Furry EVIL Bogies Go for the Flag! “Caddy Hack” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Special Edition Hole-in-One “Caddy Hack” On Blu-ray!

At the Old Glory Holes Golf Course, owner Wells Landon runs a tight ship under his garish wig before the weekend’s big money member’s tournament.  Hambone, Landon’s dimwitted and loyal groundskeeper, maintains the greens aesthetic tiptop shape with the help of his home brewed fertilizer, but the enriching fertilizer does more than just keep weeds from sprouting and keep the grass greener than Gumby, it also mutates the terrain terrorizing Gopher population into glowing-eyed, hairbrained killing machines offing the snobbish members, the party-hard caddies, and the course’s pretentious upper management in gruesome detail on all 18 holes.  Book nerd and greenhorn caddy Googie and his newly appointed and strict caddy manager Becky rally the caddy troops against a horde of impish, bloodthirsty rodents hellbent on shanking the golf course with more than just lumpy greens and unsightly mounds.  An all-out war between man and mammal tees off toward a fairway of carnage! 

A comedy-horror satire based off the satirical sports-comedy “Caddyshack,” Anthony Catanese’s written-and-directed “Caddy Hack” (see what he did there?) continues the feud that started with Bill Murray’s groundskeeper character, Carl Spackler but instead of one pesky Gopher wreaking havoc, a multitude of furry, landscaping vandalizers rise from their subterranean burrows to take the offense battle against man.  The “Sadomanic,” “Hi-Death,” and music video director, of such bands as Doc Rotten and UgLi, helms the 2023 with great flair for the farcical and satire that not only madcap of mayhem but also rib-jabs an arrogant elitist wearing a bad hairpiece and expresses the building of a wall and having the gophers pay for it, if they could.  We all know that person and he shall not be named here for the sake of this review’s integrity.  “Caddy Hack” is filmed in Morrisville, PA and part of New Jersey (we get some really good Jersian accents here) and is produced by Catanese, Sara Casey, Jim Gordon, Joseph Kuzemka, and Scott Miller under Gordon’s Content Trenton and Catanese’s D.I.Why? Films along with Wild Eye Releasing’s Rob Hauschild as executive producer.

Not only is “Caddy Hack” a ridiculous horror-comedy of binging buffoonery, its also a story about unlikely romance between near middle-aged caddy of golf nerditude and a browbeating, yet ravishing, woman eager to be taken seriously no matter her qualifications.  Jake Foy and Chrissy Cavallo respectively play the likeable oil and water who commingle unexpectedly when Cavallo’s rigidity as the unqualified caddy manage takes a shine to Foy’s caddy-passionate and meek-lined Googie.  Foy and Cavallo, along with Jim Gordon (“Hi-Death”) as the unscrupulous, neon colored toupee-wearing course owner Wells Landon and Nick Twist (“Sadomaniac’) as the dimwitted groundskeeper who huffs his own fertilizer and has anachronistic Vietnam PTSD for his age, keep “Caddy Hack” from going into sandpits and water hazards with their on-point caricature performances of the assorted kind that pair well with this type of comedy-horror.  Ancillary moments with Googie’s boys-club, caddy cohort and an awkwardly horned-up Dolores Umbridge type secretary to Wells Landon pepper the cast with enough perpetual zaniness that the madcap madness never loses momentum but they pale terribly in comparison to the core four personalities to the point that “Caddy Hack” is downgraded a little in its laugh-out-loud lunacy with the dilution of many side-characters who don’t get the time of day and are overshadowed by the schlocky puffballs that are the gophers gone wild.  “Caddy Hack” tees up the remaining cast with John Evans, Joe Bierdron, Travis Frank, Cole Funke, Vincent Lockett, Scott Miller, Matt Reversz, Kirk Ponton, Mike Paquin, David Olsen Jr. and Ilene Sullivan (“Center City 2”) as Wells Landon’s pernicious, brown-nosing, admiring secretary. 

Some semblances of the 1980, Harold Ramis-directed and Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, and Bill Murray-starring gold-themed side-splitter barely lays up with Catanese’s comedy-horror spoof and homage.  There’s a catchy, 80’s-esque enough, opening credit song overtop areal views of a golf course with spliced in golf concatenations.  There’s also a dopey groundskeeper in warmonger mode against not one but a whole platoon of gophers.  That’s about where “Caddy Hack” draws the line in the sand, likely for legal reasons, in keeping tune with “Caddyshack” and from there on out, Anthony Catanese goes balls to the wall with his unapologetic creature-feature held in party mode that drops jabs of anti-Trump drollery.  The hand puppet, bloodthirsty gophers add to “Caddy Hack’s” shameless charm in a good way by layer compositing only a very little with VFX glowing eyes to give the burrowing rodents an evident behavior aberration.  Because they’re hand puppets, the gophers are very limited in frame and in action but that doesn’t hinder their mischief-maker flow and the angles, and composites, of which they’re filmed and constructed warrants credit in it hark back to the iconic “Caddyshack” dancing gopher and to make the scene somewhat tolerably evil.

Go for this gobbling and gobsmacking gopher horror “Caddy Hack” now on a special edition Blu-ray from Wild Eye Releasing. Presented on an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50, in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, “Caddy Hack” caters to the standard, low-budget independent mustering with a severe contrast in details and delineation between daytime and nighttime scenes. Generally, details thrive in well-lit exteriors with some softness due in part to the innate raw footage. The ungraded final product really shows its colors, or lack thereof, at night with a washed overlay and a noticeable of digital artefacts. There are some scenes that look cropped and blown-up for closeup purposes, degrading the image resolution a bit. The English LCPM stereo 2.0 has uncompressed, uninhibited thrust that’s decently shaped and arranged in sound design and layered. Dialogue can be detached at times but still in the forefront of the action with the occasional takeover by the cute or ferocious gopher grunts. Plenty of range diversity with no depth to add space leaving competing audio tracks to fight next in line behind dialogue, including fart gags which is becoming tiresome trope across indie comedy-horror in my opinion. There are no subtitles available with this release. The special edition release comes with an abundance of special features, including an audio commentary track with director Anthony Catanese and producer Sara Casey, Balls Deep karaoke pulled from the film’s main song on the soundtrack, a Brew Break drinking game, an Old Glory Holes commercial with Wells Landon, outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage, and the caddy rap track. The Blu-ray comes with exclusive physical lineaments too with a cardboard slipcase with an unacknowledged illustrated composite art, a clear traditional Blu-ray case with snapper that holds reversible cover art – a front cover that’s mixed composition between evil gophers and a happy foursome and the reverse side has an evil gopher laughing manically in a still frame, an Old Glory Holes VIP Card, and a folded mini poster of the slipcase cover art. The region free has a runtime of 75 minutes and is not rated. “Caddy Hack” chips divot-after-divot of missed fairways only to find a love for the game that is independent horror with a wildly and weaselly whackadoo of film about fur-lined pocket cheek gophers chewing on the golfers’ balls.

Special Edition Hole-in-One “Caddy Hack” On Blu-ray!

Being Lesbian is Not as EVIL as Being a Homophobic Subverter. “Herd” reviewed! (High Fliers / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Having been banished by her abusive and intolerant father, Jamie Miller struggles inside her once amorous relationship with girlfriend Alex as they make a new life for themselves in the city.  The dwindling connection between them forces their hand into a couple’s canoe trip retreat down a river near Jamie’s hometown to hopefully rekindle what was lost.  When Alex accidently breaks her leg after a nasty couple’s spat, Jamie has no choice but to seek help within town only to find the town is under siege by a mutating virus, turning infected into shambling shells of their former selves.  The Government’s downplaying of the containment of the small town leads to armed militias warring against each other for food and supplies and Jamie and Alex are caught in the middle of a tripartite conflict between her Father’s prejudicially like-minded militia, a ruthless band of rogue soldiers, and the walking infected.

Socio-political outbreak horror “Herd” is the latest project from music video and documentarian filmmaker Steven Pierce trying his hand at a full-length fictional narrative.  Pierce co-pens the film with James Allerdyce, both of whom have worked on the 2020 music documentary “Jose James & Taali Live from Levon Helm Studios” about the creative process of live-streaming performance at Woodstock venue.  The song and dance of the 2023 released “Herd” pulls inspiration from recent popular talking points in America with a couple of conspicuous drifts from one surface level incredible horror, a lesbian couple stumbling into the unbridled mess stirred by virus mutated townsfolk, to a more realistic horror of gun-toting narrowmindedness, extreme self-preservation, and government half-truisms.  Alongside Steven Pierce and James Allerdyce producing are also debuting fictional narrative filmmakers with Michael Szmyga, Matt Walton, Lev Peker, Matt Mundy, Bret Carr, Lori Kay, and Ryan Guess under the banner of Framework Productions.

Initially after the opening scene of something zombie-contagiously brewing, the story dives head first into despondency of Jamie Miller (Ellen Adair, “Trick”) and Alex Kanai (Mitzi Akaha, “Bashira”).  Not at first evident of what kind of relationship sends these two on a canoe trip in the middle of nowhere but becomes evident quickly that the two are a couple with Alex forcing a last ditch effort hand to rescue a ship that’s slowly sinking in the abyss with troubled girlfriend Jamie.  While Jamie has her extraneous displeases with their relationship, very similar to most couples, the knotty crux more so lies Jamie’s abusive, bigot of a father who lives inside her head and, for some reason or another, has flared up recently despite be resolutely at bay for what seems to be years into the relationship. That bit of missing backstory becomes an harbinger of many other unexplained or underdeveloped aspects of “Herd’s” genetic makeup that funnel down to not fleshing out many characters, such as the father character who is plainly found deceased in the second act with yet to no significant progress made with a character who has tormented our heroine protagonists to the point of a near mental breakdown with disturbing visions of a faceless mother amongst the crippling of her disavowed, disapproved relationship with another woman.  “Major League’s” Corbin Bernsen plays the father briefly before succumbing to an offscreen fate and Bernsen’s no stranger to zombie genre having directed one himself (“Dead Air”) and would have greatly added to “Herd’s” undercurrents as a headstrong xenophobe with a radical complex.  Instead, we get Big John Gruber (Jeremy Holm, “Don’t Look Back”), a complete and utter 180 from the volatile buildup of Bernsen’s conditioned and dogmatic militant.  Nothing inherently flawed about Big John’s softness and sympathy toward a difficult situation, even going as far as supporting Jamie’s same-sex relationship, in what could be construed as a parallel of dispositions that ultimately bleed red all in the same as redneck conspiracists will never bleed out, such as seen with militia lackeys Bernie Newson (Brandon James Ellis) and Tater (Jeremy Lawson, “Happy Hunting”) who hold onto their conspiracies as well as their guns.  Amanda Fuller (“Starry Eyes”), Steven Pierce, Matt Walton, Ronan Starness, and “Shallow Ground’s” Timothy V. Murphy and voice actor Dana Snyder of “Squidbillies” fill out the cast.

“Herd,” once titled “It Comes From Within,” very much implies the sheep who blindly follow the influential proximal powers into separating factions of dependency on the very moment national authority downplays the truth and designates into a free-for-all for survival, a doomsday prepper’s wet dream.  “Herd” catapults a very anti-government harpoon message right into the lampooning of Midwest gun nuts and schismatic truthers.  These instances surrounding a not-too-exaggerated truth detrimentally snaps the arc for the initial, more considerable character metamorphosis with heroine lead Jamie Miller.  We’re no longer on her track toward parental recovery that’s laid a substantial foundation in the first two acts with flashbacks of her father verbally tirades and banishment, only able to visualize her mother’s faceless corpse, and the brittle relationship she has with girlfriend Alex when going into the third act careens into a clash of the small-town titans.  The disinvestment of an endeavoring lesbian courtship plagued by mind-traumatizing scar tissue and a frustrated partner is ran over by the warring militias to the point where we’re scuttled from face-off to face-off and Jamie and Alex road-to-unity takes a backseat wholeheartedly.  The unexplained infected are also pulled into the backseat as an unfortunate consequence of said conflict that missed the mark explaining the climatic scene with the infected, shambling, boil-riddled bodies’ near unintelligible and moaning in unison wail that conveys a less antagonized existence and to defend themselves when threatened.  The humanizing moments are lost in the wake of war and conservative hoopla that insidious impale anything meaningful, but perhaps that was the message all along, a sort of blindness or autocratic ways to diverge free thinkers, as exampled with Big John Gruber whose liberal opinions and talk did nothing for him in the end.

Get into the “Herd” mentality with a new DVD from the UK distributor High Fliers Films.  The MPEG-2 encoded PAL DVD has a widescreen display with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  Compression decoding bitrate has impressive measure up to an average of 7 Mbps, leaning toward more detail, less artefact intrusion.  Shot in more rural areas of Missouri, though I believe the story takes place in the Midwest, Kansas maybe from the dialogue, an enriching scope of landscape, such as a dusty crossroads or a vast river shot from above, adds palpable details and texture with a natural grading.  Brennan Full doesn’t go fancy with an extravagance appears but exercises control over the contrast and shadows to obscure the infected lurking about and also handles the camera professionally, resulting in a cleaner, precise, and full of various angles and shots that typically would be nonexistent in most indie works.  Full also retains much of the natural and environmental irradiance for lighting without the use of gels to augment tone.  Two English audio options are available to select from, a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo and a Dolby Digital 5.1, though not listed on the back cover. The surround sound mix shepherds in a better flexier channel distribution with back and side channels offering broader infected gutturals and militia gunfire. Dialogue is clear and clean of hiss and other banes in the leveled whereabouts of the digitally recorded audio layers. No subtitles are available. The High Fliers DVD is void of special features within the static menu framework. The clear amaray case unfortunately displays a shoddy composite image of a boil-repleted infected man with a beard trimmed with bad photoshop scissors giving way to a horde of baldies, which the latter doesn’t closely represent the “Herd.” There is no insert inside the casing. UK certified 15 for a sundry, laundry list of strong language, violence, gore, threat, horror, domestic abuse, and homophobia, the DVD’s playback is region 2, PAL encoded, and has a runtime of 97 minutes. “Herd” variegates down many different possibilities – a tumultuous fraught lesbian couple, tormenting father issues, governmental lies, rural dissidence, inexplicable infected creatures – but never settles to resolute one of them with confidence and that’s hurts the film’s better laid in visual portraiture.

Crooked EVIL’s Fixation for Chocolate and a Childlike Girl Will be its Sole Destruction. “The Dead Mother” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Dead Mother” Lives on a 2-Disc, LE Blu-ray/CD Set from Radiance Films!

A botched burglary of an art restorer’s home leaves the art conservationist dead and her daughter wounded by a shotgun blast at the hands of apathetic criminal Ismael Lopez.  Years later, the daughter, Leire, has grown into being a young and beautiful simpleton at a mentally disabled clinic where the mute girl often recesses to a caretaker’s city home off clinic grounds.  By coincidence, the lifelong crook Ismael catches sight of her on the street and becomes obsessed with her witness of his past transgressions.  Conferring with his love-hate girlfriend and felonious partner Maite, the two decide to kidnap her while she’s off clinic campus and put her up for ransom after Ismael couldn’t bring himself to initially kill her but an increasing preoccupation for the chocolate-fond and childlike Leire within a stoic Ismael places an insidious jealously and enigmatic strain between him and Maite that tests that already turmoiled codependency of affection and survival.

Emotionally recrudescent with multiple intrinsic layers of tough guilt, incontrollable desire, and maybe even a pinch of forbearing responsibility that can be labeled cossetting at times, “The Dead Mother” is a beautiful film with unsettling undertones from Spanish filmmaker Juanma Bajo Ulloa.  The “Baby” director cowrite the “The Dead Mother” alongside younger brother Eduardo Bajo Ulloa, their second collaboration after hit success with the duo’s crime thriller “Butterfly Wings” two years prior in 1991.  The Spanish film is shot primarily in Vitoria, Spain with the backdrop of a near classic medieval architecture of urban city with old wooden interiors, high ceilers, and gothic qualities, providing a relative old world air to a tale of petty ideals and madness that disintegrates by the mere site of pure, ingenuous goodness. Under the private and state run production companies Ministry of Culture and Gasteizko Zinema, “The Dead Mother,” or “La Madre Muerta,” is produced by Fernando Bauluz.

To obtain the intensity, the coldness, the unpredictable, the pitch-black humor, and the soft touch, Juanma Bajo Ulloa doesn’t hire a vocational dramatic.  Instead, the filmmaker chances actor just getting his feet wet the Spanish cinema with Karra Elejalde whose assortment of comedy and drama in his first years seasons him for the role of the reprobate Ismael Lopez, a coldhearted killer with a short fuse for anyone who defies or belittles him and, on the opposite side, can be pensive about his past and next steps in a haphazard way. Opposite Ismael is a devout partner/lover, equal in ruthless potential, yet happy, in her own way, to play house wife in their ramshackle, fly-by-night home.  Played by the Portuguese-born, Belgium-raised singer Lio, her stage name in lieu of Vanda Maria Ribeiro Furtado Tavares de Vasconcelos, the pop star, who still to this day floats between acting and singing, rivals Elejalde’s dark-and-light intensity within her own character’s amorous feelings for the petty crook and murder and would do anything to keep him, even if that means destroying what he adores.  And what does Ismael adore?  Ismael’s new fascination is with Leire, the once little girl who attempted to murder now all grown up, developmentally disabled, and beautiful.  While I can’t fault in any of “The Dead Mother’s” cast performances, I could not imagine Leire being portrayed by anyone other than Ana Álvarez (“Geisha”).  Exuding innocence in her eyes amongst a full-body vacuity, Lio might be the professional singer but it’s Álvarez who hits every note of amentia that constantly has us questioning how much of her facility is there, conscious of the bizarre love-triangle or the homicidal-involving abduction.  In the same breadth, a muted Álvarez talks with her eyes, her expressions, and her body language that subtly fidgets or does other under-the-radar subnormal behaviors to convey an unequivocal virtue starkly in contrast amongst her callous captors who enjoy playing house or even try to make her smile or laugh with jokes and play.  Eventually, the dynamic dissolves, like many love triangles do, between an advantageous perversion and deadly ultimatums that will result unfavorably for most.  “The Dead Mother” rounds out the cast with Silvia Marsó, Elena Irureta, Ramón Barea, and Gregoria Mangas.

Ismael’s fixation toward Leire is so tremendously opaque without much exertion it’s difficult to understand the criminal’s ultimate motives, leaving audiences with a shrouded aftertaste of open interpretation.  Perhaps guilty from killing his mother all those years ago and nearly killing her, a wash of responsibility for her now placid and childish existence courses through him, driving him to do the bare necessity in taking care of her.  Another facet to Ismael’s curious interest is Leire’s inherent beauty despite her absent situational awareness.  His attempts to make the young woman’s empty expression become joyous with a smile fails, as if that blank-faced barrier keeps him from moving forward with something akin to being romantically involved.  In a couple of brief, uncomfortable viewing stints, Ismael gropes with the second time being passionately fondled by Maite in attempt to win over affection in what Maite believes is a duel between Leire for his attention.  Leire can be interpreted as a burden that has passed from the mother, hence the title, to Ismael, an assuming responsibility pseudo-father figure.  When Ismael kills Leire’s mother during the bungled burglary, a hint of a smile extends upon her face before the blood drips down her eyes in a fantastic POV shot by cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe.  Supporting this theory is the Renaissance painting of mother and child with a tear in the canvas between them, a painting that Ismael lingers over for a few seconds while rummaging through the art restorer’s home.  The ambiguous nature of “The Dead Mother” only succeeds because of the confident performances and Juanma Bajo Ulloa’s august eye for the impeccable shots he wants and achieves. 

“The Dead Mother” arrives onto a limited-edition Blu-ray, to the tune of 3000 copies, from Radiance Films U.S. line.  The new 4K scanned transfer, restored from the 35mm negative and stored on an AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD50, is presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 Cinemascope aspect ratio.  Juanma Bajo Ulloa oversaw the pristine cleaning of film strip defects and the new, frame-by-frame color grading at the Cherry Towers lab in Madrid, Spain.  The excellent work by the restoration company and Ulloa’s supervision of the process resulted in a naturally clean edged and detailed saturated transfer to rejuvenate the image with a fresh look.  The overcasting shadows and slate aesthetics with brilliantly hued low-key lighting suggest an immense lugubrious tone throughout, accentuated by the antediluvian structures. The Spanish language uncompressed 2.0 stereo audio absorbs what’s absent, which isn’t much, with an uninhibited, original fidelity of the dialogue, surrounding milieu, and the bordering whimsical string soundtrack by Bingen Mendizábal. There are no hints of hissing, cracking, popping, or fragmented damage of the audio track that persists on being punchy with every Ismael scuffle down to the very rustling of the chocolate wrapper in Leire’s chocolate-stained hands. While range is plentiful and natural, depth is not as utilized unless absolutely necessary, such as with the oncoming horns of the diesel trains in the trainyard or Ismael whistling between the pews of a decrepit church shot from the chorus balcony. English subtitles are available and optional. Special features on this limited-edition set include a Spanish audio commentary by the director with burned in English subtitles, The Story of the Dead Mother an archive behind-the-scenes featurette of retrospective interviews from 2008 and some raw footage of takes that’s, again, in the Spanish language with English subtitles, Bajo Ulloa’s short film “Victor’s Kingdom” aka “El Reino de Victor” from 1989 and now restored in a 4K scan, the film’s trailer, and photo gallery. Physical attributes impress within the clear, slightly thicker amary Blu-ray case that’s been conventional distribution use with Radiance Films in its near retro, austere facade. Sheathing a reversible cover of the original media artwork inside, the outside cover continues to remind me of its Arthur Fleck appeal with a doleful Ismael Lopez in his very best clown make up. Both discs, the Blu-ray and the CD soundtrack, are overlapped and locked in place pressed their respective black and creme coloring scheme. On the insert side contains a 35-page color booklet filled to the brim with captured film images, promotional images, and cast-and-crew posed pictures along with the CD track listing, cast and crew breakdown, and expressionism written pieces and essays by Eduardo Bajo Ulloa, Juanma Bajo Ulloa, Nacho Vigalondo, and Xavier Aldana Reyes. The unrated feature has a runtime of 111 minutes and his region free for all you worldly, cultured lovers of cinema out there. The mother might be dead but Juanma Bajo Ulloa’s converging of cynical odd behavior with the breakdown of status quo by a wicked curveball makes for a darkly cherub of Spanish filmmaking worth coddling in Radiance’s exceptional release.

“The Dead Mother” Lives on a 2-Disc, LE Blu-ray/CD Set from Radiance Films!

Prancing Forest EVIL Will Seduce You to Death! “Devil Times Two” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Devil Times Two” on DVD from SRS Cinema

A forest encircled convent hidden away from the Milan population undertakes an occult responsibility to keep bloodthirsty and callous demons from entering the human world.  On the verge of retiring, Father Ernesto Taro, a once formidable force for good who exorcised a powerful demon decades ago that cost the lives of many in his fellow cohort except for Mother Dolores, takes on a younger understudy to be his replacement, the ambitious Father Chuck Bennet.  Father Taro and Bennet were summoned by Mother Dolores when grisly body of a young hiker is discovered.  A pair of former Nazi sadists turned Netherworld demons come to Father Bennet in a vision and are suspected to be the carnage culprits.  Souls are at stake and the world is on the brink of falling into darkness as the Returnees are only the right hand of a more profound evil itching for complete and utter omnipotence. 

“Devil Times Two” is an Italian-made, demonology-contextualized horror from Italy writer-director Paolo del Fiol.  Having purveyed grindhouse horror in anthological means with previous films “Connections” and “Sangue Misto,,” del Fiol branches out into his solo feature-length narrative set in the 1970s as a faux lost film recovered onto VHS from the only known syndicate televised program on Telelaguna to account the terrible tale full of profane hostilities, sexual stimulating supremacy, and, of course, gore in the interlacing recognition between the popular devil, demon, or hell on Earth inspired movies and the obscenities connected to eurotrash and sleaze movement of the 70s topped a hint of Japanese adulation, a motif heavily sprinkled into the film carried over from the director’s previous work as well.  Underscored by the tagline Quado le Tenebre escono al Bosco, or When Darkness comes out of the Woods, “Devil Time Two” once again pits religious good versus irreligious evil in this Himechan Movie Production self-produced by Paolo del Fiol.

Characterized as the titular pair, Returnees Jasmine and Umeko are the ethereally evil duet of diabolical detriment who seemingly float in and out of the material world as alluring succubi, seducing prey into their web of demonic lust and languish.  Some turn up grotesquely inside out while some others disappear, saved for later for special ritualistic planning.  Erika Saccà, an Italian fitness instructor in her debut role, plays the blonde Returnee Jasmine in a sleeveless, lowcut gown and with nearly ever kill, exposes and massages her augmented bosom with underboob scarring in a change to showoff her toned physique, and Reiko Nagoshi (“Re-Flesh”) wears a kimono without any unveiling of skin but does a bit of thrust-damage on her quarry that initially and inexplicable appears to be a strange phenomena when everyone in the scene is a woman but becomes apparent there’s something unholy and very “War of the World’s” alien under that traditional Japanese garb.  Saccà and Nagoshi wear many hats in this product but also don’t have the dialogue to hoist their demonesses higher.  The dialogue is left with the trio of convent gatekeepers in Father Taro (Enrico Luly), Father Bennet (Paolo Salvadeo, “Occultus”), and Mother Dolores (Amira Lucrezia Lamour, “Re-Flesh”) in what becomes a deeper understanding of their backstories around Father Taro’s deadly bittersweet exorcism decades ago, his on the sly and subtle affection for Mother Dolores, and Father Bennet’s questionable rise to supersede Father Taro, laying a foundation of doubt within the current gatekeeper.  While I like the contrasting dynamics of the two factions within the cast, I found the discourse overly bulk and tedium between the trio of piety that strung on scenes way too long with way too much talk that it ultimately suppresses the pacing when every little detail has been uncovered and explained. All the casted bits in between are slaughter fodder with Denise Brambillasca, Alessandro Carnevale Pellino (“The Wicked Gift”), and Martina Vuotti in non-defying death roles.

Paolo del Fiol’s unaccompanied and independent deluge of demonian debut has doses of phantasmagorical imagery sublet by its more shocking and odd immolation of incognizant individuals unlucky enough to cross paths with the Returnees. Likely to have never seen, Fiol’s film very similarly compares to James Sizemore’s “The Demon Rook” by creating unique mythos not reliant on a religious bedrock and use independency as an advantage for showcasing practical makeup and effects and while “The Demon Rook” would overwhelm with prosthetic made-up characters, “Demon Times Two” focuses attention more on the guts of the matter, the gore, but though not pernicious enough to the story, the eyeball sucking, throat lacerating, or intestine exposing bloodshed is prosaic panoply that won’t outshine in the sea of subgenre synonyms. Aforementioned dialogue scenes can be a slog to get through with many exchanges overstaying its course between the pious gatekeepers, especially between Father Taro and Dorlores, and that hurts the pacing to pick up the gore more frequently for more potency. Instead, exchanges are more elucidations that go around-and-around to where we’re lost on the mounting reveal of the Returnees’ mission and master which turns out to be visually more stimulating and visceral in the last ten minutes than in the first 100 minutes of runtime. The backlot lore is Fiol’s greatest achievement simulating a 70’s style grainy movie caveated as only broadcasted once on December 8th, 1983 (a few days before this reviewer’s birthday) and never seen again until it’s VHS recording is recovered.

Under a pretense of being a buried lost film, under the tribute of a grainy and scratched psychotronic celluloid, and under the falsity of genuine huge knockers, “Devil Times Two” is twice baked into a classic contemporary dish served by SRS Cinema on DVD. Arriving on the SRS Cinema: Extreme and Unrated Nightmare Fuel label, “Devil Times Two” is nothing short of being a modern-day emulator of once was with suitable grain overlay, a hazy, if not washed, overcast grading, and trope-laden atmospherics with dense fog, unnerving dissonances within earshot, and blood brilliantly cut with pseudo Telelagua commercial programming of brief adverts until returning to regular scheduled programed checked in and out by a gondola and it’s gondolier in dusk silhouette. Presented in a pillar box 1.33:1 aspect ratio, the fuzzy and non-delineated details are not a punch to the salient gut as the intent here is to be obscure, opaque, and ominous in nature and in technique bathed in 480p. The Italian PCM is the exact recreation of a time period post-dubbing with the actors re-dialoguing their performances as it was common practice in most motion picture industries, especially Europe, at the time. ADR is clear but not necessarily clean to recreate that shushing and crackling of an older recording. The subtitles are also forced or burned into the film with the sole Italian audio option. Bonus content includes what is called Backstage, a raw filming look into the production shoots and behind-the-scenes footage with no real direction or cosmetics, a photo gallery, a trailer with English subtitles, and other SRS Cinema released trailers. The SRS Cinema DVD front cover resembles mock-70’s, thick-red font with a bare woman’s back dressed in a painted Satanic symbol within the border of a VHS-esque rental casing with rental stickers. Inside the amaray case is a pressed disc with an extreme close up and crop of the same front cover with no insert in the adjacent slot. Pacing burdens this release, especially in its near 2-hour runtime with a clock-in at 114 minutes which is approx. 24-minutes too long in my opinion and the film comes not rated and has region free playback. No matter how much arcane the content is, or how grotesque the horror show, or how much perversity and skin can be unclothed, “Devil Times Two” has difficulty retaining a flow of fascination in a rather windbag approach to a rather devilishly good salvo construction.

“Devil Times Two” on DVD from SRS Cinema

X-rated Adult EVIL Without Any Calling Cards. “Man at the Door” reviewed! (Impulse Pictures / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

X-rated and Exploitational “Man at the Door” on DVD!

Virtuous Anne arrives home after a stretch of day shopping and answers the ringing phone.  On the other line is her more uninhibited sister Jill telling Anne she’ll be working late, undeclaring her naked reverse cowgirl position on top of her equally naked boss’s lap.  Immediately after, Anne receives a phone call asking if Jill or if Anne’s roommate is home.  The stranger quickly hangs up soon after Anne admits their absence.  A following knock at the front door opens to Anne meeting a tall man claiming to be her roommate’s date.  Skeptical, Anne is at first hesitant about letting him inside until he forces his way in, ties her up, and molests her half-naked body before stealing her virginity with one thrust before the opening of the front door and an Anne’s unsuspecting roommate encounters the brute, but she takes his aggressive perversion in stride, eager to partake into his sexual tyranny, and finally able to bed the sweet and innocent Anne after long-lusting after her.  When promiscuous sister Jill arrives, more-the-merry for the horny home invader.

As far as time encapsulated sleaze goes, the 1976 sin-street stag film and home invasion obscener “Man at the Door” is about as obscure and odd as it’s chaste title.  Yet, there’s not a lick of chaste about the beyond-the-canoodle content of X-rated exploitation and the only licking happening here is with the scores of cunnilingus with every new starlet entering from stage left.  The lower-rung adult film has plenty of action in the simplistic of narratives but much of this a film by John Ruyter production is left unknown to the universe with no identifying credits to properly give recognition for the cast’s improper behaviors, with the crew’s dedication to stagnancy yet consistent and staid presentation, and with the sordid studio behind what was likely an obvious low-budgeted blue movie featured only in the darkest, dankest, and stickiest cornered cinemas on the infamous 42nd Street for a measly buck-fifty to get your rocks off.

Where to start with the cast?  I couldn’t even tell you.  The three satisfying starlets, unpretentious with their set dress but heady in their roles, come under the thrusting hips of a two pedestrian, stud-less joes lucky enough to engage coitally with the fairer sex.  Out of the two male performers, the titular “Man at the Door” character could pass for a less-intimidating and skeezier Edmund Kemper in a wet-blanket flesh suit looking like a former military analyst fired for his inability to hack it and tried his luck at philistine porn.  Perhaps my attitude to the casted intruder is a bit harsh, unfair, and hypercritical of some historical schlub with average measurements and downgraded fanfare – I don’t even know the guy or even his name – but my sixth sense knows the type and his type fits the bill to a T, a balding, mid-to-late 30s, man whose onscreen personality is about as dry as an overtoasted piece of stale day-old bread.  However, with much of the triple-X industry, men don’t sell product, women do.  The three ladies gracing the screen outperform above expectations after scanning the undervalue pinning synopsis with their distinct, amongst themselves beauty, able to individualize their roles, and entice with their own energies to make a synergy-coupling during the girl-on-girl scenes.  One blonde and two brunettes even liven up the boy-girl scenes against dull male talent who’s supposed to be knife-wielding sex fiend, but the women wear that personality down, grinding it to a halt as they grind on against each other.  I apologize in the lack of cast detail for this mysterious sleaze, but the DVD also mentions the lack of credits and there’s nothing on the web to match against it, not even doing image search on the actors’ faces and so we’re left with nameless sensualists of the mid-70’s sex scene.

When reviewing porn, especially from the New Hollywood era of the 70s, I always have to remind myself substance and story are going to take a backseat to skin and sex.  That is what’s laid out in “Man at the Door,” a rudimentary home intruder gimmick to extract the ethical-swathed deviancy deep inside us with sexual assault, uninhibited perversions, and even a humiliation peeing scene for those urophilia fanatics who get off on distressed whizzing.  Humdrum performances from a rather unflattering and uncharismatic male lead fashions little enthusiasm and in atypical swanky retro-porn flair, expositional statements, such as Now I’m going to fuck you both, said in perfunctory banality that it takes the story’s wind out of the sails.  Though production studio is unidentified, “Man at the Door” has blueprint echoes of an Avon assembly that prominently reeled in profit by paraphilia with fetishisms and rough-sexual-play shot on 16mm that feels very similar to this John Rutyer film.  Perhaps, John Rutyer was another of Phil Prince’s pseudonyms and “Man at the door” was his trial-by-fire initiation into the Avon Dynasty.  We can’t prove but we do love to speculate!  Avon’s skeletal productions undress the glam of fantasy for more feral roughies and “Man at the Door” has, more-or-less, the same façade with a handful of natural, sparse sets, carelessly visited by the boom mic and a few wandering heads into frame, and so this mysterious adult roughie is about as unspectacular as the next, only finding its way into our physical media devices by the pure unadulterated grindhouse gravitational pull and our extreme curiosity for its archaic and, once considered, sub-rosa period compared to what is today an easily accessible porn industry.

If curious like me or have a knack for any and all types of film, “Man at the Door” can be an interesting minor blast from the past and Impulse Pictures, a subsidiary label of Synapse Films, has secured the relatively unknown and unheard of title for DVD distribution.  Presented in a pillar boxed full screen presentation, 1.33:1 aspect ratio,” size of the storage capacity won’t affect your viewing pleasure with every typification of a dog-eared 16mm print to please the grindhouse appreciators.  To be honest, the print is in relatively good shape with faint vertical scratches pretty much from start to finish, plenty of good grain, dust, dirt, and a pinch of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it frame damage.  Grading is on what I believe to a high-key color saturation because of the heavy fill lighting casting clear shadows onto the backwalls and so skin tones can look more orange than natural but for older celluloid, I’m quite pleased with the finished product look.  The audio is an English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono track.  The collapsed audio channeled through more than one speaker doesn’t amplify the weak dialogue track, likely root issued by inferior commercial equipment or bad boom placement.   The track also has plenty of crackle and pop amongst the constant shushing interference that essentially muffles and muddles the already feeble dialogue so you may not understand half of what is being said on what is more than likely barely a script or half a script for a hour-long porn feature.  Forget about depth and range with the limited setting and confined to the actors’ close vicinity.  There’s some hint of swank laced in the soundtrack that’s feels more like looped bossa nova than like rock or funky bubblegum pop.  There are no subtitles available.  Also not extensively available are special features in this barebones disc that has been set with chapters and a sneak peek at Impulse Pictures’ “42nd Street Forever: The Peep Show Collection” preview; however, I do adore Impulse’s new types of crude color-pencil illustrations on the front cover that roughly represents the narrative concept in what is a blend of childish drawn nightmares and erotic art.  Inside the common DVD amaray case is a Synapse Films product catalogue insert and a disc pressed with the same front cover image.  The region 1 locked playback disc is not rated, obviously, and has feature runtime of 60 minutes.  Impulse Pictures has paraded “Man at the Door” more than the film deserves but it’s a fine, old obscure romp film from the porn of yore now on a contemporary format and with odd-neat packaging.

X-rated and Exploitational “Man at the Door” on DVD!