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Milan Has All the Best Short Film EVIL! “Drag Me To Fest” reviewed! (Rustblade / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Hurry! Grab the Limited Edition Copy of “Drag Me to Fest” Before Its Gone!

An outpatient nurse is requested by an old woman leaving by her lonesome.  Always forgetting and troubling eccentric, the humble nurse finds he’s in way over his head with a clearly unstable, possibly delusion woman, until the truth of her hidden secret unveils a web of horror.  A young couple looking to help a lonely farmer find themselves erecting a sheep fence as well as maintaining the upkeep of a strange rock formation known as a Tursemorkel that emits ooze out of black orifices and soon find the psychological and physiological energy from the Tursemorkel is more than they can withstand.  An elderly couple, tucked away inside their roadside camper trailer, whips up a finger-licking meaty stew made from all natural, locally sourced ingredients as they watch the nightly news’ top story of a missing person.  A man answers the doorbell and finds a package on his step, scratching and crawling out is a festering corpse eager to play with him.  A priest with an obsessive bug collection has him turnaround when a recently caught rare beetle toys with his mind.  Dafne, a young woman lost in another state of mind, is in the presence and in the arms of her own, personal demon. 

These bloodcurdling tales are the latest batch of horror shorts from the annual Milan, Italy hosted Drag Me to Fest.  The festival brings together Italy and international filmmakers to submit their unique brand of terror.  The 2024 lineup were submitted to the Milan collection in 2023, hit the festival the following year, and has now been compiled onto a home video release for North American audiences to enjoy and cower in teeth chattering fear under its namesake title, “Drag Me to Fest,” from Italian distributor Rustblade Records in association with MVD Visual, a subsidiary of MVD Entertainment Group.  Norway’s “Vevkjerring,” or “The Weaving” by Øyvind Willumsen and “Tistlebu” by Matthew Valentine kick off the anthology followed by Italian filmmaker’s Riccardo Suriano’s “Long Pig”, Julie Gun’s “Dafne is Gone,” and Jacopo Vismara’s “Il Coleottero” and finally rounding out with Japanese director Nori Uchida’s “For What the Doorbell Tolls,” all of which are self-produced.

Three countries, six distinct films, and all packed into the unusual side of ambiguously horrifying elements contained inside six short films.  Each character is curated to fit inside the narrative design, no matter how outrageous or avant grade the message is.  Willumsen’s “The Weaver” is a more straight forward, common structured horror of building up tension in an already uncomfortable situation of a friendly, living assisted male nurse Henrik (Fredrik Hovdegård) knocking on the doorstep of a haggard and kooky old croon named Gudrun, played devilishly and disgustingly by Isa Belle.  The next four episodes become a bit vaguer in their intentions of madness, purgatory, survival, and obsession that intends to either harm or transfigure into something beyond the dimensional standard.  “Tistlebu” aims to transfigure as a young city couple (Sascha Slengesol Balgobin and Sjur Vatne Brean) look to connect with nature and their curiosity, coupled by intrusive misuse and sexuality, toward an earthy pillar of energy inside a widow’s (Oda Schjoll) barn enraptures them into something more primordial, literally connecting them to an omnipresent natural world that’s much bigger than their insignificant need.  Uchida provides his own one-of-a-kind performance based immensely off Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” by playing not only the hero but also the decaying plaything that arrives at the hero’s doorstep in one’s mirrored rotting of loneliness.  “Il Coleottero’s” Don Antonio (Mimmo Chianese) has a crisis of faith that become sidetracked by his diligent hobby of entomology when his prized find, a rare beetle, suddenly disappears from his collection.  Chianese finds the balance between being a disenchanted priest and an anxious man hunting for the beetle that got away and that will eventually destroy him.  Julie Gun’s “Dafne is Gone” is more operatically finessed with interpretive dance between Dafne (Giulia Gonella) and a demon (Jason Marek Isleib) that’s completely absent of dialogue, stagecraft visualized, and characteristically naked to showcase Dafne’s descent into the Demon’s spellbinding movements.

The collected and presented works are not the highest dollar productions but do encase a prosthetic practicality as seen in Willumsen’s “The Weaver” with a shedding of an exterior layer into a more grotesque freak of nature while Uchida takes the tribute route using filleted flesh and milky contacts, along with LFE tones and grading, modulated vocals, to accomplish his own version of “Evil Dead” without the presence of Ashley Williams.  The others are not as cut and dry with their infinite interpretational insights that likely will speak more on a personal level than a glossy buttered popcorn one that requires little effort to absorb.  “Tistlebu” and “Dafne is Gone” entrench themselves in their respective unknown and modern art by providing very little in the one thing they both have in common, a shared sense of unsettlement.  There’s also an undertone of sexualism as if it equates to the very beast that entrances, which in these shorts is the Tursemorkel, which is a large surface growth that emits an allurement of safety and gratification, and, in comparison, to the demon, perhaps her own visceral demon, that frolics to breach Dafne’s temptation, drawing her closer to his own colorfully neon netherworld in a production of warmly dark euphemism.  “Il Coleottero” is perhaps the best understated undercurrent between the skepticism that plagues man and his faith.  Shot mostly naturally, tension is built on Father Antonio continuous deviations from his religious duties, distracted in his homilies and divine surroundings, by the mere fact of a lost beetle, a beetle, similar to the appearance of a Stag Beetle, that toys with him.  One could assume the beetle represents a test from God to challenge the priest’s diversification balancing his faith between realism against spirituality, to quote biologist J.B.S. Haldane, and I paraphrase, if the creator had made life, it must have been inordinate fondness for beetles because of their profound species diversity.

“Drag Me to Fest” has now hit DVD home video for the first time in its 3rd annual run with a limited edition to 500 copies courtesy of Rustblade Records, routed through the North American distribution channels of MVD Entertainment Group under their MVDVisual label.  The region free release, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, is encoded onto a MPEG2, upscaled 1080p, DVD5 with palatable average of image quality in its varying degrees of filming equipment, lighting, and technical know-how to get the intended look without suffering cinematography faux pas.  Compression wise can be a different story but, generally, “Drag Me to Fest” has an adequate presentation albeit a less-than-desirable color saturation, especially Gun’s “Dafne is Gone” that implements warm neon primary coloring in a high contrast, hard light emulsion.  Skin and pattern textures vary from short-to-short, but the delineation is there to not blend depth nor create solid, smoothed out surfaces.  Valentine’s “Tislebu” relies heavily on the rolling hills and greenery farmscape to enact its character qualities for an Earthy or terrestrial mystery important to the sentient and engrossing formation.  The Italian, Japanese, and Norwegian language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo offers a passable mix that doesn’t elevate the atmospherics or construct tension to the max but neither does it flounder or lay waste to the support of the shorts.  There’s not a profound amount of leveled depth or creative sound design to fabricate space as much of the dialogue and environment resides in the foreground, and the dialogue does render over clean and clearly with forced errorfree English subtitles, but the focus is primarily on moving the story in a matter of minutes for some of the shorts, leaving narrative devices, such as characters and the effects, to drive the story and its tension.  The DVD is a barebones released that does not come with any encoded extra content, but the slim, trifold jewel case does depict a grouping of cherry-picked ideas from the shorts in a green bath illustration from graphic artist Gonz and has individual taglines and color stills for each short.  The 92-minute anthology is unrated. 

Last Rites: Abroad anthology with a goal to highlight and amplify short filmmaker voices, “Drag Me to Fest” finishes up from the main screen and extends to home video for the first time! Rustblade and MVDVisual illuminate the cinema obscure for the general public and we’re all the richer for it!

Hurry! Grab the Limited Edition Copy of “Drag Me to Fest” Before Its Gone!

An EVIL Taxi That Requires Your Baby for Payment! “Black Cab” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Anne has lingering reservations about getting back together with cheating boyfriend Patrick but half-heartedly agrees to take him back and even merry him.  The announcement comes as a surprise to dinner friends, including Anne’s best friend Jessica, but before talking out the situation that clearly has the two women upset, Anne is eager to leave and return to her home.  The embattled couple jump into a cab driven by Ian, a gabby cabby prying into the couple’s heated discussions.  When Ian drives down a dark alley and stops to retrieve a map from the trunk, Anne and Patrick realize they’re locked inside the cab.  A returning Ian reveals his true intentions with a purpose still ambiguous why the couple has been abducted but a desperate Ian will do anything, even kill, to get what he loves back from a wistful countryside spirit, and he needs disordered Anne for a trade. 

Should have taken an Uber.  “Black Cab” is the 2024 British abduction and supernatural horror-thriller from serial television and made for TV movie director Bruce Goodison, with a career credits that specializes mostly in tales of international military conflict and British murder mystery, and a screenplay by “Reawakening” writer-director Virginia Gilbert, incorporating into the relationship couple’s discordant flame a sliver of kidnapping, electrical prodding torture, and a desperate act inside the context of an old ghost tale as well as inside the English’s famous hackney carriage of black taxis, using the popular public mode of transportation as a device to market the film’s story for the sordid cab driver.  Filmed in the city of Manchester and the surrounding greater area, the Shudder exclusive presented film is produced by Jan Roldanus of Stolen Pictures and executively produced by Sony International Pictures’s former strategic producer Lucy Robison and current producer Michaela Fereday.

When a moviegoer familiar with actor Nick Frost runs through a mental checklist of the actor’s filmography, comedies like “Hot Fuzz,” “Shaun of the Dead,” “Monster Family,” and “Paul” come to mind with the often lighthearted, sometimes heart wrenching or darkly humorous, storylines in the presence of physicality and fun, done nearly most of the time alongside Frost’s usually entourage and friends, actor Simon Pegg (“Star Trek,” “Run Fatboy Run”) and director Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Last Night in Soho”), but Frost has been frequently rooted at the base in horror, science fiction, and, well frankly, genre films in general, with the perfect examples being the aforementioned with shoot’em up polizias, zombies, classic monsters, and an Earthbound alien features.  Frost’s comedic genius is all about timing and the way he carries himself jovially and nonchalantly through tough situations, but Frost can also use those same qualities and twist them to enact a man of deeply troubled anguish behind a masked funny face and viperous wit.  That’s his role in Ian, a cab driver with the gift of gab but turns on a dime with forced aggressive intent to take what he needs from Anne, emoting her character’s already internalized troubles with now a threatening abduction conflict from actress Synnove Karlsen (“Last Night in Soho”).  While Anne is poised as can be in the situation, her disagreeing fiancé Patrick has little-to-no merit as a character being a bit of a bully, cheat, and coward.  Luke Norris (Poldark) gives his best unpleasant rendition of a dirtbag white male with misogynistic issues, but the poorly written aspects of Patrick never fully amount to anything but a weighted towline and an extra body to do what what Ian thinks best with.  Tessa Parr and Tilly Woodward make up the rest of the cast. 

“Black Taxi” subsidizes good suspense over the supernatural calling cards that slowly, yet continuously, shows Anne through an emotional struggling, involving a rather vocally rambunctious boyfriend in Patrick, as well as building the tension inside the cab by hinting at its unusual state of tinted windows, child locked doors, and a more than nosy driver, mostly gone unnoticed by Anne and Patrick due to their bickering and heated love life, or lack thereof.  The first two acts slowly feel out where this story is aiming to drive the audience as Ian’s true intentions are well covered and contained and not fully delineated by the baby clues Ian hints at along the way.  There’s an elemental theme of family and protection, loss and heartache, and how that torment is divergently depicted by both the lead principals Ian and Anne, with the latter being more at a crossroads of choices whereas Ian has already made his choice and it’s one he won’t or can’t come back from.  The third act is mostly where the supernatural factors come into play with the infamous haunting of Mabel Hill, a fiction road supposedly paranormal charged with the ghost of a woman who lost her baby fleeing an abusive relationship and continues to search for the child through bypassing passenger vehicles.  The third act is also where things get murky under the black and white essence of Ian’s motivations as the Ian, Anne, and the ghost are nebulously intertwining on Mabel Hill in some sort of supernatural netherworld dimension that plays mind tricks and is foggy with phantom, falling apart at the seams to support a porous ending.

“Black Cab’s” fare is prenatally pricy in this new release from Acorn Media International and presented as a Shudder exclusive. The UK release is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25 that renders a softer image quality that, in all fairness, was already foggy and murky being set in the darkness of the English countryside, presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Lots of shadows and silhouetted surroundings drowns out the delineated city structures that blend to the spooky forest as the focus is significantly on the interiors, the cab and the abandoned hotel, and not even those highlighted inmost sets solidified specifics. There’s quite a bit of banding from compression and that’s not to be surprising given the format size and the profound amount of tenebrous tone. Textures along Frost’s dressed-in-black casuals or in contrast to Karlsen’s cocktail outfit that’s more nightgown than ritzy, they’re just not there to extensively define Ian and Anne other than being the epitome of differing the dark and light of loss. “Black Cab” has more of a cityscape than a landscape though the story heavily hits upon Mabel Hill as ghost central and yet lacks the elucidation as well as the finer points to flesh out the haunted area. The ghost too is more a cheap visual effects trick than the implementation of palpable practical patience with an overlaid layer of overexposed blues and whites over top the actress to be then augmented into the scene for ethereal effect. The English language DTS-HD 5.1 surround mix is a better outfit, more so in the clean and clear dialogue exchanges between the trio of Nick Frost, Synnove Karlsen, and Luck Norris but does whittle down to the Nick Frost exposition hour when his vague maligned venture is made with more understanding through his broken man diatribes and Anne just sitting and listening as any good abductee would do to avoid saying or doing the wrong thing. Light atmosphere hubbub caters to just that with the night, likely late, shoots inside the city and rural settings but the localized car actions, taser zaps, and character efforts are effective enough to entice a palpable action. English subtitles are optionally available. Acorn’s releases are not chockfull of special features, and “Black Cab” harbors the same slimmed down supplements with a behind-the-scenes gallery. The UK release has a slightly thicker than normal Blu-ray Amaray with an encompassing composition of a rearview mirror peering Frost and a shadowed Karlsen in the fear of the mirrored frame while a ghost hovers above the presumed Mabel Hill Road. UK certified 15 for strong threat, horror violence, domestic abuse, and very strong language, “Black Cab” is hard encoded for region B playback only and has a runtime of 87-minute runtime.

Last Rites: “Black Cab” starts off as an unpredictable ride of mystery and suspense that quickly loses gas to keep up with the swerving supernatural vehicle.

Piloting Toward a Path of Mob Hired EVIL! “Flight Risk” reviewed! (Lionsgate / Blu-ray – DVD – Digital)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Flight Risk” Blu-ray Takes Off and Is Now Availablle to Own!

After tracking down and arresting a criminal kingpin’s accountant in an Alaskan hotel, U.S. Marshall Madolyn agrees to a plea deal with the accountant in exchange for his incriminating testimony that would lock away the mob boss for years, but before prosecution can get underway, the U.S. Marshall must get her witness to New York City.  Charactering a Cessna 208 light aircraft to escort them out of Alaska, the more-than-eccentric rustic pilot is more tirelessly inquisitive than charismatically charming toward the Marshall about having a suspect chained to the seat in the rear of his plane while also gabbing about casual, byway pleasantries and his rural, for-hire lifestyle as a pilot.  Little do Madolyn and the accountant know is that their pilot is a sadist assassin hired by mob boss and by the time they reach cruising altitude, Madolyn finds herself confined with a relentless killer and without the knowhow to fly a plane herself.  

Not since 2016 has “Lethal Weapon” and “Mad Max” actor Mel Gibson directed a film, that film being the World War II action-drama, “Hacksaw Ridge.”  Gibson returns to being behind-the-camera in 2025 with his latest venture, an aerial, hitman thriller “Flight Risk” from a contained debut big picture script by Jared Rosenberg.  “Flight Risk” strays from the normal course of being an epic feature that usually draws the cinematic eye of Gibson with being a smaller production, an intimate cast, and isolated mostly on a deconstructed light aircraft in front of what is essentially a floor-to-ceiling, 180-degree IMAX screen simulator to depict coursing through the snow-topped mountains of the Alaska Range.  Gibson produces the story along with Bruce Davey, John Fox, and John Davis in a Lionsgate presented combined company production from Davis Entertainment, Icon Productions, Media Capital Technologies, Hammerstone Pictures, and Blue Rider Pictures.

Three onscreen principals and a handful of voiceover work is all there is to “Flight Risk’s” casting with many of the scenes “high” above ground inside the tight confines of a personal aircraft to intensify the close-quartered combat with the unspoken caveat of nowhere to run, nowhere to hide thousands of feet up in the clouds.  Actress Michelle Dockery, known for her role as Lady Mary Crawley in the dynamic upstairs, downstairs period drama series “Downton Abbey,” exchanges her glittering ballroom gowns and British accent for a sidearm Glock and a flat American-beurocratic accent as U.S. Marshall Madolyn with a complicated backstory that places her back into the field after being assigned desk duty when a witness dies in her custody.  Dockery is all business and no pleasure with a retaining wall that holds all her emotions in so she can focus on the important opportunity to be back into the field.  Audiences will be thrusted right the middle of the opportunity and experience her unpleasant history being unraveled exposition as she begins to empathize and sympathize with her current witness, Winston, a skilled accountant with a harmless, passive proclivity played by with the sarcastic reflex of a frightened squirrel in Topher Grace (“Predators,” “Spider-Man 3”).  Madolyn and Winston slowly, simmering bond, merging into a fight or flight friendship out of from being an authoritative escort and detainee, is forged by fire when Mark Wahlberg’s receding hairline, eccentrically crazy, sadistic rapist of a hitman pilot attempts to restrain Madolyn and divert Winstown for his own personal pleasure on the behalf of the Mob Boss instruction.  Likely Wahlberg’s most depraved role since 1996’s “Fear,” the “Transformers” and “Daddy’s Home” actor puts forth less of his muscular tone and good looks by stepping into a balding, gum-chewing wild eye maniac, relentlessly bloodthirsty with the gift of grotesque gab, in a cat-and-mouse tit-for-tat game for the plane yoke and control.  A voice cast rounds out the rest that push the story in deception and direction with Leah Remini (“Old School”) and Paul Ben-Victor (“Body Parts”) as Madolyn’s colleagues who may or may not be corrupt and Maaz Ali (“Anxious”) as your friendly and flirtatious pilot instructor. 

An absolute different kind of project for director Mel Gibson that’s not historical, period, or epic as he takes off into unknown territory and elevating as a director who can remove himself from the bigger picture for a smaller one.  “Flight Risk” is a prime example of what Hollywood should be putting into production rather than squandering millions on grand flops but limited the budget that, in turns, limits the star power and conceding the story to saturate with substance rather than with ostentatious effects.  “Flight Risk” proved to be a modest profiting film on what is now considered a meager budget of $25 million, but a profit is a profit, and the thriller is highly entertaining and engrossing with solid performance supporting a step-by-step, linear story arc.  Granted, the film isn’t completely without flaws.  While Johnny Derango (“Fatman”) can capture the correct angles in the plane’s small, confined space and gratifying the depth with the visual screen through the plane windows, these aspects are negatively counterbalanced by visual effects that stunt the aesthetics with cheap-looking knockoffs of exteriors at the beginning and end of the film.  Fortunately, these scenes are scarce and does continue the yard forward without looking back as girth of Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery, and Topher Grace vie for their moment in the spotlight with their character’s idiosyncrasies. 

The Lionsgate presented “Flight Risk” takes cue from the locomotive folktale being the little film that could, replacing the small train for a small plane and chugging, climbing up the Alaska mountain of nonstop thrills.  The new combo format Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital set from the company evokes many ways to enjoy the latest, and humblest, Mel Gibson picture.  The Blu-ray is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 while the DVD is MPEG2 encoded, upscaled to 1080p, on a DVD9.  In covering the Blu-ray, the picture is near perfect without compression issues faulter a landscape of whites, blues, and the spotted greeneries in between that make up the Alaska geography on the big 180’ volume screen for pseudo flight. The matte visual mixed with the angle of the cameras work to the location’s authenticity and the camera angles solidify that the illusion while the pixel range sharpens any loose ends that might occur in presentation.  Coloring and breadth of saturation diffuse fine with an organic look except for the VFX that stands out like a sore thumb.  English Dolby Atmos creates an immersive audible impression, splicing through the channels that reflect more in the back channels of Mark Wahlberg’s frantic, and sordid, diatribes from the plane’s cargo tail.  Exteriors are not as explosive around the plane as expected with the Dolby’s loss of fidelity but, to the advantage of the story, the engine him and the turbulence has an agreeable depth muffle to it in the surrounding channels and into the frontloaded dialogue, which is intelligible and without unintended equipment interference.  Also included are French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks and an English descriptive audio.  English, Spanish and French subtitles are optional.  Risk Management:  Making flight Risk is the standard fare behind-the-scenes cast-and-crew interviews with some raw behind-the-camera shots surrounding the genesis of “Flight Risk” and the how certain aspects of the film, such as cinematography and Mark Wahlberg’s devilish persona, are achieved.  The theatrical trailer rounds out the encoded special features.  Personally, I was not impressed with the cover art that’s on the Amaray and the cardboard O-slip with a sheen coating that puts Wahlberg front-and-center of a misleading campaign of the ruthless killer looking oddly unflappable while zipping fighter jet theatrics are composited over his midsection; the whole illustration just doesn’t speak the “Flight Risk’s” disposition.  Nothing else to note tangibly other than the 4K digital code insert in its usual slot.  Rated R for violence and language, Lionsgate Blu-ray is region A encoded and has a textbook runtime of 91-minutes.

Last Rites: “Flight Risk” cruises at a palatable attitude of flight dynamics, aerial assassinations, and the rehabilitation of broken character in Mel Gibson’s smaller, but mighty, latest feature.

“Flight Risk” Blu-ray Takes Off and Is Now Availablle to Own!

A Prince’s EVIL Plan to Gain the Throne Meets High-Flying, Kung Fu Rebel Resistance. “The Lady Assassin” reviewed! (88 Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Lady Assassin” LE Blu-ray Now Available!

Emperor Ching’s health is rapidly declining and before his death, he challenges his 14 princes to find the best candidate to rule of his kingdom.  Ultimately, the 4th and 14th princes are vying for the throne but embark on different moral paths that set them starkly apart.  Fourth Prince Yung Cheng will lower himself to any ignoble scheme worth gaining him the throne while the 14th Prince, who might be weaker in strength, would be a better, more compassionate, ruler for the people.  When Yung Cheng plots an assassination against the 14th Prince, his plans are foiled by the prince’s skilled bodyguard Tsang Jing, the greedy Prince takes an alternate route to the throne by conning Han loyalists, who feel the Manchu clans have treated them unfairly by abusively restricting their power and fortune, into a plot to steal the Emperor’s royal decree of announcing the new Emperor and forging his name into the document.  By this very deception, Yung Cheng is announced Emperor and turns his back on the Han loyalists who joined forces with Tsang Jing and Han rebel Si Nang to end his dishonest rule over both the Hans and the Manchus.

The eclectic Shaw Brothers produced fantastical fights, high-flying stunts, and a story interweaved with deception, death, and melodramatics in the immersive period of dynastical China with the film “The Lady Assassin.”   Filmed in Hong Kong, the film is written-and-directed by acclaimed action filmmaker Chin-Ku Lu at the height of his career.  “The Black Dragon” and “Holy Virgin vs. The Evil Dead” director delivers a deluging epic of sensationalized kung fu interspersed with a usurping back-and-forth story of cutthroat politics and deceit and the minority that attempts to dethrone villainy with punitive justice, the only kind of justice ancient China knew to dish.  Mong Fong (“Killer Constable,” “The Mad Monk”) produced the feature with Run Run Shaw serving as executive producer.

One would think the title being “The Lady Assassin” would focus on a solo female kung-fu killer aimed to strike ruthlessly in a clandestine caper, but most of the story’s principal shoulders have an equal share burden amongst a deep protagonist cast of characters.  Leanne Liu plays the titular assassin Si Niang, a Han rebel whose father (Ku Feng, “Erotic Ghost Story,” “Vengeance of a Snowgirl”) is head dissident number one against the Manchu leaders, and the “Bastard Swordsman” and “Hong Kong Playboys” actress doesn’t become introduced into the story until about midway through as much of the Prince-on-Prince, good-vs-evil, tale is spearheaded by those vying throne-seekers with much emphasis on their guards, assassins, and the skilled in Kung Fu company they keep.  Tony Liu (“Fists of Fury”) and Mok Siu-Chung (“Nightmare Zone”) are respectively the evil scheming 4th Prince and the good-natured but weaker 14th Prince seeking the throne of their dying Emporor father (Ching Miao, “The Devil’s Mirror”) and the two give into their roles very efficiently, delineating a clear line where they stand in the grand scheme of the plot with the 4th Prince proactively trying to destroy any chance others may have at the throne with the 4th keeps in the shadows and avoids conflict; the latter heavily emphasized by a lot of do-nothing from the 4th Prince’s character.  A great deal of the first two acts relies heavily on Tsang Jing’s honorable service to the people who showed him kindness.  “Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain” actor Norman Chui imposes impeccable fighting ability and timing but is strangely engrossed by his character’s life to serve those who he owes and we’re not talking a purse debt or for saving his life but rather a loyalty aspect for kindness, morality, and justice that contrasts against Min Geng Yiu, played by Jason Pai Piao, who initially is introduced as an upstanding citizen fighting against unethical behavior until his hypocrisy lands him greedily in the arms of a deceiving 4th Prince, twisting You to accomplish his bidding while he always subverts his lord with his own deceptive plans of power.  Backstabbings and desperate mesasures, along with stellar, high-flying, hand-to-hand and sword fighting, zip “The Lady Assassin” into another level of martial arts mania with a rounded out cast of Cheung King-Yu, Yeung Jing-Jing, Yuen Tak, Kwan Fung, Sun Chien, and Johnny Wang Lung-wei. 

Kung Fu films, especially in the 1970s through well into the 1990s, are a dime a dozen so what makes Chin-Ku Lu ‘s “The Lady Assassin” different from the rest?  One area to note is fight and stunt choreography that smooths the edges around the other contemporaries slower, less theatrical, routines with vigorous and diverse long sequences containing large quantities of combatants.  Usually, most fight sequences are limited to 1-on-1, 2-on-2, and maybe 3-on-3 or 3 or 4-on1 at most, but hordes of swords, staffs, and topographical anomalous landscapes, constructed on a stage of course, are seamlessly dynamic and meritoriously fast paced and thrilling, produced by the stunt work team of Yak Yuen, Kin-Kwan Poon, and Yung Chung.  The other area to note, and one that goes hand-in-hand with the stunt choreography in order for it to work, is Shao Kuang Liu’s editing, taking footage and just going to town with a series of cut and tapes and still coherently fashioning a continuous fight and flight, complete with pulley wires, despite its rapid strikes that might have some accelerated motion of the film.  What’s inherently captivating for “The Lady Assassin” can also be a tiring visual as the fights flare up brief plot points in between, the fights can feel a bit long in the tooth come the third act; however, the final showdown, a last ditch effort between the last of the Han rebels versus the 14th Print and his crazy-faced, hired gun Japanese martial artist levels up the violence that halves fighters horizontal and vertical.  The story’s an effort to keep up with as the continuous double crossing and changes of heart nearly blend together and too many assumed interpretations toward the fate of characters off screen can work the thinker double time, compounding the ambiguous clarifications profoundly. 

88 Films continues to restore-to-rejuvenize the Shaw Brothers extensive catalogue of Hong Kong produced eclectic films with the UK company’s latest high-definition scan of “The Lady Assassin” from the original negative and release the 45th title on a part of their 88 Asia line  Cleanly saturated and rich in beautiful coloring, the AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50, presented in the original widescreen aspect ratio 2.35:1, is a marvel to watch. The original print has been kept well-preserved with barely a flaw to note albeit a less than a handful rough tape cut or damage framed moments that are so insignificant that if you blink, you’ll miss them.  The vivid and vibrant mise-en-scene is a convergence of stark contrasts and itemized delineation that creates space and depth while also visually stunning, even with what I like to call peacock fighting, or showing off fighting.  Of course, there’s also tiger fighting, praying mantis fighting, etc.  The gain is naturally pleasing without being too thick or smoothed over.  Skin tones and gleams are natural and absolute with a sense of popping right off the screen.  The Cantonese 2.0 mono is post-production ADR but syncs well with not an egregious division between mouth movements and dialogue.  Dialogue is overall clean and clean with faint hissing here and there.  Chopsocky audio layers have clean hand and foot, leg and arm whacks and full-bodied swish and swing of sword and glaive swipes.  There’s not lucrative range with much else, specifically the ambient environment as all the audio design is done in post, with a few only a handful of moments, such as Tsang and Si Nang fishing or a few interiors fights implementing room objects require foley.  The soundscape is epically charged but not terribly memorable and there are quite a few fights that go without a score to provide the action effects more prominence.  The newly translated English subtitles are errorfree, do sync well, and keeps with the pace.  Special features include an interview with Kin-Kwan Poon conducted by Fred Ambroisine From Child Actor to Fight Coordinator as well as the film’s trailer and gallery stills. 88 Films’ houses the Blu-ray in a limited-edition glint of golden cardboard slipcover of new art featuring the titular assassin. The same image is primary Amaray cover art with the original poster art on the reverse side. In the insert, a thick, dual-sided folded poster of both cover illustrations rounds out the tangible elements. The Blu-ray is encoded with A and B region playback, is unrated, and has a runtime of 86 minutes.

Last Rites: A spectacle of soaring Kung Fu with a spruced-up restoration that makes “The Lady Assassin” that much deadlier in all its dynasty melodrama and game of thrones strife. One of the best Shaw Brothers offerings from the early 1980s!

“The Lady Assassin” LE Blu-ray Now Available!

Black Mamba Wriggles Only for EVIL! “Venom” reviewed! (4K UHD and Blu-ray / Blue Underground)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Slither into “Venom” on 4K UHD and Blu-ray Combo Set!

American family, the Hopkins, live in London and while Mr. Hopkins travels the globe to attend to his international hotel business, Mrs. Hopkins and son Philip, live wealthy in their three-story row home along with visiting, Safari-expert grandfather Howard Anderson.  When Mrs. Hopkins plans a trip to see her husband after a month a part, she’s worries for Philip’s severe asthma attacks but with the assurances of the grandfather, the housekeeper, and Philip’s rudimentary zoo in his room, full of furry creatures in vivarium cages, Mrs. Hopkins half-heartedly boards her international flight.   Not everything is going to fine, however, when the housekeeper schemes with the family chauffeur and an Interpol criminal Jacmel to kidnap Philip for ransom.  The foolproof plot commences to plan with departure of Mrs. Hopkins and the arrival of Jacmel but one little mishap causes the plan to quicky unravel when a Black Mamba, one of the most aggressive and poisonous snakes in the world, is mistakenly crated and provided to exotic animal enthusiast Philip instead of his harmless ordered common variety garden snake and when the Black Mamba gets loose, it slithers in the house’s ventilation system, the house they’re all hold up in when the police swarm the outside perimeter. 

What was once going to be a Tobe Hooper (“Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) directed production before his eventual and sudden departure from the film after a few weeks, the 1981 crime-thriller with a creature feature twist, “Venom,” is then picked up by the late director of  “The Blood on Satan’s Claw,” Piers Haggard, to finish the Robert Carrington (“Wait Until Dark”) adapted screenplay off the Alan Scholefield novel of the same title.  The American screenwriter Carrington writes nearly a faithful iteration of the Scholefield novel but with more emphasis on the serpent’s over-lurking presence as an important reptilian character to the story, serving as a catalyst for the upended kidnapping plot and determining the fate of certain characters.  The UK film is American produced by Martin Bregman, the spear runner for “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Serpico” as well as “Scarface” and “The Bone Collector” later in his career.  Morison Film Group served as production company on the mostly LLC entrusted venture.  

If the American Tobe Hooper did helm this picture, directing Leatherface as an actor would been child’s play in comparison to what would had been if he had to corral a pair of strong-willed, A-type personality Europeans in Germany’s Klaus Kinski and Britain’s Oliver Reed, both with well-known and formidable career of not only in genre films but also to be problematic and difficult to work with.  The “Nosferatu the Vampire” and “Aguiree, the Wrath of God” Kinski was perhaps mostly misunderstood for his not understanding of inflections, innuendos, and gestures of the English language that made him often sounds gruff and antagonistically questioning the director’s every choice whereas the “Paranoiac” and “The Brood” Reed was plagued with alcoholism and was equally gruff in his own right as a dedicated actor saturation with austere method stratagem.  Yet, on screen, Piers Haggard manages to get the two hurricane forces to be on-the-edge cooperating, backed-into-a-corner kidnappers without cutting any tension when interacting with each other.  Distinct in demeanor, Kinski as a calm, trench coat KGB-type and Reed as an anxiously and trigger-happy, hotheaded brute put on a good show in their respective performances and beat the odds of two notorious personas colliding.  Haggard doesn’t coddle them either and lets them loose to exact the carrier in their own right even if off-book and they’re even more vilified by taking hostage a young boy Phillip, the introduction of Lance Holcomb (“Christmas Evil,” “Ghost Story”), his Safari-seasoned grandfather Howard Anderson, played by beard-laden and serial gesticulating Sterling Hayden (“Dr. Strangelove,” “The Long Goodbye”), and a zoo toxicologist named Dr. Marion Stowe who is caught in the middle when checking up on the mishap switcheroo of the snake, played by Sarah Miles (“Blow-up”), neither in shape or in vigor to be a proactive hero.  The no-nonsense Police Commander William Bulloch, shoed with “The Exorcist III” actor Nicol Williamson, a brazen candor and stoic expression with Williamson offering frank wit and a sarcastic dryness that barely gets him one step into the house; instead, it’s the Black Mamba that’s the real and unintentional hero that seemingly only has a fork tongue and fangs for villains, leaving the other hostages alone.  “Venom’s” also has Susan George (“Straw Dogs”) as the traitorous housekeeper, Mike Gwilyn, Paul Williamson, Hugh Lloyd, and the first Butler of the 1980s-1990s Batman quadrilogy Michael Gough playing real life snake wrangler David Ball in tribute. 

From the pages of Alan Scholefield’s novel to the big screen, “Venom” has a slithery way about slipping into between the crosshairs of a crime-thriller and a venomous creature feature.  Leading “Venom’s” charge is an undoubtedly great, if not iconic, cast giving their all to a farfetched plot of bad luck Ophidiophobia.  While the snake seems to have heat vision eyes only for the Klaus Kinski, Oliver Reed, and Susan George trio of kidnap-for-ransom criminals, who amongst themselves are in a deceitful love triangle that’s doesn’t quite come to a head as one would expect, there’s no animal kingdom peril to the other victimized threesome who, on a physical, first glance surface, are less equipped to handle a dangerous snake with a young, asthmatic-plagued boy, an elderly grandfather, and a nerve-bitten woman but, in reality, Phillip Hopkins, Howard Anderson, and Dr. Marion Stowe are respectively the best equipped to handle the black mamba as an small animal atrium hobbyist, a former African safari survivalist and animal expert, and a venomous snake toxicologist.  Perhaps, this is why the Black Mamba avoids these three at all costs and never interacts with them on a perilous level.  The fantastical mist that’s sprays us lightly with a crimefighting snake has comical properties that standout against what is a palpable thriller involving an international criminal, cop killing, child abduction, and the mutilation of a corpse. 

Blue Underground continues to update their catalogue with a 2-disc, 4K UHD and Blu-ray combo set of ‘Venom.” The UHD is HVEC encoded, 2160p ultra-high-definition, BD66 and the Blu-ray is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50. In regard to picture quality, both formats are nearly identical transfer that’s stems from an all new 4K 16-bit restoration from the original 35mm internegative, with the UHD receiving Dolby Vision HDR. UHD is slightly sharper around delineation when gliding between dark and light, which is often inside a merge of a half-lit house to draw more tension toward the potential presence of a deadly snake. The 1080p presentation also provides a pleasing clarity that offers little to negatively note. Color grading and saturation between the two formats show signs of varying quality by a thread with the 4K saturating that much more intently across the board with a better control over the grain levels with the Blu-ray appearing a touch thicker for the pixels to flare optically. The native 4K and 1080p come with an English Dolby Atmos as well as options for either an English DTS-HD 5.1 or a DTS-HD 2.0 stereo. Speaking only to the Atmos, the all-encompassing mix shepherds in a clean, discernible quality without any audible seams. Skirmishes, dialogues, and all the commotions in between find isolated channels of distinction that can put you immerse you into the action. And there’s plenty of action to be had coupled with a Michael Kamen’s brass horn and string score that’s both memorably building with excitement and thrilling that preludes Kamen’s orchestrated composition work of “Die Hard,” starring Bruce Willis. Despite the circumference of sound spaced mostly in interiors with a hodgepodge medley of a street full of police, reporters, and gawkers, the dialogue is equally distinct, discernible, clean, and clear without signs of hissing and crackling strains. Subtitles included are in English, French, and Spanish. The 4K special features include a new audio commentary with Film Historians and Blue Underground commenting regulars Troy Howarth, Nathniel Thompson, and Eugenio Ercolani, an archived commentary with director Piers Haggard, and film trailers. The Blu-ray disc contains the same commentaries and trailers but extends further with new exclusives in an interview with editor-second unit director Michael Bradsell Fangs For the Memories, an interview with makeup artist Nick Dudman A Slithery Story, a film historian point of view interview with British critic and author Kim Newman, and an interview with The Dark Side’s Allan Bryce providing his in-depth two cents and historical surveying. TV Spots are finish out the encoded extras. “Venom” 4K and Blu-ray combo set is physical appeasing to hold and behold with a muted black slipcover with tactile elements on both sides of embossed letters and stark coloring that’s striking in its simple snake fang design arraignment. The black, thick Amaray case has the original “Venom” artwork with the optional reverse cover art. I’m not a fan of the inside design that houses a disc on both sides as there is no room place for 18-page collectible, color picture booklet which just floats inside. The booklet features an essay by Michael Gingold, cast and crew acknowledgements, and chapter selection on the back. The discs are pressed with one or the other cover arts. This gorgeous-looking release, on the outside and inside, comes region free, has a runtime of 92 minutes, and is Rated R.

Last Rites: “Venom” might have been snakebitten back when selling book adaptations of crime capers stopped by a single snake might have seemed farfetched but, today, the 1981 film remains a cult classic of the ophidian nature being one of the earliest serpentine creature features with an imposing, impressive cast. Blue Underground proudly presents the film with a new, and improved, ultra high-definition release.

Slither into “Venom” on 4K UHD and Blu-ray Combo Set!