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EVILFormers: Robots in Disguise! “Crash and Burn” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Remastered Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Crash and Burn” on Blu-ray from Full Moon Features!

In the year 2030, the global economy has collapsed and the most powerful organization on the planet, Unicom, controls most of the national markets with scrutinizing oversight.  What makes matters worse is years of pollution and nuclear naivety is dissipating the ozone layer, exposing the Earth and its denizens to altering ultraviolet rays that scorch the Earth with thermal storms, turning much of the terrain into wastelands. Out in the middle of nowhere in one of those barren lands, Unicom errand boy Tyson Keen delivers freon to an isolated Unicom television station fabricated from an old powerplant.  An impending thermal storm forces Keen to stay overnight with the motley crew of station personnel and televised guests.  When the thermal storm knocks out the power, they discover the station chief has been murdered, revealing the chief’s involvement with the Independent Liberty Union, a rebellion group against the mighty repressive Unicom, and secret plot involving Unicom’s illegal use of synthetic people to infiltrate the station to stop dissident behavior. 

2030.  That’s only five years away, folks!  Get ready for the global financial downfall and fallout when the ozone also says peace out after years of abuse.  Giant robots and subverting T-800s, I mean synthetic androids, are exploited for corporate gain and power over the few who resist.  Actually, if you think about it, the premise of 1990’s “Crash and Burn” might actually be happening now, today, five years earlier by the sound of it!  The Full Moon production, helmed by company founder Charles Band, (“Trancers,” “Doctor Morbid”) and written by J.S. Cardone (“Shadowzone,” “The Forsaken”), is seemingly ahead of its time with the exceptions of mecha robots and a vastly dusty wasteland of the Earth’s surface, complete with temperature rising thermal storms.  Unofficially considered a sequel to Stuart Gordon’s “Robot Jox,” another Full Moon production released the year prior, “Crash and Burn” is produced by “Nightmare Sister’s” David DeCoteau and John Schouweiler with Band and Debra Dion serving as executive producers.

The futuristic dystopian thriller plays out much like a slasher with a group of people hunkered down safely in shelter until one-by-one they’re picked off.  Paul Ganus (“The Monolith”) acts as the Unicom outsider Tyson Keen, a motorcycle-riding delivery boy just needing cash to get by in turbulent times, inside an established dynamic of a reclaimed power station used for Unicom television broadcasting where Ralph Waite dons the station chief shoes of Lathan Hooks, Megan Ward (“Arcade”) in the role of Lathan’s tech expert, teenage daughter Arren, Bill Moseley (“House of a 1000 Corpses”) as the station’s handyman Quinn, Eva LaRue (“Robocop 3”) educating the children over the TV waves as Parice, and Jack McGee (“Rumpelstiltskin”) in the blowhard and perverse egotistical TV host role Winston Wickett.  There are also two Winston Wickett guests, flesh and blood adult actresses who came back into the business after Unicom banned robot porn star and are being roasted by Wickett for their licentiousness, played by Elizabeth Maclellan (“Puppet Master II”) in the non-nude role of Sandra and Katherine Armstrong (“The Arrival”) in the topless required role of Christie.  Sandra and Christie are opaquer when it comes to their purpose as the two seemingly nomad women obviously need the money Wickett promises them to do the show to continue moving from place-to-place, but they put up with Wickett’s pompous and chauvinistic degrading being, even sleeping separately in the same quarters as the television host without wearing clothes.  There are dialogue moments between them that suggest there’s more to their relationship than what’s in exposition but never fleshes out; instead, Christie fleshes out in a shower scene with Bill Moseley’s Quinn for a brief cleansing.  The above cast of characters set the same for a “The Thing” similar mistrust when one of them is suspected to be a sabotaging, murderous robot in human skin, they even do a blood test too.  Solid performances all around with Moseley outshining most and Megan Ward’s innocence really comes through in her debut as a teenager while Ganus can be a suitable leading man but lacks the presence where it matters.  Jon Davis Chandler (“Carnosaur II”) and Kristopher Logan (“Puppet Master III:  Toulon’s Revenge”) round out the cast as two wasteland gas attendants close to the isolated power station.

“Crash and Burn” is an enjoyably campy, science-fiction horror that derivatively cherry-picks from other films in the genre.  From “The Thing” to “Aliens,” to even Full Moon’s own production “Robot Jox,” “Crash and Burn” puts other sci-fi cult films’ best elements together to form something new that instills a sense of isolating tension and heart-racing thrills from the man versus machine narrative.  Charlie Band adds his localized flavoring of beautiful women, sometimes teasing to bare it all, to zhuzh it up in a different light.  Like most of Full Moon’s earlier productions, and what separates the company’s catalogue from the modern features of today, is the practical effects.  Greg Cannom (Francis Ford Coppola’s “Dracula”) and his assistant Larry Odien’s make up effects, plus “Terminator 2’” Steve Burg’s robot design with the puppeteering, have longevity over the decades rather than today’s fly-by-the-seams visuals that often look cheap and mismatch against the live action with no tangibility and hardly anything the actors can work off against.  The under skin, robot skull exposure looks phenomenal for the era and budget with multiple layers peeling off in its prosthetic application and makeup arrangement. 

Full Moon continues to remaster their catalogue into high definition with their 1990 title “Crash and Burn” next on the docket. Remastered from the original 35mm negative, that was recently unearthed, the image has greatly improved from the flat colored transfers of previous positive prints, AVC encoded with 1080p high-definition resolution on a BD25. Full Moon’s remastering adds richness to the color pallet and a fine texture point that discrete objects the internal boiler room of the television station and, in contrast, the arid desert of Alabama Hills, California doubling as the futuristic wasteland. Skin textures are filled with stubble, ridges, imperfections, sweat, and robotic skin peels in every frame without the softening or smoothing over process to work quicker rather than precise. Full Moon offers two English Dolby Digital audio tracks, a Stereo 2.0 and a surround sound 5.1, which has been standard fair with the re-released remastered lineup. As fidelity reproduction goes, the layers perceive repressed for a bigger approach, especially one that has giant mecha action and a whipping thermal storm that causes a giant satellite crashing into a building. There’s nothing innately substandard about the Dolby mix, it’s perfectly adequate to handle the action, ambience, soundtrack, and the forefront dialogue and exact clear prominence without the lift in its intermediate range. English SDH are optionally available. Charles Band and actor Bill Moseley launches off the special features portion with a feature parallel audio commentary that’s entertaining between Moseley’s quips and Band’s stories in relation to the “Crash and Burn.” Also included is the making of the film, a blooper reel, the original trailer, and other trailers from Full Moon. Housed in a traditional Blu-ray Amaray, the original VHS art is reiterated, again, for the Blu-ray that’s more mecha oriented rather than stealthy robot assassins. There are no inserts inside or other physical features with the release that has a runtime of 85 minutes, is unrated, and is encoded as region free.

Last Rites: “Crash and Burn” does not do just that, crash and burn, but has real world dystopian concepts underscoring a Full Moon slasher reanimated by remastering for high-definition fanatics.

“Crash and Burn” on Blu-ray from Full Moon Features!

Psychological and Psychotic EVIL Descend Upon a High School Boy! “Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker” reviewed! (Severin Films / 2-Disc 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The 2-Disc UHD and Blu-ray Available for Pre-Order. Due to Release 5/28!

Orphaned Billy Lynch has raised by his Aunt Cheryl after his parents are tragically killed in a motor vehicle accident.  On the verge of his 17th birthday, Billy is ready to move on from his old life living under the overly caring Aunt to building a relationship with girlfriend Julia and possibly moving to Denver on a basketball scholarship, but the threatened Aunt Cheryl will do anything to keep Billy home, even if that means murder.  A brutal, stabbing incident of a local television repair man in their home leads to Detective Joe Carlson to suspect Billy as the main culprit and begins digging into the young man’s life that, coincidently, unearths the dead repair man had a homosexual relationship with Billy’s basketball coach.  Bigotry and intimidate course through Detective Carlson being as he prejudicially hounds and interrogatingly paints Billy as a gay, jealous lover without an ounce of hesitation.  Between his crazy Aunt and an intolerant cop, Billy’s life spirals dangerously out of his control. 

‘Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker,” also known as “Momma’s Boy,” “Night Warning,” or just “Nightmare Maker,” is the 1981 queer awareness and maturing suppression horror-thriller from “Bewitched” TV-series director William Asher.  Trying his hand at an edgier storyline with plenty of graphic violence and subversive themes, Asher helms the picture working off a script by a trio of debuting writers in Steven Breimer, Alan Jay Glueckman (“The Fear Inside”), and Boon Collins (“The Abducted”).  The American-made production brought considered taboo topics to the table when homosexuality was becoming more prominent in American culture in light of the AIDs epidemic and while the sexually transmitted disease has no part in this story, the derogatory fear of same-sex coupling is mercilessly present.  “Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker” is a Royal American Pictures production, distributed theatrically under Comworld Pictures, and is produced by screenwriter Steve Breimer and “Class of 1999” producer Eugene Mazzola.

Hardly does any film ever made have the perfect cast.  “Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker” does not reside in that genus of imperfection.  Every performance is spot on and fitting for this early 80’s video nasty, each actor playing the singular part ingrained into their act that deciphering if their behavior is actually like that in real life can be tremendously difficult and a completely disorienting.  The story focuses on Jimmy McNichol’s 17-year-old high schooler Billy Lynch who, until recently, has been living moderately comfortable under his Aunt Cheryl’s roof.  That is until school sis nearly over and the prospect of college and girls sows the seeds of springing him from his childhood home.  Though the story is supposed to be centrically Billy Lynch, it’s the quirky and unusuality of Susan Tyrrell as the undefined obsessed Aunt Cheryl with a thick undertone of sexual tension toward her nephew that just makes McNichol and Tyrrell’s scenes enormously uncomfortable.  The late actress, who starred in Richard Elfman’s “Forbidden Zone” and would later have roles in “Flesh+Blood” and “From a Whisper to a Scream,” could charm audiences with perky provocativeness and scare into submission with the ability to pivot to a crazed madwoman.  And while we’re slightly turned on and also frightened by Tyrrell, we’re completely in disgust of “The Delta Force’s” Bo Svenson’s one-train-thought, homophobic detective strongarming high school teens, coaches, and even his sergeant (Britt Leach, “Weird Science”) into being cocksure of his own short-sighted homicide theory driven by hate for homosexuality.  Marcia Lewis (“The Ice Pirates”), Steve Eastin (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Julia Duffy (“Camp X-Ray”), and before he was a big superstar, a young Bill Paxton (“Aliens,” “Predator 2”) bring up the supporting cast rear.

For an early 80s video nasty, “Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker” is without a doubt intense and provocative with timeless themes that nearly table the trenchant violence for corrosive mental issues, systematic homophobia, and pressures of maturity.  The two prong antagonistic sides bear down on Billy Lynch and the one principal who still technically a child and learning all the facets of adulthood has his own good being thwarted by conventional adult role models of family and law enforcement.  Director William Asher, through the script, inlays a pro-queer avenue where the gay basketball coach displays immensely more wit, sense, and compassion than that of Aunt Cheryl and Detective Carlson, awarding the coach with more likeability and favor to come out of this ugly business unscathed.  Asher’s very intent on defining the personalities and the actors deliver tenfold under a surly environment of not only the brusque characters but also Cheryl’s home that is a tomb for one of Aunt Cheryl’s past lovers and is becoming a tomb for Billy who will either bend to Aunt Cheryl’s sexually-toned obsessiveness or die a terrible a death.  “Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker” also predates the infamous “Final Destination 2” log truck scene with its own that’s equally hard hitting and macabre, the latter also being expressed thoroughly throughout the entire narrative with a morose overhang that’s simmering to explode. 

Arriving onto a 2-disc UHD and Blu-ray set, “Butcher, Bake, Nightmare” is Severin’s latest title to go ultra-high definition, first for the William Asher film, with an HVEC encoded, 2160p 4K resolution, BD100 and an AVC encoded, 1080p high definition, BD50 for the Blu-ray.  Presented in an anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, “Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker” favors a stark and naturally vibrant color scheme with low profile compression issues on a pristine transfer, scanned in 4K from the original camera negative.  I could not detect any compression artefacts with the dark spots retaining their inky cohesion and the details retain superior depth in a slightly more saturated contrast of a healthy-looking, grain-appropriate picture quality, even elevated more definitively with the extra pixels.  The English uncompressed PCM mom track has lossless appeal with some foremostly faint dialogue hissing and crackling that’s more of given with age rather than a flaw in the mix.  The mix also doesn’t establish depth all too well with one channel doing all the heavy lifting, but the layers are well-balanced in proportional volume that make the audio composition effective and scary.  English subtitles are available. Encoded special features include 6 hours of content. On the UHD in lies three audio commentaries: one with star Jimmy McNichol, one with cowriters Steve Breimer and Alan Jay Glueckman, moderated by Mondo Digital’s Nathaniel Thompson, and the last one with co-producer and unit production manager Eugene Mazzola. The theatrical trailer cabooses the UHD special features. All of the above are also on the Blu-ray special features with additional content that includes a new interview with Bo Svenson Extreme Prejudice, a new interview with director of photography Robbie Greenberg Point and Shoot, a new interview with editor Ted Nicolaou (“Don’t Let Her In”) Family Dynamics, archival cast and crew interviews with Susan Tyrrell, Jimmy McNichol, Steve Eastin, make-up artist Allan A. Apone and producer Steve Breimer, and a TV spot as the cherry on top of some sweet special features. However plentiful and well-curated the special features are, my favorite attribute of this Severin release is the exterior with a dual-sided cardboard slipcover that has new illustrated compositional art and tactile features. Underneath, a reversable cover art featuring the film’s one-sheet poster art with a more Severin Film’s retro constructed “Nightmare Maker” arrangement that’s more red-blood heated. Inside does not contain any insert goodies or booklets and a disc on either side of the interior featuring the slipcase and black UHD Amaray case cover art. Both formats are region free, have a runtime of 93 minutes, and are not rated.

Last Rites: Seriously messed up on so many levels, if being a teenage boy isn’t pressurized enough right before manhood, becoming an adult can be arrantly deadly in this superbly packaged shocker “Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker” now on 4K UHD for the first time ever on May 28th!

The 2-Disc UHD and Blu-ray Available for Pre-Order. Due to Release 5/28!

Breathtaking, Private, and Full of Blood-Hungry, EVIL Amphibians! “The Tank” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Tank” on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment!

A financially struggling San Franscisco family of three learn their recently deceased grandmother had a large, secluded property on the oceanic foothills of Oregan. The coastal property was kept a secret for 30 years from the mentally unstable woman’s youngest child, the father, for reasons unknown. Rundown and off the beaten path, the vast acreage promises lucrative income from interested land developers at a time when the family needs the money the most. Included with the home is a water tank system built into the cliffside that can house thousands of gallons of fresh water underground from a nearby spring. Activating the system awakens a sinister breed of anophthalmia creatures, revealed to have plagued the family for generations and answers a number of troublesome family secrets that now terrorize the current inhabitants.

Initially beginning the backstory of a vital family turning point stemmed in the 1940s, “The Tank” succeeds 30 years later in the 1970’s with an execrable house understanding with a loving but desperately coursed family walks into its deadly den and sharp-teethed, subterranean dwelling. The creature feature thriller is the sophomore feature written-and-directed by New Zealand filmmaker Scott Walker, ten years after the director’s debut full-length biographical drama “The Frozen Ground,” starring John Cusack and Nicholas Cage. “The Tank’s theme toils with the troubling idiom, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is, as opportunity turns oppressive when ignoring red flag secrets and throwing caution to the wind when taking chances for the love of your family to relieve financial troubles. The looming debt and inevitable curiosity, who we all know killed the cat, sends a family into the fire, produced by Walker, wife Minna, and Lesley Hansen and is a coproduction from Ajax Pictures, General Film Corporation, and Happy Dog Entertainment with Ingenious Media presenting.

“The Tank” contains a slim six characters: three principals and a handful of support. However, another can be added to the list but in a non-speaking role, unless you consider Regina Hegemann and her contortionist craft as an articulate performance with her hands, feet, arms, legs, and, well, her entire body. In fact, I do consider those crooked twists and bends of a slender anatomy to be able to speak louder than words sometimes – think the archetypical Doug Jones. Hegemann’s debut film role builds a gap in between the contortionist’s regular vocational circus acts and instructions of physical sinuous spiraling of the human body to bring practical effects to slithering, vicious life in “The Tank’s” underground dwelling monsters – yes, she plays more than just one creature. Hegemann’s innumerable creatures are pitted up against a nuclear family made up of a strictly New Zealand cast beginning with Matt Whelan as Ben, the father and inheritor of the secluded cliffside cabin whose drowning in family closet skeletons and ambiguity, Luciane Buchanan as Ben’s wife Jules who drowns in a different way with debt as she tries to earn her degree in zoology while raising a family and running a pet shop, and Zara Nausbaum as daughter Reia caught in the middle of her parent’s woes and in the clutches of the undiscovered and eyeless salamander never imagined to be extant. With a secret home laid out in Ben’s mother’s postmortem belongings, an opportunity to dig themselves out of debt seems now feasible for a family treading profusely to keep their head above water, but the script only nibbles at what the family is doing at the cottage. Sure, a real estate agent comes a-knocking to offer them an interested buyer’s more than generous offer to build upon the land, but that doesn’t keep the family from loafing about the property, reissuing a there’s always tomorrow stance even when all their current problems can be obliterated with a firm yes. Instead, thinking about the supposedly large offer doesn’t quite kickstart negotiates but rather belays the inevitable, a family’s forgotten dark and dastardly secret is now gnawing on them – literally. Ascia Maybury, Graham Vincent, Mark Mitchinson, Holly Shervie, and Jack Barry fill “The Tank’s” cast list up.

Following up on “The Tank’s” main theme of some family secrets should never be explored, investigated, dug up, analyzed, or even the slightest looked for its potential value because the secret is secret for a reason. Usually, those grounds are odiously detrimental and, in this case, the grounds have hidden a longstanding life form unbeknownst to man. “The Tank” has a hard time selling the message with the one most affected by the family’s history, with a father and sister having perished under mysterious circumstances and a mother committed to a mental institute, having little interest in unravelling the truth. Instead, the reverse happens when Jules immerses herself into Ben’s past, unable to shake the freaky feeling of the cabin’s ominous atmosphere and checkered past around the land that had claimed the lives of her husband’s father and sister. Jules continues to surpass her husband’s faults and failings with a reminiscent climatic “Aliens” strap up for battle when her child is snatched by the insidious creatures, with attributes and coloring very similar to the xenomorph but on a smaller scale and telluric, and to their water-filled, underground tank-habitat. Using an aerosol flamethrower, we again get that Ellen Ripley vibe as she uses her motherly strength to go toe-to-toe with a terrestrial creature who took down a well-built cop with a gun. All the while Jules wades through multiple encounters with the slippery salamander with razor sharp teeth, her husband Ben, who had previously failed in collapsing the cavern with explosives, becomes invalid with injury and so she stands alone up into the final act of one-lining a car creeping-in creature with, “Get out of my car!,” before shooting it’s head off with the dead cop’s sidearm. Comparably not as influential or heavy-duty with force and violence as “Aliens,” “The Tank” still manages to hold water with a strong, female heroine willing to jump into the jaws of death to fight for her child without backup.

“The Tank” doesn’t run empty with a solid Blu-ray release from Well Go USA Entertainment. The AVC encoded BD50 is presented in 1080p, high-definition, in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Faced with a lot of low-lighting scenes, the digitally captured picture offers up good detail levels with spotty compression banding when introducing light into darker scenes. The larger format storage leans to non-compromised video quality that provides enough storage to maintain consistent grading stability and pixel sharpness all along the way. The English language DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound mix provides a wide-berth of sound elements that hit in the right audio channels. I found dialogue to be quite soft, especially against the prehistoric boom-roar of the creature resonating across the channel board, but the overall dialogue track is clean and clear despite its lack of boost. “The Tank” features fair range elements involving the slinking creatures, cabin creakiness, and outdoor ambience; this also includes a well-rounded depth to create space albeit the creature’s ferocious roar that doesn’t have any directional positioning and swallows output space. Bonus features include A Look into the Tank – a compositional cut of cast and director interviews regarding their experiences in the making of the film, Making the Creature is a full-blown look from spark idea to complete realization of the creature-look and design to fit the outward and physical capabilities of Regina Hegemann’s contortionist craft, and the original Well Go USA trailer to bring up the rear. The Blu-ray comes in traditional casing with latch with an advert insert on the inside for three other Well Go USA Entertainment titles. Though not as sexy as some other covers, the still highly effective front cover embodies the mysterious circumstance of looking into the belly of a dark-laden tank. The region A encoded Blu is rated R and has a runtime of approx. 100 minutes. A salamandroid reservoir that supplies a deluge dose of devilish, aquatic quadrupeds, “The Tank” is yet another title of alternative, out-of-the-box horror courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment!

“The Tank” on Blu-ray from Well Go USA Entertainment!

EVIL is in the Eye of the Beholder! “Mansion of the Doomed” reviewed! (Full Moon / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Mansion of the Doomed” on Blu-ray.  Hold Onto Your Eyeballs!

In a stroke of irony, renowned optometrist surgeon Dr. Leonard Chaney had a car accident that accidently causes his young adult daughter permanent blindness.  Obsessed by guilt and determined for her to see again, Chaney moves toward a not only radical procedure but also unethical one of a full eye transplant.  The catch for this type of surgery to be successful is the eye has to be extracted from a living patient.  Unwilling to wait for a donor, Chaney employs every deceptive tactic to lure unwillingly healthy and beautiful globular organ donors into his dark basement where he drugs them unconscious, surgically plucks out their entire eyes, and leaves them locked in a cellar cage, blind and crudely healed with scar tissue but still alive.  With each failed attempt at restoring her eyesight, the reminders of his experiments linger down below, screaming in pain, and pleading for their lives.  Soon, those pleas will ultimately catch up to him. 

Before his fascination with mini-sized maniacs of killer animated toys and malicious experimental oddities, Charles Band used to produce other types of original horror and the “Mansion of the Doomed” was one of them.  The 1976 Frank Ray Perilli (“Dracula’s Dog,” “Alligator”) written and the “Dead & Buried” and “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers” actor Michael Pataki directed mad surgeon “Mansion of the Doomed” was the first feature film Charles Band officially stamped his actual name onto along with father and western screenwriter, Albert Band, as financial executive producer.  While “Mansion of the Doom” is known by various other titles around the world – “Massacre Mansion,” “Eyes,” “Eyes of Dr. Chaney,” “House of Blood,” “Eyes of the Living Dead,” and “The Terror of Dr. Chaney” – the one aspect that the film is firm in is its Hancock Park and estate shooting location in Los Angeles as one of the very first features to come out of Charles Band Productions company.

Lance Henriksen.  You know name, right?  Sounds familiar, yes?  The “Aliens” and “Pumpkinhead” actor, hot off the success of “Dog Day Afternoon” with Al Pacino, begins his tour de force of horror and dark science fiction with the Pataki mad doctor eye opener.  Dr. Chaney uses his misguided experimental expertise first on Dr. Dan Bryan, played by Henriksen, after Dr. Bryan’s recent romantic relationship breakoff with the recently blind daughter of Dr. Chaney, Nancy (Trish Stewart).  Before he became the narrating voice in TV’s “Knight Rider,” the veteran actor Richard Basehart, who also had a role in the 1977 “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” became his own inhumane medical malpractice physician in Dr. Chaney.  Though Basehart makes for the epitome of a professional doctor, his performance was the weakest link in the cast’s locks that didn’t exhibit the stress and desperation of a man continuously exploiting and disfiguring people for his own personal guilt release.  The guilt was not compounding as much as the story wanted to suggest, but we feel more empathetic to Dr. Chaney’s longtime assistant in Gloria Grahame (“Blood and Lace,” “Mama’s Dirty Girls”) who we can see her character dissolve with each abducted patient and affected to the core by their sightless screams.  “Mansion of the Doomed” rounds out the cast with Al Ferrera (“Dracula’s Dog”), Marilyn Joi (“Black Samurai”), Donna Andersen, JoJo D’Amore (“Dracula’s Dog”), and Katherine Stewart.

Michael Pataki’s “Mansion of the Doomed” is an eye-peeling shocker that’s dark and grim to the core and has an eye for cynicism. I could keep the eye puns going but that would be too easy to pluck out. Perilli’s story is rather plainly spoken with not a lot of fluff diving into medical or procedural jargon to bore you down into a loss of interest. Instead, the good doctor character goes right to work getting his hands elbows deep into the eye sockets of his victims and that’s how this particular exploitation perfectly crafted the balance by tabling the under stimulating medicalese with caged disfigured patients left to live in agony. Where Pataki and Perilli faltered some is in the preface by skimming the surface of the Dr. Chaney caused accident that rendered Nancy blind when she face-planted right into the doctor’s windshield as he swerves to not runover a mutt. In driver’s ed, you’re supposed to hit the small animal that runs in front of you in order for these kinds of accidents don’t happen! Told in the inner thought of a flashback, the force between the two immovable objects shatters the glass but leaves Nancy unscathed physically yet, somehow, she loses her sight in both of her eyes and while Dr. Chaney is unable to best the blindness with everything the surgical optometrist throws at it, perhaps that’s the unsolvable mystery that beleaguers abashedly an expert at the summit of their excellence. ‘Mansion of the Doomed” is not a feel-good film as not one single character has a positive outcome and having lost more than just their sight but also, to name a couple, their humanity and their hope.

Uncut, restored, and remastered onto a new Blu-ray release, Full Moon Features re-release “Mansion of the Doomed” onto 1080p, full high definition, from the original 35mm negative. Source material held up over father time with a pristine 85-minute uncut transfer to retouch in a pop of color and refine the details in a softer, more airy-soft image, presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Full Moon offers two audio options available with an English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and a Dolby Digital 2.0 PCM. Though slightly staticky in the ambient and dialogue tracks, the balance works and is full-bodied around more essential scenes of surgery and the cries of anguish. Dialogue doesn’t sound overly boxy or hissy and the cult composer Robert O. Ragland’s (“Deep Space,” “Q”) classic orchestra score come across with a powerful range that speaks the scene without exposition. The region free Blu-ray has no extra features, leaving this release as a bare bone, feature only. “Mansion of the Doomed’s” harrowing ending induces stupefying blank stare and feels like a brick just walloped you in the face knowing that every pawn in this story loses at the hands of man disillusioned in playing God.

“Mansion of the Doomed” on Blu-ray.  Hold Onto Your Eyeballs!

EVIL’s on the Shallow End of “Deep Space” reviewed! (Scorpion Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Deep Space” Invades Blu-ray on Amazon.com!

A government funded space craft containing a monstrous biological weapon crashes to Earth.  The organic creature is genetically coded to be a killing machine with a craving for eating it’s enemy and, now, it’s loose in the city and not responding to the scientists’ command self-destruct codes.  Tough and obstinate cop Ian McLemore and his partner, Jerry Merris, are ordered ot investigate the crash site before government agents take control of the case, even removing a pair of strange organic pods with them for further examination.  When a couple of close colleagues are shred to pieces at the hands of the creature, McLemore will stop at nothing to figure out what’s wreaking havoc in his city and blow it away.  

1988 – a weird, yet greatly satisfying transitional period of fading 80’s horror into nipping at the insanity of 90’s brazen prosthetic creature effects right before the turn of the computer generated decade.  Granted, Fred Olen Ray’s Sci-Fi horror “Deep Space,” which is ironically set on Earth, is very much an enamored 1980’s horror, but the Olen Ray film is where you can kind of see the turning of change on the horizon when the story’s ideas become too grandiose for tangibility alone, no matter how much us fans love to see practical effects over CGI.  The script, cowritten between Olen Ray and T.L. Lankford (“Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers,” “Fatal Passion”), is massive more expensive than anything the filmmaker’s had previously done and with a $2 million budget, “Deep Space” gets a giant explosion, high speed car scenes and wreckage, the iconic face and voice of Charles Napier, a Xenomorph-like creature, and a ultra-bloody chainsaw scene that could give “Evil Dead’s” Ash Williams a run for his money.  “Deep Space” is a production of Trans World Entertainment (no, not the same monikered company that sunk money into the bleeding financially physical media brick and mortar outlets like FYE, Camelot Music, or Suncoast) and shot in Los Angeles under producers Olen Ray, Alan Amiel (“Inner Sanctum”), and Herb Linsey (“Neon Maniacs”) with Yoram Pelman (“Commando Squad”) as executive producer.

At the center of the chaos is Ian McLemore, a hardnose and stubborn, harmlessly sarcastic detective who goes against the authoritative grain and cuts through bureaucratic tape to get the job done.  Playing McLemore is the unmistakable Charles Napier.  The “Rambo:  First Blood Part II” and “The Silence of the Lambs” actor, who is about as legendary as they come in supporting roles, lands his own lead man role with his own buxom beauty romantic leading lady in Ann Turkel {“Humanoids from the Deep”), as a new, but experienced, cop, Carla Sandbourn, on the L.A. force.  Experiencing Napier as an attractive male lead was a little more off-putting that initially thought.  The veteran actor, who began a career in the movie picture industry in his early 30s which was later than most of his counterparts, is hovering around early 50s in this role, middle of the ground with his physical appearance, and has a masculine square chin akin to Ron Pearlman with matching hair color to the “Hellboy” actor.  At an age gap of approx. 10 years between them at the time of filming, Napier and Turkel make their courtship appear easy; in fact, almost too easy as Turkel’s drops her shirt at the mere sight of McLemore dressed as a Scotsman blowing away at bagpipes for a gag effect in sleeping with him.  Both Napier and Sandbourn are charming enough to pull off a love affair without causing too much of a they’re so old stir.  “Serenity’s” Ron Glass plays the casual with the flow Partner Jerry Merris, “The Inglorious Bastards’” Bo Svenson is full of patience as the McLemore insubordination absorbing Captain Robertson, and the original Catwoman herself, from the Adam West “Batman” television series, Julie Newmar as a psychic who can clairvoyantly see the creature’s murderous mayhem.

The fact that “Deep Space” doesn’t take place at all in space is innately tongue in cheek to begin with, but that brand of flippancy courses through the film’s veins despite the blood splattering and semi-serious veneer, weaving between an action-horror and a horror-comedy during the entire 90-minutes.  Some of the comedy is intention, such as McLemore’s husky wit and sarcasm, but there’s also the extremely foggy campy side to this gem.  Some of these elements include the creature being hinted as a genetically mutated cockroach or the left field use of Julie Newmar’s psychic abilities that are randomly injected the storyline for the sole purpose of forewarning McLemore over the telephone rather being an intrinsic piece to stopping the creature.  The creature carnage would undoubtedly be investigated and exterminated without the psychic’s help, making her character farcical in futility.  “Deep Space” also pulls a little inspiration from “Alien,” maybe even the sequel, “Aliens,” with a toothy, long-headed, and eyeless black organism that resembles much like a Xenomorph or the Xenomorph queen and there’s also a near shot-for-shot sequence of a security guard whistling to and trying to persuade a cat to come to him while the monster rises from behind and strikes a fatal blow.  The scene is very reminiscent of Harry Dean Stanton’s death in “Alien.”  Being campy has it’s highlights but never can fully overshadow scenes that erect suspense or are saturated with gore which “Deep Space” has both with a combination of editing and piercingly sharp sound design and a rip-roaring, blood-splattering chainsaw kill that’s leaves that good metallic taste in your mouth.

There’s no escaping the blood-hungry tentacles of the “Deep Space” monster coming at you in a brand new 2018 high-definition master Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing, leased from MGM, and distributed by Ronin Flix and MVD Visual. The hard-locked region A Blu-ray is presented in an anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio and is rated R. Fred Olen Ray knew how to develop an eerie, twirling fog and wind atmosphere and this master crisps up that iconic trope image. Textural details and natural-appearing skin colors are delineated nicely throughout as you can make out every little blemish and hair on a shirtless Charles Napier as well as really getting into the slimy orifices of the creature and having a sense of its viscosity with a decisive sheen. Black areas are inky and dense with the right amount of grain in the overall picture and no obvious signs of image posterization, retaining the natural shadowing, along with no cropping or border enhancements. The English language DTS-HD master audio stereo finds common quality ground with a tidy dialogue track that does Napier’s resonating and recognizable jest justice. However, there is some hissing early on into the film, especially in the lab scenes in the contentious dialogue between the military general and the lead scientist. Omar Tal’s sound design proves vital to the story that relies on the screeching, the scuttling, the whooshing of tentacles, and the booming roars of the creatures, coinciding appropriately with Alan Oldfield and Robert O. Ragland’s rather run of the mill serrated and discordant electronic score. What “Deep Space” Blu-ray lacks is robust extras with only an audio commentary with director Fred Olen Ray and a scene selection index. “Deep Space” ages about as well as you expect over the last 35 years, but this Fred Olen Ray creature feature relic becomes rightfully preserved for being quintessential B-movie verve that no longer seems to exist in today’s age and also the fact that Charles Napier wears a kilt.

***Stills do not represent or were captured from the Blu-ray release

“Deep Space” Invades Blu-ray on Amazon.com!