rounded and smoothed over contours, especially around defining facial features, that create more of a splotch than an edge. A bright spot is the palette with a diffusion and delineation balance around stock lighting. The lossy English Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is difficult to distinguish between the other audio option available, a Dolby Digital 2.0, as there’s not enough atmospheric or ambient rampage in the side and rear channels when dolls go deadly, which is mostly in the medium closeup to extreme closeup range. Taking hold of the audio reigns, mostly, is the District 78 soundtrack. Likely where the remastered elements come into play with its gothic rock opening credits score, this Charles Band production trades the jaunty carnivalesque for reinforced horror theme elements of isolated piano and electronic notes the musical production has accolades for and this translates throughout when presenting the dolls ominously and when they strike and into the coda credits with a full-on instrumental rock and wordless vocal background piece that’s very circa 2000s. English subtitles are available to select. Special features include a making-of featurette with snippet interviews from the cast with an introduction from Charles Band, a blooper reel, and the trailer amongst other Full Moon prevuews. There are no after or during credit scenes. The traditional blue Amaray goes along with the current Full Moon remastered trend of their horror catalogue with yellow-green primary art, no inserts or tangible features, and a disc press cropped of the focal primary cover art. The region free release has a brisk runtime of 73 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: A pedestrian, pale comparison to Full Moon’s maniacal line of moppets, “Doll Graveyard” stands far too short being the lower rung runt among giants in the company’s lineup.

“Doll Graveyard” Available for Purchase Here!