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Your Mother Sucks EVIL in Hell! “The Exorcist: Believer” reviewed! (Universal Studios / 4K-Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Let the Power of 4K Compel You!  “The Exorcist Believer” from Universal Home Video!

Thirteen years after having to make the tough life-and-death choice between his wife and unborn child, Victor Fielding strives to protect his daughter now teenage daughter Angela, even if that means being a little overprotective.  When Angela persuades her father for an afterschool study date with a friend, Angela’s seizes his moment of letting down his guard with real intentions to sneak into the woods with a different friend, Katherine.  Eager to connect with the late mother she never knew, Angela evokes a simple rite to call upon her mother’s spirit.  Three days later, Angela and Katherine are found in a barn, with no memory of days passed, and returned to their worried parents only to deteriorate with violent behavior, self-abuse, and an altered appearance that can’t be explained by science.  Desperate, Victor is turned toward Chris MacNeil, author of similar experiences that happened to her daughter Regan 50-years ago, to help exorcise an entity that has taken residence in the girls. 

William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” has been labeled one of if not the scariest movies of all time, according to sources like Rotten Tomatoes, Rolling Stone Magazine, and countless other outlets who run a top-rated lists.  Usually in pensile at the top seed spot, “The Exorcist” has become a terrifying beloved and timeless horror classic amongst genre crossing fans who hide in horror behind a blanket as priests do battle in good versus evil while others may revel in and gawk at the profane possession of a young girl turned into a head-spinning, vomit spewing demon host.  No matter which category fans find themselves in, there’s one singular, common impression, “The Exorcist” could never be dethroned as the scariest movie of all time, even if direct sequel “The Exorcist:  Believer,” helmed by the latest “Halloween” trilogy director David Gordon Green, and marks the return of Ellen Burstyn as Chris MacNeil, contemporarily challenges the 1973 demonic suspenser.  The sequel would be doomed in an instant of it’s trailer, and know what?  It was for the fans had immediately forsaken it, prejudging it without a second thought and a holy exorcism prayer.  Fortunately, prejudging is not in my lexicon database until the credits role.  “The Exorcist:  Believer” is written and executive produced by David Gordon Green, cowritten by “Camp X-Ray” writer-director Peter Sattler, and executive produced Danny McBride (actor of “Pineapple Express” and producer of the latest “Halloween” trilogy), Atilla Salih Yücer, and “M3GAN” producer Mark David Katchur with James G. Robinson and Blum House’s Jason Blum producing.

Much like Linda Blair stepping into Regan’s white gown before becoming vilely sullied by a demon, “Believer” hosts two up-and-coming actresses fresh for being Hell’s marionettes in Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neill.  Jewett, with more acting chops experience having had roles in kid friendly and feel good stories of “Wonder” and “Nightbooks,” plays daughter Angela to “Murder on the Orient Express’s” Leslie Odom Jr.’s widowed father Victor, a photographer who had to make a difficult decision after a massive Earthquake on their babymoon trip to ancestral Haiti cost wife Sorenne (Tracey Graves, “Sebastian”) her life but not their child.  The father-daughter combination becomes center story as a daughter trying to understand and know the woman who bore her despite living in reason to her death and a guilt-ridden father serving his existence by helicopter protection of his miracle child.  Angela and Victor’s story becomes intertwined between the past and the upcoming events, shedding light on circumstance that hinges on the subtle cracks of their relationship.  Meanwhile, the whole second possessed, Katherine, is essentially collateral damage.  Played as her debut role, Olivia O’Neill awfully resembles Linda Blair, recreating a Regan anti-transfiguration that has two purposes into the tale – 1) being a second difficult choice for Victor Fielding and 2) a bridging support to connect to Friedkin’s film in it’s 50-year gap alongside the more prominent connection in Ellen Burstyn returning as Regan’s mother Chris MacNeil.  MacNeil’s return gives “Believer” a boost in legitimacy and the potential to put die hard “The Exorcist” fans’ butts back into theatrical seats for the sequel, but the then now 91-year-old actress, who was likely in her late 80s or 90 at the time of principal photography, seemed relatively uninterested.  Now whether that was age related weariness or not is undeterminable, I’m sure it was a factor, but there is no pop in the actress’s step as a mother who previously fought the devil for her daughter’s soul and won.  “Believer” rounds the cast with some throwaway characters who come into the picture offering slim worth despite being pivotal to the story’s universal belief theme with performances from Danny McCarthy, Sugarland country singer Jennifer Nettles (“The Amityville Horror” ’05), Norbert Leo Butz (“New World Order”), E.J. Bonilla (“The House That Jack Built”), Okwui Okpokwasili (“Master”), Rapheal Sbarge (“There’s No Such Things as Vampires”), and “Handmaid Tale’s” Ann Dowd as the former nun-turned-nurse neighbor of the Fielding’s. 

Much of “Believer’s” message is to separate the Catholicism answer in order to separate the sequel as a duplicate of the 1973 production where Catholic priests dig in deep to expel the demon from within.  Writers nix the Catholics by making them not only unwilling participants, afraid of the damage that might incur from an exorcism, but also immediately removing the only willing Catholic to go against the Church in order to do the right thing.  Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.  Instead, “Believer” marks an era of new faith or, rather, new faiths with a sundry of religious convictions unifying to bring the girls back beyond Hell’s reach and dominion.  Pastor of a Georgia Baptist church, excommunicated nun, Earth-centric religious beliefs, and skeptics formulate a bond to save loved ones, creating the perfect bedrock for taut tension with colliding beliefs and, yet there’s none of that disagreement as much of the dissent is turned toward from within the individual who challenges their own convictions in what they see, hear, and experience.  For the most part, the farrago works against the grain of dichotomies who are usually at each other’s throats to one up their own beliefs, Gods, or what have you.  The incongruous mix of faiths easily falls into rough-and-ready kumbaya in what assumed scared beyond the point of a reality-smacking wakeup call that announces the confirmation of Heaven and Hell.  Netherworld hellion can very much be felt akin to Regan, though I believe Pazuzu’s possession of Regan was more violent and obscene in comparison to the diluted Lamashtu having been split into two bodies.  Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neill rocked the Christopher Nelson (“Fear Street” trilogy) makeup artistry to distinguish and differentiate themselves from each other but still stay in line with the Regan model and like the Pozuzu demon, we don’t get to see or experience much of Lamashtu other than phasing briefly into that plane of existence within the soul to see the winged, horned, and deformed body cast of the demon through the distorted, blurry sight of a viewing glass.  While practical effects shine with the makeup, prosthetics, cable work, and so forth, praise for the entire body of work is containment by the use of poor, poxy visual effects in an attempt to be bigger than its much older predecessor.

For double the demon, you can get 4-times the sharper image with the new Collector’s Edition of “The Exorcist: Believer” on a Universal Studios 4K UltraHD, Blu-ray, and Digital Code set. The 2-disc set presents the feature in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The 4K UHD is stored on an HEVC encoded BD100 with a HD10/Dolby Vision resolution while the Blu-ray comes AVC encoded, BD50 stored with a 1080p resolution. There’s nothing really to fault with the presentation that sets crystalized moods and tones without a hint of compression complications on either format. Through the lens of Michael Simmonds, the tenebrous tone of the new Halloween trilogy, variegated briefly only by surround bursts of the environment elements, is transplanted to “Believer’s” as in equal in less light austerity. UHD pixels offers slightly contouring and detail but not much to make a tremendous different between image presentation, which both really do the job pulling every surface attribute from the possessed girls’ abraded faces and a mounting demon taking shape. Both formats contain an English Dolby Atmos and Digital Plus 7.1 surround with the Blu-ray also sporting a DVS 2.0 stereo mix. Again, not much to express negatively here with a multifaceted and versatile output that creates the tension but lacks the palpable finesses of the original film by adding more score to the production with a sample nod of Mike Oldfield’s iconic tubular bell theme integrated into a less iconic composition by Amman Abbasi and David Wingo. Sound design ushers in a nice ambience and spatial rhythm while also inducing a couple of sudden low-frequency jump scares. Dialogue is clean and clear with the appropriate intensities in due part. Other non-English options include Spanish and French on the UHD and Blu-ray. English, Spanish, and French subtitles are included and optional. Bonus features, in 1080 HD, includes Making a Believer a behind-scenes-look with cast and crew interviews and raw principal photography footage, Ellen and Linda: Reunited sits down briefly with director David Gordon Green, Ellen Burstyn, and Linda Blair on reuniting the actresses after many years for the first time in scene, Stages of Possession goes through the makeup process and the Lydia Jewett and Olivia O’Neill’s impressions on the possessed makeup and prosthetics, The Opening shot in the Dominican Republic to recreate Haiti where the story begins, Editing an Exorcism has editor Timothy Alverson (“Sinister 2”) speak toward editing the chaos and creating scares in a new “Exorcist” installment, Matters of Faith explores theologies via consulting experts to recreate accurate depiction of different beliefs, and feature-length parallel commentary with co-writer/director David Gordon Green, executive producer Ryan Turek, co-writer Peter Sattler, and special makeup FX designer Christopher Nelson. Stylistically, I really like this sleek multi-format package design of the two deeply possessed girls, sideways on a black and silver and monochrome kissed cover as you don’t get too lost in the coloring and focus on just what we’re all here to see, the demonic destruction, right on the rigid O-slipcover with embossed title in the middle. The 4K Amary case holds the same image arrangement back and front compared to the slipcover. Inside, each format resides on its own side of case real estate with the Blu-ray pressed with simplistic CD-like art while the UDH goes with the same front cover image. In the insert slip is a digital code for your downloading pleasure. With a near 2-hour runtime at one hour and 51-minutes, the release doesn’t list region playback, but I would suspect region one and is rated R for some violent content, disturbing images, language, and sexual references. With the exception of a few moderately eye-twitching jump scares, “The Exorcist: Believer” has been exorcised of the breath-holding terror that exalted William Friedkin’s film. However, what David Gordon Green produces is a different breed of religious cultivating inclusiveness inclined to be more so about the social commentary than being about the rite of excruciating deliverance. 

Let the Power of 4K Compel You!  “The Exorcist Believer” from Universal Home Video!

Eric Bana Embraces EVIL’s Infamy! “Chopper” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Mark “Chopper” Read is one of Australia’s bestselling authors.  Read is also one of Australia’s most notorious criminals having wrote his autobiography in prison.  The pathological criminal’s life begins in the H Division of the Pentridge Prison in the late 70s where he quickly establishes himself a leader of a small three-man gang and viciously murders a rival leader at the chagrin of his acolytes, Jimmy Loughnan and Bluey Barnes.  When Jimmy turns on Chopper, stabbing him multiple times and then accusing him of attacking first, the ordeal has a subtle effect on the wildly shrewd and wayward Chopper who 8 years later is released with massively suppressed paranoia as old flings and old acquaintances are believed to be going behind his back or contracting a kill order on his head.  Under the delusions of working for the police, a paranoid, suspicious-filled, and unpredictable Chopper takes the opportunity to revisit old accomplices, such as the treacherous prison mate now turned drug addicted family man Jimmy Loughnan, after rumors circulate of Loughnan’s involvement in placing a contract on Chopper that results in conspiracy and murder.

Not to be confused as being completely autobiographical, or even semi-biographical, “Chopper” is a highly-stylized and self-proclaimed embellished account of the late Mark Brandon Read.  The Australian feature written-and-directed by Andrew Dominik (“Killing Them Softly”) was once the highest grossing Australian films of all time and still marks as a predominant, early 2000 release to accentuate Chopper’s high energy, erraticism, and violent behavior along with a stellar, method-acting performance from the lead star Eric Bana, who before turning into one of Hollywood’s most recognizable Australian actors was a former sketch comedian and stand-up comic.  Shot in Melbourne, Victoria, “Chopper” is produced by Michele Bennett and Michael Gudinski (“Wolf Creek,” “Cut”) with Al Clark (“Gothic”) and Marin Fabinyi (“Bait’) as executive producers under the state funded Australian Film Finance Corp. as well as Mushroom Pictures and Pariah Entertainment. 

As mentioned, Eric Bana, star of Ang Lee’s “Hulk,” and having villainous roles in the J.J. Abrams “Star Trek” prequel and “Deadfall” alongside Olivia Wilde, helms the titular character with a plumped-up version of himself, grows a wicked handlebar mustache, and engrosses himself into the peculiar persona that is Mark Brandon Read.  “Chopper” really puts Bana’s range on display with a crucial to success performance and the actor lets Read sublease headspace in what is an aberrated humor and darkly concerning ball of a biography.  Bana manages to make Chopper likeable yet terrifying, funny yet ferocious, and human yet monstrous as an unpredictable juggernaut of paranoia and survival that only knows how to protect himself by thwarting violence with violence.  Chopper mingles with other unsavory, carnivalesque characters in his journey through a jailbird’s life with what he considered his number one mate in prison Jimmy Loughnan (Simon Lydon, “Blackrock”), an old foe in Neville Bartos (Vince Colosimo, “Daybreakers”), and druggie girlfriend Tanya (Kate Beahan, “The Return”).  In Chopper’s post-near death eyes, enemies and friends are now subject to his suspicions, making him truly lonely in his own world of crime.  Performances shepherd in waves of volatility, intensity, and even immodest humor that force the scenes between them and Chopper into a pool of frigid and death-calling ice water, yet somehow, in the same breath, Dominik is able to take those performances in “Chopper” and turn them into one-giant joke at Read’s expense while still managing to keep afloat some sort of baseline truth to this period in time of his existence.  “Chopper’s” cast fills out with other colorful roles from Dan Wyllie, David Field, Gary Waddell, Hilton Henderson, Kenny Graham, Brian Mannix, Sam Houli, Robert Rabiah, Skye Wansey, and Terry Willesee. 

Most Americans will likely never understand “Chopper” as the comedy Dominik intends.  Bana does so damn good at his job, especially in his feature film debut, and Dominik’s black humor becomes murky by subsequent and sudden jerks toward humanization that audiences will grasp in different directions on how they’re supposed to feel and relate toward a character who stabs a man to death in the face and then cry in compassion for him or beats his girlfriend and then next scene unzips his pants and pulls out his manhood under the bar countertop to show his now ex-girlfriend while talking to two police investigators about his delusions of undercover responsibilities at the other end of the bar.  In its two-tone theme of the 1970’s thin, assured, and incarcerated Read and the decade later bulkier, paranoid, and free Read, “Chopper” has paradoxical and against the grain tones of wildly encompassing visualized thoughts stitched stylistically in the same fashion for pure entertainment value to symbolize Read’s emotively internalized expression.   Though fully linear, Dominik’s narrative structure can also be off-putting to audiences, digging into the entertainment value with crude edits and choppy segues that hardly shapes a timeframe and that can be tough for viewers invested in a particular storyline only to be abruptly pulled out of it and placed into another decade and an entirely different situation altogether.  Then again, “Chopper” essentially has no conventional plot other than the fleeting, distinct stages of a bumpy and insecure Mark Brandon Read’s course through crimes of contract and charisma of character. 

“Chopper” arrives onto a Second Sight Films Limited Edition Blu-ray set and a Standard Edition Blu-ray in association with Vertigo Releasing.  This reviewer was able to get hands on the Standard Edition that’s an AVC encoded BD50 with 1080p High-Definition resolution of a 2K graded, restored scan presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  A steely graded first act leads into vivid variability with color, matching Chopper’s descent tenor from shaking stability to a rocky road of mistrust. Decoding at a bitrate of approx. 23Mbps, Second Sight Films’ scan has elevated the details within the tumble of stylistic choices that closely symbolizes specific Chopper eras in which a very different Chopper is exclusive to one or the other while retaining a great amount of natural grain of the 35mm print. Audio specs include an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 which, though lossy, has great compressed fidelity mostly in the dialogue department. Plenty of reverberations captured onsite at the Pentridge Penitentiary scenes that add a slither of realism instead of isolating solely the actors’ discourse. Dialogue itself is clean and clear without obstruction. When moved past Pentridge, the environment layers are scaled back to more isolated effects driven by the actors, i.e. gunshots, scuffles, etc., and so we lose that bit of realism deeper we go into Chopper’s psyche and the soundtrack from “Deliver Us From Evil’s” Mick Harvey pumps a little harder. Optional English subtitles are available. Though missing out on some of the physical lot in the bonus content, the standard release still offers a bountiful built-in special feature of old and new with fresh commentaries by Australian critic and author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Australian film scholar Josh Nelson, new interviews by writer-director Andrew Dominik Stand-up Comedy and Violence, new interview with composer Mick Harvey Not your Typical Film Composer, and a new interview with editor Ken Sallows A Tale of Two Halves. Archived bonus material regains new life and traction with commentaries from Chopper himself Mark Read and one with Andrew Dominik, a behind-the-scenes that sees raw film footage and cast and crew tidbits, a Weekend With Chopper is raw and untouched home video footage of Andrew Dominik and Eric Bana spending a couple of days with a wildly excited Read giving anecdotal accounts of his prison life and discussing his disbelief with a film where the subject is himself, and deleted scenes with optional director’s commentary. This particular Second Sight release comes off a little different than past dispersions in physical attributes with a clear green Amary Blu-ray case, something I have not seen before from the UK label. Detail illustration of Eric Bana as the titular Chopper holding a gun to his head in ebullience is quite striking and explicit in its purple-green coloring. Inside is what you roughly get with any standard release with no insert, but the disc is pressed with the same cinereal-alike art representing one of the Chopper’s frequent locations in the story. ”Chopper” is regionally locked on B for the feature that has a 94-minute runtime and is UK certified 18 for strong bloody violence and very strong language. Unlike any criminal to have ever lived and to have ever been represented on screen, “Chopper” wily tussles with Western audiences despite the dedication of Eric Bana but the work and the film can’t be denied as anything but great about an unusual man in a hyper dramatization that pierces more truth than fiction and now Second Sight cements a next level, Hi-Def release to better legitimize the irregular gang member and thug Chopper into cinema homes around the globe.

Eating Disorder? More Like EVIL Disorder! “Binge and Purge” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Binge and Purge” on SRS DVD Home Video!  This One Is Hard to Keep Down!

Three former police officers now private sector detectives find themselves embroiled in a cannibalistic frame up by the police state in a near dystopian future.  Their no choice, self-preservation investigation leads them to a group of models who consume people in order to stay vibrant and young as if frozen in time.  The mastermind behind the models’ ravenous new diet is a former Nazi science experiment-turned-fashion designer who has not only spread his indelicacies throughout the fashion world but also into a corrupt authoritarian police department helmed by a sordid chief.   As more and more people succumb to the ghastly craving of human beings, the rebellious detectives embark on an ambitious plan to cut off the head of the snake by working up the fashion designer’s human-hungry hierarchy but are they too late to stop the meat-eating madness?  Has the world been forever infected by the touch of pure evil? 

The first Christmas horror film review of 2023!  Brought to you by the Canadian-born, “Meat Market” trilogy director Brian Clement, the filmmaker’s written-and-directed third feature, “Binge and Purge,” is the 2002 genre melting pot of action, horror, and comedy set in an undisclosed urban jungle of North America where a person’s legal rights no longer exist, beauty and fashion insidiously influence, and normalcy becomes rebel factions’ reason to fight tooth and nail to hang on to it despite the coursing corruption and taking refuge from repressive authorities on their tail.  While sounding glum and despondent, Clement’s addition of black humor adds a loose layer of lurid levity to the bizarro-world society mirroring our own that teeters toward a path of culture and humanity deterioration with radical political and influential figures.  Once considered being the third film in the “Meat Market” series and alternatively known as “Catwalk Cannibals” in other countries, “Binge and Purge” is produced by Clement under Frontline Films. 

One thing to note about SOV independent production is the impressive number of cast involved.  The large cast helps manifest Clement’s ambitious dystopia and chaos-riddled world.  Without it, “Binge & Purge” would have been too anorexic to sustain selling grandiose on the cheap.  Typical formula for flesh-eater films persists with secluding a handful of principal roles, majority only speaking roles, fleshed out with an epic apocalypse contextualization of little-to-no dialogue, story arc, or any other sort of prominent screen time stock or background characters in a horde of the undead in crude bloodstained suits.  Clement establishes good guys and bad guys clearly but doesn’t necessarily the focal characters with an ebb and flow pattern between the three detectives May (Tamara Barnard), Vanzetti (Stephan Bourke, “Exhumed”), and Number 11 (Fiona Eden-Walker), who we gather was a former highly trained operative so engrained into the training and operations that her name was lost or forgotten, reduced to a number and the troupe of man-eating models under the eternal fashion designer Karl Helfringer (Gareth Gaudin). The models consist of not your slender-hip vixens with shaved down noses and hungry-looking figures but rather the curvy, pin-up types to wet a seemingly heathy appetite. Moira Thomas, Samara Zotzman, Amy Emel, Becky Julseth, Terra Thomsen and Melissa Evans lavish in so much delight over the sticky glop and spilling intestinal scenes of shoulder-to-shoulder cannibal chow downs that there isn’t an ounce of hesitation or disgust before enamel stabs into the fresh viscera but where the enthusiasm mostly falters is with the monotone dialogue deliveries with hardly any swing in inflection, tone fluctuations, or any kind of gesturing during the more emotive occurrences. “Binge and Purge” rounds out with Robert C. Nesbitt and Chuck Depape respectively as a fashion magazine reporter turned human hungry minion and the coke-snorting corrupt police captain.

“Binge and Purge” is more than just a Christmas horror.  Amidst the meandering storyline of touching points in time and space with numerous characters and flashbacks skating on thinly laid context ice, such as the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, Nazi experiments of the 1940s, and how America became a police state, the girth of “Binge and Purge’s” main coarse actually spans across the end of the holiday season in that week between Christmas and New Year’s, approximating a Y2K scare vibe of total chaos and confusion by way of cannibalism contagion instead of a feared computer bug, but that’s one area lacking in Brian Clement’s production laced with insatiable consumerism and consumption with in regard to really hyping up the cheerful holiday atmosphere to become besmirched by the corrupted filth of dirty cops, a plague of death, and a conspiratorial coup by high fashion.  The occasional Santa hat makes an appearance in a model shoot and the end of the year countdown denotes the pinnacle of a MP5 massacring finale, and though I can’t be certain, even the soundtrack sound to be distorted versions of the perennial Christmas classics, but that’s the extent of Clement’s holiday backdrop that would have easily fissure a chasm between “Binge and Purge” and the next low-budget cannibal shocker.  If you’re going to set the film during Christmas, deck the freaking halls, man!  Where Clement bedecks the film is with blood and gore that sees stringy sinew and a high body count’s insides become outsides over an encircling of edible entrails and on literally finger food trays.  Another shining highlight area is the action with agreeable submachine gunfire and the creative pyrotechnic-flares for explosion special effects that does rich up production value, inching the film more toward a magnetic, practical effect-laden, SOV spectacle worth the viewing calories. 

Shot on S-VHS, SRS Cinema gets their hands on the best master print director Brian Clement could carve out of his body of work. The MPEG2 encoded DVD presents the feature in 1.33:1 pillarbox aspect ratio in a 480p resolution. S-VHS master looks pretty darn good despite the caliginous reflection that produces more shadows and illumination on the tape, even if S-VHS offered better illumination as a format, and a lower, poor resolution than S-VHS’s Betamax predecessor. Still, this print has enough delimiting factors to produce a well-oiled image suitable for public distribution with a mix of neon warm and soft color capturing and crude lighting for maximum gritty-palpable product. The English LPCM mono track also has admirable lossless fidelity with a bitrate decoding of 192kbs, that has come typically standard, and greatly appreciated for audiophiles, on SRS releases. Some scenes are better than others, but the dialogue does retain some tail-end hissing and can be soft in spot. Otherwise, dialogue renders clearly enough. The release offers no subtitles. Bonus features include an archived audio commentary and a new SRS cinema produce audio commentary both of which include a self-deprecating Brian Clement going through his “least favorite” work’s production wishful do-overs, where the cast are nowadays, and his favorite gags and setups, a handful of deleted scenes, a slideshow, a new SRS cut trailer, and other previews for other SRS distributions. SRS Home Video release is mocked up with a retro VHS box-impression Amaray DVD case complete with graphically printed-in Please Be Kind, Rewind and Horror stickers. The not rated film has a runtime of 83 minutes and is region free. Nowhere near being a bulimic gorge for expulsion to empty one’s cinematic capacity, “Binge and Purge” is fully digestible grubby grub of horror, action, and comedy. 

“Binge and Purge” on SRS DVD Home Video!  This One Is Hard to Keep Down!

Playboy Discovers Vengeful EVIL’s Hidden BDSM Room A Little Too Snug. “Emanuelle’s Revenge” reviewed! (Cinephobia Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Emanuelle’s Revenge now on DVD from Cinephobia Releasing!

A wealthy businessman philanders his way through woman in a pursuit of satisfactory conquest.  The formidable challenge of bedding a hard-to-get woman arouses him and the chase is all that more thrilling and erotic.  His persistence and perfect man act pays off with up-and-coming model Francesca, but for the playboy, Francesca becomes another notch in his belt and quickly implodes Francesca’s romanticized relationship after a sexual tryst in the public eye.  A year later, he begins his surmounting quest again with Emanuelle, a renowned writer in a lesbian relationship.  The beautiful and darkly seductive woman catches his eye and the game begins as he uses every excuse to rendezvous with her despite the Emanuelle’s partner standoffish opposition, but as his tenacity appears to be paying off as she leads him on, awarding his constant charm with favorable kittenish returns, Emanuelle is actually leading him straight into the jaws of a deceitful plan.

Italian co-directors Monica Carpanese and Dario Germani are copiously inspired by the heyday of Italian Eurotrash cinema.  The actress-turned-debut director Carpanese has starred in a handful of erotic and horror thrillers of the prolific trashy filmmaker Bruno Mattei, such as “Dangerous Attraction” and “Madness,” while also having a principal performance in the 2022 sequel to Joe D’Amato’s notorious cannibalism film “Anthropophagus.  Her colleague Dario Germani is also the cinematographer for the spaced-out follow-up as well as establishing himself in the genre not as a filmmaker behind the lens but also a director with genre films under the belt with “Anthropophagus II,” a dissimilar lover’s anguish in “Lettera H,” and a snuff-slasher “The Slaughter.”  Carpanese and Germani’s next collaborating venture continues with another D’Amato influence mixed with the popular erotic series, and its tangent spinoffs, of Just Jaeckin’s “Emmanuelle” that has official and unofficial sequels spanning all through Europe with enticingly, titillating erotic stimuli and thrills.  Their explicit explication of the near 50-year-old sexy-laced franchise comes in the form of “Emanuelle’s Revenge.”  Dropping the second “m” along with the choice of similar story and title moves the film closer to being a remake of the Joe D’Amato “Emanuelle and Francoise,” aka “Emanuelle e Francoise” or “Emanuelle’s Revenge.”  Carpanese pens the Marco Gaudenzi and Pierpaolo Marcelli produced script under the production flags of Flat Parioli, Haley Pictures, and TNM Productions. 

“Emanuelle’s Revenge” is carried by a small, four-person principal cast and half that for peripheral players within a dual-timeline story that provides the same cat-and-mouse game but with different, yet shocking outcomes on both of them.  At the tip of the spear is playboy Leonardo played by Gianni Rosato.  Sporting his best bandholz beard and pony bun, Rosato’s aggressive entrepreneurship extends beyond the working stiff hours and into the extracurricular activities of hunting down and dominating the opposite sex to sate his kicks for kink.  As the primary principal, Rosata receives the screen time that digs further into Leonardo’s psyche and what’s revealed about Leonardo’s nature is obvious trouble with an aggressive flirtation to the point where his whole game is akin to a stalker, showing up unannounced where he knows his targeted woman will be, obtaining their property that he has no right to, and essentially sucking their face with really bellicose kisses that look like they hurt.  Okay, maybe the latter is more overzealousness on Rosata’s part but certainly adds to Leonardo’s alarming behavior to which women seem to be attracted to as if giving into the idea that women prefer bad boys.  Such as the case in the first narrative with Francesca, a promising model with a now sex-relationship smart attitude after a previous relationship went terribly wrong with revenge porn.  Played by Ilaria Loriga in her own credited role, the young actress isn’t quite the epitome of innocence but is understandably weary to fall in love again with the persistent Leonardo but with all the foretell warnings of a disaster in the making, Francesca’s penned as sorely naïve and having learned not one single lesson of her past relationship with promiscuous men.  A year later, in the second act’s story, Emanuelle strolls into the picture under the olive-skin and deep eyebrows of Beatric Schiaffino who bats enticing eyes of the titular character’s hidden agenda. Schiaffino’s crafts a demeaner starkly different against her previous year counterpart as Emanuelle’s coquettishness doesn’t refrain from the fact she’s already in a hot-and-heavy relationship and matching Leonardo’s hot-to-trot escapade with a come-hither that’s just out of his reach. If a rake beckons a game of amorous desire, then Emanuelle enacts a game of her own, one of a lure to lead the blind right into her spider’s web and Schiaffino properly tightropes pleasure and purpose to a somatosensory stimulation level. “Emanuelle’s Revenge” rounds out with Luca Avallone as Leonardo’s licentious friend and business understudy, Ilde Mauri as Emanuelle’s lesbian partner, and Miriam Dossena as Leonardo’s 20-something daughter who suddenly pops into play in the Emanuelle story.

Even though “Emanuelle and Francoise” has never traipsed across my eyes, from what I’ve read the Joe D’Amato and the coproduction of Monica Carpanese and Dario Germani share a lot in common, but the modern-day version of this sordid tale of lust and revenge sticks to the venereal veneer only whereas D’Amato engages a cannibalism and other ghastly horrors. “Emanuelle’s Revenge” seduces with melodramatics, frisky fantasies, and contemptible thralldom because of one man’s wandering libido, focusing tremendously on the building game of mostly pavalar rather than diving into shock value. The narrative begins with a suicide of Francesca, jumping half nude off a busy passenger vehicle bridge, and this segues into Leonardo’s assertive activity into Francesca’s life and so the tale’s non-linear format is already incredulously fated with tossed in opening scene just to grab attention. When following Leonardo’s uncomfortable pursuit, and uncomfortable henpeck kissing, of Francesca, the audience is just along for the ride up to the point of incident where they’re abruptly blue-balled by cut-to a year later without knowing why Francesca decided to throw in her life towel. The brain and our movie-watching experience eventually catchup with the fact everything will be explained at the climatic, but the format jars the assimilating process a tad. Throughout the narrative, there’s plenty of a T&A to go around as I believe nearly every actress with speaking lines drops at least her top, living up to the long history of “Emmanuelle’s,” or “Emanuelle’s” fleshy affluence and erotic elements. Considering the plot twist, Carpanese’s approach doesn’t compel any creativity into the mostly remade erotic-revenger and makes contact with formulaic properties that poison any kind of novel ideas that might have been indited in the inner story layers.

Arriving at number 8 on the spine for Cinephobia Releasing, “Emanuelle’s Revenge” is now on DVD, presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The MPEG-2 encoded DVD9 has a sleek look albeit tumbling through a bitrate spread of 5 to 7 Mbps. Some surface coloring suffuse, especially on skin where similar tones seep into the adjacent due to block boundary artifact, but the amount is very little and doesn’t sully much to render the picture an admixed wash in the lion’s share of soft lighting. Details are okay here with the stunning urban landscapes and more opened metropolitan venues, such as a rooftop party, opening up audiences to the chic levels of high society’s profanation of control and sex. The release offers two Italian language audio tracks: A Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and a 2.0 stereo. If asked, I would suggest less channels as they are redundant and useless and go for the 2.0 stereo as there’s not much frequential range in what is essentially a talking head film with an exposition driven narrative. Dialogue is clearly and cleanly stated overtop other audio layers with a powerfully boosted stock file soundtrack in parallel unison to the theatrics. English subtitles are optionally available and the error-free translations keep up with dialogue pacing. Only other Cinephobia Releasing film trailers, including “Brightwood,” “The Goldsmith,” “The Human Trap,” and “Amor Bandido,” are available bonus content. The black background front cover delineates deliciously Beatric Schiaffino as the titular Emanuelle sitting open robed, in thigh-high laced stockings, and on her wicker chair throne. This image reminds me of a mistake in this revealing scene with the very first image of Emanuelle sitting in the oversized back chair resembling closely the front cover image, but the subsequent scenes have her once flesh exposed chest to midriff covered up with censurable continuity. Inside the DVD Amary case lie no insert and the same provocative front cover Emanuelle image more centrally cropped down and blow up to emphasize the seductive siren. The not rated, 83-minute feature is limited to a region one playback. “Emanuelle’s Revenge” spices up the contemporary franchise with erotic entails, exorbitant egos, and illicit indecencies despite its sacrificing of pacing and organization for sleaze, skin, and a side dish of kink.


Emanuelle’s Revenge now on DVD from Cinephobia Releasing!

Congratulations! You Won an All-Inclusive EVIL Trip to “Terror at Red Wolf Inn” reviewed! (Cheezy Movies / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Come for the Dinner, Stay to be Eaten at the Red Wolf Inn on a Cheezy Movies’ DVD!

When riffling through her mail, Regina McKee opens a letter informing her she has won a marvelous prize, an all-expenses paid vacation at the quaint resort of Red Wolf Inn.  The young college student is escorted on a charter plane to a quiet town where the historic 1891 resort house resides and to greet her re hosts Evelyn and Henry Smith along with their grandson Baby John Smith.  Occupied with two other guests, Regina finds the old house luxuriously relaxing, her hosts cordially jovial, and the food as about as fantastically delicious as it is seeming endless when the Smiths introduce course-after-course of beautifully cut fillets and delectable desserts.  The Smiths don’t like to skip a meal.  When the other guests’ planned departure feels abrupt without them saying goodbye, Regina begins to suspect something isn’t quite right with The Smiths, something hidden behind the doors of the walk in refrigerator and is being incorporated into all those fatteningly delicious meals. 

Before Papa Jupitar and his children terrorize and cannibalize the Carter family on their way to Los Angeles through the rural, desert roads of Nevada in 1977 and even before a group of young friends stumble upon a demented family abiding by the slaughterhouse rules of people in the backwaters of Texas in 1974, there was the elderly couple and resort owners named The Smiths who entertained young women for dinner to wet their appetites by plumping those same young women into dinner in 1972.  The Late director Bud Townsend, who helmed a limited filmography in his short feature film tenure between 1970 and 1985 with such titles as “Nightmare in Wax” and “Alice in Wonderland:  An X-Rated Musical Fantasy,” took the only credited Allen Actor script and fashioned it into a dissembling macabre for the silverscreen.  Also known as “Secrets Beyond the Door,” “Club Dead,” “Terror on the Menu,” and “Terror House,” which the latter was likely the version experienced for this review due in part to cuts made, “Terror of Red Wolf Inn” is a production of Far West Films and Red Wolf Productions LLC with “Count Yorga, Vampire’s” Michael Macready producing and Allen Actor and Herb Ellis associate producing.

Would you ever answer the letter to a strange solicitation about winning an all-expenses paid vacation in a sleepy little town?  No, neither would I, but that’s what the heroine principal Regina McKee (Linda Gillen, “Black Rain”) did on a whirlwind, excited whim during a time when scammers had only the United States Post Office to importune their tricks upon the gullible.  The 1970s are obviously not as clued in or as technological savvy as the modern times of today with caller Ids, tall tell signs robo-recordings, and all the news stories and documentaries about telemarking boiler rooms; instead, we’re transported back in time where the gift of deceit can be achieved too terribly easy.  Linda Gillen, a freckled face, auburn-haired actress looks like the girl next door with a realness about her modest appearance as a leading lady and when compared to the likes and looks of Mary Jackson (“The Exorcist III,” “Skinned Alive”) and Arthur Space (“Mansion of the Doomed,” “The Swarm”), as innkeepers Evelyn and Henry Smith, the elderly couple reel in that realness even further by being not overly ruthless in their confidence game of cooking with cannibalism and instead bring warmth and hospitality that results in a slow burning dread that can be just as terrifying as an open cookbook cannibal.  The one character I struggle with is Baby John Smith played by John Neilson (“Honky”) and is method toward an unhinged grandson Regina recklessly falls for in record time of knowing him.  Baby John Smith very much plays into his moniker with childlike tantrums and glistening eye wonderment under a tall and chiseled frame of a man, but his infatuation with Regina, that ultimately plays deeper into the story and to foul up his family’s usual dinner plans, feels ingeniously forced as a device just deployed without justification as there is nothing inherently special about Regina compared to the two other lovely guests with more interesting backgrounds and appearances in characters played by Janet Wood (“Ice Cream Man”) and Margaret Avery (“Night Trap”). 

Allen Actor’s script is overall just plain ludicrous.  Who in their right mind would jet off to an unknown small town for a vacation getaway they won out of the blue from a resort that somehow, someway received their name and address?  Was it just a name randomly picked by pointing to that person in the national phonebook?  Who knows because the exact why and how doesn’t see light within the framework that has Regina be the crab who doesn’t know they’re boiling in a pot of hot water until it’s too late.  There are also two good-looking female guests who are also invited for a 2-week staycation until a party and celebration are given by the host for what is ultimately their guest’s last meal to become a meal for the remaining, unsuspecting guests and the devious entertainers.  Aside from a questionable story setup, I found “Terror at Red Wolf Inn” to be well-made and acted.  Townsend obviously knew what he wanted and how to do along with cinematographer John McNichol (“Private Duty Nurses”) to effectively turn around a fly-by-the-seams script into something far more polished on the surface and that adds that layer of suspense when our heroine discovers the truth about her hosts and her newfound love interest.  There’s also an interesting angle of letting Regine free range the house and grounds after the unveiling of anthropophagy because the whole town is essentially in own the caper or the town’s just  one big family, the character pilot who dropped off Regina and the police offer who turns out to be Baby John Smith’s brother or cousin.  Not a lot of detail explores this angle but enough is said and done to know that Regina is trapped without being shackled to her room in a pretty surreal and scary variable of the Inn’s history.

The USA thriller has many titles, been released on many formats, and now Cheezy Movies and Trionic Entertainment presents “Terror at Red Wolf Inn” on a standard definition DVD.  The 480p transfer print is an anemically graded rip from the VHS, digitized to DVD with all the excessive noise, speckled dropouts, mistracking, and blocking included and on top of the original 35 mm print that had typically celluloid grain and, perhaps, its own age and wear issues by the time this print made it to tape.  The print used for VHS appears visibly clean if removing the VHS defects but with the lower resolution, the Cheezy Movies DVD looks pale and dark with very little detail in what is basically slapping together a DVD without any augmentation and restoration to the print.  This is very conventional for this distributor so no I’m not surprised.  The English language mono mix has an enervated strength being ripped from the VHS audio track. Dialogue meets bare standard being out-front and intelligible and can be rambunctious at times with the unpropitious parties for every guest sendoff but doesn’t have space or depth around them under the brittle unbridled bitrate that offers crackling and some hissing throughout. There are no subtitles available with this release. With most of Cheezy Movies’ catalogue, only within the static menu is a chapter selection in its near-nude dressing. The region free release comes with a, supposed cut, R-rated print and has a runtime of 90 minutes. Behind the exemplar 1970’s color graded and arranged poster art for the front cover, one of Evelyn and Henry Smith looking stern over a girl laid out in bikini, inside the standard Amaray DVD case is a disc printed with the same artwork, but title and tagline cropped with just the elderly Smiths and the bikini-bottomed gal. There is not an insert included. “Terror at Red Wolf Inn” is the precursor to a family of cannibal crazies subgenre that has, for the better part of its existence, exploded rather than imploded all due in part to Bud Townsend and his modest directorial.

Come for the Dinner, Stay to be Eaten at the Red Wolf Inn on a Cheezy Movies’ DVD!