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EVIL Chews Through Its Own Loved Ones as “The Vourdalak” reviewed! (Oscilloscope Laboratories / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Vourdalak” Available Now at Amazon.com!

The special emissary of the King of France is ambushed by Turks in an isolated Slovic countryside.  With his carriage and clothes stolen and his driver-servant dead, Monseigneur Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfé has nothing more than the clothes on his back.  He finds himself in the home of Gorcha, an enemy of the Turks, who resides with his three adult children, a daughter in law, and a grandson, but Gorcha was not presently there to greet his hapless visitor until his returns later that day from fighting the Turkish raiders.  Yet, aside from the oldest son Jegor, the family’s superstitious beliefs lead them to doubt Gorcha returning home human and instead has returned as vourdalak, or a blood hungry vampiric creature who feeds on his own loving family to turn them all into the same unnatural ilk.  From an outsider’s point of view, what Marquis d’Urfé witnesses initially is a strange peasant family’s irritational fear turn into a harrowing horror as one-by-one the family members reach an unfortunate end after the return of Gorcha.

Based off the gothic novella “La Famille du Vourdalak. Fragment inedit des Memoires d’un inconnu” from Russian author Aleksey Konstantinovic Tolstoy, a story that plays on the etymology of the Slavic folklore word Wurdulac, or a vampire-like creature, that exacts a similar transpiring fate as described in the above plotline of Adrien Beau’s “The Vourdalak.”   The writer-director fleshes out the 1839 Tolstoy story, one that’s predates Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” by nearly 60 years, for his own period set rendition created for modern times almost two centuries later in 2023 as his debut feature-length film.  The French film is cowritten alongside Hadrien Bouvier who doesn’t depict the vampiric creature as a nobleman, or even a man of wealth, but rather as a likely lowly serf of the countryside under a noble or lord.  Yet, the script, very much like Tolstoy’s novella, is contained within the family and their home rather than expanding across continents and seas, as in Stoker’s “Dracula.”  “The Vourdalak” is produced by “Alone in Berlin’s” Marco and Lola Pacchnioni and Judith Lou Lévy (“Zombie Child”) under the production banners of Les Films du Ball, Master Movies and, in association with, Cinemage 17 and Amazon. 

A period piece with an intimate cast brings closer together the targeted era of late 18th century to early 19th century costuming, articles, and, to extent, performances that sell the monarchial times of French aristocracy and Slavic provincials living humbly on the fringes of an everlasting Russo-Turkish war that spanned decades.  Leading the charge is the only French aristocrat portrayed character in the story played by Kacey Mottet Klein (“The Suicide Shop”).  Dressed in traditional Empiric style high collar shirt, petty coat, and a white wig and garishly garnished with white pale-looking makeup with mouche, an adhesive mole, to reflect their wealth and status, Klein’s prim-and-proper, yet prudish and prissy, Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfé is finely out of his element with a satisfiable character arc that has the Monseigneur go from a squeamish snob to finding compassion, sympathy, and courage amongst darkness aimed to swallow a family whole as d’Urfé’s high society and fantastical life clashes with the real world with war, necessity, death, natural beauty, unconventionalities, and consideration through another type of fantasy lens, a troubling, insidious darkness that plagues and feeds on the blood from within a domestic design that’s ruthless as it is unfathomable.  Jegor (Grégoire Colin, “Bastards”) is the loyal eldest son, Piotr (Vassili Schneider, “The Demons”) is the sexual orient ambiguous second son with external emotions unlike his other brother, Sdenka (Ariane Labed, “The Brutalist”) is the free-spirited but melancholic beauty, Anja (Claire Duburcq, “She is Conann”) as Jegor’s more than practical and realistic wife and young Vlad (Gabriel Pavie) is Jegor and Anje’s preadolescent boy.  The aforenoted characters are all embodied by a physical, living person to play the role but Gorcha is a horse of another color.  In fact, Gorcha’s not a living thing at all and is actually a puppet personified by two puppeteers and voiced by director Adrien Beau.  The puppet has an emaciated appearance, resembling closely to those used in “Return of the Living Dead, and with the power of green screen, the animating arms and bodies are overlayed out and Gorcha lives and breathes with an animatism spirit that’s creepy as all Hell with an underscoring tow of vampirism. 

In its essence, “The Vourdalak” embraces the simplicity with a less-is-more atmosphere, a self-assured reliance in the palpable and practical, and a confidence in its cast to extract the drama and horror of a longstanding folklore and deliver its poignant potency with eccentric diversity and steady anxiety.  Beau drenches dread into every crevice that sticks like humidity to its subdued black comedy attire.  Yes, “The Vourdalak,” though grim and dark, has a sliver of comedy course through its bloodlet and lapped up veins from the main character’s perspective who, at first, is quite out of his comfortable, aristocracy element being wiggled into a lower-class family’s unusual dysfunctionality.  There’s also the puppet aspect integrated into living, breathing actors as if one of their own and that certainly as a basic layer of absurd surrealism, the French know a thing or two about liberal arts absurdism.  Beau’s shooting style resembles a blend between the fixed camera and low-key lit silent films, also implementing throwback spyglass shots that were widely used in the early cinematic period, and the Euro-horror movement of the 1960s to early 1980s with an ominous romanticism, a dark and creepy-fog environment, and tinged to cooler shades of soft blues and greens all the while lightly touching upon themes of sexuality, homosexuality, and family structures that often collide with one another to stir the pot and overshadows the imminent danger in front of them. 

“The Vourdalak” is unpredictably grotesque in the most amusingly macabre way and is now on a region free Blu-ray release from our friends at Oscilloscope Laboratories.  AVC encoded onto the BD50, the high definition, 1080p resolution, might throw audiences and purveyors of physical media for a loop when the picture isn’t as fine as expected for a modern released picture.  That’s because Adrien Beau shot “The Dourdalak” in Super 16mm that enlivens a grainy and soft toned picture that can appear slightly blurry, resembling the ilk of European horror from the 1960s-1980s  Presented in an anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, Beau is very committed the coldness of bleak grays, blues, reds and the variant fused shades of purple, pink, and teals that sparingly envelope the entire frame with a lens tint in surreal moments, such as fever dreams or emulated night shots.  Though unfocused at times, plenty of distinction can still be rendered, such as the very stooge features and qualities of the Gorcha puppet.  The French DTS-HD Master Audio stereo track is an audio sensory mini-triumph.  In its modest sound design, minor qualitative sounds instill creepy atmospherics, especially the sound prominence of a raw chewing theme associated with the vourdalak creature’s folklore.  Adrien Beau also better animates and personifies his Gorcha puppet with a wheezy and struggling voice over for who is supposed to be a very elderly father-grandfather in an undernourished and skeletal appearance with sunken, bulging eyes and a near fully exposed teeth. The special features include two of Adrien Beau’s short films “Les Condiments Irreguliers” and “La Petite Sirene” as well as a behind-the-scenes featurette that’s more of the raw footage of animating and acting the Gorcha puppet without the visual effects removing the puppeteers. The Oscilloscope Laboratories Blu-ray comes in a clear Amaray case with soft, airbrushed quality composition artwork of a calm Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d’Urfé being feasted upon around his neck by the vourdalak. The reverse side contains a still image of a medium-far shot of one of the more powerful images in the film of a graveyard d’Urfé passes through as if it was a revolving doorway in and out of death. A simple yellow title and label name are splayed across the disc, consistent and normal per the company’s design, and the film is not rated with a runtime of 90 minutes.

Last Rites: Rarely do I give a five-star review for a film but Adrien Beau’s “The Vourdalak” is a fascinating and frightening visualization of Aleksey Konstantinovic Tolstoy story that trades visceral images for palpable ones in a folkloric entrancement of unnatural beings disrupting the natural world, a concept worth chewing on the nape of the neck for.

“The Vourdalak” Available Now at Amazon.com!

Experimental, Recreational Drug Use in College has Killer, EVIL Effects! “Blue Suneshine” reviewed! (Synapse Films / 3-Disc 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and CD Limited Edition Set)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Trip Out on Synapse’s Limited Edition “Blue Sunshine”

A party between friends turns deadly when one of them goes into a violent frenzy after being reveled his loss of all his hair.  Blamed for the murders, floating through life Jerry Zipkin is evading police investigators while also trying to connect the pieces on why a good friend of his would suddenly turn into a madman with no body hair and with five times the strength of any ordinary man.  His own investigation leads him to Blue Sunshine, an LSD variant connected to every transgressive event similar to the party, and at the center of it all is congressional frontrunner Edward Flemming who peddled Blue Sunshine 10 years ago at Stanford.  The latent consequence is now slowly surfacing to a head and more people are starting to experience the aggressive, alopecia effects, all Zipkin has to do to prove his innocent and a major ticking timebomb is to take a sample from a living specimen to show aberrant chromosome damage caused by the designer drug. 

Before becoming outed and investigated that the U.S. government experimented LSD on human subjects and it’s unknown but possible dormant side effects of years later, writer-director Jeff Lieberman put theory into sensationalized practicality with his post-psychedelic horror “Blue Sunshine” that turned ordinary, friendly people into headache-induced phonophobia sufferers and hairless, homicidal maniacs with super strength.  Lieberman’s 1977 released film snugs in between his killer Earthworm creature feature “Squirm” and one of the better backwoods slashers titled “Just Before Dawn,” tackling with themes of adverse effects from manmade drugs, political corruption, and to never judge a book by its cover.  The film is produced by “Squirm’s” George Manasse with “He Knows Your Alone” and “The Clairvoyant” producers Edgar Lansbury and Joseph Beruh serving as executive producers on the Ellanby Films production.

While the plot point that pushes Jerry Zipkin in the direction of investigation of the sudden fury and death surrounding his friend treads a threadbare rope with little background to suggest Zipkin is characteristically dedicated, loyal, curious, or all of the above to find out what happened, Zalman King’s overall performance as the path unaffixed Zipkin overshadows those missing background pieces and motivations.  In more key precise terms, Lieberman’s misdirection toward King’s erratic and strange behavior puts a lot of the focus on Zipkin rather than obvious derangement of the latent LSD maniacs with corrupted chromosomes in what was meant to puzzle the audiences in believing Zipkin himself might be the loose cannon cause behind the murders or, even perhaps, another ignorant victim of blue sunshine, which the latter would have been more intriguing and powerfully motivating for the Zipkin character as what drives him to solve the mystery and save himself.  None of the relationship resolve any type of secure or genuine interactions, specifically with Alicia Sweeney (Deborah Winters, “Tarantulas:  The Deadly Cargo”) with an unrealistic strong undying love for Zipkin despite only knowing him for a couple of months and the entire Stanford contingent from a decade earlier who Zipkin was able to easily link together within a matter of seconds of either examining a bloody crime scene or meeting a pair of the blue sunshine fiends.  One of the better, solid bonds is between the will-do-what-it-takes congress candidate Ed Flemming (Mark Goddard, Lost in Space) and his towering former college football buddy Wayne Mulligan (Ray Young, “Blood of Dracula’s Castle”) who becomes Flemming’s 6’6” advisor and bodyguard.  While might not seem like a well-rounded bond, Flemming and Mulligan have something tangible one can grab and understand when compared to other dynamic relationships that float in arbitrary.   Robert Walden (“Rage”), Charles Siebert (“Tarantulas:  The Deadly Cargo”), Ann Cooper, and Stefan Gierasch (“Carrie”) costar. 

“Blue Sunshine’s” premise has long stood the test of time because its more relatable now than ever as scientists and medical experts are in a fluid state of studying the effects of drugs digested, snorted, injected, or smoked weeks, months, years, and decades ago.  This premise also translates over to contaminants that cause sicknesses, such as the link between asbestos and cancer were tumors form years after exposure.  Lieberman catches wind early of the dangerous latent effects and manipulates it for the basis his film that is more fact than fiction.  Lieberman’s ability to minimize assurances on who is transfiguring into a killer is all in his characterizing nuances, shading in gray areas with excellently crafted character profile vignettes in between the opening credits that instill suspicion, fear, and some unknown stemmed danger ahead.  The unique setup is the filmmaker’s only real unconventional course in the narrative that plays out mostly a routine hand in a natural style albeit the surrealism of extreme closeups and angles on bald headed balefulness when the rage takes over or the slow, insidious madness that seeps into Zipkin’s mind causing hallucinations to exact an audience experiencing disturbance in the envisaged air.  Engaging and self-security eviscerating, “Blue Sunshine” is carbonated madness in a bottle, shook up and ready to pop. 

Synapse continues to upgrade their catalogue with Blue Sunshine next on the augmentation block with a new and mighty 3-disc Blu-ray and 4K UHD restoration release.  Presented in Dolby Vision HDR10, the restoration of the original 35mm camera negative sees it’s 4K transfer compressed with a HEVC codec that produces 2160p and is stored onto a BD100 while the Blu-ray is a compressed AVC, 1080p resolution, on a BD50.  The restoration will blow you away with diffused color palette and organic details that by far are the best they’ve ever looked with a balanced, natural grain level that keeps the speckling down in darker portions of the film to retain inkiness while securing the authenticity of the film stock without any smoothing over and artificial enhancements.  Vivid coloring, immersive details, and natural skin tones, when not softly grayed by the drug’s effects, throughout are appreciatively stable with no qualitative loss between cuts, creating a pleasurable and seamless visual experience on both formats.  Each format comes with two English audio options, a lossless DTS-HD master audio 5.1 surround sound, supervised and approved by director Jeff Lieberman, and a lossless DTS-HD master audio original theatrical mono 2.0.  While the amplification of the same sound output through the dual channels is inviting for purist, I highly recommend the immersive 5.1 surround sound that retains the genuine article of audio fidelity.   Charlie Gross’s orchestral strings instruments, percussive gongs, and synthesizing score fully engrosses the characters and audiences alike into a fold of unnerving, lingering tingles that evoke the monstrous maniac effect possibilities beyond the Jerry Zipkin tale.  Dialogue renders over with fine precision that hangs on every word and sentence with no hissing and crackling to obstruct it’s sweeping clarity.  A bountiful amount of Mind-Altering special features that fill this limited to 4000 copies set that include a new feature prologue introduction with director Jeff Lieberman.  There are two audio commentaries, an archived 2003 interview with Lieberman, a Channel Z Fantasy Film Festival ”Lieberman on Lieberman” interview with the director hosted by “Sleepwalkers” Mick Garris, a Q&A video from the Fantasia Film Festival 4K premiere moderated by Michael Gingold and Lieberman, an anti-drug scare-film “LSD-25” from 1967 and “LSD:  Insight or Insanity?” From 1968 from the American Genre Film Archive, Jeff Leiberman’s first film “The Ringer” with two cuts of the film, the original uncut version from the projection print source and the final release from the remastered Synapse Films 4K transfer with audio commentary included on the uncut version by Jeff Leiberman and moderator Howard S. Berger, still gallery and theatrical trailers. Synapse’s limited-edition boxset is nothing you’ve ever seen before from the company with not only a rigid slipbox case but there’s also a cardboard O-slipcover, both housing the clear, inch-thick Blu-ray Amaray case and both showcasing new illustrative, compositional, air brushed artwork of some of the key character scenes and expressions by Wes Benscoter, which is a real thing of beauty. The Amaray cover art is the regular 70’s grade cover art seen on previous releases from DVD to Blu-ray with a reverse side an image of the tripped-out Ed Flemming icon photo of his drug peddling days at Stanford. Overlapping 4K and Blu-ray discs display graphic presses in story moment compositions, though I don’t recall a half-naked woman in the film yet is on the cover. Not quite yet done with the bonus material, the 3rd disc is a 13-track Soundtrack CD of the score and laid overtop is the 11-page liner note booklet from Jeff Lieberman’s 2020 memoir “Day of the Living Me: Adventures of a Subversive Cult Filmmaker From the Golden Age,” plus the CD track listing, production credits, and special thanks on the backside. A reproduction of the original one sheet poster is stored in the insert as a mini-folded poster along with Synapse’s 2024 catalogue for your perusing pleasure. The rated-R film has a runtime of 95 minutes, and the limited edition doesn’t limit itself to a confined playback with region free decoding.

Last Rites: In order to snag a copy of this stellar Synapse set, muscles are required as this heavy boxset feels like 5lbs of software and hardware special features regarding Jeff Leiberman’s drugs-are-bad thriller “Blue Sunshine” with chrome dome, blank-stare killers doing the dormant bidding of 10-years-old recessed LSD.

Trip Out on Synapse’s Limited Edition “Blue Sunshine”

Babysitter Wanted….by EVIL! “The House of the Devil” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

University student Samantha is strapped for cash when trying to express her independence from an invasive and inconsiderate college roommate by renting a house.  In need of quick money to put down the first month’s rent by upcoming Monday, Samatha answers a babysitting billboard ad that leads her to an isolated house outside city limits on a night when the moon is going to be fully eclipsed.  Misled by her employers, the Ulmans, that the care job is not for a child, but rather Mrs. Ulman’s elderly mother and in her desperation, Samantha accepts the odd job for the money needed to secure her new home.  Alone in a dark old house, Samantha’s nerves quickly tingle and recoil at every sound and strange occurrence, quickly coming to realize the Ulmans may be lying to her more than she knows, especially behind the locked rooms where satanic secrets reside and she’s the key to their black practices during the occultation. 

Perhaps one of the hottest directors in the horror genre today with his “X” trilogy, within the trilogy is also “Pearl” and “MaXXXine,” Ti West has been a consistent genre filmmaker since his first feature “The Roost” two decades ago.  Yet, before the “X” trilogy, the year was 2009 when West caught the attention of horror fans with his 198’s inspired and veneered satanic panic film, “The House of the Devil.”  Shot in Connecticut, primarily in an older woman’s gothic Victorian style home, West wanted to bring back the alone babysitter and old dark house theme from decade the story is set, shooting entirely on 16mm that, too, provides that grainy image and darker aesthetic through each frame of the stock.  Initially called just “The House” in initial script treatments, Ti West’s completed film is a production of Larry Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix (“The Last Winter”) in association with RingTheJing Entertainment and Construtovision with MPI Media Group (“Henry:  Portrait of a Serial Killer” presenting and is produced by Fessenden, Josh Braun (“Creep”), Derek Curl (“Stake Land”), Roger Kass (“A History of Violence”), and Peter Phok (“X”).

In her western, button-up plaid shirt and high-rise mom jeans, Jocelin Donahue (“Doctor Sleep,” “The Burrowers”) epitomized the look of young college girl of the 1980s and with her dialogue and her eclectic 2-minute dance session through the Ulman house proved she has the speech and movements that resemble the timeframe as well.  Donahue is extremely good of taking her character, Samantha Hughes, from a panic scale of one straight up to panic scale of ten in this slow burn, tension-building thriller that isn’t a rollercoaster ride of the next attention deficient disorder event but rather a steady increase of anxiety and anticipation that nags in the back of one’s mind.  Donahue has good reason to be as frightened as she appears on screen with the towering presence of the ever something’s-terribly-off-about-this-character portrayal by “Manhunter’s” Tom Noonan and the malicious grim of a steely wolf under a pearly sheep’s wool from “Night of the Comet’s” Mary Woronov as a pair of satanists.  Noonan and Woronov don’t have immense screentime and are behaviorally underused in the interactions with their babysitter Samantha as West intended target is for Samantha to dynamically degrade within the shadows and creaks of a creepy old house rather have characters be the foremost formidable, focused fear.  In the peripherals is Samatha’s wealthy and vocally blunt friend Megan (Greta Gerwig and, yes, the same Greta Gerwig who wrong and directed that “Barbie” movie) who provides that calling of rationality toward a strange situation only to find herself too wrapped up in her friend’s choices rather than seeing the danger that’s in front of her and there’s also fellow Satan cultist Victor (AJ Bowen, “You’re Next”) who is more or less the son in this Ulman trio of terror.  The cast rounds out with Heather Robb (“The Roost”) as Samantha’s inconsiderate roommate and the genre actor Dee Wallace (“Cujo”) in a small cameo role of the Landlady who, refreshingly, isn’t part of the core plot to burden the actress as an accelerant to pulse the heart of the story faster.

Ti West really did harness and recreate the dark, solemn energy of the alone babysitter and/or the old dark house subgenres that propelled films such as “When a Stranger Calls,” “Black Christmas,” and even “Halloween” into the cult favorite cosmos.  These particular horror categories are obviously nothing new to diehard fans but they have unfortunately been, for a lack of a better term, forgotten, conjured up only in stored memory banks of those old enough, like me, to have lived consciously through the 70s and 80s and, maybe because of West, audiences starting to see a revival of sorts with modern day retrograding to relive the golden age of the slasher renaissance, popularized by hardcore and gory scares with films like “All Hallows Eve” and the “Terrifier” trilogy,.  Yet, “The House of the Devil” is not an overly gory and squirmy disgusting feature as West meticulously structures the narrative to be evidently tense in an uncomfortable, unfamiliar environmental setting of an antiquated house owned by equally antiquated, and frankly weird, bunch in Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov and West guides audiences step-by-step very slowly up to craggy edge before pushing us violently into the infernal grips of satanists and the demons that seek a female vessel for, whom we presume will be, their unholy lord and destructor.  The third act rips ferociously in contrast to earlier acts in a spiral fit of rite and sacrifice that incorporates more characters, more blood, and a cynical ending that requires no more exposition, no more scenes, and no further explanation in its wayward wake. 

Second Sight Films delivers Satan to us with a new UK Blu-ray release.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 is jam-packed with bonus content and a more than satisfactory A/V package.  Presented in a widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1, the colorist reproduction leans into that of an 80s horror with a diffused, mid-level saturation of frame cells on 16mm stock, bestowing the image quality with more noticeable grain elements because of its smaller size blown up.  The seemingly white fleck-riddled darker areas or clustering grain experience may discourage audiences of a broad digital generation but for those who know, know how great “The House of the Devil” aesthetically looks as a whole, complete with era appropriate wardrobe and set dressings.  Textures and details do come through despite the stock naturalities but they’re not terribly overpowering or as substantially present an a mostly tan or brown color scheme in a lower contrast.  The English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio offers superb audio reproduction and spatial dissemination, especially through the wood-laden house to where the strain creaks of wood floors and doors offer a side and back-channel chill.  There’s plenty of front loaded, two channel action between the dialogue and the rest of the meium-to-close range shots with a range of diegetic effects – i.e. gunshots, telephone rings, and other actionable movements within the frame – and non-diegetic effects that include demonic whisper through moveless lips and, of course, those creaky noises amongst the empty house.  Dialogue is clean, clear, and prominent throughout.  There are English subtitles optionally available for selection.  Second Sight films did a ton of legwork here for special features, conducting and encoding new interviews with director Ti West The Right Vibe, actress Jocelin Donahue Satanic Panic, actor AJ Bowen Slowing Down is Death, producer Peter Phok A Level of Ambition, producer Larry Fessenden An Enduring Title, director of photography Eliot Rockett It All Feels Appropriate, and composer Jeff Grace Hiding the Seams, sound designer Graham Reznick Writing Through Sound.  There are also a pair of audio commentaries with 1) writer-director Ti West and actress Jocelin Donahue and 2) West with producers Larry Fessenden and Peter Phok along with sound designer Graham Reznick and the rounds out with a making-of featurette, deleted scenes, and original trailer.  Since we’re reviewing the standard Blu-ray release from Second Sights, this version does not call with all the physical bells and whistles associated with the limited, rigid slipbox releases that contain lobby cards and booklet, usually.  Instead, the standard release is a streamlined, green-hued Blu-ray Amaray with uncredited illustrated artwork of Donahue’s character overtop of the titular house with the dark and spooky moon in the background.  Instead, is just the disc pressed with the same front cover image of the house sans Donahue and the moon.  The UK certified 18 release contains strong violence and gore, is hard encoded B for regional playback, and has a runtime of 95 minutes.

Last Rites: The 80’s knock back with Ti West’s satanic panic inspired alone babysitter thriller with a sleek new Blu-ray, overflowing with new retrospective interviews, from Second Sight Films!

Mesozoic Era EVIL and the Cavegirl Beauties! “Dinosaur Valley Girls” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Dinosaur Valley Girls” Visual Vengeance Collector’s Set Available Here!

Action movie superstar Tony Markham’s relationships exploit him of his actor status as women will only surround him for even just a bit part in one of his films.  Tony continues to have reoccurring dreams of a prehistoric place where a beautiful cavewoman allures him with mysterious passion.  Unable to get the images out of his head, he visit’s a natural history museum that conjures familiarities within the dinosaur bones and cave drawings that look awfully similar to the cavewoman of his dreams.  When he wishes upon a supposed magically talisman, Tony is transported to prehistoric past where he encounters dangerous dinosaurs, brutish cavemen, and bosomy cavewomen looking for love, even Hea-Thor, the one from his nightly visions.  As Tony tries to figure out a way to return home, he finds Hea-Thor has become infatuated with the man from the future for not his movie stardom and seeks to reestablish relationships between the men and women tribes after years of loveless contention.

A time-travelling, dino-tastic romp with also a whole lot of rumps, “Dinosaur Valley Girls” is the voluptuous, velociraptor sex-comedy of the mid-1990s during the post-Jurassic Park Dinosaur craze.  Filmmaker and paleontology enthusiast Donald F. Glut combined his love for making practical movies and the inscrutable dinosaur biota together into one hairbrained comedy “Dinosaur Valley Girls.”   Glut, who established himself as a short film and television writer, especially in animation, had worked on “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends,” “The Transformers, and even “Scooby-Doo” and “Captain America,” and then, after his feature length debut on “Dinosaur Valley Girls,” continued on to write and direct more sexploitation features, such as “The Erotic Rites of Countess Dracula” and “The Mummy’s Kiss.”  Film in mostly in the Bronson Canyon and Dinosaur Valley State Park of California and Texas, “Dinosaur Valley Girls” is produced by Kevin M. Glover (“Sisterhood of the Shewolf”) and is a production of the Donald F. Glut, Kevin M. Glover, and Executive Producer Daniel J. Mullen cohort company Glut Mullen Productions in association with Frontline Entertainment for distribution rights.

Jeff Rector, who has a classic look circa 50s or 60s in style and mannerisms, principally leads as Tony Markham, the hot flavor of the month actor within a franchise of martial arts films and is in the weeds of women yearning to be with him only in hope for a small role in one of his hit movies.  The “Hellmaster” and “Legion of the Night” actor hams up the humble, good-lookin’ good guy act with smooth as butter suaveness and silky speech that drives his dream cavegirl Hea-Thor up a Brachiosaurus neck.  Actress turned television and column journalist Denise Ames rocked out with her chest out for nearly all her filmic career before going into the celebrity news reporting profession with securing her only principal lead in Hea-Thor to head Glut’s “Dinosaur Valley Girls,” a gaggle of fed-up cavewomen who have separated from their male counterparts because of their abusive, brutish behavior.  Denise Ames (“Danger Zone III:  Steel Horse War,” “Slash Dance”) was typically typecasted as the sexy girl and as Hea-Thor, the role is no different with a big hair-don’t care, easy-on-the-eyes early woman whose half nude or topless for much of her scnees.  Glut’s comical pen plays as much into the satirist spirit as it does into the gratuitousness of a rather harmless sexploitation.  For instance, all the cavegirls have that play on stereotypical valley names like Hea-Thor with Bran-Dee (Staci B. Flood), Tor-Ree (S.G Ellison), Bar-Bee (Caree), Tam-Mee (Tammy Lee Jackson), Mee-Shell (Donna Spangler), Bam-Bee (Lauryn Vea), and Buf-Fee (Michelle Stanger).  There’s also Ro-Kell, played by the late cult actress Karen Black  (“Trilogy of Terror,” “House of a 1000 Corpses”), trying to keep her girls safe from a longing Ur-So, played by Ed Fury in a name homage role to his days playing the titular hero Ursus.  Black and Fury are fine apart but together they’re like two playful puppies enjoying each other company and making their characters be the catalyst for change Tony strives for amongst the long feuding cave people.  In the casting mix, Harrison Ray plays Beeg-Mak, leader of the semi-food monikered cavemen, the late “Blacula” actor William Marshall as a museum scientist, and softcore actress Griffin Drew (“Sex Files,” “The Blair Wench Project 2:  Scared Topless”) showing off her breast assets as Tony’s hand-and-foot, yet superficial, girlfriend.

“Dinosaur Valley Girls’ is not rocket science but it is science-fiction at its genre core with an ancient magical talisman transporting Tony to a bosomy, featherheaded, primordial time where stop motion and forced perspective dinosaurs roamed and the people population live simply in what is considered a primal culture that’s more creature than comfort.  You can see the fun Glut instills into the writing and the filming with little-to-no serious peril thrusted upon the characters in either facing off in a gender war or going toe-to-toe with an allosaurus.  Instead, Glut focuses more effort into the sexy and lighthearted campiness by theme of running gags and a love story plotline between a man and a woman from different time periods.  Does Glut explain why Tony is haunted by dreams of Hea-Thor and the prehistory.  No.  Do we need to care about that?  Nah.  Suggestive and silly sexploitation is genetically trimmed to be less tensioned and more stimulating with comedic relief and attractive nudity and “Dinosaur Valley Girls” delivers both commodities inside a lost world, fantasy-driven framework bred out of the mid-90s out from the wake of the mega blockbuster and special effects Tyrannosaur that was Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park.” 

Visual Vengeance, masters of the ostentatious obscurity and understated SOV films, transport us to the past with “Dinosaur Valley Girls” on a New American debut Blu-ray collector’s release! The BD50 is AVC encoded, 1080i upconverted from 720p, transferred from the original standard definition tape elements, with the pre-film caveat of potential A/V issues to set the bar. Presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, the image is a mix of 35mm and tape that produces a mixed bag of quality standard with some scenes harnessing the film grain while other scenes get a sense of the interlacing aspects of tape. The grading if often muted yellow or a warm greenish tint inside and outside caves that often indicates the yellowing effect caused by either an aging tape or poor record quality but “Dinosaur Valley Girls” is actually one of Visual Vengeance’s better looking products when considering the image. The English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix offers front channel effects without seemingly too fixed. Instead, there’s plenty of distinct isolation between ambience, Foley (including non-diegetic sound effects), dialogue, and soundtrack. Ripping farts and boob-dropping boings take precedence in the layering scheme for the running gags unless there is dialogue than that’s untouched and unmolested with a clear and clean track that can take an anemic turn at times through the dual channels. Optional English subtitles are available for selection. Visual Vengeance supplies substantial supplementals with a new 2023 commentary with director Don F. Glut and director of “Lurking Fear” C. Courtney Joyner along with an archive commentary with same two. Extras continue with a 2023 interview with Dinosaur Valley Guy Don F. Glut, Don Glut: The Collection a look inside Don’s home that doubles as a dinosaur museum, deleted and alternate scenes, the Making of Dinosaur Valley Girls, a music video reel Dinosaur Tracks, Jurassic Punk film soundtrack with music and lyrics, Dinosaur Valley Girls soundtrack music and lyrics, the original storyboards, production stills, go-go dancer and model Mu Wang in Don F. Glut music videos Mu-Seum and Dance Prehistoric, original promotional trailer along with other Visual Vengeance trailers, and a PG-13 (boo) cut of the film. Visual Vengeance’s encoded animated loop menus are always a joy to just watch as well. If you want to talk about marketable physical media content, the limited o-slipcover on this collector’s set alone will turn head and catch eyes with illustrated, half-naked cavegirls running and following over as a monstrous, man-eating Dinosaur roars in the backdrop, credited to graphic artist Rick Melton. If you missed out on the slipcover, the same artwork is pressed on the Blu-ray disc and is on a mini-folded poster tucked in the insert. The clear Blu-ray Amaray case has additional, uncredited artwork that’s more sensationally adventurous than the actual film and the reverse side has the original cover art of a smiling Denise Ames as Hea-Thor pulled from previous releases. Inside is packed with the aforenoted poster plus a “Dinosaur Valley Girls” sticker, retro VHS sticker sheet, and a plotline, release acknowledgement, and Denise Ames image insert sheet. The unrated release is region free and has a runtime of 94-minutes.

Last Rites: Campy, schlocky, and plenty of T&A, “Dinosaur Valley Girls” beats out the Flintstones any day of the week with another Visual Vengeance awesomesaurus release.

“Dinosaur Valley Girls” Visual Vengeance Collector’s Set Available Here!

Next Step in Evolution Leads to EVIL’s War Against the Common Man. “Scanners” reviewed! (Second Sight / 4K UHD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Scanners” 4K is Head Popping Good! Buy it Here!

Dr. Paul Ruth is a ConSec scientist, the head of the private contract weapons department on the “Scanner” project.  A Scanner is a highly developed human with psychic and telekinetic powers able to control and damage the minds of others through the nervous system.   Ruth’s latest case is Cameron Vale, a vagrant helped by Ruth to control his self-detriment powers with the use of a scanning suppressive drug known as ephemerol.  When one of Ruth’s past subjects, a renegade Scanner known as Revok, infiltrates and assassinates a live public demonstration of the Scanner project with the intent to wage war on non-Scanners, Ruth’s only hope is to convince to conscript Vale to join the fight and infiltrate against Revok who kills any Scanner who doesn’t join his growing army.  Vale’s search for Revok leads him to learn of a treacherous mole within ConSec and that ephemerol is being weaponized against the normal human race.

On the heels of our Second Sight 4K review of David Cronenberg’s 1979 film “The Brood,” Cronenberg’s following film “Scanners” released two years later in 1981 ups the ante in elaborate special effects and high conceptual themes twirling around in a bowl of body horror soup and is now also available on 4K UHD from the UK Second Sight label!  Like “The Brood,” Cronenberg writes-and-direct a dysphoric film in his birth country of Canadian, per his normal track record of principal production countries, specifically shooting in in the urban and greater areas of Québec, Canada.  The first film of a trilogy, to which Cronenberg did not return to direct the subsequent sequels with both films released a decade later in 1991 and helmed by “Screamers” director Christian Duguay, is a production of the  CFDC (Canadian Film Development Corporation), Filmplan International, and Montreal Trust Company of Canada with Pierre David and Claude Héroux both returning from “The Brood” as executive producer and producer, respectively. 

The face of Scanners has been and always will be Michael Ironside, included on most poster and home video release stills and artworks of a flaringly distorted Ironside as Revok deep in a frighteningly milky-white eyed scanner turbulence.  The “Total Recall” and “Starship Troopers” actor has a face the camera loves, especially in an antagonistic role with Ironside’s gifted devilish grin, dagger eyes, and sarcastic stoic expressions.  However, he is not the heroic lead of Cronenberg’s “Scanners.”  Ironside is not even in the top three headlining credits.  That foremost distinction is consumed by Stephen Lack (“Perfect Strangers,” “Dead Ringers”) in the Cameron Vale role and Lack’s performance is indicative of his name in a completely overshadowed protagonist role.  Lack’s monotonic bordering dangerously to catatonic presence is swallowed up by Ironside who has fewer scenes but instills punchier passion toward his character’s rebellion against humanity cause, plus the contour control over his mannerism and expressions are impeccably cinematic  There are other actors credited ahead of Ironside, beginning with the greatly dramatical Patrick McGoohan (“Escape from Alcatraz”) as the pro-scanner ally Dr. Paul Ruth whose commanding the Vale assignment, “The Clown Murders’” Lawrence Dane as a traitorous ConSec company man Keller in Revok’s pocket lining, and “The Psychic’s” Jennifer O’Neill as fellow pacificist scanner and Vale love interest Kim Obrist.  Each actor finds their individual, attributable, character voice while giving into the required performance with commitment, a sentiment that was not shared by Lack in a strong leading man contender against the forces that face him or scan his mental space.  “Scanners” rounds out the cat with Robert A. Silverman (“The Brood,” “Jason X”), Mavor Moore (“Heavy Metal”),  Fred Doederlein (“Shivers”), Adam Ludwig (“Short Circuit 2”), and Victor Desy (“Rabid”) with that iconic head explosion scene.

To follow up “The Brood” almost right on its heels with “Scanners,” David Cronenberg’s creative synapses were just thunder stroking on all cylinders with ways to evolve mankind into next level grimdark science fiction.  The simple premise of the advanced human condition sparking a potential war between normal man and Scanner man with a private weapons developer in the middle, perhaps inadvertently or intentionally coaxing a new breed of man, is elevated by the special effects of Gary Zeller (“Visiting Hours, “Amityville II: The Possession”) and the makeup alley-oop by Dick Smith (“The Exorcist”) to give audiences those head-exploding, vein-popping, fire-starting special effects that are sear so well into the mind they’re virtually unerasable from the mind, as if real life scanners were implementing the reel into the occipital lobes themselves.  Plot devices like these inarguably saturate the cloak-and-dagger, on-the-run, and species-eradicating storyline with leadup anticipation, building suspense through the truth and lies of Vale’s assignment as well as Vale understanding and, ultimately, accepting his gift rather than seeing it as a burden or a blight to his being.  Unlike “The Brood,” “Scanners” leans more into the physical method of effects with not only the pulsing veins and the white contact lenses but Cronenberg amps up the pyrotechnics with violent and fiery explosions, both of which do a number of the body with blunt invisible force ravaging soft tissue, and also sets ablaze characters’ specific, isolated areas for visual awe and a presentation of a whole new possibility dimension plane of the mind and body that can create, endure, and eventually destroy.   

“Scanners” rounds out the pair of Second Sight’s David Cronenberg releases onto 4K UHD, in conjunction with “The Brood.” The HEVC encoded, 2160p ultra high-definition, BD100 houses the director approved 4K restoration transfer, presented in Dolby Vision HDR10 and in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Previous HD releases favored a slightly anemic image with a tilted color grading that never approached the aesthetics of the cinematic era. Second Sight improves on this with a present in time natural grading true to the late 70s into the early 80s. Healthy, organic grain filter through with an agreeable measure, never overtaking the details that effect upon texture and substance, such as from the massive head explosion with all the intricate gory bits of hair and flesh flying splattering about make for ideal visual immersion to the more macrolevel of inside circuitry when Vale enters the computerized nervous system through scanning. Skin tones render over organically with no flashes of a slightly orange tinge as in previous releases, corrected to overall completed neatness on the finer points. An English DTS-HD 5.1 master audio and a LPCM 1.0 mono consummate the release with fidelity honoring mixes. The surround sound offers a constructed immersive dynamic riddled with explosions and a feverish Howard Shore score engulfing the echoing of the scanner waves to denote the telekinetic or psychic use, but the mono track offers something far greater than any retroactive designed immersion track could offer, a genuine, unforced mix. Both tracks offer clean, robust dialogue with a clarity to match. English subtitles are available on both. Special features include a new audio commentary by Canadian film writer Caelum Vatnsdal and a second audio commentary by film academic William Beard. If comprehensive interviews straight for the horses’ mouths are your thing, than Second Sight has you covered with new and archive interviews with Stephen Lack My Art Keeps Me Sane, Michael Ironside A Method in His Madness, Lawrence Dane Bad Guy Dane, cinematographer Mark Irwin The Eye of Scanners, composer Howard Shore Mind Fragments, executive producer Pierre David The Chaos of Scanners, makeup artist Stephen Duplus Exploding Brains & Popping Veins, and with makeup effects artist Chris Walas Monster Kid. A new visual essay by Tim Coleman Cronenberg’s Tech Babies cabooses the special features. Encased in a traditional back UHD Amaray, the new artwork also sports a prominent and looming Michael Ironside as a raging scanner Revok but now Stephen Lack has presence space with his own iconic and disturbing moment from the film now on the front cover, as the little spoon of course. The companion standard Second Sight release of “Scanners” is UK certified 18, has a runtime of 103 minutes, and is region free!

Last Rites: “Scanners” never looked so good. An exceptional inception of a release from Second Sight Films that continues to aim high and raise the bar with every title they touch, like King Midas without being cursed by their success.

“Scanners” 4K is Head Popping Good! Buy it Here!