Tag Archives: 35mm

Screenland’s Bright Lights Can Turn One Lonely Man EVIL! “Hollywood 90028” reviewed! (Grindhouse Releasing / 3-Disc Blu-ray and CD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Hollywood 90028” 3-Disc Collector’s Edition Can Be Preordered Here!

Having moved West from a small Ohio town a few years back, photographer and video cameraman Mark found himself stuck shooting nudie reels for a low-budget porn producer.   A solitary life lends Mark more freedom then most to wonder about and driver around on the streets of Hollywood with ambitions for a legit job of shooting regular material that doesn’t humiliate him.  Troubled about his childhood past involving the death of a younger brother and with his frustrations within his video film capturing vocation, Mark finds himself in the company of young, attractive women who find him easy to talk to and attractive as well, but when Mark reaches a limit, aberrant thoughts take over and he strangles them to death.  When he meets starlet Michele on one of his shoots, Mark believes he’s found the woman for him, one that can relieve the pressures of life and work with nothing more than her beauty.  For Mark’s abnormal mind, love at first sight might not be that easy.

Writer-director Christina Hornisher tackles trauma induced behavior and the Hollywood pull of small-town aspirations chasing dreams in the drama-suspenser character piece of “Hollywood 90028.”  Hornisher’s debut feature film released in 1973 also became her only feature credit as a director who supplied arthouse substance but also embodied a different kind of substance, the grueling confiscation of hope for work, stardom, and love, perhaps even sliding into a bit of escapism, as the bright lights of Hollywood draw the flies to the flame.  Shot on location in and around the Hollywood, Los Angeles area that also had scenes fillmed directly at and underneath of the self-referential hillside Hollywood sign landmark before the iconic, globally recognized attraction had been fenced-off with visitation restrictions post-film in the 1980s and further protected with security systems in the mid-1990s.  Hornisher also self-produced the film which was also known under alternate titles as “The Hollywood Hillside Strangler,” “Twisted Throats,” and “Insanity.” 

Christopher Augustine, who would also have a part in “The Doll Squad” of the same year, played Mark the calm and restrained pornography cinematographer and editor.  Not as sleazy as his title, Mark’s reserved nature doesn’t stop him from photographing and working diligently on splicing film without completely cutting off from the world but does make him quiet, observant, and intriguing, or so does Michelle thought.  Michelle’s a smalltown girl who moved West to work in the fame industry who soon finds herself being financially forced out of legit paying gigs for more sordid, sleazy work.  Played by Jeannette Dilger, who would actually have a role in the adult film “Young, Hot ‘n Nasty Teenage Cruisers” a few years later, she would spark chemistry with the mustached Augustine that allows their Mark and Michelle to fall in love that isn’t amorously glamorous but has innocent notes of flirtation and a lot of walk-and-talk realism onscreen relationships tend to omit.  Hornisher determines Mark to be the centerpiece of her character study.  Every scene caters to Mark’s interactions with Michelle, his professionalism with sleaze producer Jabol (Dick Glass), and the two other women he meets and eventually strangles.  Where Hornisher isn’t her best is in the building up of Mark’s suppressed sociopathic behavior, stemmed from a brief opening montage of a preteen Mark and his large family that implies his involvement in the accidental death of a younger brother, with ever delicate triggering that doesn’t solidify calling back to his aggressive-resulting trauma.  “Hollywood 90028” cast rounds out with Dianna Huntress, Beverly Walker, Kia Cameron, Ralph Campbell, Melonie Haller and Gayle Davis.

Though her first feature credit, Hornisher had the makings of a competent, auteur filmmaker.  “Hollywood 90028” evaded the conventional narrative structure and one-trick pony photography with more arthouse ambition that saw not only panning and tracking in her cinematic cache, but a stunning and incredibly quick finale zoom out from the Hollywood sign of smooth drone quality but completed in 1973 with a helicopter soaring over the Hollywood district.  Use of spliced-in cells of modeled sex representation as well as sign denotations of the character’s dialogue and thoughts, a kaleidoscope lens utilized during an intimate love scene, and the greater use of off-screen dialogue over on-screen conversating creates a thin layer of psychological realism in contrast to the actual realism between Mark and the rest of the characters.  Mark’s sullen display of emotions throughout the story culminates with his unconscious destructive demise after finally expressing a sliver of elation with Michelle but that’s also when he realizes that his tragic past and present psychosis will never let him go and will destroy anything that tries to replace it.  In one theory, Hornisher might have kept Mark in the same clothes throughout most of the picture to depict a deranged mental image; his constant choice of clothes is a hangup that can’t be let go for sharp-eyed viewers who wish he’d change out of his denim, long-sleeved shirt and denim jeans.  Unlike Mark’s unchanging denim statement, Hollywood in Hornisher’s film is a city captured in time; much like the Hollywood sign had gone from an area of loitering to now protected from the public, the fornicated fleapits and the colorful and character-building structures of Hollywood have long since been razed and rebuilt into the more glamourous, if not still snakebitten, Hollywood you see today. 

Grindhouse Releasing has gone the extra mile in not releasing a standard version of “Hollywood 90028” with standard fare and a rink-a-dink, barely passing muster transfer, but releasing a definitive chef-d’oeuvre of this lost Christina Hornisher film.  The new 4K restoration created from the original 35mm negative makes a statement that they underrated, underappreciated and the underbelly of indie cinema will not be ignored and, instead, be celebrated in retrospect, recoloring, and painstaking supervision in the efforts of all areas of rejuvenation.  The 3-disc, Blu-ray and CD set has an AVC encoded, 1080p high-defintion, 50 gigabyte capacity on the feature disc.  Presented in anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1, the Grindhouse Releasing restoration gives “Hollywood 90028” a fresh coat of paint on a precise saturation spectrum and illuminates details from the limitations of untouched, processed 35mm triacetate.  The original negative appears to have survived the test of time with barely perceptible, thin vertical scratches that were more sporadically sparse than a nagging nuisance.  Grain’s healthy and natural looking in the overlap and the contrasts levels clarify stark delineation and depth, attributing to finer details on textures and skin tones when mostly interior scenes.  Exteriors lose some definition because of the natural lighting and contrast levels typically lower to more create deeper shadows and amalgamation between object and background.  Video bitrate decodes a nice low 30s Mbps. The back cover does not provide explicit specs for the audio but my setup picks up the English language mix as a DTS-HD master audio stereo (the menu setup states mono) is the adequate acquaintance to the visual elements with an ADR dialogue recording, that to note has nothing to do with the release’s presentation, does feel detached in some regard to the visual character temperament despite its well-preserved clarity and projection, but the real star of the audio makeup is the Basil Poledouris (“RoboCop”, “Starship Troopers”), remastered by Jussi Tegelman soundtrack that is a delicate and absorbing mix of piano, wind-instrument, and percussive that reflects Mark’s wondering loneliness and reserved longing as well as introducing jazzier sax and guitar tracks for livelier montage moments.  Suddenly, we’re thrust into string-laden, semi-dark and low-tones for Mark’s buried spiraling. English subtitles are available.  Grindhouse Releasing had some so bonus content they added a second disc with the first containing audio commentaries with film enthusiast Marc E. Heuck, the film’s editor Leon Ortiz-Gil, and cult and porn director Tom DeSimone who attended UCLA with Hornisher, the original, unrestored, X-rated alternate scenes, Christina Hornisher’s experimental 16mm short films, cameraman outtakes, still galleries, radio spots and trailers under the “Hollywood Hillside Stranger,” the “Hollywood 90028” trailer, and the Grindhouse Releasing coming attractions.  The second disc contains retrospective interviews with stars Christopher Augustine, Jeannette Dilger, Gayle Davis, and editor Leon Ortiz-Gil in a near feature length making-of, a theater presentation discussion with Christopher Augustine, and a Tom DeSimone retrospect on Christina “Tina” Hornisher.  The third disc, a soundtrack CD of Basil Poledouris eclectic composition, is 17-tracks deep and comes in a customer sleeve inside the beautifully illustrated and tactile slipbox.  Instead, a slightly larger than normal Blu-ray Amaray case without the Blu-ray logo with the original poster art as primary cover with the new slipbox art on the reverse side.  The Blu-rays set on top of each other, staggered, on the right side while the left houses a 24-page booklet filled with color pictures, poster art, and historical, anecdotal, and analytic context essays from Marc E. Heuck, David Szulkin, Richard Kraft, and Jim VanBebber.  Grindhouse Releasing’s region free “Hollywood 20008” hits retail and online stores November 26th and has an 87-minute runtime under it’s not rated package

Last Rites: Grimy Tinsel Town sets the backdrop and insidiously swirls inside the mind of the forefront encased and bejeweled inside a Grindhouse Releasing special that’ll never have you look at Hollywood the same again.

“Hollywood 90028” 3-Disc Collector’s Edition Can Be Preordered Here!

A Pact Plans EVIL Revenge on Crime Fighting Heroes! “Royal Warriors” reviewed! (88 Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Royal Warriors,” a Revenge Tale, Now on Blu-ray from 88 Films!

Hong Kong police inspector boards a Hong Kong bound plane on return from her vacationing in Japan.  She meets Michael Wong, the plane’s air marshal, as well as her across the aisle seat mate, Japanese native, Yamamoto, a retired cop returning to Hong Kong to retrieve his wife and daughter and retreat back to Japan to start their new life.  Also on the plane, an escorted criminal being extradited to Japan for prosecution.  When a criminal accomplice takes the plane at gunpoint, Michele, Michael, and Yamamoto spring into action and thwart an aero catastrophe with the two terrorists dead.  After celebrating their success of saving many lives, the heroic trio begin to depart their separate ways when suddenly Yamamoto’s car explodes with his wife and daughter inside.  The assassination attempt puts a target on the backs of all three of them as two war veterans swear vengeance for their slain combat brothers from the airplane hijacking.

“Royal Warriors,” also known in other parts of the world as “In the Line of Duty,” “Ultra Force,” and “Police Assassin,” is the 1986 Hong Kong police action-thriller from “Web of Deception” director and “Once Upon a Time in China” director of photography, David Chung.  Stephen Chow’s regular screenwriter Kan-Cheung Tsang, who penned Chow’s “Kung Fu Hustle” and “Shaolin Soccer,” as well as “Magic Cop” and “Intruder,” reteams with Chung on their sophomore collaboration following the comedic-crime film “It’s a Drink!  It’s a Bomb!” starring the Hong Kong humorist John Sham, and a denotes a shared three-way perspective of protagonist principals while simultaneously providing sympathetic seedlings for the principal antagonists who though are coming wrongdoings and murdering up a storm of people, a wartime conflict bond between them holds them a higher level of honor between close brothers in arms.  Dickson Poon and D&B Films produce the explosive and hard hitting with prejudice venture with John Sham (Remember him from earlier?) and Yiu-Ying Chan, serving as associate producer.

Michelle Yeoh plays Michelle Yip, the level-headed chopsocky cop returning from some rest and relaxation only to wind up on a dish best served cold “Royral Warriors” for Yeoh, who then under the less recognizable moniker Michelle Khan, is the risk-it-all action film for the actress still in the earlier days of her what would be a prolific international career.  Her breakout hit “Yes, Madam,” saw both Yeoh and also then newcomer Cynthia Rothrock punch and kick into silverscreen success as unlikely onscreen partners to take down a crime syndicate.  In the Yeoh’s next film, she rides solo but only in the actress category, being a third of the good guys, yet holding her own as a strong female, lead between another prolific Asian cinema actor Michael Wong (“Tiger Cage III,” “Dream Killer”) playing essentially himself as Michael Wong (not a typo), the plane air marshal turned love sick puppy for Hong Kong’s tough cop Michelle Yip, and yet another prolific Asian actor whose career in Japanese films started well before Yeoh and Wong and has been rising internationally amongst the ranks of American cinema in Hiroyuki Sanada (“Sunshine,” “Mortal Kombat”) playing retired officer Yamamoto, a revenge-seeking justifier on those responsible for killing his family.  The level of how these three come together in a post-incident instantaneous bond borders an idealistic way of an extreme shared experience.  Yeoh and Sanada offer a cool, collective approach with degrees of vindictive separation with a layer of compassion thinly in between with Wong providing calculated lighthearted measures of chasing Yip with infatuated eyes to break any kind of monotonous, stagnant composure between the other two, yet they’re seemingly different lives, connected ever so vaguely by being around law enforcement one way or another, doesn’t seem to thwart an instant relationship immediately after the plan incident.  What’s also odd, especially with Yamaoto, is there is more background to the villains of the story than there is with him, providing rewarding elements for reason why the two men are hunting down Yeoh, Wong, and Yamamoto and seeking deadly revenge.  Ying Bai, Wait Lam, Hing-Yin Kam, and Michael Chan Wait-Man are the pact-making, behind-enemy-lines soldiers of some unknown war from long ago who neither one of them will turn their back on a combat brother in need.  Through a series of none linear flashbacks, a union of honor between them is made and while respectable and moral during war, that pact turns rotten overtime outside the context of global conflict, suggesting ever-so-lightly toward a combat shock issue between the four men that builds a bit of sympathy for them even though blowing up a mother and child and shooting to shreds a whole lot of nightclub patrons in their misguided revenge runs ice through their veins.  Peter Yamamoto wears his sleeve on his shoulder and there is this uncertainty with his character, and his wife too, that something is amiss, creating a tension that goes unfounded and sticks out.  “Royal Warriors” rounds out the cast with Kenneth Tsang, Siu-Ming Lau, Jing Chen, Reiko Niwa and Eddie Maher.

As part of the In the Line of Duy series, a strict criterion needs to be met:  Police Action, check.  Martial Arts, check.  A Level of High Intensity, check.  And a Female Heroine, check.  “Royal Warriors” meets and exceeds the bar with another bar, a no holds bar, of spectacular stunt work done by the Hong Kong standard way of action now, think later which looks phenomenal on camera and the resulting footage.  Hoi Mang’s martial arts choreography showcases a fast-striking combinations that cut traditional sparring with melee improvisation dependent on the surroundings, moving the action left-to-right, top-to-bottom by never staying in the same place and expanding the field of play with collateral damage of bystanders and family.  A couple of components are missed between that focused innocence and whiplash of violence.  For example, the playfully amorous affections between two of the characters are not poignantly shattered like precious stained glass when one is suddenly offed.  There are other examples of once a downspin cataclysm occurs, the aftershock of loss and change does not rear its ugly head.  “Royal Warriors” just pushes forth, continuing pursuit, in a rage of retribution and righteousness. 

88 Films releases “Royal Warriors” onto an AVC encoded, 1080p high definition, BD50, presented in the film’s original widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1.  If you own the “In the Line of Duty” four film boxset, the version in the boxset contains the same transfer as this standalone, standard version that stuns with a new 2K restoration from the original 35mm print.  When I say this restoration stuns, I mean it.  A clean-cut natural gain, color balanced saturation, and with all the detail trimmings laud 88 Films’ work, as such as with the rest of their higher definition catalogue in the older Asian film market.  Range of atmospherics challenge with a different lighting scheme and mise-en-scene cinematography, such as the pink and purple warmth of a nightclub glow or the brilliantly lit restaurant ferry boat.  Skin and texture tones cater to a slight darker pastel but is consistent through-and-through without appearing to unnatural.  The restoration does have a positive to a fault, revealing stunt equipment during the fast-paced fighting, such as the exterior stone ground turning bouncy with creases when Yeoh vault kicks one of the Japanese yakuza members to the ground.  The release comes with four, count’em four, audio tracks:  a Cantonese DTS-HD 2.0 mono theatrical mix, a Cantonese DTS-HD 2.0 alternate mix, an English dub DTS-HD 2.0, and an English dub DTS-HD 5.1.  Of course, I go with the theatrical mix to comply with the original fidelity as much as possible with any films using ADR for an immersive experience within the original, intended language.  the 2.0 mix keeps a midlevel management of the voluminous aspects to bombastic range but never muddles or mutes the tracks.  Dialogue comes out clear with a microscopic static lingering way deep in the sublayer but, again, has negligible effect on the mix.  Special features content includes an audio commentary by Hong Kong film expert Frank Djeng, missing airplane inserts which are spliced out shots of an inflight plane exterior, and the Cantonese and English trailers.  The standard edition comes pretty standard but does feature the new character compilation artwork of Sean Longmore on the front cover with the reversible sleeve featuring the original Hong Kong poster.  The disc is individually pressed with Michelle Yeoh doing what she does best in most of her films, kick butt.  There are no inserts or other tangible bonus content.  88 Films’ North American release comes with a region A encoded playback, not rated, and has a runtime of 96 minutes.

Last Rites: 88 Films’ “Royal Warriors” Blu-ray release captures Hong Kong cinema impeccably with monumental stunts, hard-boiled police work, and permeates with color, detail, and a cleanly, discernible audio mix. In the Line of Duty, “Royal Warriors” is the first, and foremost, cop crusading caper that began it all.

“Royal Warriors,” a Revenge Tale, Now on Blu-ray from 88 Films!

An Odyssey through the Phantasmagoria EVIL. “Moon Garden” reviewed! (Oscilloscope Laboratories / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Take a Stroll Through the “Moon Garden” on Blu-ray

Five-year-old Emma is caught in the middle of her beleaguered parent’s marital strife.  When Emma witnesses one particular heated and nasty argument between mom and dad, she flees to escape the anger only to slip and fall down the stairs, hitting her head that puts her into a comatose state.  She awakes lost, confused, and consumed in an industrialized gray zone, loomed over by strange land’s dark gloom and also curious wonderment that both frighten and amuses her.  As Emma looks from the inside out, seeing her parents come together from the struggles to cope and worriment surrounding her comatose body, the young girl is determined to make it back to her parents by trekking through the bizarre land, but a menacing, chattering being feeding off her fear and tears pursues her and she has to rely on the amiable ambivalence of unique strangers that inhabit this world to help her escape the nightmare and return home.

Cut with relatable bleak themes of family dysfunction, Ohio-born filmmaker Ryan Stevens Harris undertakes fantasy rarely seen in this day and age of computer visuals and special effects, probably not since “Labyrinth” or “The Never Ending Story” of the 1980s.  Stevens, chiefly an editor in the movie industry with credits ranging from indies like “What’s Eating Todd?” to big-budget blockbusters like Roland Emmerich’s “Moonfall,” writes and directs “Moon Garden,” a wayfaring grim fairytale with visual ferocity in a practical DIY-fashion and without major studio help.  The 2022 fantasy envelopes elements of difficult navigation surrounding nuclear family problems through the quivery, unguarded eyes and immense imagination of a very young child still developing those rationality and interpretation skills to make it all make sense.  Based off Harris’s proof-of-concept 13-minute short film “Every Dream is a Child with Teeth,” “Moon Garden” is a production of Harris’s Fire Trial Pictures and is self-produced alongside Fire Trail Picture’s co-founded John Michael Elfers and wife, Colleen.

“Moon Garden” is truly a family affair with not just the husband-and-wife collaboration behind the camera but also the couple’s young daughter, Haven Lee Harris, at the forefront as the enchanted young Alice in Wonderland-esque wanderer named Emma.  Haven, who also starred in the “Every Dream is a Child with Teeth” short,” fully embraces Emma’s forming schism between her parents and being engulfed by an intimidating atmosphere that’s often bursting with melancholy and acrimony, a credit to the father-director who can turn the darkness to light by making behind-the-scenes an engagingly fun atmosphere for his impressionable, yet talented, daughter to thrive as an untrained actor in her debut performance.  As Emma travels through the eclectic settings of sewers and steam pipes, dilapidated houses, swampy overgrowth, and towering observatories, she comes across equally eclectic figment inhabitants that help her, a hammering string musician (Phillip E. Walker, “13 Mysteries”), a sullen groom (Timothy Lee DePriest, (“BnB HELL”), a budding mud witch (Angelica Ulloa, “Gnome Alone”), and a lonely Princess (Maria Olsen, “Vile”), but not all seek the wellbeing of Emma as a haunting levitating and sinister pursuer (Morgana Ignis, “Satanic Hispanics”), garbed in inspired militarism and a void where only sharp, chattering teeth makeup it’s face.  Each character is bred out of Emma’s emotional states brought to fruition by her extensive imagination, correlated by her playing with resembling toys before her accident.  Mom and dad are played by Augie Duke (“The Badger Game”) and Brionne Davis (“Mom and Dad”) for the first act and through flasbacks of the second and third.  The parents inadvertently inject sorrow into the heart of their daughter caught in the middle of the martial affliction.  Duke saturates leadenly into the mother’s depression with poignancy and potency, fueled by Davis’s uncompassionate workaholic for the father, and this sparks the tension that requires a forced happy family face around Emma whose brimming at the edge of her imagination for a better existence.  Filling in the cast gaps are Téa Mckay and Emily Meister. 

If Phil Tippett directed a movie from a script by Lewis Carroll, “Moon Garden” would be the outcome.  Pure imagination and creativity ignite a new world to travel down toward the rabbit hole, utilizing a series of practical techniques to show how grotesquely and beautifully grandiose this world can be erected and the odd characters can come alive all without breaking the bank.  With any abstract art, grasping concepts and correlating visual expressions can be difficult but with “Moon Garden” there’s a sense of celebration for movie magic.  Between detailed miniatures, visual compositing, manipulative time and camera techniques, practical special effects, etc., Ryan Stevens Harris promenades the audience through the different levels, stages, and exhibits of what is a carefully curated museum of ingenuous imagination, which sounds like something Willy Wonka would melody about, and does so while tapping into our own fears as not only having once been children ourselves with vivid imaginations looming in ever crevice of our minds but also in us lucky enough to be parents as Harris interposes clips of Emma peering in reverse through the looking glass, into reality, to see her parents reformulating a bond through the muck of grief, worry, and love for their child in what is a parents’ worst nightmare to experience.  “Moon Garden” can be intense and scary at times but certainly could be kid friendly and empowering for little tykes afraid to take on the daunting outside world or the inside of uncertainty. 

Our first venture into an Oscilloscope Laboratories release is anything but paramnesia. “Moon Garden” arrives onto an AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, 50-gigabyte Blu-ray transferred and processed from the original 35mm print, as Fire Trial Films is a 35mm production company, and presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Having scored age-worn film stock, Harris achieves some unusually neat prints that saturate the colors differently than if the stock was in brand new, pristine condition. An ingrained darkness from the stock adds a pinch of otherworldly tincture that accentuate the already overwhelming serrated slumberland atmospherics coupled with a filmy layer of good-clean grain. Primary colors don’t often appear like primary due to the aged film stock but pop in distinct crush, nonetheless. Emma’s unconscious dimensional detour is full of pocket voids, shadowy symmetrical shapes, and dreamy in exact detail on all accounts without being empyrean or wistfully. The English language DTS-HD 5.1 master audio and the film’s original uncompressed stereo 2.0. The lossless surround sound mix options to deliver the identical audio measures in comparison the uncompressed audio while also slinking through the side and back channels for full-bodied immersion into Emma’s tribulating trek back home. Dialogue comes through exceedingly well-enough albeit the multi-faceted improved industrial soundtrack sneaks in staggering oversteps at times. Speaking of the soundtrack, an original score by composer Michael Deragon, the transitional tunes, melodies, discordances, and synths are just a taste of the eclectic, haunting sounds that navigate Emma’s journey and the elegant, melancholic, and even comforting lullabies by Augie Duke as the mother bring a sort of peace and tranquility that resets the intensity and fear of the child in peril. The chattering teeth, though comically inclined to an extent, are especially effective as a looming, omnipresent pursuant. Optional English subtitles are available. Special features on the Blu-ray include a making of “Moon Garden” featurette that lets director Ryan Stevens Harris be giddy-as-school boy proud to show off and explain the how-tos of his masterclass piece of creativity as well as to dote on his sweet daughter Haven, Harris’s 12-minute proof-of-concept short film “Every Dream is a Child with Teeth,” a single deleted scene, and the theatrical trailer. Oscilloscope’s Blu-ray comes in a clear Amaray case with a what looks almost to be an innominate water-colored cover art composition, with gothic overtures, of a few characters with the reverse side bathed in a blue landscape setting that Emma crosses which is shown in the film. The disc art is curiously plain with the Oscilloscope Laboratories logo and the title “Moon Garden” above it. The not rated Blu-ray comes region free and with a 93-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Ever since post-credits, The M Machine’s Moon Song and Promise of a Rose Garden has regained ground in my mind and it’s a very fitting pair of tracks not only for their keyword titles but also for its industrial beats and unconventional sonority structures similar to the cadence of the deep space wandering that is “Moon Garden” as visually the imagery confounds the senses and surrealism takes hold of us as this sweet and innocent little girl confronts alone a world much bigger than anything than we could ever imagine, and only she can pull herself through while the discordant parents can only be a unifying beacon of light and hope. Highly recommended.

Take a Stroll Through the “Moon Garden” on Blu-ray

Make Do With Your God-Given EVIL! “Bad Biology” reviewed! (Severin Films / 4K UHD – Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Bad Biology” on 4KUHD and Blu-ray Combo Set. Purchase Here!

Jennifer and Batz don’t know each other and live two totally different lives but they have one thing in common, they are enslaved by their abnormal sexual organs.  Jennifer, a young provocative photographer, embraces her vagina’s biological differences and immensely magnified hormones whereas Batz suffers monstrously from his radical rehabilitation of a once limp manhood.  The contrasts continue as Jennifer must scratch the inflamed itch to be penetrated, luring men with her insatiable lust that ultimately end in their demise with an irrepressible emotional sway, whereas the botted-up Batz’s love life is virtually bankrupt due in fear of his conscious and uncontrollable enlarged penis.  When Jennifer happens upon Batz in her peripheral during a photoshoot, she finds him intriguing enough to break into his home and watch him with a prostitute.  The experience left the prostitute with a continuous orgasm long after penetration was over and left Jennifer with an impression that her vagina has finally found it’s match in life. 

Seventeen years.  That’s how long the inactivity span was between Frank Henenlotter’s last directed film and his next.  Not since 1991 did Henenlotter, the madcap mastermind behind some of the more than unusual creature-esque concepts surrounding sexuality, addiction, and childbirth in a way that sheds light on society’s blatant distaste for the odd and grotesque,  profess his creative talents with his trademark dark humor and unabashed practical effects that campy the content toward much to our enjoyment again until returning to the director’s chair with the 2008 shlock-sleazy horror-comedy “Bad Biology,” cowritten alongside American rapper R.A. “The Rugged Man” Thorburn as the musicians first taste of the film industry.  Shot in and around the New York metropolitan area, “Bad Biology” is also produced by Thorburn alongside associate producers Dario Correale, Nicholas Deeg, Antonia Napoli, Vinnie Paz, and star Anthony Sneed under the LLC created for Bad Biology. 

Not many would take on a role with heightened sexual absurdity, especially one with a puppeteered penis on the hunt for feminine pelvic regions or where a numerous clitorises ramp up sexual drive into murderous overdrive.  Yet, first time actors Charlee Danielson and Anthony Sneed seem game for the roles as lonely sexual misfits Jennifer and Batz.  To debut right out the gate as a character proclaiming to have 7 clits in the very first scene can’t be easy and I’m sure a deluge of thoughts questioning just what in the ridiculous Hell did I get myself into accelerated through her thoughts but Charlee Danielson doesn’t pull punches or need a second to rethink life choices in the feed the need role of lust, sex, kill, labor, birth and repeat.  Same can be said about Anthony Sneed’s slinking and desperate peculiarities for Batz and Sneed’s willingness to browbeat his own anaconda trouser snake to assert back in being control.  Danielson and Sneeds have tough jobs but pull off Henenlotter and Thorburn’s grotesquely envisioned gallows humor and body horror.  While the confidence is there, the experience is not resulting in a stiff, monotone performances in nearly every scene and that can dampen the story’s eccentrical principals who are just delivering the lines instead of taking the lines to heart.  Being that “The Rugged Man” is a rapper, the cast is comprised of other likeminded musical artists, mostly rappers as well, with Remedy, J-Zone, Vinnie Paz, and Reef the Lost Cause along with cameos from other artists and music producers.  And being a film mostly about sex, “Bad Biology” fills out the cast with models and actors very comfortable showing their skin in Vivian Sanchez, Carolyn Thompson, Brittany Moyer, Vicky Wiese, Ginger Starr, Vladislav S., and well-verse indie horror scream queen Tina Krause (“Crimson Nights”, “The Fappening”).

Outrageous with bad taste, “Bad Biology” prides itself with point-blank profaneness and kitschy special effects, a resounding typical Frank Henenlotter production as the director hasn’t seemingly lost a step in 17 years between films.  Yet, the story’s infiltrated by the need to incorporate strong personality cameos and is uneven in a way that hyper focuses on Jennifer’s quest, with inner monologuing, flashbacks, and direct camera speaking surrounding her spiritual search of a satiable schlong for her specialized snatch, becomes subverted by Batz’s less significantly told story quickly summed up in introspection while being pleasured by a homemade, industrial-sized masturbator.  Doesn’t quite feel Batz receives the same valued introduction in contrast to his female counterpart, but he quickly forges a more interesting path having a roid-raging, self-aware, monster cock that’s addicted to large animal anabolic steroids and is isolated from the rest of the world.  As polar opposite in the way Jennifer and Batz view and handle their sexual anomalies, the pair make the perfect odd couple, like “Ghostbusters’ Key Master and Gatekeeper, but at the cost of their own stories and their inevitable hookup that becomes flattened by a steamrolling climatic slasher-esque moment that doesn’t really involve them at all, segregating the leads momentarily from their own catalytic arc that deflates the finale into a flaccidity.  Most of the comedy also falls flat but the dialogue is well bulbous in the skilled rhapsody and written dialogue that shocks and awes with every depraved bluster.

Scanned in 4K from the camera negative, “Bad Biology” receives a UHD plus Blu-ray 2-disc set from Severin Films. The HEVC encoded, ultra high-definition 2160p, BD100 and the AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD50 are both presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The 4K scan fills in the gaps of next stage video evolution though the gaps filled are minuscule at best. What makes the real difference is Henenlotter shooting in Super 35mm that provides a gritty grain overlay and similar, if not identical, saturation as film stock. Finer details more in the setting aspects, around darker areas, that are more illuminated by the pixel increase. Skin tones and grading are naturally set without much of a stylistic presence other than the gels used for the giant penis vision and the peering from inside-out Jennifer’s Uterine cavity. I do think facial details are not as firm, possibly smoothed too much during the restoration. The English language audio options include a lossless DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio and a 2.0 stereo. Presenting flawless dialogue within the heavy soapboxing monologues and philosophical diatribes, “Bad Biology” promenades dialogue as an important part to the film’s machination. This doesn’t mean everything is flounders with a range of outrageous sound effects, including the gushings of childbirth, the whooshing whips of a conscious monster male member, and the squishy ins-and-outs of copulation. Spatial depths have finite proportions that relinquishes true depth to keep audiences near the action audibly. Closed caption English subtitles are optionally available. The 4K disc might have a capacity of 100 gigabytes but the format’s space on this release is quickly depleted for the feature and two audio commentary tracks – one with director Frank Henenlotter, director of photography Nick Deeg, and actor Anthony Sneed while the second commentary also includes Henenlotter and cowriter/producer R.A. The Rugged Man Thorburn. Both commentaries are also on the Blu-ray, housing over 5+ hours of special features which includes interviews with a Spook House entitled segment featuring interviews with Henenlotter, Thorburn, Deeg, production coordinator Michael Shershenovich, production manager Chaz Kangas, and David Henenlotter, an unorthodox interview between a basketball and actress Charlee Danielson In the Basement with Charlee Danielson, a lengthy back and forth question and answer between actor Anothy Sneed and cinematographer Nicholas Deeg, an interview with special effects artist Gabe Bartalos (“Frankenhooker,” “Basket Case 3”) Swollen Agenda, a behind the scenes of the film, photographer Clay Patrick McBride snapping cast and crew O-faces around Henenlotter’s apartment in F*ck Face, short film “Suck” directed by Anthony Sneed, R.A. The Rugged Man Thorburn music video for “Legendary Loser,” an imagine gallery, behind-the-scenes shots, and video covers and death stills. The standard 4K UHD release comes in the traditional black Amary case with an O-face compilation compositional cover art and has a lock-tabbed disc on each side. The release does not come with a reversible covert art or insert. Both idiosyncratic disc arts have whimsically crude caricatures of the main characters. The region free release has a runtime of 84 minutes and unrated.

Last Rites: “Bad Biology” marks a return to ungovernable psychotronic cinema for filmmaker Frank Henenlotter with new blood, a new story, and the same old objectionable orifices and organs of monstrous body horror.

“Bad Biology” on 4KUHD and Blu-ray Combo Set. Purchase Here!

EVIL Wants to Cut Out Your Unborn Child. “Inside” reviewed! (Second Sight / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Order The Limited Edition Copy of “Inside” From Second Sight!

Four months after deadly car crash that claimed the life of her husband, a disheartened and depressed Sarah is 24 hours away from being induced into labor on Christmas day.  Just wanting to be left alone, Sarah is eager to lower her head into her work as a photojournalist of capturing horrifying images that bear a resemblance to her own accident and inviting her editor over later to discuss the work ahead.  As the even lingers into night, an unexpected woman knocks at the door and menacingly tries to break into her house.  As the police arrive to investigate the incident, the woman is nowhere to be found and brush off the incident with little concern, but the woman returns, finds herself inside Sarah’s home, and is determined to cut the baby directly from Sarah’s womb to be her own child.  The tormenting violence becomes a cat-and-mouse game between the two women with an unborn child hanging in the balance. 

Extremely violent and soul biting, “Inside” is one of the more corrosively dehumanizing and destructive films under the French New Extremism, French New Wave Horror, flag.  The 2007 French feature cowritten-and-directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury broke the duo into the industry as formidable and fearless filmmakers, reaching global heights having helmed later in their careers a segment of the popular anthology “ABCs of Death 2” and tackling one of America’s more renowned and bred-and-buttered horror franchises with the chainsaw-wielding cannibal in “Leatherface.”  “Inside” comes after the tremendous success of Alexandre Aja’s “Haute Tension,” opening the flood gates to other extreme French horror films in early 2000s with also “Martyrs” and “Frontier(s).”  La Fabrique de Films and BR Films in association with Canal+ server as production companies with later “Frontier(s)’s” Teddy Percherancier, Frederic Ovcaric, Rodolphe Guglielmi, and “Witching and Bitching’s” Franck Ribière and Vérane Frédiani producing the film known as “À l’intérieur” in France.

Not your typical home invasion ultraviolence, Sarah and who we know as labeled only as The Woman are two vipers circling each other, ready to strike when the guards are let down.  Of course, both have distinct personalities and strategies in the measured way of attack and survival that will impress on viewers preconceived notions about them.  As Sarah, Alysson Paradis, younger sister of Johnny Depp’s wife Vanessa Paradis, is bathed in exposed light, literally and figuratively, as the pinpointed principal woman from the start, battered and bloodied in the opening two car accident, to the end, in the final harrowing moments with the relentless Woman but though Paradis performance reeks greatly of depression and perhaps hopelessness with the death of her husband with a baby soon to be brought into this world without a companion by her side, the momentum shifts towards proposed surface villain of the story, The Woman, in a frightening portrayal of stony guile and grim severity by the established, character provocateur French actress Béatrice Dalle (“The Witches’ Sabbath”) in comparison to Paradis relatively filmic beginnings.  Dalle’s role expresses more physically than vocally with motivation coursing through her eyes, facial expressions, and body language that strikes a transfixing chord, turning Dalle’s the Woman into not only an unpredictable killer but an on-screen killer with a lighted purpose without confounding arbitrary slaughter as the yearning for The Woman’s reason never breaks silence until the shocking end.  François-Régis Marchasson, Nathalie Roussel, Ludovic Berthillot, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Aymen Saïdi, Emmanuel Lanzi, and Dominique Frot (“Among the Living”) fill out “Inside’s” cast.

Most will plainly see and interpret “Inside” as a regular home invasion thriller of a pregnant woman defending herself to survive a mad woman’s unborn baby obsession, and maybe that’s how Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury mostly intends the narrative to be as an overly graphic portrayal of hate and envy that makes us uncontrollable sinners at heart.  However, there’s something inside me to dig deeper below the face value of terrorizing prenatal torment of a young, expecting mother-to-be in what could be construed as a double-edged explanation.  The Woman doesn’t hold a name as she symbolizes all the worst qualities of a mother, such as anger, deceit, and she even smokes, in Sarah that could be considered a split persona or an archetype of duality.  Sarah is cladded in a bright white nightgown while The Woman is dressed all in black from head-to-toe, contrasting a good versus evil, and both want the same child.  The climax does rebuff the split duality theory to an extent but the way the script is written and how the film is shot very much suggest these two women are cleaved from the same whole with a patriarch-less presence and, to add as an interesting note to further examine and contemplate, all the male characters in the story are slain by the same women while the only other female character is brought down by the other in what is a powerful suggestion of split gender and how gender plays a role in their individual lives.

In what can be said to be the most definitive edition of one of the most brutal films ever produced, Second Sight Films’ Limited-Edition boxset of “Inside” is amply packed with goodies, in application and in a tangible sense. Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, double-layered BD50 from the UK label holds tremendous value with not only new special features and neat and attractive corporeal contents but also valued by retaining image fidelity with a gritty 35mm print. Natural grain and low-fi celluloid present the seedy grindhouse overlay that’ll take audiences from the comfy, cozy reality into a dark, anomalous atmosphere with warm muted coloring, lambency, and an overall light general haze suffused into the setting. The cinematography has been purposefully constructed with analog building blocks for a rough look for a rough story. Not technically applicable here but “Inside” is set around Christmas, Christmas eve into Christmas day to be exact, but the choice production dressing exhibits little holiday spirit with a far less ostentation presentation and in how the characters dress the season feels more fall like than winter. The lossless French 5.1 DTS-HD master audio offers plenty of spatial awareness during intense pocket skirmishes inside the quaint two-story home, which is the primary setting of the story. The range provides laceration slits and surgical squishes of blades and scissors while gunfire shocks with an innate immediacy. Even with a mostly prominent inconversable back-and-forth, the dialogue that does come up carries through with robust confidence without overbearing the action or feeling out of synch. Speaking of being in synch, English subtitles are available with the French audio track and are error-free and pace well. Special features include a new audio commentary by The Final Girls’ and film critic Anna Bogutskaya, new audio commentary by editor Elena Lazic of the online magazine outlet Animus, a newly produced interview with writer-directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury First Born as well as newly produced interviews with principal actress Alysson Paradis Labour Pains, producer Franck Ribière A New Extreme, cinematographer Laurent Barès Womb Raider, and stunt coordinator Emmanuel Lanzi Reel Action, with The Birth of a Mother, a Jenn Adams analytical essay focusing on a denied mother’s perspective and the opposite. The limited-edition physical elements of the release add additional magic to the whole package with a rigid, cardboard sleeve case with new artwork by Second Sight retainer artist James Neal. Inside the “Inside” sleeve is a 70-page book with color pictures and thematic essays from film historians and critics Chad Collins, Kat Ellinger, Annie Rose Mahamet, and Hannah Strong. There are also 6-5×7 collector art cards adjacent. The green Blu-ray Amary case houses the same Neal front cover from the rigid sleeve, likely will be the face of the standard release, with the interior disc art having a simple yet effective image of a blade open pair of scissors and psycho-split or -sliced title in red and while. UK certified 18 for strong bloody violence and very strong language, this Second Sight release is B region locked and has a runtime of 83-minutes.

Last Rites: Second Sight invests in “Inside” and its first-time French directors nearly two decades after initial release with a comprehensive package that not only elevates beyond what many labels sought to get out of the gore-laden entropy, quick cash, but this premier release also has depth and range into the film’s applied style and dives into demystifying the breadth of thought preluding random terror.

Order The Limited Edition Copy of “Inside” From Second Sight!