Tag Archives: Bill Paxton

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!

Early Bill Paxton EVIL in “Mortuary” reviewed! (MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The tragic swimming pool drowning of Dr. Parsons might not have been an accident as determined by the police.  At least that is what his daughter, Christie, believes and she is for certain her mother has some involvement in the so called accident.  Plagued with nightmares followed by a stint of sleepwalking a month after her father’s untimely demise, Christie tries to maintain a semi normal life as a high school student romantically involved with boyfriend Greg Stevens.  Meanwhile, Greg’s best friend disappears after the two trespass onto local mortician Hank Andrews’s storage warehouse.  Christie and Greg unwittingly become embroiled into sinister intent by a masked and caped ghoulish killer stabbing victims with a detached embalming drain tube and at the center of it all is Hank Andrews and his son Paul’s family morgue that processes and possesses all the dead’s secrets. 

Before Wes Craven’s “Scream” mega-franchise turned caped killers revolutionary cool with meta-crafting horror tropes of the genre slasher, there was the little known “Mortuary” that perhaps paved just a slab of keystone for the Ghostface Killer who has become the face of slasher films for more than 20 years, much like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers back in the 1980s and early 90s.  Written and directed by the Baghdad born filmmaker, Hikmet Labib Avedis, credited under the more westernized stage name of Howard Avedis, the 1983 film nearly had all the hallmarks of a peculiar macabre dance that skated around the slasher sphere.  “Mortuary” had seances, pagan rituals, a shrouded murderer, and, of course, the embalming of dead, naked bodies that are the inevitable, natural, mortality reminding entities in movies regarding morgues.  The late director, who passed away in 2017, cowrote the film with wife, producer, and actress Marlene Schmidt who had a role in every single piece of his body of work.  “Mortuary” was self-produce by the husband and wife filmmakers under their Hickmar Productions company and by grindhouse producer Edward L. Montoro (“Beyond the Door”).

Though the post-credit opening scenes begins unscrupulous enough with Greg Stevens, played by television soap opera star David Wysocki whose credited as David Wallace, and his best friend Josh (Denis Mandel) stealing tires from Josh’s ex-employer, morgue owner Hank Andrews, the late “Day of the Animals” and “Pieces’s” Christopher George’s last cinematic role, because of being fired without being paid for his services, “Mortuary” inconspicuously moves from Stevens’ infringing on local law to surround itself more aligned with Stevens’ girlfriend Christie Parsons who feels more like a backseat character upon introduction.  Yet in a flurry of exposition with her mother, Christie, who is played by “Mom” actress Mary Beth McDonough, circles back and ties into the opening credit scenes of an unknown man being bashed over the head with a baseball bat and falling into his pool.  We learn that the man is Christie’s father whose death has been rule an accident (no evidence of baseball bat related injuries? Was evidence collecting really that low-tech in the 1980s?), but Christie begs to differ as she point blank accuses her mother, Christopher George’s life co-star Lynda Day George, being involved in his poolside death.   While performances statically hover inside the wheelhouse of teen horror with Greg and Christie seemingly unaffected by the mysterious incidents happening all around them until someone literally is grisly murdered in their adjacent bedroom, a fresh-faced Bill Paxton (“Frailty”) inevitably steals the show with this enormous presence on screen as Paul Andrews, the town’s mortician loony son working for his father as an embalmer.  Paxton’s zany act borders “Mortuary” as either a diverse trope horror with an awkward outlier character stuff into the eclectic mix or a seriously unserious bluff of being a serious horror film – see what I did there?  Paul listens to Mozart on vinyl, has an obsession for Christie, and likes to prance and skip through the graveyard as a son broken by his mother’s unhinged suicide.  “Mortuary” rounds out with Curt Ayers (“Zapped!”), stuntwoman Donna Garrett (“The Puppet Masters”), Greg Kaye (“They’re Playing With Fire”), Alvy Moore (“Intruder”), stuntman Danny Rogers, Marlene Schmidt, and Bill Conklin as a walking contradiction as a beach town sheriff wearing an unabashed cowboy hat like a sorely out of place rootin’-tootin’ lawman from the West complete with country draw lingo. Also – don’t miss the bad nude body double used for McDonough when Christie is lying on the morgue slab.

Now, I’m not saying “Mortuary” is the sole inspirational seed that sowed the way for the “Scream” franchise, as I’m sure many, many other iconic classics inspired Kevin Williamson, but, in my humble opinion as an aficionado about the genre components and how they’re all connected by a few or many degrees of separation, “Mortuary’s” villain could be the long, lost ancestral sperm donor responsible for the origins of Ghostface.  The purposeful movements and actions align very closely in a parallel of deranged defiance and floaty black and white costumes.  However, “Scream” is just packaged nicer as “Mortuary” continuously drips all over the place like a three scoop ice cream cone on a hot summer day.  Containing Avedis’s arc on Christie was nearly impossible as each act jumps and focuses on someone entirely different while also exposing the killer blatantly without even trying to misdirect or repel any kind of suspicion.  It was as if Avedis and Schmidt swung for the fences with a convoluted giallo mystery plot but couldn’t figure out how to build that into the narrative without drawing from and drowning in exposition and that’s how the cards came crashing down by unfolding with talking head pivotal plot points that steered to a rather quick, yet pleasant, climatic head of a total mental meltdown that’s much more cuckoo than Billy Loomis and Stu Macher will ever be. 

If you didn’t score a copy of Scorpion Releasing’s limited edition release of “Mortuary” on Blu-ray, then sing the praises of second chances with this Scorpion Releasing Blu-ray reissue through the MVD Visual Rewind Collection line. The all region release is presented in a high definition, 1080p, widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio of the Scorpion Releasing AVC encoded transfer on a BD25. Quality-wise, the release delivers the perhaps the full potential of a cleaned up 35 mm restore with no sign of cropping, edge enhancing, and a healthy amount of good grain, but there are noticeable gaffes with select scenes that seemed to have missed or left out of the restoration all together, reverting back to the rough, untouched image. Coloring, skin and objects in the mise-en-scene, come out lively, naturally, and without a flutter of instability with transfer damage at a minimum. Probably the most surprising is the original 2.0 mono LPCM track. The English language mix does the job without climbing the audiophile corporate latter, leaving in the wake a soft dialogue that’s a struggle to get through if you’re not wearing headphones. Depth seems a little slim, but the range keeps progressing nicely that often feeds into the late John Cacavas score. Cacavas operatic film score is bigger than the movie itself, often grandiose the Gary Graver one-note cinematography. The overexposed ethereal flashback has slapped redundant fatigue plastered all over it but, then again, the film is from the 80’s. Option English subtitles are available. Special features include only an interview with John Cacavas from 2012, from the original Scorpion Releasing print. Two upsides to the MVD Visual release are the cover art mini-poster tucked inside the casing and the added cardboard slip cover that resembles a tattered VHS rental tape slip box complete with a faded Movie Melt yellow caution sticker, a Be Kind, Remind sphere sticker, and a Rated R decal. If you’re a big Bill Paxton fan, “Mortuary” reveals another shade of talent from the late actor. Other than that, the Howard Avedis production often haphazardly stumbles bowleggedly to a giallo-errific-type ending made in America.

Youtubers EVILlog a Malevolent Presence Inside Their Home! “8ight After” reviewed! (PovertyWorks / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Vlogging husband and wife, Vince and Deanna, digitally showcase their married life to the world from their vacation travels to exotic coastlines to the day-to-day, mundane tasks that includes home renovations.  When they demolition a wall in order to install a French door in the master bedroom, they discover a mysterious box containing a Portate (carrying) cross hidden within the wall.  Every night since then, Godfearing Deanna has felt a profound presence in the house, experiencing supernatural phenomena, such as grabbing at her feet and possessing her body, almost on a nightly basis, especially 8 minutes after 1:00 AM.  The compilation of footage from Vince and Deanna’s vlog cameras around the house capture the seemingly malevolent events, but Vince, being the ever agnostic skeptic, tries to invalidate any paranormal occurrences, passing them off as more feasibilities explanations.  Yet, the bumps in the night continue to place Deanna in inexplicable danger, forcing Vince to reconsider his position on God in order to save his wife.

CCTV horror has been quiet over the last few years, but 2020 has seen a fair share of the stale, declining genre that’s become more repellant than a draw for audiences; yet these new ventures into CCTV horror have splashed into a Lazarus pool, rejuvenating a slither of lifeforce within genre, with limited theatrical and VOD releases into the volatile cinema market.  Vincent Rocca’s written and directed multi-camera spectral thriller, “8ight After,” is a found footage horror-comedy that is an analogue releasing on the heels of moderate success, following the making-of an active shooter thriller, “Mother of Monsters,” and the hellish hotel imprisonment of souls of “Followed,” another apparitional aghast blending CCTV and handheld footage in a vlog style.  Rocca’s sophomore directorial comes nearly a decade and half after his 2006 feature film debut, a comedy entitled “Kisses and Caroms,” and is produced by Rocca’s less-is-more production company, PovertyWorks Productions, that aims to produce funny and profitable films and shorts on a miniscule budget.  In “8ight After’s” case, the production cost totaled a whopping zero being Rocca’s own actual camera footage of and around his home and the use of handheld’s and phone cameras when out and about. I’m also positive he didn’t pay his wife a dime.

“8ight After” fits right into the PovertyWorks’s comedy portion of its business model, especially with Vincent Rocca in the lead role as a practical joker-goofball of a husband (who really has the vocal projection of the late Bill Paxton), leading the charge of the voyeuristically invasive vlogging lifestyle as well as being a religiously laidback soul with an atheist belief set.  In stark contrast to his convictions is his wife Deanna, played by his real wife Deanna Rocca, who brings a knowledge of faith for a subplot of inner family squabbles about their mixed relationship to God.  When I say “8ight After” is invasive, I mean the film is a truism of invasiveness that not only is a near tell all of Vincent’s life as a videophile and Deanna’s vocation as a zoo vet but also fractures into the story their recorded travel escapades from their VinceRocca Youtube channel show, “Life Doesn’t Suck,” that discusses and logs their destination highlights of various locations from around the world.  The energy from their Youtube channel transcends over into the scenes committed to the necklace narrative with a bout between comedy and horror that peers Vince and Deanna’s religious fervors.  Deanna shoulders more of the in character plights with the subtle, but effective, person plagued by a unremitting presence and has to become possessed, sleepwalk, and look menacing toward her husband when the time is right for the all-seeing camera.  

Compiled like a documentary (or mockumentary?) and presented in a meta format by spinning and weaving the Rocca’s exuberant régime of life and love into an undercurrent of hidden terror, “8ight After” has unique cinematic properties, utilizing his reality television fluff techniques and editing, and tackle themes of family upheaval contentious topics like religion and gun control, to wrap “8ight After” complete on a zilch budget that rides the seams of fact and fiction.  For the most part, “8ight After” tenderly progresses organically with little staged affect as the high school sweethearts play to their most innate strength – 20 years of marital bliss – and chips in sparsely the sarcastic wit of Vince Rocca (did I mention he sounds exactly like Bill Paxton?) through a tech-recorded compiled story that’s well built up initially with convincing acting and strange and spooky incidents that, like most found footage films, point to specifics pieces important to the narrative. There are even a couple of homages to great horror classics like “Jaws” and “Exorcist III.” But then in a turn of sudden events, the revealing climax fizzles like the air wheezing quickly out of an inflated balloon.  The finagled ending stinted completing something uniquely branchlet from the found footage genre and something that had solid momentum and steam of an escalating snowball toward the essence of a presence, but became grounded by the acute conclusion to the matter in such a matter-of-fact fashion that it completely killed the mood, tone, and disposition “8ight After” carried in preponderance.

Become wrapped up in the lives of a pair of vloggers and see them suffer the wrath of a stubborn spirit in “8ight After” that was released October 15th on various digital retailers, including Amazon’s Prime Video. The film is unrated and has a runtime of 97 minutes and has an accompanying English language 5.1 surround sound audio mix with optional English subtitles. There were no bonus material included, but you can live vicariously through Vincent and Deanna’s touristy adventures of swimming with manatees, paddle boarding, and visiting breathtaking waterfalls. Also, you can purchase Vincent Rocca’s journal notes put into paperback, of the same title as the movie and also on Amazon, that goes hand-and-hand with the film; it’s also available as an audiobook. “8ight After” tempers with a well braided blend of found footage comedy and horror from a pair of seasoned Youtubers that then suddenly trails off, leaving us holding the baby in trying to make sense of an nonsensical ending.

Watch “8ight After” on Prime Video!

 

Read or listen to the book on Prime Video!