Tag Archives: Caligula

EVIL’s Brew Just Needs a Severed Head! “The House of Witchcraft” reviewed! (Cauldron Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The House of Witchcraft,” a part of The Houses oof Doom series, Now on Blu-ray!

Luca Palmer has experienced the same reoccurring nightmare for months of him finding shelter from being chased inside a large countryside house with an ugly hag boiling his severed head in a large cauldron.  The dreams have required him to find professional help in a psychiatric ward but without any real mental or physical health concerns, he’s released to his incompatible, witchcraft practicing wife Martha who sets up a country house getaway in a last ditch effort to save their dwindling marriage.  When they pull up to the house, Luca immediately recognizes it from his nightmares.  From then on Luca believe he’s seeing the malicious old woman from his dreams around on the estate grounds and urges his psychiatrist, who is also his late brother’s wife, to visit him to assess his state of mind, but the visions keep coming and those around him keep dying a horrible death with his wife being the key suspect of witchcraft related deaths.

“La casa del sortilegio,” aka “The House of Witchcraft” is a made-for-television, witch-centric movie for the four-film series The Houses of Doom concept created under the companies of Dania Films and Reteitalia’s producing team Massimo Manasse and Marco Grillo Spina.  The 1989 witchy-slasher hybrid and the third film of the series is helmed by another notable Italian schlock and shock director, Umberto Lenzi (“Seven Blood-Stained Orchids,” Cannibal Ferox”), as well as Lenzi writing the script from the story of The Houses of Doom envisaging duo Gianfranco Clerici and Daniele Stroppa.  “The House of Witchcraft” speaks the very essence of what to expect in a traditional sense regarding witches while really stepping up with Italian nastiness inside the slasher principles, filmed in the heart of Italy in the popular Chianti wine municipality of Rufina where the landscape is lined with vineyards, churches, and castles.

Luca Palmer is committed to his mental health by committing himself to his sister-in-law’s psychiatric hospital after months of nightmares involving a witch and his severed head as the main ingredient for her boiling stew.  Perhaps, because of his rocky relationship with wife Martha, played by French actress Sonia Petrovna (“Flashing Lights”), Luca just needed a break from her witchcraft obsession and loveless aloofness to clear his head.  Either way, the American-born and ‘Naked Rage” actor Andy J. Forest is one of Umberto Lenzi’s go-to action stars, of such Lenzi’s war films “Bridge to Hell” and “The Kiss of the Cobra”, whose taken off the film battlefield and positioned as the confounded centerpiece of a cackling witch tale, completing his task as a the tall, handsome, and flawed hero of a man haunted and driven by unpleasant night terrors of the long face, broad features of the fittingly named Maria Cumani Qausimodo as the dolled-down witch.  Quasimodo is no stranger to the filth and frights of Italian schlock with roles in “Behind Convent Walls,” “Five Women for the Killer,” and even the notoriously porn augmented “Caligula” and her physical traits, long stare of blue eyes, and pandering of character’s wickedness transform her into an ideal archetype of the original folk-acholic Brewmeisters.  Characters for the slaughter tin this supernatural slasher and to be intertwined into the suspect and innocent pool are played by Paul Muller (“Lady Frankenstein”), as the sixth sense blind homeowner Andrew Mason, Marina Giulia Cavalli (“Alien from the Deep”) as Andrew’s visiting niece Sharon, Susanna Martinkova (“Fracchia Vs. Dracula”) as the psychiatrist sister-in-law Dr. Elsa Palmer, and Maria Stella Musy as the doctor’s daughter Debra tagging along with her mother to visit the barely mentally managing Luca. 

Umberto Lenzi’s rollercoaster career has seen its fair share of misses overtop what are today considered trashy, cult triumphs that lure fans to seek out his even lesser known, poorly critiqued titles more often than required for any more than the casual horror moviegoer. However, “The House of Witchcraft” is not one of those latter, threadbare produced pictures as Lenzi instills more aesthetic style and cinematic substance of searing phantasmic enthrall and danger with an unwavering villainess vile down to her very rotten teeth and scraggly, gray hair.  Offing houseguests left and right is the witch’s supernatural birthright but why exactly Luca Palmer, a stressed out journalist, to be the target of precognitive events is more opaque than it is clairvoyantly evident but we get some great malevolent manipulation and sleight of hand with black cat familiars, bulgy maggot-infested corpses, unusual indoor freezing precipitation, severed heads, and a face transfiguration that’s pretty damn good that has no right to be in a Lenzi film, mostly in part to special f/x and makeup artist Giuseppe Ferranti (“Anthropophagus,” “Nightmare City’), his favorable, collaborative relationship with Lenzi, and the fact he’s locked into the 4-part film series The Houses of Doom provides him creative freedom, flexibility, and fluctuation in diversity.  “The House of Witchcraft” is not the one-all, be-all witch story but does scratch that warty itch in the foulest of cloak-wearing evils without flying a broomstick! 

The second of four Blu-rays for The Houses of Doom lineup produced by Cauldron Films, “The House of Witchcraft” is an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 with a transfer scanned into 2K, uncut and restored, from the original film negative.  Very similar to Lucio Fulci’s “The House of Clocks,” Cauldron Films scan is quite impeccable.  A pristine picture with no wear or tear and age deterioration, “The House of Witchcraft” is deep and rich with immense coloring timing efforts, defining an authentic look without overcorrecting to a fault.  There’s no perfunctory enhancing or extreme variability with contrasting, retaining a smooth, consistent picture quality throughout its European aspect 1.66:1 presentation.  Even in the more stylistic lighting work that creates clear tone of how the indoor snow should feel cold or the lightning strikes and wind brings a chill of ominous doom, there’s plenty of delineation to provide space and demarcations of depth between objects.  There are two DTS-HD 2.0 mono mixes with an ADR Italian and an ADR English dialogue.  Synchronously smooth, a noticeable dialogue separation between audio and video is not easily perceptible, which is kudos to the post work on the post-crew efforts, and Cauldron’s mixes have clarity without a fault in the compression means.  The two channel funneling of the mono output separates the dialogue and ambience/score.  Backing of the boiling cauldron stew or the knife swipes that severe heads and stab fleshy trunks, leaving impacting thuds and thwacks, are good examples of the conveyed foley audio that leaves a lasting impression through component construction in the audio design.  There are optional English subtitles on both language tracks.  Special features include Cauldron Films’ produced interviews with FX artist Elio Terribili Artisan of Mayhem, cinematographer Nino Celeste The House of Professionals, and a commentary track with Eugenio Erolani, Nathaniel Thompson, and Troy Howarth.  Also like “The House of Clocks” release, Matthew Therrien and Eric Lee compose a composition of illustrative graphic artistry of film’s decomposing and maniacally laughing madness and logo design for The Houses of Doom series on the front cover inside the clear Scanavo case.  Reverse cover has a still image of the black cat and the disc is pressed with the same front cover artwork but cropped to focus primarily of the witch with title and company logos at the bottom half.  The region free release has a runtime of 89 minutes.

Last Rites: Umberto Lenzi’s “The House of Witchcraft” casts a spell over the hex canon, beguiling it with mystery, enchanting it with surrealism, and bewitching it with blood. Cauldron Films’ Blu-ray is topnotch for an obscure made-for-TV Lenzi production.

“The House of Witchcraft,” a part of The Houses oof Doom series, Now on Blu-ray!

Mother Russia’s Most EVIL Serial Killer is “Evilenko” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Limited Collector’s Edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Limited Collector’s Edition 4K and Blu-ray Available Here!

Kyiv, 1984 – An aging schoolteacher named Andrej Evilenko is stuck in Josef Stalin’s quickly dwindling sociopolitical communism party and finds himself dismissed from the school after being accused of attempted rape of one of his preteen students.  His release from vocation obligates him to write letters to the Communist party still clinging to control and from those letters comes a job with the KGB under the guise of a railroad inspector.  Evilenko’s empowerment by the party drives his dangerous urges to rape, kill, and cannibalize women and children over years around Kyiv and Crimea, using his position of inspector to travel.  In 1987, Magistrate inspector, Vadim Lesiev, is assigned by the D.A. to hunt down the serial killer who has by then murdered over 30 victims.  Over the course of the next eight years, Lesiev finds himself chasing his tail and fearing for his own family’s safety against a monster that has all of Kyiv frightened. 

Based off the true crime story of notorious Soviet Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, “Evilenko” tells the fantastically frightful tale of the real “Butcher of Rostov” who did confess and was convicted for rape, murder, and the cannibalization of 52 young women and children, of both sexes, from 1978 to 1990.  The Italian-English production is spearheaded by Italian filmmaker David Grieco who directs the film as well as supplies the story’s base material from his own semi-biographical novel on Andrej Chiktilo, entitled “The Communist Who Ate Children” (“Il comunista che mangiava i bambini”).  Grieco, the son of the of the founding members of the Communist party, finds a financial means to produce a visual adaptation from Britain’s Pacific Pictures consisting of Michael Cowan and Jason Plette of “Killer Tongue” and produced by Italy’s Mario Cotone (“Malena”), representing the MiBAC, the Italian Ministry of Cultural Activity.

Who better than to portray a variant of the child molesting, murdering, and eating Soviet Andrej Chikatilo than Malcolm McDowell, the British actor who is no stranger to controversial films and performances having the lead roles in both Stanley Kubrick’s celebrated violence in a dystopian society in “A Clockwork Orange” and in the pornography spliced infiltrated titular performance film of the sultry period drama “Caligula.”  Being older and wiser doesn’t phase McDowell to shy away from committing to difficult scenes involving minor aged costars, especially scenes with sexually ambiguous dialogue and being pants less while speaking it, and while not a physically demanding role for McDowell nor is it filled with the intense-eyed actor’s usual fiery fervor, but in the shoes of Evilenko, he nails down the real serial killer Chikatilo’s exterior appearance, despite attempting to make McDowell appear younger with just only a wig to convince audiences of the 20-year span in the story, and touches upon the oddities and the quirks that make Chikatilo a delusionally faithful comrade, justified by his own investment into the communist party.  Evilenko’s archnemesis comes in the form of district attorney magistrate investigator Vadim Lesiev, played by the underutilized New Zealand born actor Marton Csokas (“Lord of the Rings,” “Cuckoo”).  “Evilenko” is clearly the Malcolm McDowell show but Csokas gives his all to a man not only doing his duty as an official of the Russian pervading prosecution but also as a family man haunted by his inadequacies and his inabilities to catch the perverted serial killer that might just strike close to home, putting Lesiev on edge with that nagging worriment.  Grieco’s editing and story development greatly undercurrent Csoka’s motivations and plights, distorting his complexities to a minor key of his true self, and letting McDowell have free reign over his subsidiary counterpart.   Yet, neither character is fleshed out definitively, none to compel a reason for their idiosyncratic methods and behaviors, which goes hand-in-hand with the purgatorial editing that is loose with the timeframe.  Ruby Krammer (“Alien Exorcism”), Frances Barber (“Superstitition”), Vladimir Levitskiy, Ihor Ciszkewycz, John Benfield (“Hitler’s S.S.:  Portrait in Evil”), and Ronald Pickup (“Zulu Dawn”) as a psychotherapist assisting tracking down the killer.  

As much as the Grieco and McDowell dynamic works to monstrously depict a coldhearted and crafty serial killer coupled with a sliver of slithering supernatural propensities to lure women and children in a fixed trance or, in more conventional means, into doing what he wants with an spellbinding combination of stares, manipulative conversation, or just overall emitting a towering communist cloud of authority, “Evilenko” is deflated by the story’s time lapsing.  Opening with Kyiv 1984 and then subsequently in Crimea five years later in 1989, the noting of years or periods is hereafter eliminated from the narrative that becomes a back-and-forth yarn between a select of Evilenko’s pied piper lures and kills and magistrate Lesiev always behind the eightball pursuit of the elusive, unknown killer.  There’s a loss of sight on Lesiev’s psyche that is very important to the story and more so at the climatic interrogation scene where both men are stark-naked in a power and controlling situation that harks back to Evilenko’s mesmerizing tactics used against the adolescent prey and Lesiev’s fear and obsession of losing his family to what once was an uncatchable slaughterer who hallmarked with mutilation and devouring.  Grieco’s willingness to be grisly is tamer than the expected based off the prologue scenes of Evilenko exploiting and nearly raping a preteen girl but doesn’t take away the effect that the entire narrative arouses an uncomfortable experience teased to always be on the edge of overly graphic but never breaking that threshold; “Evilenko” is one of the biggest blue balls instigators is in last 20 years and that rush of not seeing or knowing can be more thrillingly charged for some than anything totally explicit ever could produce. 

Unearthed Films limited collector’s edition has 2-disc, dual format capacity with a 4K UHD and Blu-ray.  The second 4K UHD from the label, behind their release of “The Guyver,” solidifies the extreme horror company a player in the ultra high-definition game.  The New 4K transfer restoration of the original camera negative is HVEC encoded, presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio with 2160p UHD, on a massive three layered BD100.  The Blu-ray comes AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, on a BD50, presented in the same aspect ratio.  What’s gathered from both presentations is that there’s nothing to fault them with as both excel to their max output abilities.  In fact, the transfers are pretty much identical, integrally achieved by digital optimization of an already optimized digital camera, a Sony PMWEX3 with 35mm adapters, which at that time was the bigger brother and flagship model of the Sony line.  A slight grading reduction instills a sense of austere or lackluster coloring that mocks a communist Russia veneer.  Close ups on McDowell’s unique features and the expound of particulars in the surroundings, especially when engulfed in leaf-covered and tree-thick woods, tell of the emerged details and textures in a higher pixel count.  An English DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio is the sole mix available.  The back and side channels are essentially used sparing for a few flakes of brief ambient hubbub in what’s mostly a frontloaded conversational piece of mostly McDowell in one of his great monologuing moments. We get some nice oblong orchestral pieces from the late David Lynch regular composer Angelo Badalamenti (“Lost Highway,” “Twin Peaks”) that incorporates haunting harmonies and soft, ethereal vocals that play into the loss of innocence theme. Dialogue’s healthy and prominently favorable next to the unchallenged low ran range. English subtitles are available for selection. The BD100 offers only the feature, and a new commentary track with director/writer David Griece and star Malcolm McDowell while the Blu-ray offers the same commentary plus Evilenko Dossier: Andrei Chikatilo, the examination of the real killer against the onscreen rendition, cast and crew interviews with Grieco, McDowell, and Badalamenti, a photo gallery, and the original film trailer all within the bonus content of a fluid menu with Badalamenti’s and vocalist Dolores O’Riordan’s main track “Angels Go to Heaven.” The limited collector’s edition is housed in a cardboard slipcover of one of the many variants of Malcolm McDowells face slathered in soviet red. The black Amaray has the same cover art with no reversible cover. The discs are snap-locked in place on opposite sides, pressed with another slathered in red image pulled from powerful interrogation scene between Evilenko and Lesiev. Both formats are not rated, locked region A encoded, and have a runtime of 111 minutes.

Last Rites: “Evilenko” is a heavy story that needed to be told. You don’t hear much about the USSR vulnerability and the real-life serial killer had frightened the proud, the stoic, and the impoverished alike as “Evilenko” seers as a case study mental illness, is a metaphor for deteriorating Communism, and a tale too terrible to forget and despite some pacing issues and timeline infractions, Grieco and McDowell pull off a rather nasty semi-doc of one of the worst killers to ever live.

Limited Collector’s Edition 4K and Blu-ray Available Here!

This EVIL, Straight-Razor Killer Has a Novel Idea! “Tenebrae” reviewed! (Synapse / 4K-Blu-ray Combo Set)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

2-Disc 4K UHD and Blu-ray Set Now Available of Dario Argento’s “Tenebrae”

While on a media book tour for his latest popular crime thriller novel, “Tenebrae,” American novelist Peter Neal is swiftly entangled in a killer’s puritanical wrath shortly after landing in Rome.  Using Neal’s story as an inspirational guideline to rid the world of what the fictional book labels as depraved people, the killer brutally murders women closely resembling characters in Neal’s book with a straight razor and sends Neal a deranged poetic message shortly after each death.  Police are on the case but always once step behind, even when the murders have seemingly stop connecting to the pages of Neal’s novel.  When the writer investigates by running through the list of possible suspects, the writer in him goes rogue by setting off to solve the case himself that would sensationalize and authenticate him as a crime writer, but the deeper Neal directly involves himself, the more the grislier the murders become and they’re starting to come closer to home than before. 

Dario Argento is unequivocally one of the best masters of horror for half a century, writing and directing not only some of the best Italian crime-mystery Giallos, splashed with hue vibrancy and caked in gruesome blood splatter, but also writing and directing those same films with major success internationally as his films connect with a global audience.  “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage,” “Deep Red,” and “Suspiria” have skyrocketed the filmmaker within the first decade of movie-crafting and Argento would not have been who is now without the guidance and the financial foundation constructed by father, Salvatore Argento.  Before his death in 1987, Salvatore produced one more of his son’s ventures in 1982 with “Tenebrae,” an emblematic mystery that brings Italian and American actors into the fold of Argento’s violent pulp puzzler.  Argento’s younger brother, Claudio, co-produced the feature under the Sigma Cinematografica Roma production company.

The Italiano-Americano production casts a pair of native New Yorkers in Anthony Franciosa (“Death Wish II,” “Curse of the Black Widow”) and John Saxon (“A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Black Christmas”) who regularly crossed over the Atlantic for roles in international pictures.  Franciosa plays the novelist Peter Neal with Saxon as Neal’s newly hired agent Bullmer.  Their portrayed amicable relationship succeeds expectations of client and manager professionalism, but a good publicity campaign can be torpedoed by a sadistic killer with a throat cutting fetish and Roma’s best officers on the case intruding into the Neal’s personal promotion with Detective Germani, played by spaghetti western regular Giuiliano Gemma (“Day of Anger”), and his partner, Inspector Altieri, played by Carola Stagnaro (“Phantom of Death”).  The third English speaker is John Steiner (“Caligula”), a proper Englishman setup as an Italian television host on the docket to interview Peter Neal’s latest release success.  Steiner becomes an early favorite as the suspected killer with his odd pre-show questioning that falls in line with the Killer’s motives, but he isn’t the only person of interest as Neal’s estranged lover Jane (Veronica Lario) holds a lover’s quarrel with the writer who has seemingly become intimately close with his personal assistant Anne (Daria Nicolodi, “Deep Red”).  A conglomerate of characters gyrate Argento’s maelstrom mystery, each exhibiting profound performances that make each rich in their own right, and fill out with an assemblage of robust supporting characters diffusing through the story with Ania Pieroni (“The House by the Cemetery”), Lara Wendel (“Ghosthouse”), Eva Robins (“Eva man”), and Mirella Banti (“Scandal in Black”), the model most infamously on the front cover of most home video releases and poster one sheets with the iconic neck-sliced open and dripping blood along with her wavy hair suspended in a pose of vivid void and color.

“Tenebrae,” in Latin translates to darkness, describes Argento’s post-“Suspiria” feature intently.  Giallo lives within this time capsulated enigmatic madness, color-coated and visually complex to become an easy pill to swallow amongst all others in the Italian-reared niche.  Accompanying all the hallmarks of a Giallo construct – the killer’s gloved hands in POV, psychosexual tropes, mental instability exposures, violent and gory – Argento also impresses us with baroque mise-en-scene of lavish houses, detailed interiors, and extremely broad, emotionally phrenic individuals.  We also receive technical style wonders like a long boom shot that cranes up a house exterior to follow the idiosyncratic and opposing activities of two presently quarrelling lesbian lovers on a dark, stormy night in a tensely presage moment mixed with the synth-rock sounds of the “Goblin” theme track.  “Tenebrae” is chic in its ugliness and the patience Argento shows is formidably impenetrable without being flawed with lingering stagnancy.  While wallowing into what we’re led to believe, red herrings and other subterfuges to throw off audiences’ keen-to-solve sniffers, the story stirs a cauldron of coherent progression that is, more often than desired, lost in most gialli trying to weave through an intelligible punchy crime-mystery without becoming disoriented by the twists, turns, and topsy-turvy outcomes.   

“Tenebrae” hits 4K onto a 2-Disc, UHD and Blu-ray combo set from the genre-leading distributor, Synapse Films. The HEVC, mastered in Dolby Vision, encoding 2180p UHD and the AVC encoded 1080p high-definition Blu-ray are presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio in both the English and Italian versions of the feature.  One of the more gorgeously restored versions ever to be presented, with sharp delineation and organic popping colors within the narrow margins of infrequent gel lighting, the near flawless original negative is greatly elevated by Synapse’s ultra high-def facelift that resound the lavish textures of various sets, the expressional details of the characters’ face, and the glistening shine of the spraying blood.  There’s real balance between the colors in this presentation, offering not only a wide variety of hues but a great display of the mix.  Gels are not overly used and are more key lighting spotlights to heighten tension or introduce moods on an almost subconscious level.  Both English and Italian versions score a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono.  This release caters to the very suspense Argento acoustically and phonically propounds that, in the same regard to the eyes, places viewers’ ears right in the middle of the action.  Every sound is distinct and unassuming during the throes of violence, a cleanly serrating effect that compounds killer consternation of being everything, everywhere, all at once.  Typical of the time and cost-efficient ADR usually retains some dubbing disharmony, but “Tenebra’s” tracks are neatly synchronous with Anthony Franciosa and John Saxon’s recordings timed exact and as if captured in the scene.   Some of the dubbing isn’t as in the bag, such as with Giuliano Gemma’s recording that’s does denote that space in between intensified by likely another voice actor’s reading overtop Gemma’s actual dialogue.  UHD offers English SDH on the English version while the Italian version has just regular English subtitles; the Blu-ray disc has the same.  Hours of bonus content, identical on both formats, begin with an audio commentary by Dario Argento: the Man, the Myths, the Magic author Alan Jones and film critic/historian Kim Newman, a second audio commentary by Dario Argento expert Thomas Rostock, and a third audio commentary by Maitland McDonagh, author of Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds:  The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento.  The fun doesn’t end there with a 2016 feature-length documentary “Yellow Fever:  The Rise and Fall of the Giallo” with interviews from Dario Argento, Umberto Lenzi, Luigi Cozzi, and Ruggero Deodato amongst the biggest names in film critic authoritarians, a newly edited archival interview with actor John Steiner, a newly edited archival interview with Maitland McDonagh, an archival featurette Voices of the Unsane with “”Tenebrae’s” Dario Argento, Daria Nicolodi, Eva Robins, Luciano Tovoli, Claudio Simonetti, and Lamberto Bava interviews, an archival interview with actress Daria Nicolodi, an archival interview with writer-director Dario Argento, an archival interview with composer Claudio Simonetti, an archival introduction from Daria Nicolodi, an international theatrical trailer, the Japanese Shadow trailer, an alternate opening credits sequence, “Unsane” end credits sequence, and an image gallery to wrap things up.  Inside the rigid O-slipcover, graced with a high quality and beautifully macabre illustration rendered by Nick Charge, is a Synapse Films’ black, 4K UHD labeled Amaray case with a double side disc lock and a reversible cover art with the Nick Charge graphic as default underneath the slipcover with the reverse side the Synapse Films’ standard Blu-ray cover art pulped with a famous death scene in pop art color. The insert houses a Synapse Films’ catalogue, and the discs are pressed with two notable kill scene frozen moments pulled in still image form. Feature runs at 101-minutes with an uncut presentation of the feature with a region free playback on both formats. ”Tenebrae” is Dario Argento in a cracked-up nutshell, paradoxically beautiful and horrible and burgeoning with suspense and color. The restored and remastered Synapse Films’ UHD and Blu-ray set is equally as such in its gorgeously grotesque packaging of film, its director, and its legacy that will outlive us all.

2-Disc 4K UHD and Blu-ray Set Now Available of Dario Argento’s “Tenebrae”

Two Movies, One EVIL. “House of Cruel Dolls” reviewed! (Full Moon / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

A perverse gang of sex traffickers kidnap beautiful women to be prostitutes for a hidden away bordello, known as the House of the Lost Dolls.  Gaston, a bordello regular, falls for sex slave Yvette and together they make a great escape to free Yvette from the gang’s clutches.  Yvette’s harrowing ordeal is given to the police.  What ensues next is the dispatching of secret agent Sigma to track down and eliminate the ruthless gang, but finding their hideout won’t be that easy as espionage tactics and killer assassins lie in wait around every corner, but agent Sigma will do everything in his power to see an end to their depravity. 

What a wild mashup of manipulation to work in a spy thriller around a sordid exploitation!  That’s the only way to describe French filmmaker Pierre Chevalier’s sleazy action-action thriller “House of Cruel Dolls.”  Also known as “The House of the Lost Dolls,” “The Panther Squad” director and A.L. Mariaux, one of “The Sexual Story of O” Jesús Franco’s pseudo names, penned 1974 released screenplay fills in the blanks with archival footage from the 1967 espionage flick “Agente Sigma 3 – Missione Goldwather,” starring “The Vampires Night Orgy’s” Jack Taylor.  Judging by the colorful, multi-national, grindhouse titles and the crew involved, you can bet on the “House of Cruel Dolls” to be a licentious and violence riddled romp, swanky in sexual severity and coarse with an untamed plot.  As a production of Eurociné, one shouldn’t be surprised of “House of Cruel Dolls’” shameless nature with the once legitimate Marius Lesqeur storytelling company that ventured into mass producing cheap, seedy classics, more around the uncomfortable context of Naziploitation or WIP (Women in Prison), with such films as “Angel of Death,” “Jailhouse Wardess,” “Hitler’s Last Train,” and “Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg,” as well as other European exploitations in “Diamonds of Kilimandjaro” and “Female Vampire” to capitalize on the rise of erotic in the 1970s through the 1980s. 

The Eurociné played the popular casting game of hiring American actors to star in their oversees produced films, but for “House of Cruel Dolls,” the hiring of an America actor doesn’t go as typical as you would have thought.  Instead of signing Oregon born Jack Taylor to be the leading man stopping a ring of evil sex traffickers, Chevalier, along with “Nude for Satan” editor, “Luigi Batzella,” spliced together Jack Taylor’s Italian-made spy thriller “Agente Sigma 3 – Missione Goldwather  fit into the extremely graphic and perverse scenes of rape, gang rape, and perversion narrative of the barely sticky adhesive “House of Cruel Dolls.  There’s actually one scene where Taylor’s character and partner run down a flight of stairs on a boat, but topside is definitely Taylor, but down the stairs inside the boat is a different actor with an extremely bad wig.  Co-starring, more or less, with Taylor are a blend of Italian and French actors from both stories that not necessarily share the same screen with their leading man.  The French actress Silvia Solar (“Cannibal Terror”) does share actual screen time with Taylor as the infiltrating villain in the cloak-and-dagger film whereas Sandra Julien (“The Shiver of the Vampires”) mingles deep undercover in the lion’s den of the sex trafficking master of ceremonies, Rasly, played by “Blue Rita’s” Olivier Mathot staged in actual “Cruel Dolls” territory.  Rounding out the patchwork cast is Magda Mundari, Raymond Schettino, Gillian Gill, and “Shining Sex’s” Claude Boisson (credited as Yul Sanders) who can’t seem to scratch his inch for lusting over helpless dames. 

I’ve seen worse cut and paste fuses of different 35mm reels and some not so terrible, yet oblivious a stretch at the seam, “Caligula” comes to mind with the inserted hardcore snippets, but “House of Cruel Dolls” flows and flows pretty well considering the rough segue cuts that blend the 1967 film with the 1974 film without much era style or stock degradation differences.  However, what Chevalier, and also most likely Franco, accomplished with their film had more attributes toward being a hardcore adult movie than being an action packed espionage thriller with prolonged and gratuitous sex scenes.  For example, Gaston rescues Yvette from sex slavery horror after a short-lived shoot out during the opening segment, the pair drive their way to the police station but stop along the way to cool down under the forest trees, lay out a blanket like they’re having a picknick, and have sex before going back to rushing to the authorities.  Plus, also experiencing Claude Boisson uncontrollably salivate over tied up and drugged women and easily make them look feeble as he ravages them is a trope norm of that character in the adult industry.  Plenty of skin makes “House of Cruel Dolls” a surefire sexploitation attraction, but much of the nudity is one-sided with the women baring everything while every man, except for one, keeping his clothes while committing the sleazy act and cinematographer, Gérard Brisseau, remains tight on focusing on two parts:  the clothed humping rear of the misogynistic rapist and the women’s bare nipples being forcibly suckled on. This makes the scenes not pungently powerful but more monotonously dull stuck on loop.  The latter is really laid on thick for the first act, saturating the skin-laden setup with Yvette’s escape and her flashback of how she become a lost doll in the lost doll brothel, but once Jack Taylor makes the scene, the action really starts with solid fight sequences that could rival the Sean Connery era James Bond.  However, you really receive a good chuckle when the big boss dies and story cuts-to Gaston and Yvette, hanging around Gaston’s pool, hugging and smiling that the gang has been wiped out in a drop off, that’s-a-wrap ending that table any coda gratification. 

For the first time released in North America and on Blu-ray home video, Pierre Chevalier’s “House of Cruel Dolls” comes uncut and remastered in Hi-Def, 1080p from the original 35mm transfer by our friends over at Full Moon Features as part of their Eurociné Collection.  Presented in a matted 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the pristine transfer really comes through without really a hint of damage or over the years degradation.  The color palette dices through the natural grain copiously vivid where needed to be character garments, hair, and vehicles.  Contrast has a whispery air about, heavenly almost, throughout without squashing too much of the textures.  The forced Dub English language audio tracks come in two formats – Dolby Digital stereo 2.0 and 5.1 surround sound.  Prepare to have side-splitting, cringe-worthy reactions to the incredible horrendous dubbing of baritone grumbling through the lossy audio tracks.  Even the Jack Taylor impersonator has a different dub than the actual Jack Taylor. Bonus features include trailers of other Euro cult titles. Considering being the only release in North America, “House of Cruel Dolls” is a rubbernecking sight to behold as the Eurotrash epitome of the Eurociné scene of the 1970’s, worth the price of admission just for that.

Own “House of Cruel Dolls” on Blu-ray or DVD!

The Maestro Delivers Us From EVIL! “P.O. Box Tinto Brass” and “IsTintoBrass” reviewed! (Blu-ray / Cult Epics)

Posted by Steven Lewis on


Tinto Brass, whose very name is synonymous with erotica cinema, presents a tantalizing series of letters and videotapes, written and recorded for him by adoring women executing their most sensual fantasies, exploiting their carnal desires, and giving the director a peak into their wet dreams. Brass’s lovely young assistant retrieves numerous submissions from his P.O. Box and as Brass scours through the countless correspondences, attempting to penetrate through the mundane to find that special something from his female fans, the stories become animated from text to short film visuals that involve spread eagle voyeurism, reluctantly desiring wife swapping, and a little husband and wife role playing to spice up their drab marital sex life by incorporating home movies. Each woman is able to confide in the maestro who harbors a gift for delivering classy and joyous erotica to not only the cinema market, but also into his admirers’ private lives.

While America became gradually engrossed by the Showtime syndicated erotic drama series, “Red Shoe Diaries,” hosted by “X-Files” David Duchovny that showcased unconnected sensual stories from women who bared it all in heated encounters with male companions, the Italians’, who were experts in erotica cinema that this time, had their very own, slightly more explicit, version released in 1995 in full-length feature form, cleverly titled “P.O. Box Tinto Brass,” from director, and as titular presenter, the erotic master himself, Tinto Brass. Originally titled “Fermo posta Tinto Brass” in the native dialect,” “P.O. Box Tinto Brass” arrives on a new and restored 2-disc Blu-ray release from Cult Epics and acts as a celebration on not only the filmmakers’ immensely arousing body of work, but also a celebration on the director himself who has the uncanny ability to unearth the hidden away desires in all from his tongue-and-cheeky intimacy story arcs that relieve suppression for exploration of our natural sexual ambitions without the culpability instilled by taboo cultures. Granted, some of the material presented might feel dated and not as salacious as every John and Jane Smith can now utilize their God-given bodies to amass a modest fortune across the world wide web of sex, but to understand today’s culture, which still seems a fair share of sexually oppressive forces, we must look at Tinto Brass’s gift in normalizing what once was bedroom only material. Brass, who sport smoking a signature cigar throughout the film, uses his platform and becomes the vessel of expulsion to remove the privacy and shaming barriers that hinder healthy sexual appetites and, literally, creates a tactile representation of sexual jubilee with little-to-no seething judgement other than that of the character’s own restrictions. There are a ton of Brass trademarks shots that include, but not limited to, the hairy vulvas, a playfulness toward the vagina, exhibitionist flaunting, loads and loads of butt and breast angles in and out of clothes, elaborate location patterns on a grand, maybe art deco, scale, and, perhaps his most notable trademark, the expansive range of setting up elegant shots reflected off mirrors. As a whole, “P.O. Box Tinto Brass” brings a lighthearted and free atmosphere that’s uninhibited and sexy during and between each segment and while Brass is no doughy-eyed David Duchovny, I would be remiss in the lascivious eyes of Tinto Brass if I didn’t mention that after immersing ourselves in the “P.O. Box Tinto Brass” anecdotes, me and my wife had the most passionate, free verse sex we ever had since we’ve tied the knot 8 years ago, an experience that’s akin to an economically-friendly version of sex therapy. Thank you, Maestro!

This leads us into the second disc of this Cult Epics epic release with a 2013 documentary, entitled “IsTintoBrass,” from a longtime Tinto Brass colleague and good friend, Massimiliano Zanin, who delves more into Brass’s political, experimental, and monumental work compositions that shaped the director into who is now the renowned eroticism auteur with a belief and a slogan that the ass is the window into the soul. Thought being born, bred, and flourish as an Italian filmmaker, “IsTintoBrass” speaks volumes about his French influences and his life guiding time at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris where he met Henri Langlois and Lotte H Eisner who exposed Brass to rare, unseen films His time Cinémathèque Française afforded him praise on his first films, such as “Who Works Is Lost” and “Attraction,” that were to the likes of French directors like Jean-Luc Godard and were labeled as a blend of part French New Wave movement and pop cinema. Zanin guides us through Brass’s continuous battles with censorship boards whose biggest problem with his filmic formations was not the nudity, but the supposed transgressions against conventional cinematic norms, especially with “Salon Kitty” that was an atypical example against the latter half of his career and used sex as a means of power of another person. His entrenched struggles didn’t end there as the documentary also shed lights on filmmaker’s most controversial work, “Caligula,” which became not his work due to a an underhanded producer who decidedly desired more sex than story and fought Brass, in more than one court of law, for the rights. Notable friends, colleagues, and film critics go through the eclectic Tinto Brass timeline, recalling and reexamining his decisions and aspirations into a multinational praise of his work. Some of these speakers included Franco Nero (“Dropout”), Helen Mirran (“Caligula”), and Sir Ken Adams (“Salon Kitty”). Plus, there is plenty of T and A to go around,

If Tinto Brass didn’t have a stroke in 2010, Zanin’s documentary wouldn’t have been made three years later as it’s a highlighted tribute of one remarkable Italian filmmaker’s life achievements stemmed from something as terrible as a life threatening ailment; yet, that’s how these things usually go, right? A retrospective acknowledgement, usually overwhelming positive in general, of a great artist whose work is greatly admired, frequently in a posthumous manner. In this case, Zanin saw fit to encase a historical record on Tinto Brass before meeting his maker, beginning with a really vigorous look into his inspirations at the Cinémathèque Française, chalking up much of his earlier work to his time spent looking through reels upon reels of avant garde films, but then Zanin quietly fades out of the path that elevated Brass as the cherished erotic connoisseur. Zanin’s story takes this awkward tangent to only skim the surface of Brass’s erotic films, which is strange since Zanin’s known and collaborated with Brass the last 20 years, about 13 years when this documentary was released, and penned a pair of his Brass’s saucy scripts, “Cheeky” and “Monamour.” Yet, the last 20, if not 30, years is surprisingly fleeting in Zanin’s capsulated effort to immortalize Tinto Brass. Still, the overall film is perhaps more endearing than Tinto Brass would have ever imagined, especially as brash and as perverse as his image portrays him outside the parameters of the filmic dome. Inside that dome, Brass has obtained throughout the decades a following of professional admirers and adoring fans who see him for what he truly is, himself. “IsTintoBrass” isn’t a gratuitous or perverted exhibition of an old man’s horniness; it’s an intoxication of what it means to actually be free from the repressive nature of censorship, the rapturous high of being an unchained artist, and being an obsequious master craftsman of cinema.

Cult Epics delivers a 2-disc limited edition Blu-ray of Tinto Brass’s “P.O. Box Tinto Brass” and Massimiliano Zanin’s “IsTintoBrass.” “P.O. Box Tinto Brass” has been newly restored and re-mastered in 4K high definition from the original 35mm negative and presented is a widescreen, 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The picture is absolutely stunning that revels in the burst of primary colors Brass was keen to implement. The details and the tones on the naked skin flesh out every beauty mark, fiber of hair, and every pore. Typically, Tinto Brass films run purposely a little soft to create a dreamlike, if not fantasy-like, setting to obtain a jovial mood setting for the uninhibited moments, but the details are still strong throughout. “IsTintoBrass” is presented in a widescreen, 1.85:1 aspect ratio, from a 2K transfer scan of digital video, aside from the snippets of Brass’s work. Video presentation is like crystal that obviously wouldn’t distinguish any kind of transfer anomalies because there wouldn’t be any. The Italian language 2.0 Mono LCPM/DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (“P.O. Box Tinto Brass”) and the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround (“IsTintoBrass”) are clearly discernible in all regards, especially in the Tinto Brass directed feature form ’95 with a clarity in the speech, a softer ambience that supports the dialogue rather than be level with it or overwhelm it, a range that mingles to support the dialogue as well. English subtitles are available on both discs. To smooth off any rough edges is a score by Riz Ortolani (“Cannibal Holocaust”) with a vibrant, cheeky score that fits perfectly into Brass’s wheelhouse of curvy, adventurous women. Bonus features on the first disc includes a 2003 interview with Tinto Brass who gives a brief background on his cinematic start, poster and photo gallery, and the trailer. Disc 2’s bonus material includes an interview with writer-director Massimiliano Zanin providing his reasoning for this documentary, a Tinto Brass achieve photo gallery, a couple of short interviews praising Brass’s passion, and trailers The package is also a work of art sheathed inside a cardboard, black and blood red slipcover and inside the casing is a 48-page booklet of Gianfranco Salis stills from the Tinto Brass achieve which are beautiful and almost Playboy-esque. To experience Tinto Brass is invaluable enough, but to experience his films in high definition is without a doubt worth it’s weight in gold with the powerhouse release of “P.O. Box Tinto Brass” and a retrospective documentary “IsTintoBrass” from Cult Epics!

Check out the LIMITED EDITION “P.O. Box Tinto Brass” release!