You Shouldn’t Pick On Evil! “All American Bully” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on July 18, 2015

Three high school friends live in an online gaming and comic book world making them easy targets for sinister bullies. When one of them, Devon (Alexander Fraser), becomes the victim of extreme bullying, the gaming friends are forced to come together and cope with the brutal and aggravated assault laid upon their friend Devon. Becky (Alicia Rose), whose had a long lasting love for Devon, plans the ultimate revenge by teasing to expose a hidden secret on the world wide web about Devon’s bully neighbor John Brooks (Daren Ackerman). The circle of violence and secrets wildly spirals out of control to an extremely car-crash of a finale that will put Devon, Becky, and John in a trio of devastating destruction.

“All American Bully,” formally titled “The Innocent,” serves as not the typical bully-revenge film we’re aware of in such films as Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant” or Jason Buxton’s “Blackbird” and that creates a misleading film title, but doesn’t necessarily hurt the film’s integrity. Director-writer John Hawkins intentionally creates an unexpected twist that’ll take the film into a totally different direction. With the help of the elusive, yet recently fan-revived cult “Friday the 13th” heroine Andrienne King and the superb acting by Daren Ackerman who portrays complex character John Brooks, “All American Bully” becomes a unique hybrid with a cultural and social timeliness that will surely strike the core like a bully punching you in the gut and kicking you while you’re down all for just your lunch money.

The John Hawkins film is not solely about high school bullying, but also about mental illness and childhood abuse to which all comes to the forefront to bring the house down at the end. The repercussions from years of bullying results in kidnapping, rape, and murder. Actor Daren Ackerman’s has a wide range playing the disturbing character John Brooks by never backing down from the character’s various stages. Ackerman complete shadows his peers such as Alexander Fraser who can’t strain from a monotone tone, Alicia Rose who has range but just not enough girth, and even Adrienne King who, I felt, played an overacting Principal.

There seems to be a side story that goes unexplained to which we have to make our own conclusion. Adrienne’s Principal Kane doesn’t trust her employed teacher Mr. Taylor that’s somehow related to her son being gay. I concluded that Mr. Taylor and her son had some kind of relationship that’s not being explicitly explained and this drives Principal King unhinged, but her breakdown doesn’t feel connected to the story, feeling separate from the body and not bring the film to closure. Perhaps Principal Kane’s mental break parallel’s the psychotic break that John Brooks suffers, displaying and defining two various scenarios of pain.

Speaking of homosexuality, Hawkins hits many gay undertones and not only with Principal Kane’s son and Mr. Taylor. There’s also a past relationship, even if only one sided, between Devon and John when they were tiny kids playing army in the woods. The overuse of the word fag becomes repulsive and that might be intended to reveal the true ugliness of the word. I had always thought fag might have faded into oblivion, especially in the film industry, but I guess in independent ventures the word still thrives to bring out the tensions and angers out of the viewers. Lastly on the topic, John becomes the plaything to all his mother’s friends and some of them being men, creating more taboo and disturbing qualities that make me think Hawkins is one warped individual. When Becky, played by an absolute beauty named Alicia Rose, and Devon actually have a heterosexual scene together, the mood becomes ruined when John gets a hold of them, to punish them, almost for being happy because his life turned out tragic and hopeless.

Forget the misleading title “All American Bully” (as I believe “The Innocent” works better) and the misleading Wild Eye Releasing DVD cover where a person gripping a firearm at their side in a student filled hallway; instead, focus on the film as a whole where the acting is solid and the direction tells a stunning story of various facets of bullying. Check out this Wild Eye Releasing DVD and also take a gander at the cast interviews as you’ll learn more about the actors backstory and how their take on bullying motivated them to create this film.

There’s Evil in Oklahoma! “Meet Me There” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on July 14, 2015

Ada and her boyfriend Calvin love each other tremendously, but Calvin finds difficulty in their intimacy when Ada continues to push him away, as if hurting her, in the middle of intercourse. Her sexual dysfunction puts a strain on their marriage, but Calvin has a plan that he hopes will resolve Ada’s, as well as Calvin’s, intimacy issue. His plan involves travelling to her hometown of Sheol, Oklahoma where much of Ada’s childhood memories seem to have been repressed and might be the root cause of her mental blockage. When they arrive at Sheol, they’re not exactly welcome as the town’s deranged inhabitants have a bible-thumping darkness about them and they don’t agree with Ada’s and Calvin’s lifestyle. When the couple try to escape, the town won’t let them.

Director Lex Lybrand helms the “Meet Me There” story, written by Brandon Stroud, and Lybrand seems to lose the structure as soon our hero and heroine arrive in the town of Sheol. The film tries to relay underlining messages about sexual dysfunctions, repressed or fragmented memories, suicide, paranoia, and, of course, just plain lethal psychosis. In short, “Meet Me There” attempts to mask the mental repercussions of childhood atrocities with a story about a couple becoming trapped in a town of deadly druids and God-fearing folk. Lybrand didn’t quite pull off the effect I think he was going for and that was creating an overall nightmarish realm without no escape, like a bad dream you’re unable to awake from, and what was missing was smooth segues to keep the glue together for the plot to naturally play out.

The story’s outer shell might be compromised, but only technically from a director’s chair. The introductory story of two complete strangers meeting at an airport bar, flying in separate passenger seats to Sheol, renting a car together to head to the same destination, and only to blow their brains out in a field at the same instance becomes lost in reason without the backup of exposition. However, the story of how Ada overcomes her sexual dysfunction and her fragmented memories can’t be any clearer and once she realizes and understands her upbringing involving drugged up parents, a creepy Grandfather, and a verbally abusive father, she bangs Calvin in the middle of the field, half naked and without care.

Lisa Friedrich and Michael Foulk as Ada and Calvin make a mediocre convincing couple. Their tattoos and choice of music, whether created for their characters or in most micro-budget productions the actors just have to bring themselves, labels them as rebellious to which heightens the towns’ scrutiny upon them. Foulk has great timing in his delivery when being comical with Ada, fairing rather naturally for him. Friedrich’s character lumbers a good amount of the film; her spacey attitude leaves nothing to desire and her character becomes dislikeable. I don’t blame Friedrich for a character written too sluggish and poorly for viewing comfort because even when Ada triumphs over her problems, she’s still very out of sorts.

Ada and Calvin don’t really have a single antagonist pitted against them; basically, the whole town is against them. WWE’s Golddust, aka Dustin Runnels, is one of a many wrestlers who appear in “Meet Me There,” along with other unknown wrestling talents such as Addy Starr, Leva Bates, and Angelus Layne, and is also one of the villains as the town’s preacher. There’s also Ada’s paranoid Aunt who severely disapproves of Ada’s lifestyle choices, the country store bumpkins who wield shotguns, the cloaked orgy-committing druids, and etc. Now, that all might sound enticing, but only the orgy gives a little stimulating thrill to the bone. I would like to know who set fire to Ada and Calvin’s car because the effect is priceless; when Ada and Calvin return to her aunt’s house to flee town, their car is set to inferno and someone on the crew thought that a matchbox car with blazing flames through the windows and being shot up real close would be pass for a great special effect. I admit, the effect kind of works, but still hilariously executed.

“Meet Me There,” distributed by MVDVisual and produced by SGL Entertainment, is presented in a widescreen presentation with a standard 2.0 mix. The images a bit grainy with dark tones during night scenes. Overall, “Meet Me There” needs a bigger catalyst to get Ada and Calvin into a more dire situation, but the sensation of being in a bad dream is achieved here yet the transitions from act-to-act or even scene-to-scene becomes muddled. Check out Lex Lybrand’s “Meet Me There” and see what the town of Sheol has in store for our hero and heroine.

Evil Dwells in Your Nightmares! “Horsehead” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on June 26, 2015

Jessica is plagued by recurring horrific and lucid nightmares of a horse-headed figure that brings death to her dreams. When she has a nightmare about her grandmother being impaled to death by the horsehead monster, she’s immediately phoned by her mother Catelyn informing Jessica that her grandmother has passed away. Jessica travels to the family’s countryside estate for the funeral and is welcomed by her stern mother. Jessica’s nightmares worsen the first night and she becomes trapped in her own dreams as she can feel the haunt of the horse-head figure in the corner’s of her mind. When Jessica soon realizes that her’s grandmother’s death and her mother’s cruelty might be more involved and connected with the horse-head creature, she attempts to stay in a semi-conscious sleep state to puzzle together the mysterious pieces and to control her nightmares once and for all.

The freshman feature film from Romain Basset contains such promise and maturity and Basset shows daring courage to create a horror-fantasy of this caliber thats very aesthetically symbolic and worthy of being awarded qualities of early Dario Argento’s films with intensive surreal and haunting facets. “Horsehead” embodies the character Jessica’s head in creating and blending an atmospheric jigsaw and visceral puzzle of a world while being a mirror in which you can glance back into time, far back beyond your own existence. “Horsehead’s” unique tribute blend contains the bizarre and frightening worlds of Tarsem Singh’s 2000 film “Cell” intertwined with one’s life story similar to the past and present tales of “A Christmas Carol” with Ebenezer Scrooge. However, Jessica’s past is much more dark and grim than Scrooge’s will ever be and her future won’t end in her being generous and kind to a crippled poor boy named Tiny Tim.

Certainly a visually stunning film, “Horsehead” tries turn the mind on it’s end, leaving the suspended muscle dangling near the edge of insanity. Jessica’s reality becomes no more real than her nightmares as the horse-headed monster is has comparable dream-bending qualities to the the same effect as Freddy Krueger of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” but “Horesehead” is a lot more gothic and whole lot less sarcastic than the fedora sporting child murderer. The creature has haunted Jessica’s lineage for at least three generations, presumably starting with her late grandmother and is a symbol of Jessica’s strict-bible-following grandfather who becomes the epicenter of all the family’s issues. Her dreams hold a dark mystery to her family’s continuous cycle of troubles and use horrific symbolism to express, in stages, the truth behind their ancestral secrets.

As much as I love the symbolism in this film, I’m worried about the psycho-sexual portion the film markets, splashed as a tagline right on the Blu-ray cover. Yes, the once little girl from Robert De Niro’s “Ronin” actress Lilly-Fleur Pointeaux does become involved briefly in highly sexual situations in her electric dance music soundtrack nightmares in a down the rabbit hole type of situation, but really serve no purpose to Pointeaux’s character in reality because no much is conveyed except for her profession as a dream psychologist and she has quarrels with her mother, especially on why her mother refuses to informer on the identity of her father. Gala Besson, who plays a younger version of Jessica’s grandmother, also briefly bares skin for a more gruesome and twisted scene that would make Pinhead smile with such pleasure. Perhaps the psycho-sexual scenes stem from the heavily implied incest relationships in the story between father and daughter, sister and sister, and mother and daughter. If incest is the answer to my question on why the film blatantly markets psycho-sexual, than the taboo subject matter makes “Horsehead” that much more risque and that more interestingly ambitious, creating a film that’s hard to swallow and shocking to behold when put into that perspective. Some dream interpreters believe that being chased by a white horse, in which case the horse-headed creature is of off-white color, may represent chaste or having issues with intimacy. This might explain some of Jessica’s unusual sexual scenes in her dream sequences involving relatives.

You might recognize a name from the past in the Italian horror genre: Catriona MacColl, an United Kingdom actress who portrays Jessica’s uptight mother Catelyn. MacColl is best known for her early 1980’s rolls in the Lucio Fulci films “The Beyond,” “City of the Living Dead,” and “House by the Cemetery.” With MacColl and Pointeaux’s as the overpowering female characters, “Horsehead” rounds out with weak male characters such as Jessica’s stepfather Jim, played by Murray Head, and an estate servant George, played by French acting vet Vernon Dobtcheff.

Overall, “Horsehead” delivers solid acting, dons great editing, and has better than average makeup and effects making “Horsehead” a winning release, yet again, for Artsploitation Films. The Blu-ray release is perfectly graced with a stunning 2.35:1 widescreen transfer with a 5.1 Dolby Digital mix, evenly balanced with appropriate LFE during the EDM nightmares. The picture is quite clear with some digital noise interference but only on some minor facial closeup scenes and no damage on the prints. Even though “Horsehead” is a French film and most of the cast is French, the movie is in English and it’s not dubbed English either. Bonus features also include “Inside Horsehead Making of” and four short films that have a total runtime of 81 minutes – a movie in itself.

Evil Wears a Clown Mask! “Blood Slaughter Massacre” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on June 12, 2015

The sleepy town of Havenwood becomes rocked by the mass murder of some of the town’s most prominent residents attending a joyous celebration. When two local cops, James Fincher and Walter Cobb, first arrive to investigate the horrendous massacre scene, Fincher comes face-to-face with the maniacal killer known by the moniker of The Ripper and barely survives the night. Ten years later, a string of new murders fall upon young high school girls of Havenwood and Detective Fincher starts to piece together that The Ripper might back. To unravel why The Ripper’s ten year hiatus, Fincher must look into his and Havenwood’s past in order to find the answer and stop The Ripper from killing.

“Blood Slaughter Massacre” is a nostalgia driven slasher film with a convoluted and murky plot, but the Manny Serrano directed film manages to rejuvenate the 80’s unstoppable killing machine character in The Ripper. Heavily inspired by the John Carpenter “Halloween” franchise when considering the gloomy atmosphere of the town and Michael Myers-esque antagonist, “Blood Slaughter Massacre” originality is certainly unoriginal, yet there’s something to be said about enjoying someone’s, like Serrano’s, tribute or admiration work that sparks a bit of excitement and allows entertainment to be let in to the soul, especially in the third act when The Ripper’s homicidal chaos ensues and he lays waste to teenagers left and right. Also, the title lacks creativity and doesn’t help build a case of separating itself from the pack. Maybe, a simple title such as “The Ripper” would have honed into that old saying “less is more.”

However, the blood and gore effects have sheer bite. The impressive effects for the budget give The Ripper character that desired aggressive murderer persona, warning all to stay the hell out of his way. Blood flies and flesh shreds created by buckets of bloods and well edited scenes. To showcase such effects you need a pile of bodies and “Blood Slaughter Massacre” piles high the corpses. With great kills, you need a great killer and the film’s “Shish-Kabober,” The Ripper, is a memorable slasher which can only be described as a giant fellow with an old man clown mask that displays no emotion in the hollow eyes, show’s no mercy when hovering above an easy kill, and owns a supernatural ability to be at the right place at the right time, ready to stick his blade right in the heart of his prey.

The rest of the characters didn’t stand out above The Ripper and emitted low caliber dialogue and persona all around. The acting becomes terribly melodramatic within serious and tense-filled toned scenes. Matt Cody as Fincher tried to embody a Donald Pleasence Dr. Loomis character, but Cody came off a bit to desperate in comparison and Fincher’s isn’t a strong male character able to pull off cutting down the brutal legacy that is so natural to The Ripper. The female characters with exploitive nudity, even if only for a few minutes, had more practicability because, while over stating the obvious, “Blood Slaughter Massacre” is a horror slasher movie making nudity a natural being or even a minor, disposable character. Also, many of the characters show up just to be filler for The Ripper to rip apart. Not a terrible thing, but it’s difficult to care about certain characters without being able to develop into a character we care about and in the end, all underdeveloped fillers must be six feet under ground in five or more pieces.

Technically, Serrano’s films suffers major obstacles. Scenes annoying go overboard on the grayscale with a heavy gray tint switching back-and-forth from scene to scene taking away the little coloring the film had and creating a haze blanket of the mise-en-scene as if in a dream. Continuously going in and out of focus and slight blotchy posterizing are also problematic during darker. Dark scenes and day scenes also suffer from heavy digital interference. The unbalanced audio in the 2.0 stereo mix doesn’t channel the dialogue very well, making it secondary to more inaudible parts of the film. What I can positively comment on about the DVD is the detailed cover art of The Ripper. The retro 1980s or early 1990’s feel of Wild Eye Releasing’s DVD release cover shows great promise for a film that flounders during the first two acts.

Evil Wants to Make a Triple Feature! “The House with 100 Eyes” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on June 6, 2015

Anything goes in Hollywood, California and anybody can be a star. Just ask amateur filmmakers Ed and Susan, an average middle class married couple, who are searching the streets, scouting for their three actors to star in Ed and Susan’s Red Studios produced snuff film. Ed is hellbent on making his next film a never before seen triple feature – three kills in one night. After days of scouting the streets and coming up with no potential stars, Ed and Susan finally happen upon three homeless youths and offer them $500 each to star in, what the believe to be, just a harmless porno film. Things don’t go as planned as what was suppose to be Ed’s perfect triple feature night turns to be a nightmare for all parties involved. The story is told through Ed’s staged house cameras and the cameras have a night of death to tell.

I’ve only experienced one other Jay Lee directed movie prior to “The House with 100 Eyes” and that was with “Zombie Strippers!” starring Robert Englund and Jenna Jameson and while I solely purchased that title for personal entertainment and didn’t write up a review, I remember “Zombie Strippers!” being ridiculously gory. Jay Lee hasn’t strayed too far from his element with “The House with 100 Eyes” and teams up with co-director and lead actor Jim Roof (who had a part in “Zombie Strippers!”) to bring gore and shock to a mockumentary about creating a snuff film.

Unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, “The House with 100 Eyes” labels itself as horror-comedy, but in reality, the overtone deems itself more factual about the human condition. Married couple Ed and Susan couldn’t be any more realistically different; Ed is a sadistic psychopath who gets off on his addiction of suffering and murder while Susan’s more organized, structured, and satisfies her desires through death by poisoning. Not much information is explicitly given about Ed or Susan except tidbits shared by each character through self interview commentary; Ed grew up torturing animals and watching their reactions through the results of his torment while Susan went through a string of abusive husbands and her torment feels more man-made. Now while I’ve just described two very disturbed individuals, their marriage couldn’t be any more comically stereotypical; small marital spouts, sexual frustrations, “happy homemaker” wife, etc. Ed and Susan even have a pet – a young female victim named Maddie who had all her limbs severed and is probably going through Stockholm Syndrome with Ed and Susan. The comedy element is their marriage as it’s actually not a facade for making a horrific snuff film.

The gore brings the viewer back to the subject matter of the film and the effects couldn’t be anymore gut wrenching. Ed’s torture chair has to be the most frightful part of story, strapping in his victims and just going to town on them with whatever tool inspires him. Ed slices, dices, breaks, guts, hammers, and chisel aways until the very last breath and his merciless demeanor, conveyed very well by Jim Roof, sells icy cold-heartiness. While Jay Lee didn’t linger too much on the gory scenes, Lee’s ability to inflict the anguish of the quick shots by implementing screeching audio interference from one of Ed’s stand cams, heightening the reflection of pain of torture. Ed is well complimented by his wife Susan, portrayed by Shannon Malone, who is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Susan might be pleasant and even tempered when compared to Ed, but once the sweet kiss of death reaches near her nostrils, she can’t help herself to take it upon herself to inject a vicious, blood-vomit inducing poison into her prey. This makes Susan just as deadly, if not more so, than Ed.

Now while I might be putting “The House with 100 Eyes” on a tall pedestal, I’m not too pleased with the intentional censorship of nudity. The purpose of Ed’s snuff film is for sexual gratification; he wants the double whammy of dirty sex and grisly murder. When the two lovers, Clutch and Jamie, remove their clothing, their privates are censored by close up framing or blurring out techniques. The censorship practice puts a damper on the film’s ugly subject matter, dumbing down and unbalancing the violence and the nudity. The way the filmmakers worked around this was a heed before the presentation that Ed’s tapes were all made public to expose, which the authorities thought were a hoax, the atrocities of Ed and Susan but the victim’s humility was to be kept intact.

Another miscue for me was the open ending, leaving the conclusion up for interpretation. I’m usually one for open endings, but the way “The House with 100 Eyes” set itself up in the beginning with the “public release” should have forcibly led to a closed ending, wrapped in a nice little red bow. The ending considers the audience to be left frightened or wondering if their support for the victims will be justified, but the ending was more of an abrupt cut away from what could have been a more effective, plot defining ending.

The Artsploitation Films DVD release runs an unrated 76 minute feature presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer through many digital cameras accompanied by 5.1 surround mix. The film looked sharp and clear with only minor digital noise interference during some of the more darker scenes. The well-placed screeching audio was a nice touch for fear effect, but does become a bit ear-stiffening after prolonged use. On the inside of the DVD casing, a note from the directors Jay Lee and Jim Roof give you a bit of insight on what to expect and don’t sugar coat about the dark comedy. It’s purely a film about absolute evil.

Overall, Jim Lee and Jay Roof along with a solid cast deliver a cringe-worthy found footage mockumentary that mind behind the eyes of the malevolent and being very happy to do so with a evil smirk on their faces. Make sure you send your kids to be early before viewing the Artsploitation Films’ release of “The House with 100 Eyes.”

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A honest horror review blog…

Category Archives: Trailers

You Shouldn’t Pick On Evil! “All American Bully” review!

There’s Evil in Oklahoma! “Meet Me There” review!

Evil Dwells in Your Nightmares! “Horsehead” review!

Evil Wears a Clown Mask! “Blood Slaughter Massacre” review!

Evil Wants to Make a Triple Feature! “The House with 100 Eyes” review!

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