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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be Careful Of Your Friends. They May Be EVIL! “Stabbed in the Face” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Stabbed in the Face” is now on DVD!

A high school Halloween party becomes the catalytic event for a motley of friends that plan a party in a remote haunted house where the urban legend of the three legged lady had brutally slain her husband and his mistress before her own insanity was gunned down by local authorities.  Simultaneously, a prison escaped murderer roams free around the same area, living a few friends on edge but reassured by the others that nothing will happen.  As the party begins, sex, drugs, and alcohol fuel the night away until one of the girls winds up missing and all that is left is a blood-stained bathroom where she was last seen heading.  Fingers begin pointing at each other as panic and anxiety sets in but as the thought of a deranged escape convict overtakes as best suspect, the others quickly split up to find more of their roll-in-the-hay and pothead friends only to discover the hard way that splitting up is a bad idea when hidden agendas come to light.

A character trope loaded slasher forms the foundational framework and sets up filmmaker Jason Matherne’s 2004 feature with a killer-thriller twist.  With an unambiguous forthcoming of brutality right smack-dab in the middle of the title of “Stabbed in the Face,” Matherne, the low-budget director of the franchised “Goreface Killer,” an if-you-can-believe-it less profane name to the film’s true title of “the Cockfaced Killer,” helms his sophomore gruesome gorescape off a script by fellow “Goreface Killer” writer and collaborator Jared Scallions.  The independent gore-and-shocker set in the late 1980s lands a setting in Louisiana and Mississippi, specifically around the off-beaten trails and areas of New Orleans, under Matherne’s New Orleans-based horror and exploitation yielding Terror Optics Films, under the copyright of CFK (Cockface Killer) Enteratinment, which innately chairs Matherne with the executive producer hat as well as with Jaren Scallions co-executive producing and having a principal role in the story.

Character clichés clutter the chain of events with your typical pot smokers (Jared Scallions and André Le Blanc), bad boy (Eric Fox), jock (Bill Heintz), nerd (Steve Waltz), slut (Kristen McCrory), bitch (Dana Kieferle) and goody two-shoe virgin (Amanda Kiley).  The gang is all here for the slaughter, initiating formulaic conventionalisms that would make any horror aficionado cringe with an internal “here we go again” snide rippling through their gore-bore heads at the lack of originality and creativeness from another indie production.  Yet, if you stick with the story and pay attention (instead of doom scrolling your phone), Scallion’s script evolves out of being a simplistic carbon-copy primate and into a singular, secerning Homo Sapien with idiosyncrasies because though most characters remain on the routine attribute course, more than one don’t in an an uncommon but rarely explored concept that puts audience theories and callouts to bed before the unsuspecting reveal.  If needing a comparison, think about the “Scream” franchise as those films are really good at playing out the whodunit in complicated pairings with a big surprise at the very end.  In “Stabbed in the Face,” the unmasking is not as potent but the possible advents serpentine the story, some more obvious than others, and each carry a different motivation crashing head-on with each other after a few Matherne measured red herrings to throw off the plot predictable scent as well as building up tropes to the max of their mechanics, such examples would be the overly unchaste Starr who bed hops men without shame or overstating Bruce’s money and smarts with talks of getting into Harvard and his girlfriend is only with him for his family’s wealth.  Scallion slathers principals thick with stenciled overflow and when that bottom drops and all hell breaks loose, the ostensible outcome dissolves like wet paper.  Katheryn Aronson, Samantha M. Capps, Matt Mitkevicious, Bonnie W. Picone, Jerry Paradis, Helen Whiskey, Betsy Fleming, and J.C. Pennington complete the cast.

“Stabbed in the Face” is about as savage as it sounds.  Perhaps not as graphic or intense as the Wild Eye DVD illustrated cover art (we secretly wished it was), kills that amount to the titular act has a mortality rate of only two and those pair of perforations don’t live up to the wonderfully ghastly illustrated cover but, overall, fulfills the promise.  It’s quite evident that Matherne has no qualms about using splatter and sex, two of the biggest keys to a successful slasher, in his punk-scored abjection of lewd-laced murder.  Yet, it would be very remiss of me if I didn’t point out that “Stabbed in the Face’s” blade strikes air at times with the story.  Disconnection between the first couple of scenes and the haunted house party planning and then on completely omits the transpiring moment of the jock’s sister’s murder as scenes progress, passing through the event without as much of a whisper.  She’s just there in a scene and then she’s not and that isn’t explained until after the planning of the haunted house trip when the virgin naively asks while settling into his car about the girl who apparently was hacked to pieces on school grounds two months prior.  The heavy weight of that loss isn’t there for the jock, not even a fleeting moment of sadness or shock, as everything continues as if nothing happened.  The other characters are not struck by the loss either and this sweeps the character’s death under the rug and insignificant to the plot, but does a film entitled “Stabbed in the Face” really care about emotional scarring?  Or is the intention to leave open wounds to fester with more knife strikes, decapitations, and eviscerations?  If I was a magic eight ball, all signs would be point to yes toward the latter as special effects team Jason Bradford, Robert Masters, and Richie Roachclip pull their weight (professionally, not emotionally) creating better than anticipated morbid scenes of murder albeit the one or two obvious CGI blood splatter.

An 80’s teen slasher incarnate, “Stabbed in the Face” glorifies gratuitous sex, drugs, and gore, appropriately curated and displayed by our friends at Wild Eye Releasing on their Raw & Extreme sublabel.  The 78th released title on the sublabel is presented in a blown-up aspect ratio of 1.85:1 widescreen, eliminating the horizontal bars, on a MPEG2 encoded DVD5.  Resolution retains the image tautness with only a handful of scenes cropped and zoomed in even more that reduces pixels to a more granular façade.  Matherne owns the softer presentation with instances of posterization, especially when creating a period piece using stark colored gels and less light for positioning thicker shadow that hazily defines objects, as if lurking in the dark.  The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track has great dialogue strength that does sound boxy.  I suspect a ADR dub but highly unlikely with the really good synch and might just be more carefully attained specified audio with key boom placement.  Eric Fox’s electron and punk soundtrack parallel “Stabbed in the Face’s” indie-grunge horror with synthesizing tells of inspiration from the 80’s era.  Punk and hillbilly rock bands on the soundtrack include multiple tracks from The Poots, The Projections and The Pallbearers – the three Ps.  The static menu features full-length tracks from the soundtrack overlaying its static menu with the only bonus feature being a “Stabbed in the Face” Featurette, a behind-the-scenes look in raw and polished form at the film’s genesis and production with discussions from cast and crew.  Along with the feature’s own trailer, also included but separate from the bonus features are other Raw & Extreme trailers of “Crimewave,” “Goregasm,” “Whore,” “Video Killer,” “Blood Slaughter Massacre,” “Hotel Inferno,” and “Acid Bath.”  This portion of the menu options does not include a music track.  To turn consumers onto the film, more so the gore fans than popcorn film goers, the ultraviolent cover keeps in accordance with the Raw & Extreme profile.  The cover art is also semi-reversible with magnified bloody image on the inside of the frosted Amaray DVD case.  The disc is printed with the same cover art image, just downsized.  The unrated DVD has a runtime of 81 minutes and is region free.  Just hearing the title can induce the sensation of a sharp edge going through soft flesh and with that phantom impression of pain, “Stabbed in the Face” is horny, bloody, and punk!

“Stabbed in the Face” is now on DVD!

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Emanuelle’s Revenge now on DVD from Cinephobia Releasing!

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

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

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

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

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


Emanuelle’s Revenge now on DVD from Cinephobia Releasing!