When Trying to be Good, EVIL Will Always Pull You Back In! “Streets of Darkness” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Just Look at this “Streets of Darkness” Cover!  It’s a Must Own!  

After avenging the death of his friend and sister, Danny completed his prison stint and was released back into his Miami neighborhood to restart his life.  Looking to stay clean of violence, Danny doesn’t want to connect himself to any crime organization but when a cruel Cuban drug lord assaults his mother due to his father’s past transgressions, Danny’s seek for solitude drives him into the embracing arms of the Italian mafia who also has a grudge against their rival drug trader.  One hit leads to another and Danny finds himself back in the criminal world rising quickly to become one of the mafia’s profitable enforcers.  Danny has everything he’s ever wanted – money, respect, and the woman of his dreams – but when a pre-affiliation sexual tussle with one of the crime boss’s young vixens come to light, a division between the family turns the tide on Danny’s uncertain future when a target is placed on his back.

If you’re looking for that Miami Vice feel of a movie with hot locations, hot bods, and hot criminal action, look no further with “Streets of Darkness” having been rightly resurrected from video obscurity, lost to Father Time since the mid-1990s.  The 1995 crime thriller comes from director James Ingrassia who hasn’t cinematically published a movie since his double billed features of 1988 – a surfing themed sex comedy entitled “Hot Splash” and an island survival slasher in “Kiss of the Serpent.”  “Streets of Darkness,” paying titular tribute to and cashing in on perhaps the popular stage fighting game “Streets of Rage,” is also a direct sequel to “Just a Chance” of 1992, a semi-biographical story of Danny’s descent into the depths of criminal syndicates told anecdotally while in his incarceration  Both stories are the pen presentation of Creative Productions’ Vincent LaRusso, the creative wordsmith, producer, and star of both films trying to capitalize on the market’s desire for toned bodies and gang dramas with treachery and murder. 

Vincent LaRusso isn’t just the leading man of his own film, he’s also a workout enthusiast that helped his own cause in creating a chiseled mafioso who’s smooth with women and even smoother laying down criminal keystones to the way he runs operations.  Yet, LaRusso’s character Danny can often talk-the-talk but can’t seemingly walk-the-walk with his own principles as he quickly turns against his own rules of operations by joining the mafia with dollar signs in his eyes after repeating himself, at least three times, noting how he doesn’t want to be attached to anyone or anything.  Repeating himself also becomes a running motif, or maybe a running joke, as much of LaRusso’s script recycles a ton of aforementioned material.  You can even make “Streets of Darkness” a drinking game on how many times Danny, or any character in general, says, “you understand me?”  If you do make it a drinking game, the possibility of being drunk half-hour in is very possible.  You’ve been forewarned.  Commingle the script spiraling with LaRusso’s one note performance and what churns out only scratches the surface of potential in what could have been a lucrative gem of indie filmmaking.   Instead, what’s achieved is a lifeless centric character in the midst of decent supporting players, such as Armand Cassis as the ruthless Cuban Hector, Jerry Babij as a cuckold crime boss, and Christine Jackobi as the cuckolding and scorned Diabolique.  Speaking in regard to the latter’s veneer that LaRusso aims for, “Streets of Darkness” offers that sexy, supermodel, Andy Sidaris-type of female principals, including a Hawaiian Tropic contestant.  Monique Lis and Jennifer Cole (a Miss Hawaiian Tropic), along with Christine Jackobi, fit that busty and beautiful bill that solidifies that beach body and vice viscera.  “Streets of Darkness” fill out with Joseph Cappello, Peter Gaines, Stanley Miller, Frank Palanza, Gennaro Russilo, Louisette Geiss, Lou Rebino, Angelo Maldonado, and Patrick Berry.

LaRusso’s “Just a Chance” was a made for CTN, the Christian Television Network, to deliver a religious message of strength of endurance and overcoming the cause-and-effect in turning toward a life of violence and crime.  For the sequel, LaRusso wanted to embark on a more entertaining product for the public with edgier content, hence the naked women and graphic violence which most of the Christian community won’t understand, shy away, and definitely wouldn’t fund a financial base.  With a budget doubling “Just a Chance,” LaRusso is able to obtain through private funding a higher production value with areal cigarette boat footage in and around Miami and its waters, decent lighting in a broad and focal sense, camera movement work, variety of locations though many look like hotel rooms, and achieving the overall Miami mise-en-scene cinematography.  For a 90’s indie production, “Streets of Darkness” reaches that particular look of tropical turmoil and drug scene, the perfect beachy bodies, and the complex story of one man’s reluctant return to the savage, dark streets but the picture doesn’t take the elements to the next level beyond other Miami-based gang/cartel movies like “Scarface” or “Cocaine Cowboys” where there’s a continuous blanket of thick aired intensity and explosivity of big shootouts.  “Streets of Darkness” is more expositional and story driven, likely due to budget reasons, to integrate gangster Danny’s plight into our own understanding of this character’s vow to do the right thing but ultimately destines him in the opposite direction.  The editing starts off funky with a clunky fast forward scene that comes around later to then slowly but eventually, level out to a chin high in too deep path of no return from life of crime.

Due to some shady dealings with a corrupt distributor, the Beta SP master was lost but Ron Bonk and SRS Cinema was able to obtain the VHS master tapes for an Apple Hi-Def ProRes digital remastering of “Streets of Darkness” onto DVD.  What results is a beautifully slick and clean appearance of Vincent LaRusso’s vision, especially for a standard definition 480p, sourced almost impeccably from one of the best possible VHS format options, the Beta SP.  Though virtually wear free with no signs of VHS degradation issues, details are generally and expectedly soft presented in the letterbox 1.33:1 full frame but not overwhelming glossy smooth to the point of splotchy or granularly patchy.  Remastered coloring, along with the innate lighting, sell “Streets of Darkness’s” semigloss South Beach brushstroke and achieving LaRusso’s production value desire tenfold.  Audio options only include an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix has been augmented with additional score and soundtrack by Tim Ritter (“Truth or Dare?,” “Killing Spree”) and Toshiyuki Hiraoka (“Clownado,” “Cannibal Claus”).  From the commentary track, a few of original soundtracks had expired copyrights and so additional music was needed to rescore the film but, honestly, the additional pieces delved too much into Tim Ritter’s gore-and-shock territory with heavy low-frequency tones that rattle the eardrums and don’t necessarily scream Miami’s synth-beat rock or Latin flair.  I would have been interested to hear the original music and compare to the newly supplemented release.  However, dialogue protrudes into the forefront with lesser force than normal but still clean, clear, and prominent other than the heavy duty, reverberating bass notes.  There’s slight static feedback throughout but doesn’t hinder the audio senses.  The Brutal special features include a second film, the Vincent LaRusso’s “Just A Chance” along with video commentaries and interviews with both films featuring video discourse between LaRusso, Tim Ritter, and filmmaker Larry Joe Treadway and Ritter and LaRusso only on the audio commentaries.  The bonus content ends with theatrical trailers of both films.  While not chockablock with physical fixings, the SRS release has one of the more amazing cover arts sourced from the original poster elements of a shirtless and ripped Vincent LaRusso in between two model women for the front cover.  Immediately eye-fetching and intriguing, the image is accentuated by SRS’s mock retro designed DVD casing with a round ACTION and BE KIND REWIND stickers and an image bordering encompassment to make the appearance of a VHS cover.  Disc pressed art is the same image but cropped to focus on the three individuals on the front cover.  The not rated film has a runtime of 102 minutes and is region free.  “Streets of Darkness” is a win-win for SRS Cinema and Vincent LaRusso in its newly remastered form that revives the Miami mania even if it’s only for one more heat and beach encore.

Just Look at this “Streets of Darkness” Cover!  It’s a Must Own!  

No EVIL Gets Left Behind! “P.O.W. The Escape” reviewed! (Ronin Flix / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“P.O.W. The Escape” on Blu-ray at Amazon.com!

Colonel James Cooper’s moto is no one gets left behind.  The seasoned P.O.W. extraction officer volunteers for a politically spearheaded suicide mission to save Vietcong American captives before a cease fire treaty ends the war, effectively turning the P.O.W.’s into M.I.A. and possibly never heard from again.  As the U.S. Airborne Colonel expected, the mission of rescue results in a complete fiasco of resources and being empty handed of prisoners as the enemy suspected an imminent attack.  Cooper becomes a P.O.W. alongside the men who set to rescue but that doesn’t deter the determined officer to plan his escape, but before detailing out a route out, the camp’s warden Captain Vinh has alternative plans for his prized captive in all of North Vietnam.  Vietcong headquarters wants to retrieve the Colonel in two days for public execution but Capt. Ving seeks a better life outside his country and accumulates the K.I.A. and P.O.W.s valuables plus in addition to stealing gold bars form his country in order to relocate him and his family to the U.S. but on his terms with a perilous journey across enemy lines with all the P.O.W.s in order for no one to get left behind.

The Carradine name is one of the most recognizable names in Hollywood with David Carradine the most famous, behind his father John Carradine, with his highly successful television series from the mid-70s, “Kung Fu.”  A part of “Kung Fu’s” success was due in part of the decade itself where kung fu films were a peak popular with rising star Bruce Lee.  A decade later and still in the shadow of that breakout series with a made-for-television movie, Carradine breaks into another rising type of films that trades in hip-throws and round house kicks for M1 assault rifles, Huey helicopters, and the jungles of the Vietnam war.  And coincidently enough, Vietnam actioners were made popular by another martial artist with “Missing in Action” starring Chuck Norris.  Carradine’s venture into the America’s shame frame being exploited for personal gain is P.O.W. The Escape, a rip-roaring and explosive do-or-die war caper from first time director Gideon Amir and penned, and re-penned, by Jeremy Lipp (“The Hitchhiker” TV series), James Bruner (“Invasion USA”), and “Deadly Sins” co-writers Malcolm Barbour and John Langley.  Also known as “Attack Force ‘Nam” and “Behind Enemy Lines,” the Philippines doubling Vietnam production is produced by Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan as a Globus-Golan Production.

The Late Carradine epitomizes stone-faced patriotism as the exfiltration expert Colonel Cooper.  Showing hardly any emotion except for a handful of scenes that call for it, or else Cooper would be a full-scale unempathetic sociopath, Carradine gives his best harden American warrior as well as an indestructible combat commando where a barrage of bullets whizz around him, explosions don’t impede his health, and an army of Vietcong are no match for the Colonel’s American flag draped, M60 machine strapped fighting spirt in an uphill battle of certain death.  Its farcically funny to behold but that was the traditional one-man-army paradigm back then and, to an extent, still is even today to give audiences as gung-ho and impossibly invincible hero.  Cooper leads a bunch of weary P.O.W. troopers on the brink of becoming lost in wartime politics and only three out of the bunch are highlighted throughout the misadventure toward safety with those roles’ boots on the ground by Steve James (“McBain”), as the order-following Sgt. Johnston, Phillip Brock (“American Ninja”) as wise-cracking know-it-all, good soldier Adams, and Charles Grant (“Witchcraft”) as the maverick Sparks who initially goes against Cooper’s plan.  Sparks is likely the most interesting and complex character with an internal conflict having set into his own path of escape dedicated on selfishness and greed only to feel the tremendous weight of guilt and burden of his fellow soldier while on the bed of a half-naked, North Vietnamese prostitute.  The last major principal is actually a Captain, that is Captain Vinh, played by one of the most recognizable faces in Japanese cinema history, Mako, of Arnold Schwarzenegger “Conan” fame as the Akiro the Wizard.  Understanding Vinh’s motivation hardly musters conclusively on why he wishes to defect his country and why he needed Colonel Cooper to accomplish it.  Perhaps Vinh’s undergoing hate for his own country was lost in the editing room as the film is noted to have gone through multiple re-writes, edits, and additional post-production shoots.  “P.O.W. the Escape” fills out the cast with Daniel Demorest, Tony Pierce, Steve Freedman, James Acheson, Ken Metcalfe, Ken Glover, Rudy Daniels, and Irma Alegre.

For Gideon Amir’s first picture, this Vietnam vehicle is an action-packed romp.  Never letting up on the accelerating peddle, especially with Cooper’s blank determination to get all the men out of the arm struggle before a treaty wraps up the conflict and leaves his charge in casted away in the arms of the enemy, what Amir accomplishes at the behest of his influential producers wonders how this high-value production ever made it past post without being a completely incomprehensible mess.  There lies choppy moments of editing that puts into question it’s original concept even if one isn’t aware of the film’s narrative conflictions.  What ensues is not a traditional rally and escape from a torturous, inhuman enemy camp that one can’t abscond from so easily; instead, the narrative becomes an escapade of itinerant provides various difficult scenarios that split up the group, sees internal turmoil, and propels desperation to get to the friendly Huey’s with their very lives, but doesn’t see Cooper come under threatening fire as he spurts off short rifles rounds and takes out a handful of Vietcong at once with one scene reminiscent on a particular World War II hero charging up hill and taking out a whole German squadron alone with a machine gun.  Audie Murphy, If remembering accurately, but instead of sustaining any projectile wounds, Cooper thrusts forward unscathed while those G.I.s he’s trying to recover and rescue perish in an inescapable firefight.  Carradine’s stoicism throughout the life profit and loss campaign doesn’t match Cooper’s liberation maxim that forces “P.O.W. the Escape” into an impassive, often times comical, attitude with the story’s central character.

Director Gideon Amir and David Carradine tempt their hand at the Vietnam vamoose now on a Hi-Def Blu-ray forged by Ronin Flix through way of Scorpion Releasing’s 2019 HD transfer of the previous MGM print.  The widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio presented feature fails to capture impeccable clarity of acme perfection with approx. half the frames wilted away with artefact de-escalation of details. Half the scenes look great with a semi-serious saturation of color, a few of facial and foliage details come out, and textures have tactile range at times, but the film’s glass is only half full within a darker dilution of speckled splotches. The English DTS-HD 2.0 master audio mix relays a fair enough dialogue consignment with comprehensible clarity and is utterly clean but lacks punchiness with a flat as a David Carradine’s poker-face facade. With a robust range of gunfire, explosions, and modes of transportation, especially going through the mucky and miry jungles of war-torn Vietnam, the film definitely needed a stronger suit of sound but was ultimately discharged without dullness. English subtitles are available. Special features include three on-camera interviews with Director Gideon Amir, screenwriter James Bruner, and stunt man Steve Lambert discussing their particular involvement in pre-and-principal shoots, some of the process woes, and how exotic the opportunity was to work internationally and with David Carrine. The film’s original trailer rounding out the special features block. Physically, the Ronin Flix release comes in a standard Blu-ray snapper with an action-packed and commandoed David Carradine blasting off his rifle like in a Ghana-esque illustrated movie poster. Inside, the lack of insert and reversible cover art leads our eyes straight to the disc art that’s the same as the cover, cropped down to fit in the circumference. Rated PG, that is rated 1986 PG with strong war violence, strong language, and nudity, the release is region A locked in playback and has a runtime of 86 minutes. A campy commando campaign capitalizing on the success of the Vietnam prison camp subgenre, “P.O.W. the Escape” could be much worse for wear as a solid action flick fierce in delivery yet fickle in substance.


“P.O.W. The Escape” on Blu-ray at Amazon.com!

House Music is EVIL’s Jam! “Rave” reviewed! (Scream Team Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get High and Get Pumped for “Rave” on Blu-ray.

Free flowing Mimmi and her timid pal Lina are invited to an underground night club for one more illegal rave party before the building is vacated for unlawful occupation.  As the two dance the night away, Lina becomes steadily ill and as she tries for the bathroom, she begins to bleed from her skin.  Other rave goers begin to feel the same effects, spewing blood, dripping skin, and a melting away existence while the strobe lights unceasingly flicker and the deep house music pulsates into a fixed one-note bass.  Mimmi and another friend escape the party before even the first signs of the illness, hiding away to do a line cocaine, but when they’re followed by those turned into slow walking bags of oozing flesh, no longer resembling something human, her friend is brutal killed and she barely eludes the ill-fated ravers, becoming trapped inside by those liquifying creatures and a pair of masked individuals seemingly unaffected by what’s occurring around them.

Often times there comes a film that sneaks under the radar and may warrant a second watch for it to sink under the skin or into the recesses the brain’s grey matter.  For writer-director Nils Alatalo, his Swedish melt horror “Rave” is the epitome of context.  The 2020 released independent production, known as “Svartklubb” in the Swedish language, is Alatalo’s debut feature that catapults the filmmaker into the same melt movie categories held in reverence by fans of “Body Melt” or “Street Trash” while kissing the outer edges of vintage and cult iconic eurotrash from the 80’s.  “Rave” will be our consecutive watch, analyze, and review into body horror, following the more gore-gorging merge of man and machine of Davide Pesca’s “Re-Flesh” released last year.  “Rave” proclaims a more stylized and abstruse approach compared to Pesca’s grossly unconcealed transgressions of the body.  Haveri Film is the production company behind “Rave.”

“Rave” asynchronously follows two central characters beginning with the rave-reserved and dry-hesitant Lina before a switcheroo into dipping into the carefree, go-with-the-flow, drug-positive Mimmi.  Played correspondingly by Tuva Jagell (“Girls Lost”) and Isabelle Grill (“Midsommar”), the main principals are a dichotomizing pair of personalities mutually connected to each other by friendship and though Alatalo ultimately decides not to fully explore the intimacies of a cherished bond in post-climax, there’s certainly a relatability audiences will be able to understand amongst their own friendship terms, such as seemingly tired of the meekness or revel in being the dominating friend, as being fostered with empowerment, or on the opposite side of the spectrum, needing a friend to take charge, provide reassures, and be a beacon of exuberance.   However, all the letting go on inhibitions come at a cost, a deadly one at that, and when they essentially are the peak of being identical for perhaps the first time in their lives together, the closeness of Lina and Mimmi become mortally unraveled by what could be described as pure, unadulterated Hell.  What also unravels is their friendship in the midst of drugs coursing through their bloodstream and their minds have shutoff with the trance rhythm of the house music, both aspects of which put up walls to deflect the danger from within and around them, making them clueless to the clues.  Jagell and Grill’s performances have more physical importance than whatever come be extracted from their slim dialogue written for the characters and the two young actresses convert themselves into the roles of psychedelic terror. “Rave’s” partygoers round out with Victor Iván, Sophie Lücke, Ebba Gangoura, Sebastian Norén, Christer Wahlberg, and Celina Braute.

“Rave” is a flash of brilliance tightly confined and bottlenecked to not be bigger than needed by squeezing to contain its claustrophobic purgatory that’s wrapped like a nightmare on molly.  “Rave” is also not a straightforward line of coke, glow sticks, and fleshy fluid fiends within what is an ambiguous narrative that requires an open mind to its reverence for elder Euro horror.  That’s what I suspect Alatalo was shooting for here, an immense adoration and respect for European horror peppered with inspirations from American filmmakers as well.  Soft brilliance of Dario Armento lighting, silhouette eeriness of Lamberto Bava cinematography, and the slow bloodletting of Lucio Fulci’s gore represent the best qualities of same continental yore while including a John Carpenter story-ingrained synth score and paying homage to American melt horror filmmakers, such as J. Michael Muro, Gregory Lamberson, and Philip Brophy to name a few, with his own rendition of what it means to have skin slink and blood secrete from inside the body out.  While the first viewing doesn’t quite stimulate immediately the senses with its slow burn dread, ambiguous cause and effect, and dialogue adverse script, “Rave” glues itself to the psyche and lingers in that cranial netherworld that nags and gnaws at the subconscious and does it enough that a second viewing becomes necessary.  Instantly, piecing together the puzzle through a second visual overlay can jumpstart the engines on what exactly we’re witnessing – Alatalo’s patience with the structure, meticulous details in the scene, and admiration for the genre.  “Rave” is also an indie picture on a budget but considering the composition of the final product, “Rave” strongly accomplishes a persistent uneasiness without exposition that parallels subtle strikes of sharp, startling dread only seen by a handful of filmmakers.    

A whole new version of neon dead arrives onto a special edition Blu-ray of Nils Alatalo’s “Rave” from Scream Team Releasing.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high definition, BD25 presents the film in a widescreen 1:78:1 aspect ratio, scaled down from the original aspect ratio of Univision 2.00:1 causing some minor compressed looking scenes.  Not to be deterred, the range of scene setups under the cinematography trio of Jakob Ivar Ekvall, Amelia Finngåård, and Gustav Råström offer an eclectic mix often in the humblest of fashions, such as using just a camera flashlight in a windowless room or the red and blue neon lighting through fog machine.  Silhouettes delineate nicely on screen with the use of backlighting and camera angles.  Framing is a hit or miss coupled with energetic editing, but the overall atmosphere is agreeably chafed with tension.  Minor banding and some aliasing creep out as artifact side effects of a dark-laden story with some of the quicker moments evading the slimy-secretors through the building trying to keep up through the decoding of data.  The compression issues are not terribly invasive during viewing, but they are annoying consistent and notifiable.  The Swedish uncompressed LPCM 5.1 surround mix has lossless binding and sounds really good environmentally albeit many of the tracks are done in post, such as some of the exterior dialogues, which sound natural but softer in the scene, and the itemized milieu ambience.  The Joakim Martinsson and Christer Wahlberg house music and soundtrack are the real victors here integrated into “Rave’s” overall sound design of having the discordant industrial rhythms and irregularities become an antagonistic competitor breathing through the back and side channels, reminiscent of how intrinsic Giuliano Sorgini’s score heightened the intensity of the impending zombie attack.  English subtitles are optionally available.  Bonus features include an English commentary by director Nils Alatalo providing insight on nearly every shot, a soundtrack featurette alternating between Joakim Martinsson and Christer Wahlberg discussing and sample their individualized tracks, a making of montage with soundtrack only, and the film’s trailer.  The physical characteristics of the release contain a beautifully macabre composite in neon coloring and lace slipped into a standard Blu-ray snapper with latch.  Front cover is reversible with a more disheveled and strung-out Isabelle Grill looking blankly upward, which has a variation of her facial posture on the factory-distributed cover.  Disc art contains one of the gloppy ghouls bathed in red with a black background.  “Rave” release comes region free, not rated, and has a runtime of a brisk 72 minutes.  A slow burn melt movie capturing the essence of “Rave” to the grave.

Get High and Get Pumped for “Rave” on Blu-ray.

EVIL Preys on the Goodness of the Weak. “Lady Terror” reviewed! (Sector 5 Films / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Lady Terror” is on the Prowl.  Now on DVD!  

Jake Large, a shrewd personal injury lawyer, finds himself in a loveless engagement that’s full of contempt, especially with his finance who makes up excuses to not be around or intimate with him.  When Jake foils a thief’s grab and dash of Candice’s purse, the lawyer and the exotic dancer quickly fall into a relationship that rekindles Jake’s vivacity of work and life.  Breaking off the engagement to his equally two-timing finance, Jake pours every ounce of emotion into the sexually tempest romance that’s rapidly become more than just courtship when Candice suggests the murder of her frequently threatening and abusive stepfather.  Witnessing first hand some of his behavior, Jake agrees to take out her stepfather in a fiery explosion during one of his rabbit hunting trips.  When the dust settles and all seems to be going well with Candice, a watershed moment reveals Candice’s intentions are not what they seem to be and in the middle of taking the fall for everything is Jake. 

An enticingly fervid thriller, “Lady Terror” is the latest directorial from the 30-year industry producer, writer, and director, Nathan Hill.   Filmed in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, “Lady Terror” harks back to the early 90’s erotic suspenser of sex, deceit, and murder where seduction and predatory persuasion are welded tools to accomplish unscrupulous acts.  Hill has submersed himself chiefly in low-budget genre films from his first feature, a sewer creature that craves Cartel drug pushers in the SOV shot “The Hidden” released in 1993, to more recent and gamut gorging Australian documentary pictures, such as “Bigfoot Down Under” and “Sex Down Under,” as well as keeping tethered to his horror roots with his short film work contributed to compilated anthologies in “Clownsploitation,” “Previews of Coming Attractions,” and “Schlock-O-Rama.”  Hill produces his “Lady Terror” under his company NHProductions with the Alien enthusiastic documentarian, executive producer Warren Coyle, and marks the reconnection of Hill and director of photography Dia Taylor following their debut, feature film collaboration on Hill’s “I, Portrait” and the various filmic vignettes from before. 

Not only does Hill write, direct, and produce, the filmmaker with a penchant for creating J-named characters is also the lead principal personal injury lawyer Jake Large, owner-proprietor of Large Lawyers.  Though successful in his legal craft, Jake’s has developed depression when his once endearing fiancé Celine has turned against him as she sneaks around his back with a mixed martial artist.   A loathing Celine is played severely cutting by Tritia DeViSha who has previous chemistry alongside Hill during their time on Hill’s “Revenge of the Gweilo” production and while the chemistry between their characters is palatably thick with contempt, there’s not much backstory in gain traction for sympathy, compassion, or any other emotive expression.  Jake has a single flashback of his and Celine’s happiness in simpler times during a moment of what could be regret or longing, but there’s simply not enough breadcrumbs for their history to take shape of any form.  Instead, their turmoil feeds into Jake’s unquestionable willingness to concede to a beautiful exotic dancer and damsel in distress named Candice (Phillyda Murphy).  The attention is good, the sex is good, why not just give a little back by murdering her crooked stepfather (Anton Kormoczi – who also goes by Anton Trejo because he mildly looks like Danny Trejo)?  Well, Jake’s lovestruck blindness obscures the real intent but, luckily for Jake, he has what he describes as a lucky rabbit’s foot in his secretary who aspires to be a private investigator and when she’s not punching keys, she’s clandestinely tailing Candice in a spying and snapping pictures behind trashcans and around corners caricature kind of way.  The platinum blonde and distant relative of horror maestro, Dario Argento, Simay Argento is the peripheral probing dick Ayla Harp that initially doesn’t have this close-knit relationship with her boss until the third act when she happens to take it upon herself, after examining Jake’s behavior and reading his desk notes, to snoop into his private life on his behalf.  It’s not entirely clear how she unearthed who exactly Jake became intimate with but she managed track down Candice’s exact location to snap a few black and whites.  “Lady Terror’s” remaining cast feels very much like Ayla Harp in the disconnection of each other’s narratives, ridden along in choppy succession that leaves too many plot holes to fill.  The cast rounds out with Leslie Lawrence, Anthony Cincotta, Robert Rafik Awad, Challise Free, and Adam Ramzi – the 40-year-old Melbourne actor, not the gay porn star.

Perhaps that character disconnection stems from the distracting filler from in between dialogue scenes.  A slew of these filler scenes are of Jake Large driving around town, pulling up into driveways, and entering his home, Candice’s home, or his office, eating into a runtime that could be better suited for character exploration or assembling the fragments of a deceptive thriller involving the key players.  The current design dulls the run-of-the-mill and insubstantial story with nothing new to offer audiences to facelift the core element, a rope-a-dope of relationship pretense in order to con a fall guy into another’s dirty work.  Though I know the answer in the back of my mind, a considerable amount of struggling happens in the deductive logic and complex problem solving regions of my brain for the missteps of what’s supposed to happen after Jake commits to the hit.  Ultimately, the worst outcome to happen to Jake is not what I suspected; in fact, we should be expecting a more disastrous, run-for-your-life fall from grace, but, instead, there’s no sense of urgency or consequence in the unravelling of Jake’s newfound and glorious prospects with Candice.  In fact, police presence is reduced to informing Candice her stepfather had died and that’s the extent of it, not mentioning the gunshot, a gasoline fueled explosion, or any other kind of suspicious death pursuits.  The awkwardness continues to bleed into the narrative continuity.  “Lady Terror” has a time span of at least a week or two, or longer as it’s not entirely clear, but Jake’s outfit rarely differs from the white pants, blue button-up shirt, tan sport jacket, and fedora.  The same goes with his lacy see-through topped assistant Ayla, suggesting that many of the scenes were shot on the same day or two without a wardrobe change.  When Jake does have a different outfit on, the subsequent scenes revert right back to that then by now stale getup. 

“Lady Terror” arrives onto DVD courtesy of Sector 5 Films, long overdue revisit of the distributor’s line of product since our last review from 2016.  Presented on a DVD-R, with DVD5 capacity, in a widescreen 1:78:1 aspect ratio, “Lady Terror” retains an unhewn image that appears soft, smooth, and with slight aliasing.  Overexposure wipes a fair amount of background sky, such as with approx. ten minutes into the story a plane just flies off into a bright void, but the overcast grading leaves this modern noir consistently dreary to where the only thing that stimulatingly pops is Phillyda Murphy in her skimpy intimates.  Again, there’s not a ton of landscape range, especially being set around Melbourne and not taking advantage of the city skyline or it’s Port Phillip harbor with the drone to gain urban rookery.  Sector 5 DVD’s back cover states the film has a 5.1 surround sound mix, but what my player tells me, “Lady Terror” actually comes supplied with an English Dolby Digital 2.0 mix.  The dual channel output would have been a sufficiently adequate mix albeit unpolished, echoey dialogue but for the entire length of the film, a harsh gargle undercuts the sharpness in the dialogue and the Jamie Murgatroyd (“No Such Things as Monsters”) soundtrack.  This also creates faint whispery-hissing.  There are no optional subtitles included.  Bonus features include doomsday, extraterrestrial, and anthropology hypothetical or alternative fact-doc trailers for “Occult of the Secret Universe,” “Nostradamus:  Future Revelations and Prophecy,” “Ancient Origins:  Extraordinary Evidence,” “Alien Paradox:  Legacy of the UFO,” “Demonic Aliens,” “Breaking Free of the Matrix,” “Ancient Origins:  Mankind’s Mysterious Past,” and “Elusive Bigfoot Abroad.”  The Sector 5 DVD is housed in standard black snapper with trashy romance novel resembling front cover of two who are not Nathan Hill and Phillyda Murphy in throes of passion.  The cropped top portion of the cover art that includes Murphy’s face in composited in 3 hues is also pressed onto the disc art.  The release comes not rated with an 80-minute runtime and a region 1 encoded playback.  Though performances are solid, “Lady Terror” ultimately feels underwhelming and unable to live up to the attractive title with an unadventurous noir thriller hamstrung stake to the heart from the DVD-R’s anemic technical and fidelity issues.

“Lady Terror” is on the Prowl.  Now on DVD!  

Recalled to Nam is a Return Tour of EVIL! “Kill Zone” reviewed! (MVDVisual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Enter the “Kill Zone” on a New Blu-ray Home Video!

Combat POWs are captured by enemy forces, imprisoned in an outdoor internment camp.  Tortured for information, the prisoners are held without water in the scorching heat, strung up for hours on posts, beaten to a pulp, and stowed away in a hotbox if they do not cooperate with interrogators.  When Lt. Jason McKenna snaps and loses grip on reality, he breaks free from his confinement and kills four guards during the process when the soldier believes he’s back in Vietnam.  The only problem for McKenna is that the enemy imprisonment was a his own military’s roleplay training exercise for POW-survivalist.  The commanding officer, Colonel Crawford, had pushed McKenna too hard, making the exercise realistic as possible despite the warnings of fellow trainee and McKenna’s friend, Mitchell.  Now, the incensed Colonel is out for blood, covering his tracks with military leadership as he and the gung-ho soldiers seek to put an end to McKenna and it’s up to Mitchell to find his troubled friend first. 

The high-body count film that became the launching point for what would form Action International Pictures, 1985’s “Kill Zone,” an American-made, military actioner written and directed by the late David A. Prior (“Sledgehammer,” “Killer Workout”), opened the production door for a string of both action and horror ventures that spawned cult followings over the decades to come, especially when obscure titles such as “Kill Zone” never made it passed the release of its VHS format – until now.  John Saxon’s “Death House,” “Teenage Exorcist” with scream queen Brinke Stevens, and even the pint-sized creature feature “Elves” are just a few titles that owe “Kill Zone” some ounce of ground working thanks.  Prior cowrote the script with Jack Marino, who also produced the film under the limited formation of Spartan Films, and was shot in and around what is now Prado Regional Park in Chino, California.

Trekking from internment camp to civilization, aka the kill zone, and fighting and fleeing for their very lives from their own crooked military unit are McKenna and Mitchell, played correspondingly by “Killer Workout’s” Fritz Matthews and Ted Prior, younger brother of director David Prior.  Though Matthews has the emotional range of a tree stump, the leading man more or less fits the bill as a tall and stocky soldier protagonist while Mitchell does all the emotive heavy lifting of the pair, reflected in his large and muscular Stallone-sized biceps.  The comrades’ necks fall under the boot of Colonel Crawford from an aging David Campbell (“Scarecrows”) whose ridicule onslaught is dousing and his ruthlessness remains constant but can’t top the baseline he cemented early on into the story, diluting his villainy with not much formidableness, and becomes a feeble opposition.  Colonel Crawford is backed by his equally inadaqute military unit, former fellow trainees that divide themselves into a clique against the diverging outliers McKenna and Mitchell who separate themselves from the apathetic herd thinking either by post-traumatic mental illness or for concrete concern for a life-saving friend.  Either way, the rest of the unit bully their way into Crawford’s good graces albeit the Colonel’s lack of interest in the lives or death of his men in a nationally organized armed force that breathes the creed to keep the peace, but the Colonel’s men are just as complicit to their commanding officer’s callousness when they begin to rough up and snuff civilians in what is the most cold-blooded aspect of “Kill Zone’s” torrent.  Dennis Phun (“Surf Nazis Must Die”), Rick Massery, Richard Brailford, William Zipp (“Mankillers”), Richard Bravo (“Killer Workout”), and Larry Udy fill out the Colonel’s men while Ron Pace, Tom Baldwin, Jack Marino, and Sharon Young round out the civilian contingent.

On the surface, “Kill Zone” has the presentation of a direct-to-video, low-budget rip of “First Blood” but like the Sylvester Stallone John Rambo thriller, commentary undertones rise to the top with an additional few bobbing and freestanding from 1982 film.  Producer Jack Marino admits watching “First Blood” prior to writing the script that obviously become appropriated from the Ted Kotcheff picture in what is an underlining post-traumatic syndrome plagued individual in a dormant stage of the affliction then becomes pried open by aggressive, misapprehending authority with no time for a condition they’re ignorant too.  What follows is a deadly resistance against a barbaric enemy and the starkly different situations both characters John Rambo and Jason McKenna find themselves caught up in parallel their hellacious Nam tour in many synapse-snapping and physically scarring aspects to a point where the line blurs between being back in that Hell in reality and being back in that Hell in the mind.  What “Kill Zone” adds to its own version of the tale is no pedestrian anti-war pushback like we see with Brian Dennehy’s Podunk sheriff and his deputies but rather a shift in commentary toward the military’s once push harder and neglectful treatment on PTSD in what becomes an anti-military production to the extreme.  John Rambo had military sympathizers in Richard Crenna’s Colonel Trautmann but Jason McKenna’s Colonel spat flak with nothing but contempt for what he considers a weak soldier.  While military criticism is large and in charge, what negatively impacts “Kill Zone” is the no flare for technical military behavior or jargon.  The opening combat scene exemplifies the inexactitudes with Mitchell and his team storming through brush and across a river toward an unseen enemy’s stronghold guns blazing like little boys with popguns and mouthy explosions sounds of amateurism splayed all over as he and his team run wildly, hop like a bunny into fire stances, and point rifles with no line of sight.  Prior is able to achieve some nice shots of ammunition exchange with slow profile pans and aerial assaults filmed up from the ground, but there’s too much downplay to take this low-rung action film seriously and to really get a viewer the headspace of “Kill Zone’s” deathtrap montage that warrants more respect than what the rest of the presentation layout provides.

Missing in action from contemporary formats for over three decades, “Kill Zone” finally becomes rescued from inferior definition captivity and arrives onto DVD and Blu-ray (reviewed) courtesy of MVDVisual’s Rewind Collection series.  The Blu-ray is an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition transfer scanned and restored in 4K from the 35mm interpositive print.  Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the new transfer breathes new life into the lost but not forgotten feature with an enriched color grading and a sharpening of details, especially textures of the foliage and rocky terrains and assorted skin features.  Not entirely impeccable, contrast often teeters in the same frame and there’s an abundance of saturating grain, like large raindrop grain, in nighttime image that wash out details to great extent, but we’re always reeled back in with warm and pleasant color palette that flushes the previous VHS release quality down the core memory exiting drainpipe.  There’s one or two moments of vertical scratches, indelicately faint, and rough editing patches that distort to a blip that may be more problematic and age-related from the interpositive print than the dynamic restoration that was done.  The English language LPCM 2.0 mono track suffers from the low-quality sound recording equipment or placement that renders dialogue soft and nearly unintelligible as volume levels severely spike depending on how much the actors are projecting their voices.  There is some minor, unobtrusive popping throughout the fidelity faithful ambient and dialogue track, the latter, though softly wavering at times, does ultimately prevail to the forefront.  Optional subtitles are available.  Special features include a new audio (and optional video) commentary with producer Jack Marino, moderated by Cereal at Midnight host Heath Holland, a new Making-Of Kill Zone” featurette with clips interview with Jack Marino moderated by “Kill Zone” restoration project producer Steve Latshaw, the Vestron Video VHS version of the feature in standard definition, a photo gallery, and the original theatrical trailer redone with restoration elements.  The action-packed original poster art obtains a renewed look for the Blu-ray’s retro cardboard O-slip that resembles a torn, scuffed, and stickered VHS box art. Underneath the slipcover, the same poster art is on the front of the clear Blu-ray snapper case with latch and on the reverse side a back-the-scenes still images of Ted Prior and costars in character form.  The insert holds a folded mini-poster of the original poster art and the disc is pressed with the ridged gridlines of a VHS shell cassette with insert this side directions at the top.  Pretty neat design that further leans into “Kill Zone” VHS cult following purgatory.  MVD’s 50th release of the Rewind Collection is rated R feature has a runtime of 91 minutes and the Blu-ray is region unlocked for everyone’s viewing pleasure.  No longer destined to live out its shelf life on VHS, the wonderful contributors to obscure movie restoration brings “Kill Zone” back into action with a rejuvenated hi-def release that’ll blow you away. 

Enter the “Kill Zone” on a New Blu-ray Home Video!