Romance and Chinese Boxing Don’t Equal EVIL and That’s Okay! “Gorgeous” reviewed! (88 Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Fall in Love with “Gorgeous” on Blu-ray at Amazon.com!

Bu believes in true love.  The young Taiwanese girl, with immense positivity, travels from her small fishing village of Jibei to the big city of Hong Kong after discovering a bottle containing a romantic note floating in the sea.  When Bu is let down by the originating sender, a gay makeup artist in an attempt to use fate and fortune to bring back an ex-lover, she strikes up a friendship with him which leads to a wealthy business owner and Chinese boxing enthusiast C.N. Chan who serendipitously comes into her life.  With a well-known reputation of being a rake, Bu pretends to be a prominent ex-lover of a notorious crime boss in order to not be taken advantage of as she slowly falls for Chan’s playful charm.  A longtime rival businessman causes conflict by driving a wedge between Bu and Chan as fight training intensifies after losing to his rival’s hired professional fighter and Chan loses sight of what’s really important in life – happiness.  

International martial artists superstar Jackie Chan makes his debut on our little boutique review blog for his Hong Kong cult film, the 1999 romantic comedy with stellar fight sequences, “Gorgeous.”  “Forbidden City Cop” writer-director Vincent Kok teams up with Yiu Fai Lo and the “Rush Hour” star to pen a new kind of story for the stuntman and martial artists that would put a roundhouse kick of insecurities onto any action star’s chin.  Based on the Ivy Ho (“The Accidental Spy”) story, “Gorgeous” involves more than just punches, kicks, and high-flying antics with a comedy romance story about two very different people and perspectives finding commonality in unflinching happiness, joy, and love.  Jackie Chan does comedy very well but the comedy in “Gorgeous” is half non-physical, which the action star has mastered the craft by integrating into his physical model.  “Gorgeous” is a production of Golden Harvest Productions and is produced by Jackie Chan and then Golden Harvest president the late Raymond Chow.

Obviously, you can’t have a Jackie Chan movie without high-level martial arts action.  In the same breath, Jackie Chan wanted to give his Asian fans another movie after the tremendous success of “Rush Hour” that sent the longtime East-adored icon into global stardom.  Thus, “Gorgeous” was born, developed, and rewritten to add Jackie Chan as the lead character, playboy and business tycoon C.N. Chan, alongside costar Shu Qi of “Sex and Zen II” and “The Transporter” with Jason Statham.  As Bu, Qi develops a starry-eyed longing for unequivocal romance that you can only find in fairytales and storybooks as she is confronted by the puppy dog eyes of the local fishing boy proclaiming his love for her only to be rejected by Qi’s downplayed naivety that makes her appear to be the village simpleton.   Yet, the character is surrounded by a carefree comedic mom-and-dad of beer-drinking restaurant owners, Sung-Young Chen (“Hello Dracula”) and Elaine Jin (“The House That Never Dies”).  As a flirtatious couple of Bu’s hopeless romanticism driven by the signs and kismet and Chan’s all-business, no-play waning for a girl to be childlike to bring out the dormant happiness inside him, Jackie Chan and Shu Qi manage to never close that gap to fully immerse themselves as onscreen love interests in their 80’s structured amorous narrative and go get’em montage.   Where “Gorgeous” charisma lies is with Chan’s mano-on-mano dual with Jackie Chan’s hired member of his stuntman team, Brad Allan.  The former Australian gymnast and Chinese circus acrobat has a towering magnetism about him despite only standing 5’4” tall, shorter than Jackie Chan.  The fight sequences between the two nimble men with incredible speed and form, mirror each other with precision in their own individual styles, garner some the best one-on-one choreographed bouts ever to hit the screen and to be felt by the audiences with hard-hitting throws.  While the impact of the Chinese boxing is palpable, Chan and Allen pepper in lighter moments of great physical comedy that take the intensity down a notch in a welcoming reprieve from solemn combat.  That solemnity in Allen’s character is greatly received and adds to his magnetic appeal that doesn’t make the mercenary fighter a bad guy though hired by the antagonist (Emil Chau, “Super Cop 2”) of the story; instead, Allen’s fair without pulling punches and without dirty tricks, as he mentions to Chan to avoid, and we end up rooting for both men’s dignified square up being battled not in a square ring.  Tony Leung Chiu-wai (“Internal Affairs”), Ken Lo (“Holy Virgin vs. The Evil Dead”), Tats Lau (“Dating Death”), Richie Jen (“Tales from the Occult”), Siu Wai Cheung, and “Kung Fu Hustle’s” Stephen Chow costar.

While “Gorgeous” may not be evil in the least for our conversational liking and our in-depth coverage with its abundance of lighthearted goodness, romanticized ideals, and slapstick comedy, the turn of a century film has cult qualities with shoddy 90’s effects, intricate fight choreographies, and eclectic, eccentric performances that make the Hong Kong-Taiwan product standup and standout to be noticed.  The fight sequences alone swallow much of the attention and overwhelm a rather flimsy passionate plotline between C.N. Chan and Bu in what stirs between feels more platonic than desire.  “Gorgeous” attempts, and succeeds to a version of a successful end, a theme about positivity and happiness and how that brightness can be diminished by deceits, workaholism, and distracting contentions, sucking the joy from out of life and spitting out a solitude bitterness without any kind of understanding of how it all happened.  We see this more in the dynamics of business rivals Chan and L.W. Lo, two childhood friends driven apart by their subjective comparisons as they try to top one another, culminating from their back-and-forth to see who is the best at everything into the realization that their bond was ultimately worth more than success at material things.  This enriching theme, plus Jackie Chan’s stunt team work, pushes asides the infatuation glop of Chan and Bu’s playful childlike intimacy that just seems to slip through your fingers, unable grasp traction to be interesting enough.

“Gorgeous” receives an 88 Films’ 2K overhaul with a Blu-ray upgrade from the original film materials of the Hong Kong & International versions of the film, delivering two cuts in high definition 1080p and presented in an anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  The AVC encoded BD50 offers plenty of room for “Gorgeous” to look, well, gorgeous on hi-def with a vibrant, spotless transfer of the 35mm shot print.   Coloring is consistently stable and rejuvenated for a fresh picture image; no one-off blips or glitches on the grading in sight on this very azure and teal toned production.  Despite holding two features and a handful of extras, the dual-layered single disc offers no hint of compression issues, creating a smooth beginning to end viewing.  The Hong Kong cut comes with a Cantonese DTS-HD 5.1 MA while the International Cut comes with the same as well as an English DTS-HD 5.1 dub track.  For authenticity purposes, the original native language is always the preferred choice and the Cantonese track on the HK cut simply shines with an orotund dialogue track, robust milieu and ambience, and a blended bubbly and businesslike score whenever the mood hits by Dan-yee Wong.  Balanced and kept in the check, neither track overtakes the other with a timely parallel consonance.  The newly translated English subtitles are paced well with error-free transcription.  Special features include Shy Guy – Andy Cheng, a member of Jackie Chan’s stunt team, discusses the rise of Brad Allen as well as note on the stunt team in general and Jackie Chan’s success at the time of “Gorgeous,” an interview with director Vincent Kok on Chan’s unfamiliar territory into romantic comedies, an archived making-of “Gorgeous” with raw and behind-the-scenes footage and interviews, “Gorgeous” music video in Cantonese and Mandarin, and the Hong Kong and International trailers.  The limited edition slipcover feature is a cardboard o-slip with illustrative art from 88 Films graphic artist Sean Longmore overtop a 2 to 3 millimeter thicker Blu-ray snapper to house the 32-page color booklet with daily set report of “The Accidental Spy” by writer Matthew Edwards and behind the-scene photos, a dual-sided mini-poster of Longmore’s slipcover art and the original poster one-sheet, a disc pressed with the image of Shu Qi smiling, and reversible cover art with the original poster one-sheet and a couple of “Gorgeous” stills joined together on one half.  Each cut is drastically different in length with the international cut heavily trimmed at 99 minutes while the HK cut keeps unedited at 2 hours.  Both features are not rated and are both have a region A and B playback with C untested.  Jackie Chan has always been a pillar of entertainment and “Gorgeous” is no exception to the rule.  88 Films refreshes the now 24-year-old film with a new, exciting transfer and physical package that commits one of the best fights in cinematic history to hi-def.

Fall in Love with “Gorgeous” on Blu-ray at Amazon.com!

Being Bored at Home Turns into an EVIL Enterprise! “Moonlighting Wives” reviewed! (Dark Force / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

They’re Housewives.  They’re bored.  They’re…”Moonlighting Wives.”  Now Available at Amazon.com!

Unsatisfied with her distressed husband’s meager wage as a third shift switchboard operator, Joan Rand strikes up a new Stenography business to bring in a little extra cash for the household.  When her new boss makes salacious advances toward her, she explores the opportunity of making more money than just on a stenographer’s wage.  Roping in her only contracted typist, Joan begins to bring in beautiful, bored housewives seeking to earn dough no matter how sexually scandalous and instead of perfecting their short hand skills or their ability to read back letters aloud without error, the determined entrepreneur revamps her stenographic business as a front for perfecting prostitution.  Infiltrating her way into every bar, hotel, and country club, even partnering with the country club’s golf pro, Joan’s call girl ring rides a profitable high and expands into new men-oriented territories but how long can the lucrative venture last when two vice cops are inching to bring down the elusive ring and one of her girls become scorned by the affectional eyes of love. 

Sexploitation has come a long way since 1966 when director Joe Sarno helmed the scene-efficient and bored housewife subversion “Moonlighting Wives.”  Before embarking full-fledged into the adult industry, Sarno blazed the trail for the economically friendly dicey skin flicks of the 1960s through the 1970s, retrospectively finding a cult base amongst observers and academics of subversive cinema and underground exploitation. “Bad Girls for Boys” producer Robert M. Moscow serves as associate producer on the Morgan Picture Corporation production, founded by George J. Morgan, producer of “The Thrill Killers” and “The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monster.”

Credited as Diane Vivienne, Tammy Latour (“The Naked Fog”) plays the business savvy Mrs. Joan Rand turning her dictation craft as a storefront for a more provocative and promiscuous profession to keep men happy and her pockets plush.   Latour’s a cool and calculating in her performance that makes Mrs. Rand a pragmatic kingpin of her quick-to-success prostitution ring but in doing so with her performance, that is much like everyone else’s in the film denoting a sign of the time period in which the story is constructed, Latour comes off extremely monotone like her large 60’s hairdo houses a little green man at the control of her cerebral center, calling out commands flatly, coldly, and without a slink of emotion behind her absent inflections or thousand yard stares.  Instead, much of the emotion, if any, is produced by her ashamed-driven to alcohol abusing husband and emotionally exploited bored housewife (Gretchen Rudolph, “The Dicktator”) brought to shambles after cheating on her husband and losing her paramour at the same time due to Rand’s scheming into the operational fold to rake in more rakes and cash.  We’re treated to Mr. Rand’s bottoming out as he’s no longer the bread winner and he’s suspicions overwhelm him to drink himself into a stupor.  The emotional pull that the Rand swindled housewife goes through is callously cut deep when her country club lover, Al Jordan (John Aristedes, “My Body Hungers”), becomes in cahoots with Mrs. Rand, taking her own as not only a business partner but a side-by-side lover, and coaxes his former mistress’s desire for him into doing naughty things with other men to keep him out of a deceived lie of debt.  A rollercoaster of fear, doubt, acceptance, and emotional evolution goes to full arc spectrum with the one cog in the machine that ends up breaking down the whole organization into a crumbling heap.  Aforesaid, the other performances don’t stray too far from Tammy Latour’s matter of fact and is more just a sign of the times in which “Moonlighting Wives” is produced, especially on a microbudget as early sexploitation couldn’t break into mainstream or even with welcoming arms in a more accepting niche public as a more right-wing, puritanical society was starting to be on the brink of uninhibited free love model.  “Moonlighting Wives” has a sexploitation friendly cast with June Roberts (“The Pink Pussy:  Where Sin Lives”), Marla Ellis (“Sin in the Suburbs”), Joe Santos (“Flesh and Lace”), and George Winship (“Teenage Gang Debs”).

How does a racy U.S. cinematic story beat the odds of staying out from the sleazy cinemas, like the sheltered exterior and tacky carpeted 42nd Street of the 1980s, and from being blackballed from the blue balled public looking for a little titillating release?  Innuendo in film became a thing of the past once the film boards ruled film nudity was no longer to be considered obscene a few years before 1960 and this opened up an opportunity for filmmakers to tap into the salacious half of the American population, experimenting with primal carnalities depictions that burrowed into the deepest of desires.  Since financing was scarce as the newly appointed sexploitation genre was too much of a risk for return, movies like “Moonlighting Wives” were made for next to nothing and director Joe Sarno quickly became quickly an expert in churning out licentious cinema commodities on a dime at the turn of the decade.  Having completed moderately successful films of this nature with “Warm Nights and Hot Pleasures” and “Pandora and the Magic Box,” Sarno built a rapport with actors and actresses who would return film-after-film.  John Aristedes, Joe Santos, June Roberts, and Tammy Latour, to name drop a few, regularly frequented Sarno’s casting call – and, hopefully, not his casting couch. Much like the rest of the lot, “Moonlighting Wives” serves as a lesson learned, a steep cost if you will, when morals mingle with perversity and blur the lines of right and wrong.  However, these types of films didn’t come tense action either, or rather much of any type of action because of it’s hand-to-mouth (or in related terms – any orifice to mouth) leanness in funds.  Sarno masters the exposition scene with what I like to label as high school sexual education discourse in where talking heads explain in detail every single action and do it in a tone that’s somewhere between mundane and deadpan.  Objectively, “Moonlighting Wives” is a cold-hard look at cause-and-effect with the loosening of standards jeopardizing what’s most dear to you after the deed is done. 

As a 2k restoration from the uncensored 35mm original negative, “Moonlighting Waves” has been paradoxically upgraded by adding back in original content that initially hit by censors with the lost nude scenes, a summation of 5 minutes’ worth of film, has be reclaimed for the Dark Force Entertainment Blu-ray release.  Yet, Dark Force’s release also competes with a Sarno double feature in “The Naked Fog” from Film Movement that was coincides with a similar market date.  Unfortunately, we’ve yet to land our hands on the Film Movement version to compare.  The Dark Force Blu-ray is AVC encoded with high definition 1080p resolution and presented in the letterboxed 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Back cover lists the ratio at 1.33:1 but also list an anamorphic widescreen and while I concur with the anamorphic lens, the presentation is firmly in a square box of 1.33:1.  Prefaced with a black title card warning regarding the additional image quality, more than just the additional footage has weathered under the test time to sometimes appearing more yellowish and with vertical scratch lines and speckled dust. For the most part, the overall image presentation makes the grade with an unimposing, yet steady color grading and most of the frames free from visual blights. If there were any digital enhancements done during the restoration, DNR appears to be the present culprit as facial features often appear too smooth for 35mm stock that should be developed with a fine layer of grain. The English 1.0 audio mix furnishes the appropriate single channel output for an exposition heavy feature. Distinct sound relativity is shot and the Stan Free score is lounge music 101 with rhythmic snare and hi-hat raps but the dialogue fairs rather strongly with forefront, clean, and clear conversing. Film historian Michael Bowen bookends a pair of included special features with an audio commentary track and an on-webcam interview discussing Sarno’s life coursing the newfound sexploitation genre pre his adult industry tenure. Also included is a deleted nude scene that involves no familiar actors from the trunk narrative in a seemingly out of place couple swap of the topless kind. I’m a little taken aback by the loss of some of the special features that were a part of the Alternative Cinema DVD release that are not present here on the Blu-ray, such as the Joe Sarno interview before his death. What’s neat about the physical features of the Dark Force release, aside from the clear Blu-ray snapper, is the retrograded, stark yellow and black, low-key cover art that builds up the hype with exclamational points about how obscene “Moonlighting Wives” is and not recommended it for the modestly shy and most prude moviegoers. The bold marketing attempt really perks up interesting in checking out the title that ultimately finishes with antiquated impressions, but the idea is neat, and the word heavy front cover is very representational of the exposition drenched dialogue in the narrative. Disc art is pressed with a wanted ad for young attractive women, which is also a nice touch. the region free release comes not rated and has a runtime of 86 minutes. Without a doubt scandalous in any decade, “Moonlighting Wives” encapsulates the seedlings of sexploitation with Joe Sarno at the helm of cultivating ripe, round melons out of barely any dirt and succeeding with a lust-heavy pursuit under a profession that now, ironically enough, only exists mainly in law-abiding courtrooms.

They’re Housewives.  They’re bored.  They’re…”Moonlighting Wives.”  Now Available at Amazon.com!

To Do EVIL, You Must Pay EVIL a Ton of Euro. “La Petit Mort 2: Nasty Tapes” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Step Back into La Maison de “La Petit Mort” for a Sequel that’s Hard to Stomach!  

La Maison de la Petit Mort’s doors remain open under new management, continuing to serve the dark web public interest with a wide variety of snuff services.  For the right price, a fantasy-driven in-person torture show can be arranged for your liking, and one can be an commanding observer or one can get their hands dirty in participatory play where anything goes and pleasures are on-demand.  The German snuff house expands their reach to a global level with live webcam shows that can be directed by the high price paying patron and the leather-cladded vixen staff carry out their illicit instructions exactly.  A robust menu of dark pleasures, displayed on a new showreel of select gruesome services, are available at the simple transfer of a money wire or cash in hand for the depraved to make their fantasies a reality.

In 2009, German born director Marcel Walz helmed a linear, three-act narrative of tourists laid over in the big city winding up at patronizing a dark and dingy dive bar, La Maison de la Petit Mort, only to be abducted as inventoried stock for the rich to exploit in a slew of murder perversions.  Five years later in 2014, Walz returns for a sequel, “La Petit Mort 2:  Nasty Tapes,” with reprising principal actress Annika Strauss co-writing the film alongside Walz as well as stepping back into the sadistic black platform shoes of Dominique, one of the two lovely ladies with a lecherous and violent vocation.  The direct sequel that follows a day-in-a-life of the snuff house’s employees making an advert showreel does not follow suit in the way the first film was structured.  Instead of a linear, chronological narrative, “Nasty Tapes” evolves into an anthology of different kill archetypes for the marketing video. Walz’s Matador Films serves the production oversight with Harald Schmalz (“Collar”) coproducing the anthological torture porn feature.

“La Petit Mort 2: Nasty Tapes” doesn’t seen a whole lot of return on the original cast.  The tourists were all mangled, mutilated, and murdered, the original Monique bit the dust in an escape attempt, and the first Maman rode off into the sunset rich with blood money.  Instead, and among other things, “Nasty Tapes” folds a new treatment of terror with the same old eggs and flour by reinventing itself into an anthology type, introducing a new, blonde Monique (Yvonne Wölke, “Bad End”) into the batter, and disclosing the new owner of the freaky, fetish club, a feminine man by the name Monsieur Matheo Maxime (Mika Metz, “The Curse of Doctor Wolffenstein”).  Annika Strauss is the only original cast member to reprise her original role of Dominique, the brunette to Monique’s blonde and who showed slight inkling of hesitation before being summoned to torture and murder.  Strauss doesn’t buck the character trend as Dominque still displays disgust on her face when slicing a man’s facial features in a Picasso style portrait.  Yet, Dominique remains loyal to the Monsieur and to the La Maison de la Petit Mort by committing the atrocities without question, unlike the regular administrative bookkeeping and housecleaning she regularly remains vocal in opposition in what’s a slither of dark humor contrast between her gruesome work compared to mundane work.  Unlike Cyanide Savior singer Manoush, who was a very convincing merciless club owner Maman, Mike Metz plays a very different, more layered proprietor portrayed as someone who sees the work as a paycheck to fund his deepest desire – to be a beautiful woman just like his wife Jade Maxime (Micaela Schäfer, “Sky Sharks”).  That’s about the gist of complexity the sequel has to offer with much of the thinly laid foundation is bricked up by a compilation of back-to-back kill scenarios that involve some extreme genre directors as special guests, such as Uwe Boll (“House of the Dead”), Dustin Mills (“Bath Salt Zombies”), Mike Mendez (“Big Ass Spider!”), and the late Ryan Nicholson (“Gutterballs”), taking part in the clandestine, underground activities in-person or on the web.  The film fills out the cast with victims and victimizers in Armin Barwich (“The Terror Stalkers”), Bea La Bea, Babriela Wirbel (“Plastic”), Nichol Neukirch, Marc Rohnstock (“Necronos”), Thomas Pill (“Moor-Monster!”), Kai Plaumann, Markus Hettich (“No Reason”) and the twins, Barbara and Patrizia Zuchowski.

When going into a German gore film, such as “La Petit Mort 2:  Nasty Tapes,” you have to go into It having an affinity for, or at least an understanding of, complete shameless representation of torture and killing of another human being for the simple and pure joy of the act.  In other words, you have to be somewhat sick in the head.  For me, personally, the sickness is rooted out of admiration for special effects and how the F/X artist(s) can create a realistic depiction of an unofficial autopsied anatomy. Filmmaker Ryan Nicholson, who passed away in 2019 of brain cancer, not only had a role in the Marcel Walz sequel, but was also the special effects artist, following in the footsteps of one of the notable German underground special effects artists, Olaf Ittenbach (“Premutos:  The Fallen Angel”) who had done the graphic gags on the first film with head turning results.  Nicholson, with a credit list that has a foot in independent productions and more mainstream, Hollywood productions, such as “Final Destination” and the remake of “Blair Witch” from 2016, doesn’t disappoint and keeps the blood, guts, and stringy sinew seamless in a gruesome pageantry of death that rivals and continues Olaf’s original stamp.  Beyond the glossy surface of a blood glaze, “Nasty Tapes” is nothing more than a kill-after-kill anthology with no concrete premise for either of the individual slaughter vignettes.  Title cards setup the kill moments with basic victim descriptors, such as married status, age, and how much their life has been paid for, but doesn’t humanize them in the least, creating zero compassion for the unsuspecting abductee fated for something far worse than death.  Instead, Walz flips the script with more background on the clients with ipre-and-post interviews of their most intimate time at La Petit Mort.  This structure can be monotonous as there’s nothing else to look forward to or to absorb empathetically as a viewer in an anthology that simply glorifies the leisure time of an undisturbed murder.  

As a nail-pulling, nose-cutting, drill-holing, lip-stitching, dick-scissoring, gut-stabbing anthology, “La Petit Mort 2: Nasty Tapes” is a gory, good time and is even better now in high-definition with a 1080p Blu-ray release from Unearthed Films The AVC encoded BD25 looks as good as can expected for a shaky cam, hectically edited, and filthy dark German gore film presented in a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio.  Details are oleaginous wet with blood and tissue that incongruently with the Roland Freitag’s gloomy yet suppressed cinematography and Kai E. Bogatzki discordance and chaotic editing technique that is supposed to elicit extreme shock but consequently results in a loss of the intended grisliness.  Unearthed Films‘ release exhibits no issues with compression, but the hues and tones appear to fuse in the near eliminate of some contours where there should be some.  The German-English DTS-HD 5.1 mix can be score heavy, especially a hard and energized Tekkno title credits from composer Klaus Pfreundner that’s distinctive German, but “Nasty Tapes” has profound focus on its core selling point – torture.  The very few scenes of intercut dialogue shots spliced into the client’s sociopathic session are well understood and do have prominence over the score, as well as the ambient milieu of screams and the integrated flesh destroying Foley, despite the cam-esque quality of the pseudo-testimonials.  The burned-in English subtitles under the German Language only are synced well without error and with consistently good pacing.  Disc extras include a behind-the-scenes making of cut out from the main camera, an alternate torture scene, a behind-the-scenes still gallery, a short advert of a naked woman strung up by her arms and being stapled with signs, and Unearthed Films trailers.  The Blu-ray physical features don’t stray to far from normal Unearthed Films releases with a standard Blu-ray snapper case with grisly cover art of a marred victim’s plucked out eye and a Jade Maxime holding a bone saw and wearing ripped fishnet stockings and black lingerie.  The pressed disc art has the rehashes the back cover image of Monsieur Maxime wearing a venetian mask.  The Blu-ray comes unrated, region A locked, and has a manageably sufficing runtime of 83 minutes to not overkill the overkilling.  Transparent in its surreptitious atrocities, “La Petit Mort II: Nasty Tapes” subsists as Marcel Walz charnel house of horrors with a new revamped anthology approach to razzmatazz special effects wetwork without any due remorse. 

Step Back into La Maison de “La Petit Mort” for a Sequel that’s Hard to Stomach!  

Break a Promise with EVIL And Pay the Little-Big Price! “Unwelcome” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Not the Leprechauns This Time.  It’d Be Goblins that “Unwelcome” You!  

Trying desperately to become pregnant for some time, Jamie and Maya celebrate the news of learning they’re expecting but their jovial rejoice is cut short when three thugs break into their city apartment home, nearly bringing an end to their lives and the baby.  When Jamie’s great aunt Maeve wills him a rural cottage in Ireland, the married couple jump at the chance to start afresh away from the urban chaos and the trauma in hopes for a peaceful life with their child.  The friendly village residents take in Jamie and Maya unconditionally but one stipulation is highly encouraged to be met if living at great aunt Maeve’s cottage:  they must leave out a blood offering for the little people, the Redcaps, of the forest butted up against their home.   Just happy to be out of the city, Jamie and Maya shrug off what they believe to be folkloric wives tales of old Ireland and on such short notice, they hire Mr. Whelan and his children, who come with an unfavorable village reputation, to do much-needed repairs around the house.  When dealings with the Whelan clan go violently sideways, Maya invokes superstitious belief to draw the Repcaps out of hiding and implore their murderous mischievousness for dire neighborly assistance. 

Welcome to the “Unwelcome!”  Pint-sized evil continues to be mondo popular around the world, especially in the Full Moon empire that’s built a kingdom off the backs of supernatural ankle biters.  However, “Unwelcome” is not a Charles Band production that’s rushed straight through to a fast-tracked, direct-to-video release of shoddy, schlocky proportions.  Instead, this release comes from overseas, the UK specifically, with some quality production footing that lands the 2023 released film into a limited theatrical run before hitting the home entertainment market.  Behind the film is Jon Wright, director of dark humored revenge against high school bullies in the “Tormented,” who directs and co-writes “Unwelcome’s” grim fairytale-like narrative of personal growth, inner fight, and underfoot goblins gone wild with Mark Stay, reuniting with Wright for the first time since their script collaboration on the 2014 automaton invasion epic, “Robot Overlords.”  Under the once working title of “The Little People,” “Unwelcome” is a production of the Yorkshire based Tempo Productions Limited, with cofounders by Jo Bamford and Piers Tempest as executive producer and producer, and the private equity investment group, Ingenious Media, with producer Peter Touche along with Warner Bros. and Well Go USA Entertainment distributing. 

“Unwelcome” has such unusual casting in a good way.  The entire Whelan clan consists of actors plucked from successful, multi-seasonal television shows that have essentially shaped their careers from their well-known, fan-adored roles, but the unintended adverse effect in such triumph stamina is being recognized only for that performance.  In my mind, Colm Meaney will forever be embedded in my hippocampus as Engineer Chief Miles O’Brien from “Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine.”  “Con Air,” “Under Siege,” and even as a British Airways pilot doomed for landing in “Die Hard 2,” Chief O’Brien, I mean Colm Meaney, is still in space tinkering with transporter buffers.  Here in “Unwelcome,” Meany is Daddy, aka Mr. Whelan, a rough around the edge contractor who beats his kids, let them get away with whatever they please, and has a real notoriety around town.  When I say kids, I mean grown adults stuck in Daddy’s hooligan wake and are played by more outstanding and familiar faces from Ireland, such as Hodor from “Game of Thrones,” Kristian Naim, Netflix’s “Derry Girls’s” Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, and the “1917” actor and upcoming principals of “Last Voyage of the Demeter,” Chris Walley, make up the trio of terribly laid construction workers who have really no business being around a hammer, a ladder, or anybody’s valuables.  That brings me to “Unwelcome’s” lead actors as the scarred couple who hires out Whelan’s band of delinquent spawns to do the handiwork repairs.  I realize Wright and Stay wrote Douglas Booth (“Pride, Prejudice, & Zombies”) to be an overly optimistic and fairly useless good guy with Jamie, but the insecurities are just ostentatiously oozing out of the husband without a clue.  Jamie’s arc also doesn’t quite flesh out by the end of the film as he’s blocked by the baby mama instincts of Maya, played by “Resident Evil:  Welcome to Raccoon City’s” Hannah John-Kamen, with an unspoken I’ll-do-it-my-damn-self attitude that sends the narrative into a knife-brandishing gob of Redcaps eager to do her bidding for an unfavorable exchange.  Maya sacrifices all for a good man with good intentions who can’t do diddlysquat to save her and, in the end, that doesn’t seem balanced for this ferocious fairytale. 

If there is one aspect, above all us, to note about “Unwelcome’s” shin kicking goblins as a takeaway is that the rambunctious and ravenous Redcaps are not computer generated, are not puppets, and are not even animatronics.  Actors and stuntmen fill those small shows with a little help of disproportionate movie magic, heeding to the ways of a lost art in miniaturizing actors, such as in “Willow” or “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” and touching up with some CGI on the tangible face molds for a layered composition that’s super fun to see come to life on screen.  Unfortunately, the Redcaps make a late appearance into a yarn unspooled with mostly the pent up pile of frustrations of Jamie and Maya as an unlucky couple without a chance of peace in the world.  Trouble finds them wherever they go in what’s essentially a trade for city thugs for unfriendly country versions of the same type of ill-mannered.  “Unwelcome” plays very much into it’s title that no place feels welcoming for a couple on the verge of the already daunting premise of parenthood life and everything appears now alien as the world is being upended by concessions for your child in what has turned terrifying in what was supposed to be a warm, welcoming of a new adventure.  That’s the sensation setup for the pair who trust dip into trusting superstitions and magical beings to be their guardians.  Folklore then takes over; its has, in fact, been welcomed to save the day no matter how maligned the backstories.  Wright and cinematographer Hamish Doyne-Ditmas do, in fact, construct an ocular stage crafted out of an ethereal red and yellow fire lit sky with an overall color theory toned to contrast as a mystical storybook set in what is usually flush with greenery around an Irish village, reminiscent of late 70s-early 80’s European horror sets built to detailed scale, built with vibrant backlighting, and yet built to feel distant, apprehensively off, and strange like another world, a Redcap ecosphere.  “Unwelcome’s” ending also pulls from that unabashed time to be creatively mad in an innately mad universe with an unexpected Redcap reason that doesn’t clarify so much their hunger for blood offers, which the diet includes raw store-bought meat and the frothy flesh of felonious individuals, but better explains their twisted promises and intentions for their knife-jabbing services rendered.

With Goblins, there’s always a price to pay but for the Blu-ray release of “Unwelcome,” the price is worth the admission.  The single-layered, AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p Well Go USA Entertainment release presents the film in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Slightly squeeze onto a BD25, there’s some minor irregular compression patches that degrade solid darker colors and the image loses a bit of sharpness in the background – you can see an example when the Redcaps pop up out of the keep tower appearing more like moving globules than well-defined humanoids.  Goblin facial features and skin and clothes textures have tactile appeal during closeups with the same being said with the cast in their natural color tones.  Computer-generated facial movements have seamless pertinence to the surrounding action and the motion of the Goblin actors themselves with layering of frames looking clean to create their smallness around principal characters.  The English DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix maintains a stout dialogue track but deploys no depth into recordings resulting in all the dialogue tracks to be at the forefront, even when characters are in the background in the scene.  The weird spatiality with the dialogue doesn’t translate over to ambient noise as those tracks are well designed into the scheme with levels of depth that add richness to the storybook atmospherics.  English SDH are optionally available.  Bonus features include a behind-the-scenes cast and crew interviews discussing their time forming the idea and working on the project, a making the Redcaps segment with special effects supervisor Shaune Harrison (“Nightbreed,” “Attack of the Adult Babies”) discussing the step-be-step process of bringing these little devils to life, including showcasing their head and body molds, and the theatrical trailer. The physical property comes in a standard Blu-ray snapper with latch with one-sided cover art of a knife-out Goblin starring up at the new mistress of the house.  Inside, a single-leaf advert of Well Go USA films and the disc pressed art with a blue-graded Goblin looking menacing makeup the inner contents. “Unwelcome” runs at 101 minutes, is rated R for strong violence and gore, pervasive language, some drug use, and sexual material. From an ironic perspective, “Unwelcome” uses the mythological mischievous of Goblins as a gas pedal accelerator to mature a pair of genteel gulls faced with a parlous reality and to be factotum in life in general told inside in the linings of a dark and gory fairytale universe.

Not the Leprechauns This Time.  It’d Be Goblins that “Unwelcome” You!  

Doppelganger EVIL Shares a Deadly Family Secret. “AmnesiA” reviewed! (Cult Epics / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Become Caught Up in the Mystery of “AmnesiA” on Limited Edition Blu-ray!

Alex, a meek photographer, is called back to his family home by his estranged identical twin brother, Aram, on the news of their mother’s severe illness.  Agreeing to help look after her for a while, Alex travels back home with his new girlfriend in tow, a pyromania epileptic named Sandra.  Upon his arrival in Amnesia, the home of the family business of tinkering on broken down cars around the property, Alex is met face-to-face with a past he’s long tried to forget.  Aloof Aram’s peculiar involvement with organized crime, his heart-healthy mother’s obsession with heart conditions, Sandra’s fire infatuation, and himself crippled by a imprinted, photographic fear swirls with ridicule tension around the crumbling junkyard estate.  The years long secrets between the brothers about their childhood past have taken a personalized toll on them and being in the same space together after a long time a part has loosed embedded raw emotions and dug back up the past again to finish what they started all those years ago.

“Amnesia” is a curious and mysterious black comedy thriller from the Netherlands and is the surrealistically bold effect of duality and family skeletons in the closet from filmmaker, the Hague native, Martin Koolhoven.  Taking similar household elements from the avant, 60’s inspired “Suzy Q,” writer-director Koolhoven pours another fractured glass of dysfunctional family-ade to sour perfection, squeezing every last drop out of neglected relationships in order for the truth to the be tasted.  With themes around secrets, guilt, processing that guilt, and family, “Amnesia,” or as originally spelled, “AmnesiA,” progresses a narrative of an irreversible broken family from through the looking glass of dark comedy and layered mystery to it’s ultimate destruction perceived as bittersweet.  Shot in Belgium, “Amnesia” is produced by Paul Verhoeven “Black Book” producers, Jeroen Beker and Frans van Gestel, under the partners’ 1995 established, Amsterdam-based production company, Motel Films. 

If unable to locate two suitable actors to play siblings, why not have one great actor to be both?  That’s the approach Martin Koolhoven erected when falling head over heels with Fedja van Huêt who could intuitively give Koolhoven the exactness of each brother’s personality.  Brothers Alex and Amar are so distinct in how they carry themselves as well as in their appearance that your mind and eyes can barely keep the registered fact that the brothers are inhabited by the one and the same Huêt.  Huêt, along with some good writing from Koolhoven, keeps insecurities close to the chest, blossoming a massive bubble of enigma that often repels the brothers against one another to keep audiences from homing in too close to the exact cause of their personal strife.  Tension works wonderfully despite not having the ability to act against the actual physical embodiment of the antithesis to spar with and the editing fully supports the duality with perfectly seamed visual effects touchup efforts.  Other support efforts come from a great supporting cast, including the international success Carice van Houten who starred in Verhoeven’s “Black Book” and won an Emmy for her high priestess role of Melisandre on HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”  Houten’s cagy, pyromaniac Sandra is just as odd as her appearing suddenly into Alex’s life, or rather into the backseat of his car, when things are beginning to feel complicated for Alex having to return home after many years away.  Sandra’s emotionally supportive, almost as Alex’s backbone or a buffer, when dealing with Aram but she’s interpreted as not normal by the brothers’ mother (Sacha Bulthuis) who herself is a representation of the past that keeps the individualized brothers connected and tries to keep both boys nearby without angering them; she even attempts to turn Alex into his mechanic father, whether done consciously or subconsciously goes unsaid, but in the end, the past always creeps back to the present and the unresolved coming to a close will put the final nail into the coffin of the Amnesia family business for good.  Theo Maassen, Cas Enklaar, Eva van der Gucht, and Erik van der Horst costar.

“Amnesia” is a thought-provoking puzzle box of rearranging clues and drop in visitants that instill an uneasy, surrealism surrounding chiefly these two brothers.  Bubbling to the surface through a series of baby step flashbacks is the root cause for much of the tension coursing the narrative. History becomes the driving force behind Alex’s apprehension in returning home, seeing his naive mother, and interacting with sycophantic brother who’s also jaded by the life’s little lurid lesson by turning toward a life of crime and holding onto not only a grudge against his brother’s abandonment but also against a decision his father made many times over that he now sees as unfinished and unsatisfied. What’s even more interesting is the lack of urgency and empathy surrounding them and to resolve what has been stayed stagnant for years from their adolescence and into their adult established lives. Immediate attention matters become secondary to the underfoot game that occupies mental space between them, infects those around them, and spills out of the shadows to eventually into the light. For example, Amar’s partner Wouter is critically injured after a botched heist and comes to Amnesia to wait for further instructions from Eugene, Amar and Wouter’s boss; yet, while Wouter bleeds from his abdomen, Amar saunters around the house and Wouter is equally leisured when it came down to his mortal wound. Eventually, Sandra and the brothers’ mother grow accustomed to Wouter’s state, just like Wouter, and though their mother’s deteriorating health inches itself back and forth into the conversation, the only thing that doesn’t shy from the forefront and never becomes accustomed is the lingering sense of that something isn’t copacetic between Alex, Amar, and their father in what transforms into a problem of masculinity affairs in which Amar steers the way in accordance to alpha theory. Koolhoven uses closeups and arranges characters in scenes that makes them feel right on top of each other, in various ways, that perpetuates the incommodious communalism of Amnesia.

With the associated restoration from the Eye Film Institute, Cult Epics introduces a new 4K HD transfer and restoration of Martin Koolhoven’s “AmnesiA” onto a limited edition, 2-Disc, dual-layered Blu-ray from the original camera negative. IMDB.com lists “Amnesia” as an Arriflex 16mm film blown up to 35mm, but the is incredibly sharp for 16mm and there doesn’t appear to be a ton of makeup work to cover 16mm’s sizzling grainy and jitteriness. However, the film is presented in the European standard 1.66:1 aspect ratio that’s shot in Super 16 and is particularly fascinating how Koolhoven’s color schemes and depth shadowing adds to the noir fashion of Menno Westendorp’s beautifully warm and splintering specious cinematography. Restoratively, “AmnesiA” is a perfectly graded film with a sharp, invigorating image that exhibits no compressions issues on the dual-layer BD50, available on both discs. The Dutch language audio options on the Cult Epics release has three options: a LPCM 2.0 stereo, a DTS-HD 5.1, and a Dolby Digital 5.1. Jumping back and forth between the audio choices, I settled upon the DTS-HD surround sound mix that produces a better full-bodied output, if only by a little better with notifiable sharper crackling of the tire and car fires to bring an audible warmth to the scene. Sometimes, it’s the smallest vibrations that make a biggest impact. Dialogue renders nicely on each of the three tracks with clarity and a cleanliness of the recordings. Tracks are dynamically distinct in each scene that creates a nice depth in many of the closeup scenes with more than one actor. English subtitles are available on all three audio options. Special features on the first disc include an optional presentation introduction by director Martin Koolhoven, audio commentary by Koolhoven and star Fedja van Huêt that’s moderated by Peter Verstraten, a 44-minute theater aisle retrospective conversation with Koolhoven and actress Carice van Houten, a making-of featurette, an archive behind-the-scenes with Carice von Houten from 2001, and the theatrical trailer. The second disc includes two bonus films from Martin Koolhoven’: “Suzy Q” from 1999 and “Dark Light” from 1997. The release itself comes in a clear traditional Blu-ray snapper case inside a cardboard slipcover with a new burning tire lens illustrative artwork from Peter Strain. The snapper cover art is a split screen of Alex and Amar with Sandra divisively in the middle and the reverse side of the artwork contains original poster reproductions for “Suzy Q” and “Dark Light.” Disc art is pressed with the same cover design on the feature presentation while the disc two is pressed with an image for “Suzy Q.” The 89-minute “AmnesiA” comes unrated and the both Blu-rays are tested region free. A real mind flayer that gets under your skin in a humorously surreal way, director Martin Koolhoven’s “AmnesiA” stuns as an official debut feature film, a real under-the-radar sleeper hit for the Netherland filmmaking canon, that only Cult Epics could deliver pristinely with a time-of-day restoration and high-definition scan.

Become Caught Up in the Mystery of “AmnesiA” on Limited Edition Blu-ray!