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EVIL’s the Bacon, the Pork Roll, and the Scrapple All Mixed and Slashed together! “Butcher’s Bluff” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Butcher’s Bluff” on DVD from Breaking Glass Pictures!

Film students Rodger, Nicole, and Derrick decide to head to the rural Texas town of Emerald Falls and make their class project documentary around the 28 missing persons over the years and the Hogman, an urban legend of an escaped killer now roaming the woods of Butcher’s Bluff.  Bringing along their friends to make it concurring party getaway at Rodger’s family vacation cabin, the trio conduct interviews with the eccentric town locals to build a story around the Hogman myth, even ascertaining the original location for the mask Hogman wore during his first kills before escaping psychiatric prison.  The more they investigate into the Hogman, the more the locals warn them to stay away from Butcher’s Bluff but in a case of curiosity killed the cat, the documentary film students and their drug-fueled, sexed-up friends find themselves being hunted with no cell service, no help within miles, and no way out of the Hogman’s kill radius. 

Co-directors William Instone and Matt Rifley helm their first collaborative feature “Butcher’s Bluff,” a 2023 small town slasher reminiscent of the renaissance slasher movement of the 1980s, packed with practical gore effects, odd backwoods characters, a campy party of vice-riddled youth, and, moist importantly – excuse me – most importantly, T&A.  Instone, whose all-in director, writer, and producer debut horror “Jon” from 2012 brings one man’s delusions into horrifying reality, cowrites his latest grim story with writer, painter, and overall liberal arts connoisseur Renfield Rasputin.  Filmed in Texas with principal locations taking place in Bastrop, New Braunfels, and San Marcos to composition a story set in the fictional town of Emerald Falls and its rural woodland of Butcher’s Bluff.  The film is a crowdfunded venture that raised an approximate $60K to cover principal shooting and post-production costs with Instone and Rifley serving as primary producers amongst an amalgamation of crowdfunded producing backers   Instone’s Thunder Mountain Films, in association with Dull Knife Productions and Spicey Ramen Productions, go hog wild with their slasher horror. 

As if he doesn’t have enough on his plate writer, directing, and producing “Butcher’s Bluff,” Instone also portrays the main antagonist Hogman, masked with a stitched together pig head complete with cockeyed tusks and garbed with a dingy mechanic jumpsuit and tan jacket.  The Hogman is a walk-and-run chaser with a duel-sided axe and rusty, broad curved knife as main melee weapons though he’ll get his bare hands dirty from time-to-time.  Instone’s not flashy with the villain and doesn’t key-light any iconic poses, stances, or stares to incite a nerve coursing fear.  Hogman’s victims are anyone and everyone who enters the Butcher’s Bluff forest, from necking lovers (Jacqueline Hays and “Mallrats’s” Jeremy London), to lost pot farm thieves (“You’re Next’s” L.C. Holt, “Scare Package’s’” Christopher Winbush, “Girls Gone Dead’s” Shawn C. Phillips), to finally, but not limited to, the Rodger’s friends and classmates on their excursion investigation and party.  Fortunately, the group displays different caricature tropes without going full-blown cliché.  Between them you have the exuding sexy yet overly bitchy duo of Sam and Tina (a cut pixie cut but broodingly built Samantha Holland and a slender yet high-end platinum blonde Kayla Anderson), Rodger’s sex-driven, dweeb cousin Bobby (Dakota Millett) who Sam and Tina torment, the polar opposite to Bobby stud with Jake (Santiago Sky) and of course the three documentarians:  Rodger (Michael Fischer), Derrick (Johnny Huang), and Nicole (Paige Steakley), each reside in their own attribute world consistently, dying the way they live, that’s very telling of their moral fiber.  In additional to Jeremy London and Shawn C. Phillips, who have worked themselves into being staples of the indie genre films, other notable names to mention for their brief but key roles are Brinke Stevens (“Nightmare Sisters”), Paul T. Taylor (“Hellraiser:  Judgement”), Bill Oberst Jr. (“3 From Hell”), and Bill Johnson (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II”) peppered into the rest of the supporting cast to draw in fandom.

“Butcher’s Bluff” has the necessary bone structure to be a digestible slasher, checking all the elemental boxes, and Instone and Rifley manage to technically pull off a nearly 2-hour film on a crowdfunded budget.   The problem is “Butcher’s Bluff” has a hackneyed routine about it.  Instead of creating something new and wonderfully, gory and diabolical, under a distinct flag of novelly progressive storytelling, every scene feels all too familiar, a telltale sign to horror fans that we’ve seen this kind of story before.  From Hogman’s stony silence and indiscriminate aggression bores him as a Michael Myers carbon copy, a family in cahoots with a s flesh-stitched maniac plays the tune of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and there’s even a character moment of yelling What Are You Waiting For? aimlessly into the dark forest while spinning around with arms wide apart that oozes Jennifer Love Hewitt vibes.  Add in some rather uninspiring frame, shot design, and editing and “Butcher’s Bluff” very much embodies the crowdfunded costs rather than the intended crowdfunded spirit.  Now while all of this portion of the review sounds grossly negative, don’t just run for the hills to the next slasher film in line just yet as Instone and Rifley still manage to keep an engagement lock on what makes the slasher film enjoyable to behold with some decently inlaid practical gore effects, including a pleading head being sliced horizontally through from mouth to hair or a posthumous, lawn chair display of one fine girl’s nipples and eyes plucked from her body and posed on her eye-gouged out person as if giving a blood offering to the audience Gods.  There’s also the inviting gratuitous T&A from Samantha Holland, Kayla Anderson, and Jacqueline Hays that keeps the old theme motif alive within the campy slasher genre as well as keeping young boys’ dreams from becoming dry.

Breaking Glass Pictures distributes the archetypical slasher “Butcher’s Bluff” onto DVD home video.  The MPEG2 encoded, 720p upscaled standard definition, DVD9 really has a tough go with the compression capabilities as there’s quite a bit of data to encode/decode within a near full-time night shoot picture and color accompaniments that blend right into the darkness, melding out of a clean definition.  Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, banding and splotching render a difficult deciphering of data in inkier fields.  When colors do contrast or arise into lighter hues, there’s a pop of demarcation with its full potential held back by an ungraded layer.  Textures are extremely fluid throughout with the prominent skin scenes offering a decent, natural look but most scenes are fuzzy as if the upscale fights the downscaling for supremacy.  The English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound offers an adequate compression for a routine slasher with mid-level range with clear and clean dialogue overtop eerie forest soundscape of breaking branches, tree knocks, and leave crunching footsteps.  The mix doesn’t convey much depth with dialogue and ambience hanging around the front channels while medium shots and some tree knocking flirt with the side channels.  A mainstay slasher should have a memorable, tense-riddles soundtrack for the chase or create omnipresence fear but “Scream, Queen!  My Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Dinner with Leatherface” composer’s Alexander Taylor’s insipid inspiration can’t be held in the memorable bank and fails to elevate the Hogman’s imposing sheer terror.  English closed captioning is available.  Special features include a proof on concept trailer for the crowdfunding campaign that stars a handful of the actors from the feature film, such as Michael Fischer and Paige Steakley, and a behind-the-scenes music video that contains behind-the-scenes footage.   The DVD presence is standard fair for Breaking Glass Pictures with a DVD Amaray and a one-sided front cover art, which subjectively pleasing in its retrograde mockup of an illustrated Hogman looming over a scared, running Steakley (supposedly) in her white tank top and high cut shorts.  There is at least one noticeable error on the back cover that spells Paige Steakley’s name incorrectly in the credits, listing her last name as Steakely.  The Not Rated release is hard encoded with region 1 and has a two-hour runtime which can appear quite long, but the pacing was not terrible and the long runtime for an indie slasher didn’t feel overly immeasurable. 

Last Rites: “Butcher’s Bluff’s” has little to offer as far as the next novel and generational slasher but scratches the genre itch with a large body count, solid kills, and campy campers looking to buy, sell, and trade their vices for being violated.

“Butcher’s Bluff” on DVD from Breaking Glass Pictures!

All You Need to Protect You From Everything is a Pile of EVIL Socks! “Crust” reviewed! (Anchor Bay / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Sean Whalen’s Debut “Crust” Now on Blu-ray!

Vegas Winters is a famous washed-up child actor now working at a laundry mat. Depressed from having been exploited during his career years, Vegas’s problems continue as an unkempt, middle-aged man still enamored with an ex-girlfriend who can’t stand the sight of his growth impotency and the news of his show’s revival that stirs up the past’s unwelcomed hubbub. Day-in and day-out, Vegas does the laundry mat rounds, collecting lost socks for his own personal use, whether be for blowing his nose, cleaning a blood lip, or masturbating into for his daydreaming fantasies, until one day the poor schlub is beyond humiliated and sheds a tear into his pile of used and unwanted collection of socks that turns the heap into his own personal protector he calls Crust. Murdering all who emotionally hurt or threaten Vegas, Crust becomes his best pal who has to vie with Vegas’s drunkard business partner and friend as well as his newfound girlfriend who’s infatuated with him.

Sean Whalen is one of the more underappreciated side characters in the last 30 years.  You know the face, but you may not know his extensive filmography.  Most of us horror fanatics adore Whalen in what was likely one of East coast born actor’s most notable roles from early in his career as the wall-crawling, good-hearted, inbred child named Roach from Wes Craven’s “The People Under the Stairs.”  From that film in 1991 to today, Whalen has run the genre gamut as a supporting actor in “Tammy and the T-Rex,” “Waterworld,” Rob Zombie’s “Halloween II,” as well as Zombie’s “3 From Hell” and a slew of other films, made-for-TV movies, and popping up in television series, including the U.S. version of CBS’s Ghosts pilot which I’m still sorely peeved he no longer continued the basement-dwelling, leprosy ghost role.  Now, we’re seeing a whole new side to our favorite side actor who steps into the lead principal role and, also, writes-and-directs his first feature length film with the 2024 comedy-horror “Crust.”  The indie film is cowritten with Jim Wald and is a production between Mezek Films, Moonless Media & Entertainment, Wicked Monkey Pictures, Stag Mountain Films, and the LLC, Crustsock Productions, supported by a crowdfunding campaign that generated nearly 100K dollars from over 600 backers.

A personal project for Whalen, “Crust” came to fruition as an allegorical metaphor for his own depression after a divorce and he plays Vegas Winters, a former child actor who left the industry after the success of his show due to those around him mistreating him or forgetting about him once the show success wore off.  Gloomy-faced, disheveled, and suppressively lethargic and explosively frantic when called for, Vegas is the epitome of depression while co-running a bland laundry with an alcoholic Russ, played by another horror-friendly, long-time supporting actor in Daniel Roebuck (“Final Destination,” “Terrifier 3”).  Audiences will feel for Vegas and his ultimate wish to be left alone as he sends his blood, sweat, tears, and amongst other bodily fluids, into the leftover socks of strangers, but audiences will also be delighted in his return to fervor materialized by a spur-of-the-moment, quirky laundry mat dance routine with his newfound cute-and-cuddly, stiff-sock creature, Crust. Like Daniel, Nila is too entangled in Vegas’s sticky-sock situation as his from-afar admirer turned quickly cemented girlfriend, played by Rebekah Kennedy (“Two Witches,” “Traumatika”), and there ensues the conflict when friend and girlfriend don’t know where they place or stand alongside a sock-monster. Roebuck and Kennedy manage to fiddle the strings of being the irresolute and concerned while not being a total antagonist to Vegas, who himself might not be 100% the hero of the story. “Crust” rounds the big hitting cast with “Sleepaway Camp’s” Felissa Rose and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’s” Alan Ruck along with William Gabriel Grier, Charles Chudabala, Ricky Dean Logan, Shawntay Dalon, and Zoe Unkovich.

Divided into laundry themed chapters, “Crust” is all about the depression and the stagnation that it entails. The creature Crust is that imaginary hope or need fabricated to pull one out of its depths and talons as a protector and a friendly companion to retreat into when the world around is threatening with a difficulty level of hard. Vegas is bombarded with down-in-the-dumps missiles being reminded of an unpleasant past, an ex that continues to belittle him, and an escape from reality that soon becomes an invasion of privacy. Whalen’s decision to shoot in black and white is a conscious one that eliminates colorful distractions to keep story focus around the characters, driving down the narrative nail into Vegas’s episodic progress that deepens to deprecating d, depths, and to keep blemishes with Crust’s marionette-ways to a bare minimum. That’s not to express that Crust is a mealy patchwork of loose socks and back felt for eyes. Crust construction might be simple in design but effective in applied personification with emotional swings, eyebrow moods, and hand gestures despite the obvious movement limitations that require multiple shots and cuts at different angles to sell its tearful autonomy and aggressive nature to protect. Remember, “Crust” is a comedy-horror with emphasis on comedy and while Whalen’s directorial debut comedy is fettered by a lighter shade of black, there’s a waving playfulness about it, such as Whalen and Crust’s spontaneous choreography, that provides a wake from the satirical black humor and completely submerge the story in surrealism with laughs and heart-wrenching moments.

One of the first, and hopefully many to come, titles a part of the initial Anchor Bay Entertainment revival by Umbrelic Entertainment cofounders Thomas Zambeck and Brian Katz, “Crust” hits the Blu-ray market with distribution assistance from MVD Visual.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25 has the work cut out for it with the black-and-white presentation that allows for a better decoding bitrate, hovering around easily a high-20 Mbps.  Monochromic anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio exhibits cleanly, clearly, and classically in a consistent contrast that balances situational light and shadow where appropriately.  Textures are dullened without color but the picture is crisp without showing fuzziness or compressed without blocky or bandy issue.  Not listed on the back cover, my player detects an English Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0 track.  More talkative than taking action, “Crust” delivers a fine digitally recorded dialogue track through a lossy Dolby compression that while isn’t as an exact replica, it is clear. Yet, dialogue’s separated from the pack, isolated from the caricature ambience of a laundry mat that has settles on a single wash or dryer sound, the exaggerated sounds of exterior paparazzi, and minor action sounds reach the upper audio layer hemisphere, diffusing into virtually the same foreground plane as dialogue rather medium-to-near range background in what is more of a production stemmed, Foley incorporated audio design.  Blu-ray’s bonus features include a Sean Whalen feature length audio commentary track, a Los Angeles premiere Q&A with Sean Whalen, Rebekah Kennedy, Daniel Roebuck, Felissa Rose, and William Gabriel Grier along with Crust puppeteer, Lisa Hinds, and two short comedies about Dorothy post-Wizard of Oz by many, many tragic years of alcoholism, sex, and delusional state of poor Dorothy, written and played by Whalen in “Dorothy:  50 Years Later” and “Dorothy 2:  The Bump and Run.”  Anchor Bay’s releases standard fair within a traditional Amaray case with the image of Whalen, or rather Vegas, the sock-monster Crust, and a trail of speckled blood in a back-and-white laundry mat with no tangible inserts and the same image pressed on the disc but digitally rearranged.  The region free release has a runtime of 102 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: Depression sucks, but “Crust” doesn’t in its sticky sardonic theme told simply in genericisms and broad grayscale strokes. Whelan’s first feature is first rate farce with fantastic puppet work and a Whelan, himself, best at self-deprecating his image for what’s good of the story, which is a morsel of his own.

Sean Whalen’s Debut “Crust” Now on Blu-ray!

Beer Can Stuff Boots Give EVIL a New Height! “The Lost” reviewed! (Ronin Flix / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Click Here to Purchase “The Lost” on Blu-ray!

Sociopathic teen-adult Ray Pye guns down two young women he suspects are romantically involved with each other and wants to feel the thrill of the kill for the first time with his two friends, Jennifer and Tim, as frightened, reluctant witnesses and abettors to his heinous crime.  Four years later, police investigation can’t pinpoint Pye as the culprit when the only surviving victim succumbs to her wounds after being in a coma all this time.  Pye, the slicked haired, pathological liar and assistant manager of his mother’s motel, continues his nice boy act as he peddles drugs and tries to woo any girl into bed while having a firm, feared grip on best friend Tim and girlfriend Jennifer to keep them in line.  As Pye chases after new women that enter in his world, the police continue their unofficial investigation, waiting for Pye to slip up and make a mistake but as his manipulation backfires and things don’t go his way, Pye’s already unstable nature morphs into an all-in, serial killer rampage and kidnapping of the three prominent women that have recently challenged his masculinity.

A real down spiral of machoism and growing up out of the adolescent fantasy world, “The Lost” is the 2006, loosely based biopic thriller inspired by real-life serial killer, the Pied Piper of Tucson, Charles Schmid interpreted from the book of the same title by late horror novelist Jack Ketchum.  This part II of our serial killer film review coverage, following the Robert “Willy” Pickton Canadian murders inspiring “Pig Killer,” “The Lost” bring us back to American murderers and is the first solo feature run for writer-and-director Chris Sivertson.   The father-son duo Mike and Lucky McKee, the filmmakers behind “May” and “Roman” co-produce “The Lost” alongside Sivertson and Shelli Merrill under the production company banners of Silver Web Productions.

To play Ray Pye, the actor must incarnate being on the edge of principles and be crazed to the point of no return.   For Marc Senter, Ray Pye was a means to break from minor television roles and star as a leading man defying principal conventions in being the best bad guy he could cook up.  Senter, who went on to be in credited roles of “Wicked Lake,” “Cabin Fever 2:  Spring Fever,” and “Old Man,” will forever be seen as the crushed soda can-filled boot wearing and greaser veneered Ray Pye as the boyish-looking Colorado native brings the ferocity, the energy, and the killer instinct of a high-strung teen teetering the line of losing it all.  Senter’s approach rides on insecure masculinity of being a short man showing teeth to appear larger than life and exacts a screen perforating fear that holds friends Jennifer (Shay Aster, “Ernest Scared Stupid”) and Tim (Alex Frost, “Elephant”) in a tail-between-the-leg stasis of his end all, be all despot presence.  Aside from the Ray Pye storyline, a trio of sub-stories add more development and substance to other principal characters, such as Tim and Jennifer hooking up dictated by them inching out from under Ray Pye’s reach, a washed out midlife Detective (Ed Lauter, “Cujo”), who was formerly on the Ray Pye investigation, and his romantic involvement with a Pye pursuant Sally (Megan Henning, “I Know Who Killed Me”), who is approx. 40-years the Detective’s junior that creates an intriguing, struggling dichotomy between love and appearance, and with the alluring Katherine Wallace (Full Moon regular actress Robin Sydney, “Evil Bong” franchise) in a love-hate, obstinate relationship with an absent psychotic mother and her fondness for Ray in who on some levels mirrors the same qualities as Katherine’s mother.  Michael Bowen (“Deadgirl”), Dee Wallace (“Cujo”), Tom Ayers (“Bloody Bridget”), Cynthia Cervini, Richard Riehle (“3 From Hell”), and to compound skin scenes, soft-core erotic starlets Erin Brown (aka Misty Mundae, “An Erotic Werewolf in London”), and Elise Larocca (“Blood for the Muse”) co-star.

What first struck me about Sivertson’s “The Lost” is it doesn’t define a period in time.  Charles Schmid’s reign of terror coursed the span of a year in the mid-to-late 60s, which follow’s Ketchum’s timeline in the novel.  Yet, the books’ characters follow the movie’s scheme without clearly stating the years, stringing the connection between the three like step-relationships.  Pye’s greaser finish, drive-in burger joints, boxy-rectangle cars and VW Beetles, and a motel as one of the principal shooting locations float in the very essence of the title itself, as a Lost in time story that stretches the decades.  What’s not lost is the aggressive sexual nature that drives the nihilistic Ray Pye’s bedding scorecard by feigned compassion and romance; yet there’s plenty depth behind his sleazy cockiness that warrants more discussion into his problematic psyche, such as how he’s able to charm the pants of these women and how he’s able to keep those who fear him, close to him.  Sivertson’s unafraid to make a statement in “The Lost’s” sexuality with plenty of skin from a number of the principal actresses to the simulated sexual acts in and out the vein of style and in and out of Pye’s sociopathic tantrums that’s more self-doubting bullying than actual power.  At a young age, Pye aims high for machohood by the misguided dealings of the cards he’s dealt, augmenting himself with shoe stuffers and makeup to make him taller and more attractive.  “The Lost” is very much a deconstruction of masculinity mania in the way we see Pye’s worlds comes crashing down and he loses everything when his guard is down by one swift moment of real, tangible love with Katherine and the only way to gain back control, like a hissy-fitting baby, is to go berserk in a if I can’t have it, nobody will tear. 

Evil never looked so dapper as “The Lost” receives a new 2K remaster produced from a 4K scan of the original camera negative by the boutique label Ronin Flix.  The AVC encoded, 1080p, high-definition BD50 contains the presented anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 film with pixel-by-pixel coherence exacting extensive details and chromatic fidelity.  What stuck out the most from the 4K scan was the night scenes blanked in near sheer darkness with minimal direction illumination from natural and unnatural lighting in a positive, well, light.  In night forest scenes, especially around the lake, objects are lost in the void of shadows, tenebrously covered in obscurity, and that’s accomplished and accentuated in the opening moments of Ray Pye’s debut double murder, creating a better illusion of reality rather than creating an illusion out of often folly fabrication of dark blue gels or immense random key lighting.  Textures are strong through, greatly defined by the delineating of edges on striking clothing, cars, and the amount of skin displayed.  Two lossless English audio options are available to select from:  a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and a 2.0 Stereo DTS-HD Master Audio.  “The Lost’s” audio/video design produces a high fidelity and contains a blend of unprocessed and stylistic expression that stretch the audio range depending on the current Ray Pye Richter scaled mood.  Pye’s occasional rapid-fire rants are unmistakable and clear as the decoding unfolds every syllable without sounding seamless or garbled.  English SDH are optionally available.  Ronin Flix delivers new and previously owned special features.  New content like an audio commentary with director Chris Sivertson and Lucky Mckee serve as a trip down memory lane with new, pondered upon insights and recalled tales and new individualized interviews with principal actors Marc Senter, Robin Sydney, and Shay Astar in regard to auditioning, prepping for the role, and recalling their experience on the shoot expand more into “The Lost’s” attention and what it took to illuminate focus on the Pied Piper of Tucson.  A second, archival commentary with writer Monica O’Rourke moderating conversation with late novelist Jack Ketchum, audition tapes, outtakes, storyboard sequence, and the original “Jack and Jill” short film directed by Chris Sivertson fill out the special features.  A new front cover design, replacing the bland bullet hole-riddled and blood-puddled eyes cover on the Anchor Bay DVD and Blu-ray, on the trio of cardboard O-slipcover, translucent Blu-ray Amaray case, and disc art spruces up the Ronin Flix’s lifted release with a sense of hep threads and fatal knuckle sandwiches.; however, that’s about the extent of its physical beauty and tangible adjuncts.  The region free Blu-ray comes not rated and has a runtime of 119 minutes.  Marc Senter’s tour de force burns rubber, a ferocity of friction and perpetual anger sculps one of the best true-to-life silver screen villains from the last two decades. 

Click Here to Purchase “The Lost” on Blu-ray!

It’s EVIL That Can Truly Bring Love Back Together. “By Day’s End” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures/DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on


Down in the relationship dumps, Carly and Rina struggle with sustaining the love between them. Carly recently dropped out of medical school to pursue a videography career, Rina, whose a battling bulimic, can’t secure a job, and, together, the financial strain and their respective personal issues is pushing them apart as they indolently work toward a seemingly futile plan for the future in a rundown motel recently purchased by a college friend named Wyatt. As if things can’t get any worse, an infectious pandemic turns the diseased into flesh hungry zombies and has quickly engulfed their area shortly after devouring Europe before anyone knew what hit them. With all communications down and surrounded by the infected, Carly and Rina rely on each other for survival, armed with only a couple of handheld cameras and a knife, but one Rina becomes sick, how far will Carly go to save the love of her life.

Love and zombies. Never has there been a more catalytic experience when the fate of an undead ravaged Earth becomes the tinder box for rekindling affection of a broken relationship. That’s the surmised premise of Michael Souder’s director debut, a found footage horror entitled “By Day’s End,” released onto DVD by the Philadelphian home video distributor, Breaking Glass Pictures. The LGBTQ aware zombie horror is based on Souder’s short marketing preview entitled “Hunger” that involved a man and woman couple rather than two women and was set at a motel site with Souder acting as narrator in explaining his vision. While “Hunger’s” financials didn’t gain footing through crowdfunding, Sounder was able rework his vision that incorporates a different breed of zombie that can learn at a rapid pace, shot his film in 2015, and finally hitting the retail markets in 2020. Sci-Fi-fantasy writer, Justin Calen-Chenn, co-writes the script with Sounder and serves as co-producer with the director along with another co-producer, Alicia Marie Agramonte, in her first feature produced production. Joe Wasem serves as executive producer for this complicated love story in the midst of a zombie Armageddon.

The rocky romance between Carly and Rina land praise for Lyndsey Lantz (“Lore”) and Andrea Nelson (“I Spit On Your Grave: Déjà vu”) in being a convincing complex couple with tons of baggage including relationship singeing secrets from one another and an underlying passion that has grown a little stale from a future strained of financial collapse. The chemistry between the blonde haired Carly and the dark browned Rina sizzles with tension that steams like when hot water hits a freezing cold surface. Lantz provides Carly’s bubbly optimism of a woman in love that finds climbing Rina’s colossally icy barrier a frustrating feat despite an immense amount of devout love and loyalism for her partner. The one character that isn’t very convincing is the former military turned motel host Wyatt Fremont played by Joshua Keller Katz. Katz’s rigid performance falls into the stereotype category of a bad script read, overplaying Wyatt’s previous life with a smug thinning effect on the whole zombie chaos and Wyatt sticking out of place like a giant sore thumb. Rounding out the cast is Diana Castrillion (“Godforsake”), Umberto Celisano (“First House on the Hill”), Devlin Wilder (“Grizzled”) and die-hard horror fixtures Maria Olsen (“Starry Eyes”) and Bill Oberst Jr. (“3 From Hell”) with the latter providing his voice only.

Rina’s unceasing eating disorder has staked a claim as one of the spurs affecting Carly and Rina’s declining relationship and, yet, when another eating disorder where mankind craves the taste of each other, the once quarreling lovers reignite the warmth that was once their bond in an amusing parallel of events. Character analogies are not the only nice touches provided by Souder who tweaks the zombie, extending upon George Romero’s evolutionary concept of a learning and pliant zombie while also creating a big world apocalyptic problem with small world capabilities, with the undead playing possum – how very “Resident Evil.” The 74 minute runtime offers ideal pace to not linger in exposition, which some horror love stories tend to do, balancing the backstory and the instantaneous chaos into a smooth transition of events. The camera POV style renders the same objective with also a bit of tranquility that’s like a calm before the storm rather, as some ambience is muted by security cameras. The effect results a frightening, breath holding silence which is a nice, eerie touch of cinematography and uncluttered audio.

“By Day’s End” is the motel mayhem zombie movie you’ve been hungry for and comes to you on a DVD home video being released March 17 courteously from Breaking Glass Pictures. The DVD9, region 1 release is presented in a widescreen, 1.78:1 aspect ratio, that splices together handheld camera and security cam footage. The image quality respectively shares the diverse filming tactics used to interlace a story. Handheld footage features a bright, natural appeal whereas the security footage purposefully instills as ashen approach and softer, fuzzier details with the horizontal lines created by direct light The English language 2.0 stereo mix has clean and forefront dialogue; the creature gutturals cast a more over-the-top and tawdry vocal disappointment that wasn’t fear invoking. Ambient depth and range are sizable and balanced. Special features include a behind-the-scenes, a quaint blooper reel, and Souder’s short film “Hunger.” “By Day’s End” marks the first indie horror success story of a 2020 release with a delicately modeled blend of romance and horror and a surge of lasting captivation on both of those fronts.

There is no EVIL like the Firefly Family! “3 From Hell” reviewed!

Posted by Steven Lewis on


A bullet-riddled shootout with police left Baby Firefly, Otis Driftwood, and Captain Spaulding full lead, but not dead! The trio barely survives despite getting shelled by 20 gunshot wounds a piece and are tried and incarcerated for over a decade in maximum security prisons. After Captain Spaulding’s wears out his welcome on death row and becomes the first one executed, a merciless escape carried out by Otis’ half-brother, Winslow Foxworth Coltrane aka The Midnight Wolf, leaves a trail of blood and violence in their wake up to freeing Baby Firefly who can’t wait to play and unleash her uncontrollable crazy cyanide upon the world. However, there’s only one itsy-bitsy problem – they’re faces are about as dangerous to themselves as they are dangerous to others. The three from hell vamoose to a dumpy Mexico town to start afresh, but little do they know, no place is safe for long.

Over the span of 16 years and 14 years since “The Devil’s Rejects,” shock rock and rockabilly, metal rocker Rob Zombie returns to write and direct the third and highly anticipated sequel film in the Firefly trilogy with “3 From Hell.” The 2019 continuation of the Baby, Otis, and Captain Spaulding rejuvenates interesting in returning hellions that’ll undoubtedly wreak havoc across the midwest plains, splatter some brains, remove some flesh, and, well, you get the gist of their unholy hobbies. “3 From Hell” had to literally dig out these characters from the grave since being shot to shreds at the end of,***spoiler alert***, “The Devil’s Rejects” and Zombie was able to sell Lionsgate and Saban Films on the story divergent from the last film, much like “House of a 1000 Corpses” horror show went straight into exploitation extravaganza with “The Devil’s Rejects.” “3 From Hell” is a whole new animal, an anti-hero’s indulgent fantasy of crime, action, and still barely kickin’ to kick ass through the rampaging blood.

The three in “3 from Hell,” Baby Firefly, Otis Driftwood, and Captain Spaulding, return for one more three amigo misadventure through hell and brimstone and the original cast, respectively include Sheri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, and Sid Haig, suit up to be a depraved family once again. Sadly, Sid Haig’s health rapidly deteriorates in the midst of filming, leaving Zombie no other choice other than to write him quickly from the script and introduce a new character, a transgression tyrant to pass the torch to, with Winslow Coltrane played fittingly by “31’s” Richard Brake. As though like never missing a backwoods bumpkin beat, Richard Brake embraces the Midnight Wolf and breaks in the character with such ease and fortitude that the question never arises if the Midnight Wolf should be a part of the sacred Firefly pack. Sheri Moon Zombie steps out of a time machine and right into Baby Firefly, despite being a little aged around the eyes. The quirky and unpredictable Baby doesn’t reinvent the wheel, which should please the fandom, and is a wonderful sadistic mecha with Sheri Moon at the helm. The same can be said about Bill Moseley who, goes without saying, has a unique voice that’s been rebranded as Otis Driftwood. Every other movie, old or new, with Bill Moseley starring, or not starring, will forever be tainted by Otis Driftwood for when Moseley monologues or even just speaking one or two words of dialogue, the spine starts to twinge and tingle, the hairs shoots straight up, and that stepping on your grave feeling of cold desolation swallows you in an instant. The “3 From Hell,” plus Coltrane, face the world with a big knife and lots of guns and those who stand in their way are played by co-stars Danny Trejo (“Machete”), Jeff Daniel Phillips (“31”), Emilio Rivera (“Sons of Anarchy”), Richard Edson (“Super Mario Bros.”), Pancho Molar (“Candy Corn”), Dee Wallace (“Cujo”), Sean Whale (“The People Under the Stairs”), Clint Howard (“Evilspeak”) and Bill Oberst Jr. (“Dis”).

Rob Zombie has mentioned in a behind the scenes featurette that he didn’t want to recapture the magic of the previous Firefly cruelty and the rocker-filmmaker has done that just, straying away from the horror of “House of the 1000 Corpses” and the exploitation vehemence of “The Devil’s Rejects,” which the fans groveled for, and going bravely, or blindly, into crime action with the “3 From Hell” that still’s beholden to Rob Zombie’s hillbilly swank. Rob Zombie risks a new path and also gambling on more of Lionsgate’s capital with showing off more visual effects than in the former films. Bullets tearing through flesh and flying straight toward the camera lend to example of the computer imagery effects that, from a fan’s perspective, dilute Rob Zombie’s adoration for horror who takes less and less chances with this film that not only feels rather ordinary and just another piece of maize in the field, but “3 For Hell” also doesn’t feel to have substance to all the madness. Baby, Otis, and Coltrane go from point-to-point, aimlessly pondering what’s next, and just happen to fall into a barrage of bullets and blood, rather than being the epitome of evil bring vile upon mankind. Just being a Rob Zombie film that resurrects his beloved and beguiling modern iconic characters, “3 From Hell” coopers the longing with a fierce show of violence that opens the door for one more installment.

Lionsgate and Saban Films, along with Spookshow International, proudly presents Rob Zombie’s “3 From Hell” onto a R rated DVD and an unrated, 1080p Blu-ray sheathed inside a slipcover. The two disc, dual format release are both presented in a widescreen, 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and the image is about as sleek as they come with an ARRIRAW formatted 2.8k ARRI camera that shoots 48fps. Zombie reins back on the color palette and hones onto more natural coloring. The details are delineating, as aforesaid with Sheri Moon Zombie’s crows feet. The English language 7.1 Dolby TrueHD audio track is lossless with a crisp dialogue and ambient mix. The range and depth are robust with explosions and gunfire. The release comes with Spanish subtitles and English SDH subtitles. In accompaniment with the 115 runtime, bonus features include To Hell and Back: the Making of 3 From Hell which is a 4-part documentary on the Blu-ray only and both formats include an audio commentary from writer-director Rob Zombie. Also included is a digital copy to instantly stream and download onto personal devices. The horror element might be gone, but the inexplicable chaos surges through death row to desperado Mexico in Rob Zombie’s “# From Hell!”

Own “3 From Hell” on Blu-ray/DVD!