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The Bishop and Castle seek to Checkmate EVIL! “Sabotage” reviewed! (MVD Visual: Rewind Collection / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Sabotage” on MVD Visual’s Rewind Collection Blu-ray!

Former Navy Seal Michael Bishop was nearly killed on a gone awry Bosnia mission at the hands of former special forces soldier turned mercenary Jason Sherwood.  Three years and one court martial later, Bishop’s recently hired as a bodyguard for a wealthy businessman and his wife until a successful assassination on the businessman leaves Bishop as the prime suspect in the eyes of Special FBI Agent Louise Castle and his former Bosnia commander Nicholas Tollander now a spook with the CIA.  As Bishop strives to prove his innocence with the help of single mother Castle, looking to impress and rise in the agency to support her daughter, he’s determined to uncover an elaborate conspiracy that involves the FBI, CIA, and the man that put seven holes into him in Bosnia, Jason Sherwood, who enjoys the playful art of mercenary work.  The deep-rooted plot that exploited Bishop as a scapegoat to eliminate gunrunners plays out like a game of chess and each move is deadlier than the next. 

“Sabotage” is the 1996 independent, Canadian cloak-and-dagger thriller from “The Gate” and “I, Madman” director Tibor Takács and cowritten between Rick Filon (“The Redemption: Kickboxer 5”) and Michael Stokes (“Jungleground”).  “Sabotage’s” inspiration pulls from the simple, strategic game of chess where all the pieces, moves, and players are witnessed in plain sight in what is a tactical tornado of interagency spydom and the innocent are only the pawns in the middle, sacrificed to be a part of the puzzle to strike the monarchy behind the shadows on behalf of the across adversaries.  The Andy Emilio (“Shadow Builder”) produced and Ash R. Shan (“Lion Heart”) and Paul Wynn (“Tiger Claws III”) executively produced feature, shot in Toronto Canada (which also doubles for Bosnia in certain brushy areas), is a production of Applecreek Productions and presented by Imperial Entertainment. 

Working off another script from Rick Filon, the previous being “The Redemption : Kickboxer 5,” and hot off his humanoid cheetah role in John Frankenheimer’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau” remake, opposite Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, the mixed martial artist Mark Dacascos plays the setup and scorned Michael Bishop, disgraced by his own military organizations, and reduced to being a bodyguard for an unscrupulous businessman.  Despite being soft spoken, Dacascos has great charisma on screen that mixes greatly with his eclectic array of martial art fighting styles, such as Muay Thai and Kung Fu.  Dacascos is a shoe in for leading man material, which also includes his swarthy good looks, and does fill the shoes of being a blacklisted former Navy Seal now on the hunt for who burned him in a botched Bosnia mission years earlier.  However, Bishop’s early motivation speaks more toward his character than his need for revenge as Bishop is not aware that it was his former attempted murderer James Sherwood, played by the towering and formidable Tony Todd (“Candyman”), who whacked his client.  Bishop becomes obsessed with the case which speaks to his loyalty and his completist mentality to see something through.  Overshadowing the leading man is Sherwood as Tony Todd instincts with this character is to be a merciless and cutting with his smooth handiwork and jibe remarks, all the while doing the horrible things with a sociopathic smile on his face.  Opposite Dacascos, in a semi-love interest role, is the pre-“Matrix” Carrie Anne Moss as Special Agent Castle who has more complexity of character than Dacascos and Todd combined.  Castle is a struggling single-mother trying to make headway in her governmental career but hits a snag when her morality is checked as she must either stay the course and go along with corruption to obtain security for her daughter or do the righteous thing and unsnarl dishonestly at the highest level with extreme prejudice for her sake of her daughter’s life.  Between the three principal leads, Castle’s arc is the steepest and more stirring with internal conflict, a testament to Moss’s performance.  Graham Greene (“Antlers”), James Purcell (“Bloodwork”), John Neville (“Urban Legend”), Heidi von Palleske (“Dead Ringers”), and Richard Coulter make up the rest of the cast.

“Sabotage” is a down-the-rabbit hole spooktacular 90s thriller, and I don’t mean spooky as in scary.  What I’m referring to is the characters’ covert agencies, such as the spooks of the Counter-Intelligent Agencies, and far-reaching operations that meddle and deconstruct a what should be a tidy organizational design with pot-stirring double-crossing, even triple-crossing, narrative paths that can be a strain to keep straight.  The film’s prelude and core story span 3 years apart and connect while there’s a simultaneous backdrop narrative that’s also connects but only exclusively in exposition.  Audiences will have to hamster wheel their mental gears to connect the dots and keep up with the pacing in this ever-evolving plotline that keeps the action caffeinated with a winding, hard-target center.  Takács also stylizes “Sabotage” with bullet-tracking special effects, high impact shelling, and an indulgence of explosive blood squibs that elevates the independent picture to an upper-class of B movie and gives the feature an edge of fun and entertainment that dichotomizes it from the more slapdash action films of the mid-90s where sex-appeal played more of a role than any other kind of actual action. 

Number 60 on the spine of MVD Visual’s Rewind Collection Blu-ray, Tibor Takács’s “Sabotage” breathes new life into the crisscrossing, projectile-pursuing, scacchic espionage extraordinaire. The AVC encoded BD50 provides a 1080p high-def resolution presented in an anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. A well-suffused and maintained print results in an excellent detailing of pixels and a punchy-noir grading. Details on the 2K scan print are historically omitted here, like with many in the Rewind Collection catalogue, but “Sabotage” doesn’t feign to be a product of enhanced visual replication with an organically pleasing form with minimal grain and only one noted frame containing age or damage wear. The uncompressed English language LPCM 2.0 stereo has abundance of vitality, discerning the layers through the dual channel funnel. Range of melee fire power has individualized zenith occurrences rendered at the right synchronization and depth makes the distinction of foreground and background dialogue, ambience, and the sort. Speaking of dialogue (pun intended), the uncompressed encoding keeps faithful fidelity, an ample and adequate of clearly expressed conversations without ever sounding muddled or lost in the skirmish. Optional English subtitles are included. Special features are little light for a Rewind Collection bannered release but what’s available packs a wallop with two new interviews with stars Tony Todd and Mark Dacascos on Zoom, or whichever face time platform is being used, going through their recollection and thoughts of “Sabotage” from nearly three decades ago. A Mark Dacascos trailer reel rounds out the special feature content. The rigid slipcover contains the reprint of the original “Sabotage” poster in a mockup of a VHS case; however, this particular Rewind Collection cover composition has less flair to sell the VHS facsimile. Inside cover art of the clear Blu-ray Amaray case contains the same poster sheet but is reversible with a less-is-more one sheet. In the insert section is a folded mini-poster of the primary cover art and, opposite, the BD50 is pressed with a plastic-patterned, VHS-tape motif. The region free Blu-ray comes unrated and has a 99-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Overall, a gratifying A/V and physical presentation of a mid-90’s, mid-level action-thriller encompassing a showcase of Mark Dacascos’s leading man chops as well as a different side to Tony Todd that isn’t encapsulated in the supernatural during the height of his career.

“Sabotage” on MVD Visual’s Rewind Collection Blu-ray!

Invisible As They May Be, Their EVIL is Palpable. “Imaginary” reviewed! (Lionsgate / 2-Disc Blu-ray and DVD Combo)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Chauncy Wants You To Be his Friend! “Imaginary” on Blu-ray DVD/Combo set!

Jessica purchases her family home, moving in with her new husband and stepchildren where she reminisced being happy once as a child up until her father’s mental breakdown forced her to move out of the house and live with her grandmother.  Returning to her childhood home might have suppressed most of memory but has also spurred a few good recollections she aims to share with the conflicting attitudes of her stepdaughters, the angsty, teenager Taylor and her little sister, Alice, who suffers from a traumatic past.  When Alice discovers a stuffed bear in the basement and conjures up an imagery friend named Chauncy, Jessica feels content knowing Alice is coping with a new friend outside intense therapy sessions but when Chauncy’s seeming innocent scavenger hunt turns to hurt Alice, all the forgotten, difficult memories of her past surface and Chauncy is more than an Alice’s imaginary friend but spurned entity seeking to reconnect to Jessica, feed off her unique creativity, and keep her always in the Never Ever world of imagination.

At least once during our childhood, we all had an imagery friend to lean on, to play with, to cope with difficult situations.  For me, my imagery friend was an 8-foot white teddy bear I would snuggle into its lap and read my adventurous stage one or two books to.  For Lionsgate and Blumhouse, their imagery friend is much, much more sinister!  “Imaginary’s” dark twist on the juvenile fantasy is the brainchild of writer-director Jeff Wadlow, the filmmaker behind 2018’s “Truth or Dare” and 2020’s “Fantasy Island.”   The Charlottesville, Virginia native seemingly has thing for spinning games and fantasies into crooked, ill-fated variants.  “Princess and the Frog” writers Greg Erb and Jason Oremland cowrite the script with Wadlow, adding their experiencing in writing children stories for Wadlow’s eviscerating of childhood joy.  Lionsgate Films and Blumehouse Productions distributor the Tower of Babble Entertainment film with Jason Blum, Sean Albertson, Paige Pemberton, Paul Uddo, Jennifer Scudder Trent, and Jeff Wadlow producing.

In the crosshairs of a targeting imaginary friend is Jessica, a successful children’s book author on the outside of trying to assimilate herself into a new family while, at the same time, struggling to understand her nightmares and troubled childhood past.  DeWanda Wise (“Jurassic World:  Dominion”) stars the struggling, but good-natured stepmother Jessica who’s married to “The Walking Dead’s” Jesus, I mean Tom Payne.  Taegen Burns and Pyper Braun play Payne’s sibling daughters in their respective roles of Taylor and Alice as they make their horror film debut.  Detrimental to “Imaginary’s” silkiness of a happy couple is the artificial interactions between Wise and Payne who appear to be just going through conventional motions of a very awkwardly scripted and painfully garish couple.  When Payne departs the entire climatic acts for his character’s musical tour, other characters begin to flourish more naturally from between Wise, Burns, and Braun who become entwined into a certain teddy bear’s revengeful plan and this fountains a pleasant range of character arcs with overcoming fears, building character emotions, and settling the tension between them within the context of a common foe narrative.  One crucial, tell-all character goes critically by the wayside because, at the very last possible moment, Betty Buckley (“Carrie”) as the longtime neighbor Gloria becomes a deluge of exposition and she’s only introduced in full much later into the story because the writers had no idea how to integrate her earlier and make the information Gloria sits make sense until desperate moments arise.  Buckley, though monotone at times, makes for a good crazy lady.  “Imaginary’s” cast fills out with Veronica Falcón (“The Wind of Fear”), Samuel Salary, Matthew Sato, and Alix Angelis (“The Cleansing Hour”).

Audiences will need to expand their imaginations to get immersed into “Imaginary’s” interdimensional, child creativity-eating plot that careens through the specifics and details.  “Imaginary” suggests children have this invisible pal that snake tongues into their ears, feeding them childish ploys and harrying shame to get them to do what they want, and, inevitably, suck them into the Never Ever world through a checklist bizarre ritual.  The story suggests a globally subversive circle of these entities have been explains that every culture has a take on the imaginary friend concept and even throws into the dialogue other children having disappeared shortly after speaking of the Never Ever but the shorted change of the widespread disappearances background and the fact that crazy old, neighbor lady Gloria somehow surmised a pile of information on the subject, self-published knowledgeability on the ritual, being, and even the Newer End world, provides threadbare, credulous support for the storyline.  Stylistic and visually, “Imaginary” endorses its own title with tactile manifestations of the entity’s power.  Men in nightmare costumes is always preferable over overly silky-smooth and impalpable computer-generated monsters and the work done by the effects crew greatly engenders childish fears with an overgrown, toothy, scary teddy bear and a topsy-turvy world that are magical yet foreboding. 

Snuggle up with your Teddybear and get ready to be scared in “Imaginary” on a 2-Disc DVD and Blu-ray set from Lionsgate Films. The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50, presenting the film in a 2.39:1 widescreen aspect ratio, is a solid showing of image integrity with crafty cinematography from James McMillan (“Twisted Metal“) that avoids the seams of the monster suits, keeping them in a considerable degree of low-level shadows, and using odd angles to make contradictory scenes flush in the Never Ever. Yet, despite the max storage capacity of a 50-gigabyte disc, compression banding still rears its ugly between gradient tones contrasting dark and lit scenes; problematic areas are not entirely throughout the picture but intermittently spotty to say the least. The DVD9 is MPEG-2 encoded with an upscaled 1080p. The English language option is a three-dimensional Dolby Atmos surround sound and if Dolby Atmos was going to be used for anything feature, “Imaginary” would be that feature with tons of range and depth mechanicals to float audio into the spatial fields above and below. When Never Ever doesn’t formulate a logical structure and up is down and down is up, Atmos caters and evolves to the fluid environment, emitting pinpoint ambience to be shaped to the size of television room. Dialogue comes over clean and clear, established in the forefront amongst the other audio layers. Spanish and French 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound are also available audio options with English, Spanish, and French subtitles to select from. Special features include a feature length audio commentary by director, and cowriter and producer, Jeff Wadlow with producer-actress DeWanda Wise. Also, encoded into one long featurette, are four medium-short mini-featurettes of Meet Your New Imaginary Friends of getting to know the characters of “Imaginary,” Frills and Thrills of taking a child’s joyous creativity and twisting it into a creature-laden nightmare, Crafting the Beast of Imaginary is a look at the tangible creations of “Imaginary’s” monsters, and Bringing Nightmares to Life looks at how the Never Ever is constructed and shot to get the illusion of an upside down interior slice of another dimension. Sheathed inside a glinty, nearly lenticular, cardboard slipcover is the traditional Blu-ray Amary, both with the innocently, ominously looking Chauncy bear on the front cover. In the interior, each side houses a respective format within a push lock. A digital copy does come with the release within the insert clasps. “Imaginary” is a PG-13 horror (are they trying to appeal to kids?) with a runtime of 104-minutes and a region A playback.

Last Rites: I Imagine “Imaginary” could have gone over ten times as smoothly and more coherent with a longer runtime time to flush out more characters and a better designed narrative. Instead, pacing is quickened to race through unpacking more complex themes: childhood abuse, childhood trauma, the division of the original and regluing of a new nuclear family, family history of mental illness, the concept of imaginary friends, and so forth. The result is a less than desirable bastardization of an imaginary friend that leaves us high and dry for more context and substance than just a puppeteered scare bear.

Chauncy Wants You To Be his Friend! “Imaginary” on Blu-ray DVD/Combo set!

Forest Hike Lands Four Friends Right in the Middle of Drug Smuggling EVIL! “Cascade” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Cascade” Available on DVD! Click Here to Purchase Your Copy!

The small town of Clearview offers little opportunity and for four teenage friends, they’re diverging, life-affirming paths will either cement their relationship stronger or obliterate it completely.  Looking to do something epic before everything changes and most will put Clearview in the rearview mirror, they decide to hike an unrestricted, waterfall area of the locale state park.  What they find at the bottom of the falls is a crashed personal plane, a bag full of drugs, and a dead body.  Half of the group seeing an opportunity to make a small fortune splits ties between them and leave them blindsided by the drug dealers’ sudden appearance and guns drawn interrogation to find the downed plane and their narcotics.  A series of scuffles leaves one friend dead and two others injured, pitting a sole, unconstrained teenage woman against multiple armed and dangerous narcotraffickers hellbent on retrieving their lost goods.  Determined to not go down without a fight and free her friends, she’ll use every advantage, no matter how desperate, to outwit her pursuers.

The adage there’s no such thing as a free lunch applies to the latest film from director Egidio Coccimiglio (“Compulsion”).  Coccimiglio, who puts out one film roughly every decade since the mid-1990s, begins the story of “Cascade” with two, smalltown young couples on the verge of entering adulthood, figuring out their relationships and their lives one indecisive moment at a time, until that decision is made for them when a group no good drug smugglers roadblock their grownup rite of passage.  The debut script of Ed Mason is shot in the scenic Crystal Creek forests trails and waterfalls in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada.  “The Void’s” Rosalia Chilelli and Jennifer Pun produce with Michael Baker (“Depraved Mind”), Bruno Marino (“Tormented”), and Anders Palm (“Trench 11”) executive producing the Edge Entertainment independent production and Blue Fox Entertainment presentation.

“Cascade’s” plot is split between two perspectives, the teens and the traffickers, but we’re mostly aborded into the teens’ backstory and imminent concerns:  Vince (Stephen Kalyn), a carefree, immature cut-up and army prospect aiming to leave Clearview by any means possible,  Em (Sadie Laflamme-Snow), Vince’s girlfriend whose keeping her newfound pregnancy with him a secret because of their uncertain future, Jesse (Joel Oulette), a by choice Clearview lifer who just landed the job of shop mechanic, and Alexis (Sara Waisglass), daughter to an estranged ruthless biker gang leader and who is uncertain a college opportunity is the right choice for her.  What’s admirable about the character list is that none of them are throwaway characters with ample, individual emotional weight for relatability and substance.   Compared to the adversary drug smugglers, there’s little to be known about them as their backstories are purposefully kept in the dark, evoking a dangerous impression upon first meet and scenes.  As the story unfolds, the two groups clash, and things get ugly, true natures emerge within both factions that turn once established sympathies into traitorous duplicity and vice versa.  Amid the switcheroo of moral standards, the fight for friendship and survival becomes a one-woman show with Sara Waisglass at the wheel, showcasing Alex as good as college material by outsmarting cruel yet hesitating foes.  Coccimiglio and Mason put in the trouble of frontloading meanness and calculated brutality only to fizzle into backpedaling renegers on their ill-fated promises toward Alexis’s captured and hurt friends.  We get a pretty good showing of bad guy mentality from a creepy looking Josh Cruddas (“Resident Evil:  Welcome to Raccoon City”) and a no-nonsense leader in Allegra Fulton (“The Shape of Water”), a not good showing from the bearded oldster Matt Connors (“Kicking Blood”), and a modest teetering of morality performance from James Cade (“Antiviral”).  “Cascade” rounds out the cast with Mark Brombacher (“The Kingdom of Var”), Joanna Douglas (“Saw 3D”), Bart Rochon (“Bloodslinger”), and Greg Bryk (“Rabid”) as the leader of the biker gang The Saints and Alexis’s father. 

Under the bank check of a humble budget, serviced with one primary, exterior location, and limited ostentatious stunt work, “Cascade” is forced into a character-driven corner, carried by a pack of toothsome personalities to keep the story wet with insatiability.  For the better part of the narrative, Coccimiglio successfully stacks the blocks of sympathy, disparage, and a rough action scheme and comes out on top for an independent action-thriller.  Contrarily, a few scenes stand out being too big for the film’s skinny jean britches.  Gun shot wound effects work with compelling impact with a fair amount of gruesomeness in the makeup and how the shooter and victim react; however, other stunts, such as the car collision, dampens the believability in which one person dies, one person suffers a compound fracture, and neither vehicle has flipped or sustained substantial wreckage to cause that much damage during a shaky-cam, car-crash simulation sequence.  These moments really announce, and announce very prominently, the weak points of the production which can be looked past considering how solid this indie feature generates the big picture story on a small budget scale.

From Breaking Glass Pictures, a Philadelphian based independent distributor delivering the thrills and the chills as well as LGBQT+ films of the world, brings a Blue Fox Entertainment release, “Cascade,” onto DVD.  The MPEG-2 encoded, upscaled 720p, DVD5 presents the feature in an anamorphic widescreen 2.39:1 that has a slight wrap around lens to capture a wider frame without feeling squeezed.  This works toward the director of photography Diego Guijarro’s advantage to enclose Crystal Creek falls and forest into the optical lens without being limited to medium-to-closeup shots.  The upscaled 720 resolution holds its own to decipher details distinctly between the lush greenery, white water spray of the falls, and the actors skin tones and clothing.  Since “Cascade” has limited stunt work there’s not much room for novel or innovative camera techniques but it’s a solidly organic colored film that looks professional rather than commercially graded.  The English language LPCM 5.1 surround sound, again, doesn’t have the range to really be necessary for an all-channel assault but diffuses well enough to carry a midrange peak tone. Dialogue is clearly and cleanly expressed with adequate prominence and depth is opportune but not key for any scenes except for some radio communication. English closed captioning is optionally available. The Breaking Glass Pictures DVD release is a barebones product with no special features or stingers during or after the credits. Physically, “Cascade” models much of the same splendor to keep in tune with a feature only release in a standard DVD Amaray with a decent gun-toting mockup cover. The disc is pressed with the same image art with no included inserts or other tchotchke material. The not rated release has a runtime of 95 minutes and region 1 encoded playback.

Last Rites: If in a mood for a third-tier thriller from Canada, “Cascade” checks all the necessary car chasing, gun-shooting, double-dealing, and no-frills boxes with the hunted becoming the hunter of do-no-good drug smugglers who’ll stop at nothing until thousands of dollars’ worth of their lost in a plane wreckage nose snow is recovered.

“Cascade” Available on DVD! Click Here to Purchase Your Copy!

If the Tenants Keep on Dying, Better Get Out of that EVIL High-Rise! “The Case of the Bloody Iris” reviewed! (Celluloid Dreams / 2-Disc Blu-ray and 4K UHD Set)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own Your 4K and Blu-ray copy of “The Case of the Bloody Iris” today!

A pair of beautiful women are heinously murdered in a respectable high-rise apartment building.  As the case remains unsolved, a real estate architect, Andrea Antinon, is looking for models to market his new property, happening upon models Jennifer Langsburgy and Marilyn Ricci during his photographer friend’s photoshoot, and entices them by offering a sublet of the now vacant apartment in the building where one of the girls was murdered.  Jennifer, who finds herself slowly falling for the Andrea, is stalked by her polyamorous sect past and the group’s leader, her ex-husband, Adam who refuses to let her go and while he proves himself dangerous, attempting to kill Andrea after one of his dates with Jennifer, Adam is found dead in her new apartment.  The suspect pool grows as police are continuing to be baffled by an elusive killer remaining at large and set their sights on Andrea with his brief connections in two of the three victims.  Evidence against Andrea swells as those around Jennifer wind up dead and she’s next on the kill list. 

“The Case of the Bloody Iris,” the Iris represented as the delicately beautiful flower that symbolized the bound between Jennifer and her deranged, sex cult ex-husband Adam, is the 1972 giallo thriller from the prolific spaghetti western, Italian director Giuliano Carnimeo (from the previous “Sartana” series and would later helm “The Exterminators of the Year 3000″) and prolific giallo screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (“Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key,” “Torso,”) shot in the city of Genoa doubling as Milan.  Full of eccentric suspects, taboo desires, and handsome principals, “The Cast of the Bloody Iris” is a very attractive, violent, and superbly shot whodunit.  Under the original native title of “Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer?” aka “What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood on the Body of Jennifer?” Galassia Films serves as the production company with Luciano Martino (“The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh”) having produced the giallo. 

The story floats back-and-forth between a pair of co-headlining stars, one of them being the retrospective cult and sex icon actress Edwige Fenech in one of her earlier performances, and who has starred in “Strip Nude for Your Killer” and “The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh.  Co-star George Hamilton also stars in that latter giallo, reteaming the handsome-faced “The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail” actor born in Uruguay, and whose birth name is Jorge Hill Acosta y Lara, with Fenech in their respective roles of model Jennifer and architect Andrea intertwined into what is a romantic tale of love at first sight that becomes mangled by a crazed killer on a murder spree and they’re at the heart of the matter.  If revisiting Giuliano Carnimeo, comedies and watching some of his interviews, you can see why he folds in subtle comedic elements that doesn’t allow “The Case of the Bloody Iris,” or a good chunk of his credits, to be a totally engaged, heart-racing murder mystery; those comedic elements come in the form of bumbling police, a too dead-set on commissioner (Giampiero Albertini, “Commandos”) and his more ungainly assistant (Franco Agostini, “The Sex Machine”), who are always one step behind and in the wrong direction.  The juxtaposition may be too evident yet it’s also welcoming, breaking up the forbidding business with a little levity, and creates a backend sense of assurance knowing police, just like today, can be human and clueless on serious natured instances.  The suspect pool and other salient supporting principals include Paola Quattrini as Jennifer’s roommate Marilyn (no doubt based loosely on Marilyn Monroe), Ben Carra as Jennifer’s sex cultist ex-husband, Jorge Rigaud as the professional violinist neighbor, Annabella Incontrera as the professor’s lesbian daughter, Oreste Lionello as a sleazy photographer, Carla Brait as a nightclub’s dominating femme, and Maria Tedeschi as the unfriendly neighbor.

Even though giallos did not appeal to him nor did they really become a staple of his oeuvre, director Giuliano Carmineo had a different perspective than most and that closely aligns with masterclass filmmakers like Dario Argento.  Carmineo and cinematographer, who’ve collaborated previously on a pair of Sartana westerns, had purpose in their odd and first person camera shots and movements, such as laying the camera down and sideways as characters perform routine events before being attacked or looking up and doing a 360-degree turn as if scanning a stairway, that coincided with the usual first person perspective of the conventionally masked and gloved killer wielding a deadly blade.  The technique engages the viewer, as in a sort of tell that something is about to happen or is amiss in a scene to create breath holding, heightened anxiety, but the multi-faceted narrative itself doesn’t need assistant in keeping viewers glued to the edge of their seats with the eclectic mix of sultry and taboo eroticism, lampooning the authority figures, designed seamless red herrings, unique characters, a variety in murder, and an elaborate, mysterious complexity that’s downright deviant. 

If you’re a distributor looking to shoot your shot on your first release, new boutique physical media label, Celluloid Dreams, hit the bullseye with a 2-disc 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray release of “The Cast of the Bloody Iris” on a HVEC encoded, 2160p resolution, 100 gigabyte 4K UHD and on an AVC encoded, 1080p, 50 gigabyte Blu-ray, scanned and restored brand new in 4K on a pin-registered Arriscan from the film’s original 2-perf Techniscope camera negative, and presented in the original widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1.  Coloring grading and restoration is noted on the interior insert being entirely completed by Celluloid Dreams Studios to remove all the celluloid and age imperfections and stimulate a vivid, vibrant picture quality and, by the giallo-Gods, this has to be one of the more flawless image presentations I’ve seen on 4K and Blu-ray in a very long time, or ever!  Meticulous precision techniques reveal a straight from-farm-to-table quality, organic for its era with a balanced, natural grain and color saturation.   Details have delineated trim and higher contrast leveling where appropriate for darker scenes, such as an unilluminated bedroom or a basement boiler room, that retains the rich inkiness of the negative space.  No signs of compression issues in the negative spaces as well and no signs of unnecessary enhancing.  Two, lossless audio options are available for selection:  an Italian 1.0 DTS-HD and an English 1.0 DTS-HD.  Both remastered tracks from the optical sound negative provided full fidelity through the single channel.  Concise and crisp dialogue renders through in full, robust effect with ample detail in the ambience and depth to create a dynamic space.  No hissing, crackling, or popping in the ADR dialogue or ambient tracks and swanky tuned by Bruno Nicolai’s multi-instrumental base, drum, sintir-like guitar, and more score.  English subtitles are available on the Italian track.  With the larger capacity on the UHD, both formats are able to handle the included three featurettes with star George Hilton, principal actress Paola Quattrini, and director and writer, Guliano Carnimeo and Ernesto Gastaldi in Italian language.  Also included is a new commentary track from film critic and Celluloid Dreams co-founder Guido Henkel, an outtake reel that extend out certain scenes, photo gallery, the original Italian Opening Credits that beginning of the feature, and Italian and English theatrical trailers. Inside a dual-sided cardboard slipcover with both the feature’s baptized titles and illustrated cover art representation of Edwige Fenech, the black 4K UHD Amaray case possesses a second and more fleshy-erotic illustration of Fenech. The same art and arrangement are on the reverse side but with the Italian title. Each disc is housed on either side of the interior snapped firmly on a press-lock on with a release acknowledgements and an advert for their next physical feature, “La Tarantola Dal Ventre Nero” aka “Black Belly of the Tarantula.” The region A playback release has a runtime of 94 and is not rated.

Last Rites: Showing such diligence in the restoration efforts, Celluloid Dreams is the new kid on the block, the promising young boutique label with the Midas touch, with a killer first presentation in “The Case of the Bloody Iris.” We can’t wait to see more!

Own Your 4K and Blu-ray copy of “The Case of the Bloody Iris” today!

What EVILS Lie After Death? “We Go On” reviewed! (Lightyear Entertainment / Remastered Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get Haunted as “We Go On” is now on Blu-ray!

Miles Grissom lives in fear every minute of his life.  What scares the editor of shoddily performed, midnight television infomercials the most is the unknown after death.  The question is Is there a life after you die or is there just a black void of nothingness?  To answer that existential question, Miles places a quarter page newspaper ad seeking an ounce of proof of the afterlife with a $30,000 reward attached for one single person who can show him that there is an existence beyond death.  With the unconditional support of his mother, he scours through hundreds of fakes, solicitors, crazies, and the like until he narrows down the advert answerers to a few possibilities that have real promise.    As Miles investigate the claims of each one, he finds himself closer to the truth than he ever wanted to be and now he’s forever trapped between existential planes for the rest of his life.  

One of the longstanding and biggest questions in the universe is what happens to us when we die?  Where does our immortal soul, the individualistic essence of our being, wander to after the corporeal shell is empty?  Or does it just poof vanish, like an extinguished candle flame?  While all of these questions can be up for philosophical debate amongst the various, and often contentiously stubborn, religious groups and cultures, filmmakers Jesse Holland and Andy Mitten use the idea for their 2016 drama-horror “We Go On” that gives one possible, uncontested and cinematically electric, explanation as well as imparting a somethings are better left unknown dread.  The duo behind “YellowBrickRoad” returned to write-and-direct their sophomore U.S. production with a principal photography location shoot in Los Angeles.  “We Go On” is produced by Logan Brown, Irina Popov (“Chilling Visions:  5 Senses of Fear”), and Richard W. King (“The Witch in the Window”) under the production banner Filmed Imagination.

Miles Grissom is a mild-mannered and scared into solitude individual.  His loneliness, though not conspicuous to any extent, extends to his profession of a video editor of infomercials and other overnight television programming.  Agoraphobia and thanatophobia keeps Miles securely isolated in his modest apartment building where a recurring dream of a car accident sends his heart racing, a side effect of a core, back history moment yet to be explored when we meet Grissom, who is played by a stiff, but gets the psychologically wounded character across, Clark Freeman who has worked previously with Holland and Mitten on “YellowBrickRoad.”  “Cat People” and “Superman III” actress Annette O’Toole fills in as Miles’s ride-or-die, overprotective mother with a deep, dark secret of her own coated with a thin film of backseat family drama that’s doesn’t make her character shine like it should, especially being an important piece and highly influential to Grissom’s character.   Instead, the exposure of the secret and the impact it’s supposed to have is left on the backburner for Nelson to come into play, a greasy airplane janitor with deadly drug problem in what can be described as the best Sean Whalen role he never played with Jay Dunn filling those janitorial coveralls.  Dunn, who would go on to have a role in Andy Miton’s solo project, “The Harbinger,” dons slicked over balding hair, grimy teeth, and a deep, sunken eyes to be a bane toward Grissom’s existence and while Dunn doesn’t have dialogue for half of his onscreen time, he makes for a perfect hang around the background, meanspirited glarer.  The rest of the “We Go On” cast pop in and out as Grissom dwindles down his list of fakes and phonies with appearances from Laura Heisler (“YellowBrickRoad”), Giovana Zacarías, and the always wonderful on screen, “Gremlins 2’s” actor, John Glover, as a scientist trying to scare Grissom into giving him the reward money.

“We Go On” encases more drama elements than horror but the circling horror imagery enclosed has a beautifully grim layout with the minor touches, such as the slow turn of a hanging corpse or the statement of a ripe smell of a long dead overdose victim, that add a palpability, reinforcing the horrific moments and increases the ghastly tension.  The further we journey with Miles Grissom in his obsessive search, the grislier the imagery gets in what is essentially a two-part tale that firstly puts us and Miles on the hunt for life after death that quickly nosedives into a leeching supernatural torment.  Oddly, Grissom takes his newfound nuisance almost instantly in stride with not a ton of obstacle or self-realization work to warrant an acute enlightenment of how to handle an orbiting ghost that flashes disturbing images every other minute inside his mind and allows him to see between the planes of other gruesome ghosts stuck in limbo.  There are other examples of these sudden reversals or improvements that work against the pacing and don’t invite reward through struggle or pain in what is a walk in the park for Miles Grissom to see and handle ghosts being introduced to audiences as a man emotionally crippled by a traumatic, underlying fear.

Via Lightyear Entertainment, an American coast-to-coast independent film distributor, “We Go On” receives the Blu-ray treatment with an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, BD25.  There’s little information regarding the remastering of the film with the only kick up being a digital restoration and enhanced visual effects and touchups to provide a smoother, cleaner picture presented in the film’s original anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1.  Having never watched the DVD or first Blu-ray version, I have to take Lightyear’s restoration at face value which does have a crisp, clear picture full of natural color and graded with brilliance that sometimes makes the picture look too digitally sterile with not a ton of contouring shadows that can make the picture look depthless at times.  The infused visual digital f/x add about the same flavor, but the images never linger on screen, turning brevity to the film’s effects advantage.  No apparent issues with compression on the 25gig BD; textures modestly tactile despite the bright and airy grading and blacks are deeply saturated with spectrum banding.  The English language audio options include a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and a lossy Dolby 2.0 Stereo.  Dialogue is clear and projecting over the other layers but lacks that full-bodied, full-channeled trait of lossless.  Supernatural effects find distinctive ground and synch greatly with the sudden scares in transition between reality and the ghost realm.  Range and depth are favored by the remastering in the scenes that warrant both, such as the LAX’s airstrip takeoffs that considers the jet plane’s positioning in the background or above, increasing steadily the jet noise volume whenever a plan is in the extreme background to a more overhead location.  Also added for the remastered release are three new, feature-length commentaries:  two with the individual directors in Andy Mitton and Jesse Holland with the third houses the two stars, Annette O’Toole and Clark Freeman. The clear Blu-ray Amaray arranges a darker composition cover art than what the movie actually entails with an interior disc pressed with the same cover and a reversible cover that has one of the more memorable scenes from the feature. There are no insert materials included. The region free, unrated release has a runtime of 89 minutes.

Last Rites: You get what you ask for is the moral of the story maxim in Andy Mitton and Jesse Holland’s “We Go On,” a commercially technique, light-weight thriller with a thin lining of grim imagery between drug overdoses and suicide and adequate performances by Annette O’Toole and Clark Freeman that drops the everlasting question of desire and extreme, emotional fear for instant peace of mind, even if experiencing the terrifying truth firsthand.

Get Haunted as “We Go On” is now on Blu-ray!