An Old Woman Coughs Up Blood and Smells of Death. That’s When EVIL is Afoot! “Death Ride” reviewed! (International Media Network / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Death Ride” Available on DVD!

Nick’s about to board an overnight bus in Thailand with other passengers travelling toward the city.  As all passengers take their seats, luggage stowed, and the driver starting the engine, one last ticketed passenger boards, a quiet elderly woman who reeks of fermented fish and has a continuous cough.  What should have been a pleasant ride to the city has turned into an unbearable stench that’s seated right next to Nick.  When the woman dies after a severe coughing fit, neither passenger or bus staff know what to do when the body suddenly disappears, and the believed idea of ghost enters most of everybody’s assumptions.  With the small still strongly permeating inside the cabin, the driver agrees to stop at the next rest area and call for a replacement bus, but the dark road has seemingly no end and a strange curse of the old woman snatches the passengers one-by-one, providing a bus terminus of death.

“Death Ride,” aka “VIP Death Seat,” is the 2024 released commercial transportation ghost story hailing from Thailand.  One half of the “Black Magic Mask” directors, Pasit Panitijaroonroj, splinters off to helm the horror, credited in the title cards as Phasit Panitijaroonroj.  Known by various other interpreted titles, such as “Seat 204,” “The Seat,” and as “Rot Tour Wee Ai Phee” in native Thai, the feature is also written for cinematic screen by Panitijaroonroj with the conceptual story conceived by Wiroj Chotichiawong combines the already tense mass transit journey with a supernatural grim fated outcome that pits people not only against a malevolent and eerie force and terror but also seizes each other in a plight of fear of the unknown.  The production studio behind “Death Ride” is Arriya Film, who produced “Black Magic Mask,” “The Attic,” and “Check-in Shock,” and is distributed internationally by Antenna Entertainment. 

The “Death Ride” story has an ensemble cast setup that bounces between westerner Nick, a group of young people, an older narcissist, the pair of bus staffers, and briefly minor support characters who stand out but without expressed intent, such as the mother and son combo, Nick, who’s travelling solo on unmentioned grounds, has more attention as he wanders the bus stations, becomes the primary disgusted toward the old woman, and has an unaccompanied third act all to himself.  Nick is played by American Nathan Bartling, Youtuber of My Mate Nate, a bilingual prankster who actually was in Thailand authorities’ legal crosshairs for teaching Thai children how to flatten coins on a railway and he was threatened with railway obstruction and damage.  Bartling has since been promoting the Thailand in a positive light despite his expatriate infamy.  He goes on to star in the film as the ignorant and blamed party for the cursed bus ride.  Bartling is joined by Pawornwan Verapuchong, Nichapat Chaiaek (“Bangkok Dangerous”), Prasert Weangwichit, Innyada Yurot, and Jariya Rachomas as the group of youngsters on their way to the city and become intwined in the same mesas Nick but Nick ultimately becomes singled out for being a westerner, to stir up offensive requests to change seats, and because he’s an easy target as a lone travler whereas the group of young people travel in a pack.  Another social media personality-prankster in homegrown Jaturong Papho has a smaller but concentrated role as the trip’s first bus driver who must excuse himself from duty when the local cuisine bottoms out in the stomach.  Papho provides a lot, if not all, the comedy that’s been stitched into “Death Ride’s” loose haunting narrative with fart jokes, overreactions, and funny expressions.  The cast fills out with Pichet Iamchaona, Watsana Phunphone, Suchao Pongwilai, and Namgneun Boonnak as the sickly old woman. 

Panitijaroonroj pulls together an ensemble that audiences will have a difficulty relating to, will struggling favoring for in either demise or survival, and just plainly like as characters in general.  There’s nothing characteristically interesting about the ill-fated lot who come to the story without context to their lives or the reason why their on this bus trip the city anyway.  Nick’s is a solivagant who shares not one single tidbit of information about anything substantial to anyone.  In fact, Nick is brutally quiet for much of the duration.  The only time the principal character speaks is to question strange occurrences or be in complaint of the smelly old woman next to him.  The entire cast is written to complain, mostly about the decaying fish smell emanating from who the follow passengers constantly refer to as granny, and this leaves little room to get to know the players of the malevolent spirit misadventure who are trapped with it on a 22-ton bus careening into oblivion. There desperately needs to be some subtext conversations that reach deeper into their lives that sway their motivations or speak to their typology.  Instead, all there is is screaming, bickering, blame throwing, and just being a body just to be fringe fodder for the spirit.  The spirit itself lacks an understanding as the elderly woman is escorted to the bus stop by a boy, assumingly her grandson or nephew, but he wanders off the story at some point before disembarking. At least with the spirit, there can be assumptions made about it, such as a representation of death with the fermented fish smell and the bleeding from the facial orifices, and that suggest this bus fare could cost them everything.  “Death Ride” is also loosely similar to that of Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa’s better evolving and character steeping 2003 holiday-thriller, “Dead End,” but “Death Ride’s” ending steers wildly into a ghostly eldritch to resultingly shock viewers with its foreseeable twist ending.

Our first review coverage of an International Media Network distributed DVD begins with “Death Ride” with a DVD5 encoded with NTSC MPEG2 compression and presented in 720p and a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  The first impressions are not off to a great start with a heavily aliasing with the lower bitrate that hangs around 3-5Mbps, creating an unnatural blur during active motion and reducing the detailed textures.  The story is entirely set at night that inherently produces the appropriately laid out negative spaces, casted shadows from key lighting, and a distinct higher contrast levels and while the negative spaces show some banding, there definitely some data loss with the image breaking down during the decoding.  Color saturation is left muted for a darker grading to set a bleaker tone and an eerie atmosphere.  The Thai PCM 2.0 Stereo track offers a front and center mix that retrieves and decodes dialogue in a precise and prominent reproduction with a range extended to the hum of the bus engine, the haunting echoes of a malevolent spirit, and perhaps the most asinine element, the hyperbolic hits passengers take against each other and from the angry spirit.  The ill-fitting score, uncredited, is what free stock music dreams are made of with an aggressive and overreaching tone harrowing score that was applied to every single situation the characters came to face.  Forced English subtitles appear error free and move along well enough with the quick Thai Siamese language.  IMN’s release is barebones with only a chapter selection in the static menu.  Also not impressive is the tangible DVD presence that doesn’t indicate even who the distributor is and luckily the IMN title card is presented precursing the feature.  What’s also missing is any kind of cast and crew credits from the back in what is rather also a bareboned informational and image design.  There is no MPAA rating listed but the assumption is unrated, if no rating is given.  The region free disc has a feature duration of 85 minutes.

Last Ride: “Death Ride” is a long, arduous trip to sit through. Lacking depth in story and in character, refunding the bus ticket is perhaps a better deal.

“Death Ride” Available on DVD!

This Serial Killer is the Mother of all EVILs. “Ed Kemper” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Ed Kemper” on Blu-ray Home Video

Edmund Kemper at the age of 15 tortured animals and killed his grandparents just to see what it was like.  For five years, Kemper was held at and subsequently released from a psychiatric ward where he was deemed not harmful to society.  His acrimonious relationship with his mother as a child did not stop Kemper from living with her as an adult man after his release and her abusive, alcoholic ways continued on him as well.  After some time, Kemper’s aggressive sexual urges sought out hitchhiking women and in the months between 1972 and 1973, Kemper had abducted multiple school age women and either strangled, stabbed, or shot them in isolated areas of arid California.  From there, Kemper satisfied his depravities with dismembering their bodies and committing necrophiliac acts with the sawed-off parts.  Before turning himself in to authorities, Kemper’s killing spree culminates back to his very existence with the death of his abusive mother and he does not spare her from receiving the same kind of posthumous dismemberment and sexual acts he done upon the young women before her.

American Edmund Kemper is the titular subject of the latest film from director Chad Ferrin, horror director known for pushing eyelids open for atrocity-laden films, such as “Someone’s Knocking at the Door,” “Pig Killer,” and “Scalper.”  Ferrin also cowrites the biographical horror drama with Stephen Johnston, a serial serial-killer screenwriter who has painted with font some of America’s most notorious serial murderers from Ed Gein to Ted Bundy, to Kenneth Bianchi from “The Hillside Strangler.”  The tall, dark complexioned, round glasses framed, and pitched mustached Kemper is the next subject for Johnston and the first serial killer biodoc from Ferrin that takes him from fiction to nonfiction while still retaining his admiration for graphic content, produced under Ferrin’s production company of Crappy World Films in association with Dance On Productions and Laurelwood Pictures.

In the role of Kemper is Brandon Kirk who is a by all comparisons a beefier Ed Helms and Kirk has worked with Ferrin on numerous projects since their first collab in 2021’s “Night Caller,” marking “Ed Kemper” as their sixth film together in Ferrin’s rapid release method.  Initially, Kirk seemed to not fit the role that started off with Kemper suitcase in hand being escorted out of the psych hospital and back into society.  His presence felt shallow, unimportant, and a punching bag for his mom’s barrage of boozy hate with little kickback from Kemper’s large and formidable frame and his deadly past which was only half a decade ago.  Kirk has the tall stature and framework to resemble Kemper in that department but didn’t quite fit the bill instill a confident killer that can chill to anyone to the bone with a simple smirk.   By the end, Kirk proves our conceptions incorrect by becoming a delusionally composed killer that no longer needed a smirk to make blood curdle but rather just look into the camera with his plain eyewear frames and mile stare when casually conversing atrocity as if noting the weather.  It’s plain to see how Kemper came to be with a mother like Clarnell Strandberg and her incessant physical and verbal abuse through and beyond Kemper’s youth; Susan Priver, who has also worked with Ferrin and Kirk since “Night Caller,” nails worst mother of the year being in Strandberg’s constant drunken tirade.  Kirk and Priver’s mother-son dynamic has no and is not depicted to have such traditional warmth or merit and, instead, is a one-sided browbeating at Kemper’s expense is fueled by necessity, and perhaps a little bit of masochism on Kemper’s part because if it really got under the skin of either one of them, I’m sure living on the street would have been better.  Repeat scene principals are laid with only a few with Brinke Stevens (“Nightmare Sisters,” “Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity”) in the role of Clarnell’s closeted lover Sally Hallett, adding a bit more complexion to Clarnell’s life choices and fueled bitterness after failed heterosexual marriages, and Joe Castro (“Blood Feast 2:  All U Can Eat”), special effects makeup artist on the film, also down the traditional black horn, red-caped devil that influences young Kemper’s abused mental state.  The co-ed of the Co-Ed Killer include roles filled in by Erin Luo (“Feral Female”), Patty Hayes, Isabelle Morgan, Autumn Rose Ruch, Gloria Therese, and Katie Silverman (“The Exorcists”).  Familiar faces of Lew Temple (“The Devil’s Rejects”), Robert Miano (“Chained Heat”), and Cassandra Gave (“Conan:  The Barbarian”) pop in supporting parts. 

If you’ve seen the deeply studio underappreciated and fan-favorite “Mindhunter” Netflix television series that was prematurely and devastatingly cancelled, Cameron Britton’s performance may have already seared a first impression of Kemper.  The David Fincher crime drama was dark, bleak, and interesting in what makes serial killers tick as the series investigators sat down with Kemper and utilized him as a source of knowledge, much like novelist Thomas Harris had done with his Hannibal Lector character to track down the Red Dragon killer.  Britton’s large stature and soft-spoken delivery made for a terrifying persona when Kemper goes bluntly, coldly, and without expression into detail of his own exploits and methodology with women and corpses.  Side-by-side, Britton and Kirk are starkly different portrayals and those familiar with “Mindhunter,” like me, may already have an impressed idea of Ed Kemper, but Kirk manages to reign in that initial impression and engrave his own version of the murderer into the solidified stone.  In contrasting stylistic and storytelling choices, Ferrin’s film also strays away from reality quite a bit with the Devil inside Kemper’s mind as a child, his frequent disconnection with time, and delusions with seeing things, like John Wayne knocking on his driver side window and giving him sage advice.  There’s more cinematic universe with “Ed Kemper” the feature film than reality-gripping realism to tell his tale without sensationalism, but the story does get down and dirty in Kemper’s Co-Ed killing days.  Initially, the feature felt watered down and wouldn’t go into the darkest of territories inside Kemper’s skeleton closet and deranged mindset but Ferrin, true to form, gets weird with Kemper and his sexualized obsession with dismembered corpses, unafraid to flash gore and nudity that couldn’t go untold with this type of nonfictional narrative, and to be honest, being the nudity shy Dread Presented film, I was shocked with their green light of certain scenes. 

Dread and Epic Pictures Group present true crime horror-drama “Ed Kemper” on Blu-ray that’s AV encoded with 1080p resolution on a BD25.  Presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, Jeff Billings cinematographer handles the 70’s aesthetic of an arid brown California scenery melded perfectly with 70’s period specific avocado green, mustard yellow, and a singed orange while also tackling the black-and-white representing Kemper’s childhood past.  No compression issues to note, blacks are solid, the colors saturate and diffuse nicely throughout, and details are on the softer side but stick the detailed landing unequivocally in the color scenes with the black-and-white harnessing what it can through lack of color.  The English language audio track is compressed with a Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0.  The sole compressed options hangs back the full potential of disorienting muscle, such as with Joe Castro’s basement dwelling devil who’s aimed to be an intense, delusional provocateur of Kemper’s evildoings and also Kemper himself when he goes into full-throttle turmoil within himself, when he can’t take his mother abuse or when he’s grinning ear-to-ear with killing, hacking up, and necrophiliac-loving co-ed victims.  Dialogue comes through clear and clean with optional English and Spanish subtitles available under the title menu.  What’s additional interesting about the “Ed Kemper” score is it’s orchestrated by Richard Band, brother of Charles Band, and is a stray away from his conventional carnivalesque tone into a more traditionally dark that swells tension when needed and coddles the more abusive scenes to picture Kemper as the victim of abuse.  Special features contain an audio commentary track with director Chad Ferrin, co-ed victim audition tapes, deleted scenes, a Kemper 70’s Psycho featurette documentary that’s a raw look behind-the-scenes and get a real sense of Chad Ferrin’s all-in, guts and all, directing style, a Lost Ending providing an alternate finale to the sensationalized Kemper tale for this release, “The Devil’s Slide” music video, the official theatrical trailer, and trailers for other Dread Presents films.  The traditional Blu-ray case has a mustard yellow covert art of Kemper’s face close up but does not appear to be Kirk’s Kemper mug.  The cover art is one sided and there are no other physical trimmings with a disc printed with Kirk’s Kemper mug split down the middle expressing two different faces and incorporated into a personnel file like design.  Not rated with a runtime of 92 minutes, “Ed Kemper” is encoded with a region free playback compatibility. 

Last Rites: To put all of his immoral and depraved transgressions into just over 90 minutes is simply skimming the odious surface but the Chad Ferrin and Dread / Epic Picture Group collaboration condense the irreverence and the ickiness of “Ed Kemper” onto a platform that reminds us all there is true pure evil in this world.

“Ed Kemper” on Blu-ray Home Video

Alien EVIL Will Suck Your Blood and Tear You From Limb-to-Limb! “Vampire Zombies…From Space!” reviewed! (Cleopatra Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Vampire Zombies…From Space” Invades Physica Media! Check it Out Here!

One night in the small U.S. town of Marlow, a flying saucer beams down a bloodthirsty invader and obliterates to smithereens the wife of Tobacco farmer Roy MacDowell’s wife and their two daughters.  Labeled crazy and perceived a wife murderer, Roy and his daughters must contend with the suspicious townsfolk years later until strange occurrences of UFO sightings, unkillable humanoids, and a string of grisly half-eaten corpses pop-up all-around Marlow.  New to the force Officer Wallace suspects an alien encounter from his own similar experience in the big city but the local leadership are hard pressed to believe what’s really happening under their noses, or rather above their heads as an alien race of vampires are planning to take over Earth, beginning with the town of Marlow now they have been inoculated from the ill-effects of the crucifix.   The only side effect is it turns any human bit into a mindless vampire zombie.  With Marlow in jeopardy with an all-out invasion, Wallace and those with previous encounters with the otherworldly invaders lead the town to defend itself from a vampire attack and domination. 

A tributing throwback to the 1950’s science fictional B-movies, “Vampire Zombies…From Space!” is the 2024 Michael Stasko (“Iodine”) directed and cowritten, black-and-white shot picture that recalls McCarthyism fears of a communism invasion in the United States in complete metaphor fashion by replacing the Soviets with vampires not of this world.  However, the film is not a pure-bred homage to the antiquated subgenre of miniatures and elaborate sets as it applies satire and farce comedy, excessive foul language not used during that period of time, and gore…lots of vampire, zombie, man-made gore. Co-written alongside with comedic duo Jakob Skrzypa and Alex Forman (“Luke’s House of Spooks”), “Vampire Zombies…From Space!” is a whole new breed birthed from a historical outréness meant to strike fear and awareness through a science fiction medium.  The Canadian production is from Stasko’s The Dot Film Company, produced by the director, both writers, and fellow “Iodine” filmmaker Ted Bezaire, and representatively sold worldwide by Michael Kraetzer and Nicholas Onetti’s company, Black Mandala (“Francesca,” “Abrakadabra”).

The story essentially follows three groups of characters.  Beginning with the human side of things, new to town Officer Wallace, played by Rashaun Baldeo, finds himself assigned to Marlow after witnessing what he claims are aliens who killed his partner, and he’s subordinate to the resident Chief Ed Clarke with an enacting alcoholic cynicism by Andrew Bee (“A Taste of Blood.” ).  The veteran actor Bee is lopsidedly more comfortable in his role than newcomer Baldeo is rather stiff around the officer’s gills, especially for a backstory consisting of personal death and aliens at the forefront of it but Baldeo and Bee compliment each other enough to pull off good cop and rough around the edges cop.  The next set of Earthlings come from Jessica Antovski (“The Dread”) as the single MacDowell left alive after Mary’s family falls victims to the initial landings of a vampire invasion and she’s joined Oliver Georgiou as a 50’s greaser Wayne who also faced firsthand an extraterrestrial tragedy with the loss of his brother but knows the method of how to kill them.  Antovski and Georgio represent the opposite end of the spectrum – the girl from the family who’s a town joke and the hip, cool kid with friends – but fall for each other in time of crisis, even more so when Wayne’s hand-in-hand instruction with Mary to put into real-time, stake-perforating practice that has an ecstasy emulation effect provided when there’s sexual intercourse.  The last grouping is amongst the vampiric villains and who being the best example of a vampire other than Count Dracula.  Played in a classic, Bela Lugosi-style by Craig Closter (“The Eternal Present”), Dracula’s on the verge of being out of the vampire empire, with a council by an Elvira-like Vampira, A Francis Ford Coppola Dracula-esque version with the large white rotunda for hair, and a classic Nosferatu with a round misshapen head, elongated and pointy ears, and two large fangs front and center, who are not pleased at Dracula’s handling of the Earth appropriation tactics.  With the help of his crucifix-nullifying vaccine creating son, Dylan, Dracula has a chance to change his fate, at least for now.  Robert Kemeny’s first acting role perfectly suits the nerdy and angsty teen vampire, one who very much wishes to be left alone and bemoans his pushy and workaholic father Dracula until his dad’s life is on the line.  Closter’s a passable Dracula for this story’s comedic purpose, but perhaps not as terrifying as others in the same cloak and white makeup shoes prior to his performance.  There are a pair of genre cameos that come up with Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman (“The Toxic Avenger”) as the public masturbator and the original Barbara from George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” Judith O’Dea as Vampira, plus the cast completes with Simon Reynolds (“The Gate II: The Trespassers”), Erik Helle, Mark Lefebvre (“The Eternal Present”), David Liebe Hart, and Martin Quellette.

“Vampire Zombies…From Space!” black-and-white homage to the mid-20th century science fiction film works on multiple levels.  As a science fiction film, practical miniatures are used for the droning flying saucers complete with visual effect laser blasts and its collective beehive space station where Dracula formulates and spearheads all his diabolical plans and convenes with council on holographic communication in a “Star Wars” fashion.  As a horror, a quintessential classic Dracula and general collective of timeless vampire pale face and fangs on every bloodsucker co-armed by the George Romero claw and disembowel flesh and organ eating zombie make for a gory good time.  As a comedy, dark humor gags of ostentatious gore and death using practical effects, social commentary satire surrounding tobacco and ambiguous double-entendres of pedo-politicians, over-the-top era specific dialect and expressions, and, of course, Lloyd Kaufman jerking around on the Marlow laws as the menacing public masturbator.  Stasko shows an understanding of the 1950s B-picture and aggrandizes the hell out of it by folding its absurd premise into the antiquated, monochrome aesthetic that removes the monotony often times those picture can produce and replaces it with more modern but subtle approaches that don’t dull contemporary genre fans.  The third act sprawls the chaos with vampire helmed attack saucers, zombies ripping the shreds out of Marlow’s residents, individualized and isolated scuffles between principals provide microbreak beats in between the major carnage, and ends with an all classic good-guy turnaround when all is thought lost.  Stasko lays all the cards out with “Vampire Zombies…From Space!” by never introducing mystery into the mix.  With all the work done in frame, audiences can literally sit back and just watch an old timey bloodbath of vampire and zombie invasion pandemonium. 

Cleopatra Entertainment, the filmic subsidiary to music label Cleopatra Record, reigns down terror from the skies with “Vampire Zombies… From Space!” on Blu-ray home video . The AVC encoded, 1080p high-def resolution, BD25 is presented entirely in black-and-white but while the black-and-white is a nice touch for honoring science fictions from half a century ago, the feature is not presented in a 1.33:1 full screen that was the common aspect ratio of the time.  Instead, the film has a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, which is not going to make or break the overall aesthetic but it’s a thoughtful touch that’s forgotten.  Without the dynamic range of color, the lower capacity disc provides sufficient compression with no signs of artefacts.  Even with the green screen elements, which there are many, doesn’t show signs of variability when the action is high, fast, and full of components.  Details are beholden the monochromatic scale but looks quite elaborate in every inch of the frame from the shooting sets, real and fabricated, to the period outfits.  Audio consists of a compressed English Dolby Digital 5.1 and a Stereo 2.0.  The 5.1 mix seizes the cacophonic cluster when the vampires and vampire zombies invade Marlow where land and air attack emanate a wide range of sounds from military gunfire to UFO laser blasts, plus all the melee skirmishes and squish gore, worked in and around the clean and forefront dialogue track.  Ian McGregor Smith’s score harks back to the harrowing brass and percussion of big band compositions with a few more unconventional minor key instruments specific to the science fiction and horror elements.  English subtitles are optionally available. Special features include an audio commentary from director Michael Stasko and producers Jakob Skrzypa and Alex Forman, a 16-minute cast and crew interviews that goes behind the scenes into principal production moments (not listed as a special feature on back cover), a Judith O’Dea online video-conference interview about her experience working on the film (not listed on the back cover), a Lloyd Kaufman video conference interview about his experience (not listed on the back cover), five deleted scenes, a 90-second clip of the film’s premier at the Windsor International Film Festival held at Chrysler Theater, a still slide show, and the official trailer with promotional clips.  There’s also trailers for other Cleopatra Entertainment presented films.  The Blu-ray comes in standard Amaray with one-sided cover art, a character composition arranged in a flying V with Dracula largely in the middle and designed in a classic approach font and format.  The not rated film has a runtime of 98 minutes and is encoded for all regions.

Last Rites: Fans of “Zombies from the Stratosphere,” “War of the Worlds,” and “Planet of the Vampires,” will get a kick out of “Zombie Vampires…From Space” in all its blend of horror and science fiction glory of golden era B-pictures.

“Vampire Zombies…From Space” Invades Physica Media! Check it Out Here!

Creating the Perfect EVIL Race Takes Needless Amounts of Surgery and a Good Pair of Balls! “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” reviewed! (88 Films / 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“S.S. Experiment Love Camp” 4K and Blu-ray is Ripe for the Taking!

Nazi officer Colonel von Kleiben heads a concentration camp where he experiments of young Jewish and Russian female prisoners.  His experiments bore through the encampment lot with unconventional reproductive system surgery for the good of and in the name of purifying the Aryan race, experimentations that also including nonconsensual sexual activities between the women captives and the top physical specimens of the Nazi ranks.  Kleiben’s masked, real intentions are to practice for his own sake in a testicle transplant after a Russian woman castrates him during his attempted raping of her during conflict.  Woman after woman is sacrificed for the surgeon’s rigorous rehearsal by having their uteruses removed and replaced by another and when they expire on the table, their corpses are discarded into the camp’s incinerating ovens.  One Nazi solider is earmarked to be Kleiben’s hope to be whole again and uses the soldier’s affections toward a female prisoner to gain power and control in coercing him blindly into the experiment. 

If pleasure seeking banned films from certain sovereign states, then perhaps “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” should be on your short list.  The 1976 Nazisploitation film from Italy depicts a semblance of torture simulations used from Hitler’s Reich and lays the groundwork for total absurdity with a plot coursed with nonsense motivation at the disadvantage of a minority group under the threat of torture and death.  Also known as “Captive Women II:  Orgies of the Damned,” as more of a sequel in the collective Naziploitation subgenre popular in the 70’s, or most widely known as simply “S.S. Experiment,” the film is from the “Django the Bastard” and “Kill Django… Kill First” director Sergio Garrone, who co-wrote the script alongside “The Weapon, the Hour, & the Motive” co-screenwriter Vinicio Marinuci.  The Società Europea Films Internazionali Cinematografica produced the video nasty venture and expressed no regret the depictions of Nazi terror with the continuation of the subgenre by producing “S.S. Camp 5:  Women’s Hell” as well as other rape-inclined exploitation, such as “Mandinga” between master and plantation slaves and the caged women narrative of “Barbed Wire Dolls.”  

Sifting through the atrocious Nazi experiments, the unabashed sum of nudity, and the ridiculously selfish plot of one Colonel’s lengths to restore his manhood, “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” has a handful of mainstay principals key to the premise’s perpetuation encircled around Colonel Kleiben’s clandestine reasons to willingly and uncompassionately order a new type of surgical procedure on innocent civilian women prisoners.  Played by the square jawed, blonde haired Italian Giorgio Cerioni, who after “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” went on a string of playing a woman abusing Nazi in nazisploitation films between ’76 and ’77 with “Deported Women of the SS Special Section,” “SS Camp:  Women’s Hell,”  “The Red Nights of the Gestapo,” Kleiben’s a stoic, behind-the-scenes force and Cerioni dons the decadence evil well behind German medals and sense of false soldier duty as he works both the known to Kleinben Jewish world class surgeon Dr. Steiner (Attilio Dottesio, “The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine”) pretending to be German and Kleiben’s targeted German solider Helmet (Mircha Carven, “Death Will Have Your Eyes”) sought for his textbook testicles.  Dottesio’s Dr. Steiner is a conflicted man brought to do surgery on his fellow Jews that will result in their certain death and while he knows this, and it weighs on his conscious, the stuck doctor keeps himself from being exposed from other than the Colonel who knows and exploits his little secret for advantage; Dottesio wears a burden upon the surgeon’s face but doesn’t do enough to provide the body language of resistance in being doctor death against his will.  Yet, Carven wholly depicts an outlier amongst the typical German national who rather read books than shoot the sexual gab of his countrymen, which is in itself a nice slice of visual irony with the Nazi being known for burning literature.  Carven keeps Helmut relatively quiet, reserved, and a watcher from afar, noticing blonde prisoner Mirelle as the two fall for each other at the moment of locking eyes.  Carven and Paolo Corazzi (“SS Camp:  Women’s Hell”) sizzle with chemistry that’s left pieced too far apart and with not enough relationship context toward their insta-love connection.  There are other peripheral dialogue characters that keep the story spicy in their debauchery with Serafino Profumo (“Escape from Hell”) who had that perfect thin mustache and bald and stout look that makes him a formidable slimeball as the Nazi Seargent, Patrizia Melega (“SS Camp:  Women’s Hell”) as Dr. Steiner’s sadistic lesbian colleague Dr. Renke, and a handful of German soldiers to be the plug to the female prisoner outlet, such as with Matilda Dall’Agilio, Agnes Kalpagos, and Almina De Sanzio.  One of the more details to gripe about the cast is that they’re all Italian bronze that dilutes the allusion of the nationalities their portraying. 

“S.S. Experiment Love Camp” comes with a smidgen of notoriety having been banned in select western European countries over its depiction of violence, especially at the hands of Nazis, and its controversial poster of a naked woman crucified upside.  To this day,  Garrone’s film is still shocking and abhorrent with the aforesaid but also the emotion confliction etched into characters like Dr. Steiner or Helmut who must make a choice, weighing the balance of self-preservation over the salvation and safety of others, and that’s what really drives this nazisploitation to have tremendous impact in an absurdist plot of colonel cajones.  Garrone favors a more realistic approach to the tortures and horrors of a Nazi concentration camp by including close reenactments to their torture methods and Garrone also lingers ever so uncomfortably on the complete discard of corpses into the oven without any dialogue, expression on any faces, and even adds a surrealist glance into the oven of the bodies moving, in an artful dance way, when the flames are ignited.  There’s also the given, often gratuitous nudity that accompanies most nazisploitation films and while nudity usually arouses, stimulation stalls under the barbarism that’s present in the air, the context of which the sex acts are being conducted for, and the outcome of ghastly blood and sinew that follows to the end of the mortal coil.  There’s sensuality between lovers and transactions between prostitution and paying customers but even those innocuous instances rapid degrade into unnerving anticipation. 

88 Films’ new 2-disc, dual format 4K UHD Blu-ray and Standard Blu-ray set is a marvel of physical media engineering.  The 4K UHD is HVEC encoded and presented in Dolby Vision HDR10, 2160p ultra high-definition, and stored on a BD100 while the Standard Blu-ray is AVC encoded with a 1080p resolution on a BD50, both brand new 4K remastered transfers stem from the original negatives and displayed in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Between the two formats, there’s identical visuals to the naked eye but the 4K UHD does provide a slightly sharper image that has more an immersive pop when comparing the two formats side-by-side.  Colors are rich with a complete hue saturation that isn’t present in previous, more muted DVD or other Blu-ray editions.  Darker scenes have an intention rough quality about them as well as the concrete and unpigmented concentration camp as intended by director Sergio Carrone to put forth as much realism as possible.  No identifiable issues with compression as the picture quality looks clean through-and-through with blacks retaining an inky bide, grading remains consistent and stable, and the minutiae of fabric and skin color doesn’t contest with any ambiguity as Nazi uniforms distill a gray cotton-wool blend, you can also touch the little fuzzies on their garb, and the stubble and sweat greatly show the length of detail on strained and tense faces during torture or combat scenes.  The formats both have the same audio mixes:  an ADR English 2.0 LPCM and an ADR Italian 2.0 LPCM.  The uncompressed audio brings an unfiltered and considerate quality to the front channels with clean and clear dialogue under a diminutive amount of interference and an ambience track that puts its best foot forward, or rather the front, with distinct, sundry range of electronic voltage, machine gun fire, and the surgical slippery stickiness of organs being handled.  The new translated English subtitles are paced well and have no grammatical or misspelling issues.  Special features include a feature tandem audio commentary with Italian film experts Eugenio Ercolani and Nanni Cobretti.  Plus, Italian audio only interviews subtitled in English, including an interview with the late director Sergio Garrone Sadistically Yours, Sergio G., an interview with music historian Pierpaolo de Sanctis SSadist Sound, an interview with editor Eugenio Alabiso The Alibiso Dynasty (a back cover misspelling error perhaps?), an interview with cinematographer Maurizio Centini Framing Exploitation.  The special features conclude with the Italian title credits for the opening and closing of the film and the original Italian trailer.  88 Films and Joel Robison bring a newly illustrated, censored and uncensored cover art with the censored version on the rigid dual-sided slipcover that’s crazily detailed in all its tempestuous glory with the backside depicting the original poster art of a reverse crucified naked woman, both images are impressed with a pop-pulp coloring and chrome effect. The uncensored version lies within the plastic slip of the black 4K Amaray with a reverse side depicting also the original cover in its more traditional coloring of the horrendous and country-banning portrayal.  Inserted on the left interior is an uncensored illustrative cover, of the original poster art, atop of a 11-page English essay from Tim Murray entitled “Nazisploitation, Punks, and The Nasties…”  The Not rated, 95-minute film is region free for global player use. 

Last Rites: If nazisploitation or Eurosleaze just isn’t what tickles your movie mania, any cinephile can appreciate the pristine transfer, the raw and uncompressed audio, and its physical accoutrements that rise “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” into a must-have release.

“S.S. Experiment Love Camp” 4K and Blu-ray is Ripe for the Taking!

To Be a Star, the EVIL Past Must Be Erased! “MaXXXine” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / 4K UHD Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Grab Your Limited Edition Set of “MaXXXine!”

After the harrowing events in Texas, Maxine moves to Hollywood where she finds tremendous success as a famous 80’s adult film star but that’s not enough for the pious-raised Maxine who has an ambitious eye to make it big as a legitimate movie actress.  The crossover won’t be easy as her past creeps up on her after being awarded a role in an upcoming horror sequel, and not just any role but the leading role that’ll solidify her name as an actress.   When those close around her wind up brutally murdered and a seedy private detective hounds her for more than he’s paid for, Maxine juggles her ambitions with a tough director with trying to stay alive in a cutthroat town that’ll spit her out of the golden opportunity as soon as it swallowed her up into it.  Having already survived a deranged bloodbath in Texas, nothing will stop Maxine from being a silver screen star. 

Ti West’s “X” trilogy concludes with a sequel directly tied to the aftermath of “X” but years later, bringing back the hard-fought and harden survivor of a Texas porn shoot gone waywardly wild and a few people end up dead.  That sequel is known as “MaXXXine,” focusing entirely on the titular character’s drive to get out of triple-X films and into the elusively lustrousness of Hollywood acting set in the lively grime of a neon-torched 1980s Tinseltown.  The “House of the Devil” and “The Sacrament” director writes-and-directs the 2024 released, giallo-inspired suspenser, keeping in suit with the first two films, that takes a backlot tour of the sordid side of newfangled fortune and possible fame.  The roundup film behind “Pearl” and “X” in the trilogy is produced by series star Mia Goth as well as Jacob Jaffke, Harrison Kreiss, Kevin Turne, and Ti West with musician Kid Cudi serving as one of the film’s executive producers, all of whom were involved in “X.”  A24 presents the Motel Mojave and Access Entertainment coproduction.

Mia Goth, who broke onto the scene in Lars von Trier’s hypersexualized art film “Nymphomaniac” and as a fellow dancer at a prestigious ballet school with a dark, witchy secret in the 2018 remake of “Suspiria,” has quickly become a household name amongst genre and cult film fans, especially in the last four years thanks to Ti West’s “X” trilogy.  Unabashed in pushing the envelope with her performances, as the titular character Maxine, Goth immerses herself in the starlet’s ambitious arrogance and libertine lifestyle with resolution.   There’s so much determination in Maxine that it takes mysterious VHS tapes and dead bodies to recollect a deadly past and for first time audiences unaware of the trials and tribulations the character went through in Texas; that historic side of her life from “X” contains threadbare context in “MaXXXine,” nearly splintering the third film into an isolated entity without reliant on “X” to be a crutch into Maxine’s next traumatic chapter full of decade appertaining characters, unsavory underbelly types, and it can’t be the 80’s hair metal and video nasty period without the fervent of satanic panic.  Kevin Bacon (“Tremors,” “Hollow Man” ) plays a prominent opposite in an unscrupulous Cajun private detective John Labat, hired to do track down the untrackable Maxine Minx and even catch himself in her cobweb of strife when she breaks his nose for snooping too close for comfort.  Labat brings the physical manifestation of an omnipresent threat that not only targets Maxine but terrorizes the entirety of Hollywood with a serial killer known Night Stalker who kills, maims, and even dismember victims at random.  While Labat isn’t the Night Stalker himself, he certainly could be the hired hand behind the serial killer or an entirely different danger riding the fear wave in tandem.  The cast rounds out with kill fodder, entrenched accomplices, and stubborn vocation types that include Elizabeth Debicki (“The Cloverfield Paradox”) as the dedicated live by the film director, Giancarlo Esposito (“Harley Davidson and The Marlboro Man”) as Maxine’s do-anything talent agent, Moses Sumney as Maxxine’s video store clerk friend, Simon Prast as Maxine’s zealot father, singer Halsey as Maxine’s unfortunate adult industry friends, and Sophie Thatcher (“Companion”) as Puritan II’s SFX mold caster. 

“MaXXXine” is no churn-and-burn, fly-by-night, 80’s inspired horror.  Ti West puts in the aesthetic work to build the decade with a production value that extends above colorfully tacky outfits, teased hair, and bold and geometrical VHS visual graphics and into entire sets of building facades and concreted avenues, boxy-shaped cars upon cars, and the quintessential performances accompanied by gum smacking and antiquated gestures in this well thought out and well adored decade design surrounding Maxine.  The story plays out like an Italian giallo, Americanized for the licentious space nestled in the protest of prejudicial morality that sets the state for the satanic panic movement of the time where the belief that rock music and horror movies had insidiously, devilish intentions toward America’s youth.  West firm leans into that setup with historical footage of musicians as defendant or advocates for their and their peers’ music in courtrooms, broadcasts sponsoring the harmful effects of these entertainment outlets, and others that build a background stage in conjunction with the factual attacks of the greater Los Angeles serial killer, the Night Stalker.  An obscure killer with masked gloves, a cloak-and-dagger danger of dalliance between the shadowy figure and our heroine Maxine, violent and sexy, and plenty of dread building surrealism and creative artistry are all subgenre hallmarks used by West to flavor “MaXXXIne” differently by adding his own gritty 80’s seasoning.  There’s enough back alley and dim-lit ambience to set the treacherous atmospheric tone that quickly immerses the titular starlet into nearly being a victim of her own unintended instigation but the story eventually loses steam near the climatic apex, faltering just at the precipice of a perfect suitor to accompany “Pearl” and “X” in a new age, throwback trilogy for the horror genre.  The stumble comes when West tries to do something too ambitious with Maxine’s mental approach with an outer body experience that helps her see her true North, a vision that isn’t preluding by much or at least provided an inkling of starry eyed connection through the entire harrowing ordeal that’s put her life on the line for a career she’s willing to die for, and that scene, that moment, just seems too far out of place. 

Lout and proud, gory and storied, “MaXXXine” is a fitting finale for female badass survivalism.  Now available in the UK on 4K UltraHD from Second Sight Films, “MaXXXine” receives the HVEC encoded, 2160p ultra high-resolution treatment, presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio on an encoded BD50.  With 24 frames per second and equipped with DolbyVision, Second Sight’s release can keep up with “MaXXXine” whipping narrative and fast-paced editing, especially in the variety of media clipped montage opening.  The encoding appears to sustain compression excellently, leaving no issue hanging for audiences and cinephiles to catch notice.  Details are fine and distinct of a showy, gaudy 80’s texture, fabric, and skullduggery with a slight color desaturation toward a grindhouse aesthetic layer of grittiness for its exploitational exerts.  The English language audio tracks included are a Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 and a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1.  Both have a quantitative immersion to provide the best all-around surround sound, filling in the side and back channels with ambience direction that drop you right into the bustle L.A. city scene as well as the quiet touch of more intimate atmospheres between a single character to a handful in a single space.  Dialogue is brutally present, meaning all is clear as it clears away for “MaXXXine’s” genuine curtness and confident demeanor, as well Kevin Bacon’s emulated Cajun accent.  The decade-specific, medley soundtrack, which includes tracks from Animotion,  ZZ Top, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Judas Priest, and New Order, embarks on a journey of synth and what is now considered classic rock interspersed between Tyler Bates more cinematic, if not innocuous, notes.  English subtitles are available for selection.  Second Sight includes an abundance of new special features, including a new commentary by Bill Ackerman and Amanda Reyes, a new interview with writer-director Ti West Back to the Blank Page, a new interview with producer Jacob Jafftke Money on the Screen, an interview with director of photography Eliot Rockett B-Movie Aesthetic, an audio interview with production designer Jason Kisvarday Curating Space, Kat Hughes’s MaXXXine video essay The Whole World’s Gonna Know My Name, Belly of the Beast and XXX Marks the Spot are behind the scenes look at the making of the film, Hollywood is a Killer dives deeper into the special effects, and rounding out with a nearly half-hour Q&A with writer-director Ti West.  Second Sight releases a limited-edition box with rigid slipbox and the standard release, the latter of which is reviewed here, and that includes the standard 4K UHD black Amaray with an illustrated front cover art of the titular character that’s a slight variant to the film’s real character-driven theatrical poster.  There are no other physical contents.  The UK certified 18 film for strong bloody violence, gore, sex, and sexualized violence has a runtime of 104 minutes and is region free for all players.

Last Rites: “MaXXXine” is powerful feminism, a powerful maverick, and a powerful throwback to a great time to be alive, to listen to music, and to be a star of the 1980’s. “MaXXXine” overcomes a troubled past that’s more personal and heavily influential in its noir world, but determination is a powerful drug, matching perfectly for an equally powerful decade of sex and stardom.

Grab Your Limited Edition Set of “MaXXXine!”