Tag Archives: Candyman

Tony Todd’s Last EVIL Released Film! “Cutter’s Club” reviewed! (Full Moon Feature / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Cutter’s Club” is Ready for Your Corpse! Buy it Here!

Two promising surgeons Jack and Jill seeking to reach new heights beyond their Hippocratic oath find themselves in presence of Dr. George Roberts, a once renowned surgeon turned obsessed head of a secretly society of surgeons known as the Cutter’s Club who use their skill to be monster makers, craved from slivers of fresh human flesh and harvested internal organs.  Suffering from a severe dissociative order, Dr. Roberts is eager to recruit his former lover and colleague Jill who has the necessary surgical skillset and medical knowledge to bring his two-headed, pint-sized monstrosity to life.  There’s only one problem, Jill’s boyfriend Jack is not in Dr. Roberts’s good graces and is kept out of secret operations to piece together a monster.  As Dr. Roberts’s split personality divides even further and the police become aware of the missing corpses used in their experiments, all of the Cutter’s Clubs efforts, two-headed monster, and even their lives are in jeopardy.

Filmed in 2005, shelved due to lack of funding, and thought lost by the lab storing the negative, the Charles Band directed “Cutter’s Club” went through hell and back to be finally released 20 years later.  The science fiction-horror teeters the same basic premise and principals of David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future” where surgery is the new sex and expressive art, a concept Cronenberg had for decades prior, yet the “Videodrome” director couldn’t fully flesh out the idea into cinematic fruition until recently, starring Viggio Mortensen and Léa Seydoux in 2022.  The script that’s less body horror and more mad science than Cronenberg’s vision is penned by “Thir13en Ghosts” and “AMIEE:  The Visitor” writer, and long time Full Moon narrative collaborator, Neal Marshall Stevens under his pseudonym of Benjamin Carr.  Re-discovered, ironically, the same month Tony Todd died, the “Cutter’s Club” was restored to be the unreleased swan song production from the late and great “Candyman” actor.  Band produces the venture under his founded company Full Moon.

This November is the one-year anniversary of Tony Todd’s death, yet the actor still has new movie releases with “Cutter’s Club” being one of them.  As Dr. George Roberts, Todd plays to his stereotyped tune of being large and in-charge, commanding the screen with his low-frequency voice and intense stares, but Dr. Roberts also has a softer side in his disassociation, a side that’s kinder and gentler against the mad doctor version of himself but that more gentile version barely surfaces and Todd’s ultimately stuck playing an aggressor role he’s all too familiar with and known for.  Not to speak too ill of the dead, but Todd does a bit of overacting with the character by stretching into unnecessary exposition and melodrama, especially when kinder Dr. Roberts briefly sits behind the driver’s seat.  A more down-to-Earth performance comes from Melissa Searing (“Deadly Beloved”) as the anti-heroine Jill.  Grounding an overly articulated Todd to the story, Searing makes for a decent ambitious surgeon trapped inside the confines of the law and ethics and being romantically attached to colleague Jack who’s own self-indulgent inclusion is motivated by the affection he has for Jill.  Played by Davee Youngblood (“Bigfoot County”), Jack looks like the typical Full Moon principal white guy actor that’s more surfer dude with an early 2000’s spikey hair and puka pendant necklace and less defined as a serious surgeon other than wearing the blue scrubs.  Along with Todd’s Dr. Roberts, the Cutter’s Cub society is comprised of lesser disturbed promising medical professionals with David Sean Robinson, Jemal McNeil, and Raelyn Hennessee in various facets of medicine from anesthesiology to retrieving dead bodies from the morgue to being star students when it comes to surgery.  The latter Hennessee is also supposed to playing the jealous other woman to Jill with an at interval relationship with Dr. Roberts that suggests a level perversion or infatuation we’re never privy to.  Jon Simanton, from another Charles Band production “The Creeps,” fills out the cast as the man in a monster suit, stuffing himself into Two-Head, the pieced together monstrous creation.

Without a doubt, horror fans will flock to get their hands on the last and once lost Tony Todd title, but as with many notable genre actors, only a handful of first-class films out of many of the horror legends’ filmographies deserve to be stamped and sealed into their legacy.  “Cutter’s Club” will not be one of those remarkably renowned films.  And like usual, the interesting story of monster making and crafting art out of the flesh of the recently deceased is cut off at the knees by the production’s lack of funding, funding that has rarely been outside the inbreeding of crew talent that retains a certain staleness and the necessary funding to elevate “Cutter’s Cub” from out of the depths of dirt cheap filmmaking and into novel and crisply stylish territory.  Charles Band also nearly always finds a way to integrate his fascination with miniaturized dolls and creatures by having Two-Head be short and stout side villain, adding his directing trademark where he can.  You know it’s a dime-store production not by the rudimentary crafted man-in-a-shoddy-monster suit or the bunch of greenhorn actors that can’t express lines or actions without sullying themselves but rather by the obvious nude nipple pastie on Melissa Searing as she rides an over-sex acting Davee Youngblood nearly convulses out of the bed while lying on his back.  While nude nipples pasties themselves don’t indicate the production’s value, its the from behind-and-over-the-shoulder perspective camera shot that provides a little Searing side boob with the bubbling and loose pastie that really speaks to the fast-and-loose “Cutter’s Club” construction, screaming to the top of it’s lungs that not even a nipple pastie is worth the time and effort to fix for realism.  The story itself has the bone density to stand on it’s own two feet but has hardly any flesh clingy on the Jill love triangle with Jack and George, Jill’s intense motivation to be beyond the grave of a conventional surgeon’s oath to help people, and the secretly society’s wishy-washy goal that doesn’t quite materialize whether their objective is to sculpt art out of flesh or to be monster makers as their deranged core values.

Todd fans will surely want to pick up this lost but not forgotten movie that has been resurrected from the tomb of misplaced films. Full Moon Features handles their own production and distribution with a Blu-ray release on an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, BD25, formatted in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  For an early-to-mid 2000s horror, that pleasant film layer of 35mm stock grain is a sight for sore eyes from modern day digital capturing with natural saturation and texturization that provide better practicality to the picture quality. Depth between medium to close up shorts offer plenty of outline and detail around the simultaneous focus points.  There’s not a ton of color range or texture with a most of the mise-en-scene blends a bland swirl of greens, browns, and blacks mostly only a few micro pops of brighter hues, though muted from the desaturated grading, coming through with Jack and Jill’s blue scrubs and we do get some nice sliminess from Two-Head’s stucco flesh.  Full Moon encodes two English audio options:  a Dolby Digital 2.0 and a Dolby Digital 5.1.  Both mixes keep put mostly in front with little atmosphere surround through the back and a front channels, resulting in the stereo mix to be just as adequate as the surround.  Dialogue retains prevalence throughout with the carnivalesque soundtrack of a usually tagged team of Charles Band-directed and Richard Band scored mix replaced with the Jonathan Walters trickling keyboard struck alto keys of menacing science.  English closed captioning is available.  Special features include an interview featurette with director Charles Band and actors Melissa Searing and Davee Youngblood.  The official trailer rounds out the special content laid out alongside a Full Moon promotional trailer for their streaming video magazine, VIdeoZone.  The standard Amaray Blu-ray contains collective character compositional artwork with no other physical trimmings.  The 82 minute, not rated film has region free playback capabilities. 

Last Rites: Jack and Jill might have went to fetch a pail of water, but “Cutter’s Club” is the one that fell and broke its crown. Nice to see Tony Todd in a relatively new project posthumously; yet, having no more financial standing to finish, “Cutter’s Club” feels just that, unfinished, as another slapdash, get-it-out-there-on-the-shelves, product to bank as the unseen film.

“Cutter’s Club” is Ready for Your Corpse! Buy it Here!

EVIL’s Ready to Rock! “Hard Rock Zombies” reviewed! (MVD Visual / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Hard Rock Zombies” Rocks out on DVD! Check it Out Here!

A hair metal rock band will a killer ballad Holy Moses is on the verge of making it big time.  With a scouted gig at a venue in the small-town of Grand Guignol, Jesse, Tommy, Robby and Chuck are ready to rock the house with the help from band manager Ron but Grand Guignol’s narrowminded men and women, including the sheriff and government officials, will stop at nothing to cancel the show that has their children and teenage daughters enthralled with what the parents call scandalous rock’n’roll.  In favor of canceling and to sate their unquenchable bloodlust, a strange but wealthy eccentric family of perverse killers invite the band to play at their mansion only to kill them one by-one in a horrible death.  The town is not all full of bigots and murderers as Jesse’s rockin’ romance with Cassie, a daughter of Grand Guignol, plays an incantation cassette tape that rises them from the grave to seek hang-banging revenge! 

Femme fatales.  Dwarf-sized ghouls.  Werewolves in wheelchairs.  Voyeuristic snuff photographers.  Gas-crazy Nazis!  “Hard Rock Zombies” may thematically state rock’n’roll lives forever by way of tuneful necromantic resurrection, but the 1984 comedy-horror is a complete smorgasbord of absurdity.  Helmed by the India-born and Ivy League educated Krishna Shah  “Hard Rock Zombies” is a multifaceted vaudeville act set to the rock is the devil music trope.  Also alternatively known as “Rock Zombies” or “Heavy Metal Zombies,” Shah cowrites the metal music metastasizing script alongside David Allen Ball, both of whom would collaborate once and final more with the follow year’s teen comedy “American Drive-In.”   The in and around Los Angeles shoot is a production of the Patel/Shah Film Company with Shah producing and Shashi Patel serving as executive producer along with the debut of “Candyman” and “Lord of Illusion’s”  Sigurjon Sighvatsson and Steve Golin as associate producers. 

E.J. Curse, Geno Andrews (“Dr. Alien”), Sam Mann (“Roller Blade”), and Mick McMains make up the hair metal band Holy Moses and none of them had real acting experience.  The novice lot do their best to express themselves as an 80’s metal with large and heavily teased hair to produce maximum body and volume, tight and outlandish leather and revealing clothing, and apart from the competent and skilled skateboarding, move in antiquated dance moves familiar to the era.  They may not have a single convincing acting bone in their performance but credit to their overall appearance that speaks to the film’s title.  Though the band is intended central focus, they share a copious amount of screentime and development with the family of frightening agendas and secret identities.  The story even begins with attractive blonde Elsa (Lisa Toothman, “Witchcraft III:  The Kiss of Death”) seducing two young men to their demise while a slicked dress man takes pictures from the nearby bushes alongside two playful, dressed-in-black dwarfs, one human Mickey (Phil Fondacaro, “Willow”) and one monster Buckey (Gary Friedkin, “Cool World”).  It’s like a scene straight out of a David Lynch movie.  We learn this group belongs to an eccentric grandfather patriarch (Emanuel Shipow, “Biohazard”) and his wheelchair bound wife Eva (Nadia, “Dark Romances Vol. 1”) eager to strike down their next victims with clandestinely goosestepping and small mustache fervor.  Frazzled but loyal band manager Ron (Ted Wells) and Jesse’s Grand Guignol lover girl Cassie (Jennifer Coe) are seemingly the only two sane and rational characters who favor the sweet ballads of Holy Moses rather than the sinister genocide of an experiment happy dysfunctional family.  “Hard Rock Zombies” has an abundance of supporting characters and extras to give weight toward a Shah and company’s first-time production with a select secondary cast list of Jack Bliesener (“Crime Killer”), Richard Vidan (“Scarecrows”), Vincent Albert DiStefano, Christopher Perkins, David Schroeder, Michael David Simms (“Scarecrows”), David O’Hara (“Star Worms:  Attack of the Pleasure Pods”), and Donald Moran.

“Hard Rock Zombies” was probably more fun writing and performing in than it was piecing together a coherent narrative that spins like an unruly top going in unpredictable and varied wandering ways.  The amount of subplots against the core resurrection of a metal band erode the very essence of their supernaturally charged revenge because the primary focus on their rise from dead and how that resurrection incantation came into the rockers’ possession can quickly be forgotten as the exposition and the defining titular moment can be easily missed if you blinked for 0.0002 of a second.  There’s also the aforementioned circumstantial subordinate themes of adults and/or parents unwavering, harsh rebelliousness against the adolescent swooning hard rock and of the concealed true malevolent nature of the town’s murderous hodgepodge of a family that turn out to be bloodlust Nazis with an assumed case of monstrous, experimentational evil coursing through their veins, as seen with the unexpected shape-shifting wheelchair bound grandmother who can transform into a werewolf, complete with dual switchblades, and the ghoulie-like dwarf who eventually feasts upon himself into nonexistence.  “Hard Rock Zombies” transcends viewers into a bizarro world where, initially, seemingly plausible issues around an older generation’s labeling of infernal rock’n’roll music, stirring up townhall meetings and protests they see has harmful influence of the younger generation but then the topsy-turvy and screwball antics of heinous villainy goaled with and having already done committing atrocities is a complete farce on the actual, factual, historical events of ethnic cleansing.  Shah definitely makes light with the tone-deaf analogy with great zest and jest but without a more honed in effort and concentration on just the rockers back from the dead, this absurd 80’s comedy-horror fails to address its intentions.   

If not looking to spend a ton of money on the Vinegar Syndrome’s Blu-ray “Hard Rock Zombies,” the MVD Visual DVD is an economic alternative that won’t downsize your wallet.  The MPEG2 encoded, standard definition 720p, DVD5 suits this eccentric horror-comedy just fine, retaining its campy nature in the ballpark of an unrestored scan into 2K territory but still have the working print Vinegar Syndrome used for their high-def transfer, still presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  What’s encoded has not been sheened into an apt color correction and buffed with a higher pixel count for better, digital vivid saturation and better, digital defined textures, but “Hard Rock Zombies” is innocuous as the scenes require less eye squinting for finer details and a perverse need for range of color in what’s more of a surface-level squall of rock-infused, nonsensical horror.  Again, a technical spec that won’t knock your socks off and does muddle the fidelity quite a bit, the English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has less amp, and this is where any kind of impact “Hard Rock Zombies” would have had hurts the most.  Extended Holy Moses montages and concerts, alive and dead, should be an unharnessed power of ballad rock and supernatural discords for a story driven by monsters and music, especially one that uses an Iggy Pop-like mumbling incantation to rise Jesse and his band mates from the grave.  English subtitles are available for selection.  MVD’s release is a purely a feature only substitute with no special feature and the standard DVD case has the same artwork as the Blu-ray counterparts, nicely tinged on its rad rock’n’roll and death illustrated cover art.  Another difference is the rating with MVD’s release coming in at a R-rating versus the NR Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome, yet this is most likely either incorrect rating or a re-cut of the film as both format features have a runtime of 97 minutes.  MVD’s DVD has region free playback. 

Last Rites: Rock’n’roll never dies! For “Hard Rock Zombies,” the phrase rings true with undead rockers seeking revenge from beyond the grave. For the DVD, there’s not enough overall elan behind the release to bang your head to in this barebones and untouched alternative that’s a good budget friendly option for the features only enthusiasts.

“Hard Rock Zombies” Rocks out on DVD! Check it Out Here!

The Bishop and Castle seek to Checkmate EVIL! “Sabotage” reviewed! (MVD Visual: Rewind Collection / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Sabotage” on MVD Visual’s Rewind Collection Blu-ray!

Former Navy Seal Michael Bishop was nearly killed on a gone awry Bosnia mission at the hands of former special forces soldier turned mercenary Jason Sherwood.  Three years and one court martial later, Bishop’s recently hired as a bodyguard for a wealthy businessman and his wife until a successful assassination on the businessman leaves Bishop as the prime suspect in the eyes of Special FBI Agent Louise Castle and his former Bosnia commander Nicholas Tollander now a spook with the CIA.  As Bishop strives to prove his innocence with the help of single mother Castle, looking to impress and rise in the agency to support her daughter, he’s determined to uncover an elaborate conspiracy that involves the FBI, CIA, and the man that put seven holes into him in Bosnia, Jason Sherwood, who enjoys the playful art of mercenary work.  The deep-rooted plot that exploited Bishop as a scapegoat to eliminate gunrunners plays out like a game of chess and each move is deadlier than the next. 

“Sabotage” is the 1996 independent, Canadian cloak-and-dagger thriller from “The Gate” and “I, Madman” director Tibor Takács and cowritten between Rick Filon (“The Redemption: Kickboxer 5”) and Michael Stokes (“Jungleground”).  “Sabotage’s” inspiration pulls from the simple, strategic game of chess where all the pieces, moves, and players are witnessed in plain sight in what is a tactical tornado of interagency spydom and the innocent are only the pawns in the middle, sacrificed to be a part of the puzzle to strike the monarchy behind the shadows on behalf of the across adversaries.  The Andy Emilio (“Shadow Builder”) produced and Ash R. Shan (“Lion Heart”) and Paul Wynn (“Tiger Claws III”) executively produced feature, shot in Toronto Canada (which also doubles for Bosnia in certain brushy areas), is a production of Applecreek Productions and presented by Imperial Entertainment. 

Working off another script from Rick Filon, the previous being “The Redemption : Kickboxer 5,” and hot off his humanoid cheetah role in John Frankenheimer’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau” remake, opposite Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, the mixed martial artist Mark Dacascos plays the setup and scorned Michael Bishop, disgraced by his own military organizations, and reduced to being a bodyguard for an unscrupulous businessman.  Despite being soft spoken, Dacascos has great charisma on screen that mixes greatly with his eclectic array of martial art fighting styles, such as Muay Thai and Kung Fu.  Dacascos is a shoe in for leading man material, which also includes his swarthy good looks, and does fill the shoes of being a blacklisted former Navy Seal now on the hunt for who burned him in a botched Bosnia mission years earlier.  However, Bishop’s early motivation speaks more toward his character than his need for revenge as Bishop is not aware that it was his former attempted murderer James Sherwood, played by the towering and formidable Tony Todd (“Candyman”), who whacked his client.  Bishop becomes obsessed with the case which speaks to his loyalty and his completist mentality to see something through.  Overshadowing the leading man is Sherwood as Tony Todd instincts with this character is to be a merciless and cutting with his smooth handiwork and jibe remarks, all the while doing the horrible things with a sociopathic smile on his face.  Opposite Dacascos, in a semi-love interest role, is the pre-“Matrix” Carrie Anne Moss as Special Agent Castle who has more complexity of character than Dacascos and Todd combined.  Castle is a struggling single-mother trying to make headway in her governmental career but hits a snag when her morality is checked as she must either stay the course and go along with corruption to obtain security for her daughter or do the righteous thing and unsnarl dishonestly at the highest level with extreme prejudice for her sake of her daughter’s life.  Between the three principal leads, Castle’s arc is the steepest and more stirring with internal conflict, a testament to Moss’s performance.  Graham Greene (“Antlers”), James Purcell (“Bloodwork”), John Neville (“Urban Legend”), Heidi von Palleske (“Dead Ringers”), and Richard Coulter make up the rest of the cast.

“Sabotage” is a down-the-rabbit hole spooktacular 90s thriller, and I don’t mean spooky as in scary.  What I’m referring to is the characters’ covert agencies, such as the spooks of the Counter-Intelligent Agencies, and far-reaching operations that meddle and deconstruct a what should be a tidy organizational design with pot-stirring double-crossing, even triple-crossing, narrative paths that can be a strain to keep straight.  The film’s prelude and core story span 3 years apart and connect while there’s a simultaneous backdrop narrative that’s also connects but only exclusively in exposition.  Audiences will have to hamster wheel their mental gears to connect the dots and keep up with the pacing in this ever-evolving plotline that keeps the action caffeinated with a winding, hard-target center.  Takács also stylizes “Sabotage” with bullet-tracking special effects, high impact shelling, and an indulgence of explosive blood squibs that elevates the independent picture to an upper-class of B movie and gives the feature an edge of fun and entertainment that dichotomizes it from the more slapdash action films of the mid-90s where sex-appeal played more of a role than any other kind of actual action. 

Number 60 on the spine of MVD Visual’s Rewind Collection Blu-ray, Tibor Takács’s “Sabotage” breathes new life into the crisscrossing, projectile-pursuing, scacchic espionage extraordinaire. The AVC encoded BD50 provides a 1080p high-def resolution presented in an anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. A well-suffused and maintained print results in an excellent detailing of pixels and a punchy-noir grading. Details on the 2K scan print are historically omitted here, like with many in the Rewind Collection catalogue, but “Sabotage” doesn’t feign to be a product of enhanced visual replication with an organically pleasing form with minimal grain and only one noted frame containing age or damage wear. The uncompressed English language LPCM 2.0 stereo has abundance of vitality, discerning the layers through the dual channel funnel. Range of melee fire power has individualized zenith occurrences rendered at the right synchronization and depth makes the distinction of foreground and background dialogue, ambience, and the sort. Speaking of dialogue (pun intended), the uncompressed encoding keeps faithful fidelity, an ample and adequate of clearly expressed conversations without ever sounding muddled or lost in the skirmish. Optional English subtitles are included. Special features are little light for a Rewind Collection bannered release but what’s available packs a wallop with two new interviews with stars Tony Todd and Mark Dacascos on Zoom, or whichever face time platform is being used, going through their recollection and thoughts of “Sabotage” from nearly three decades ago. A Mark Dacascos trailer reel rounds out the special feature content. The rigid slipcover contains the reprint of the original “Sabotage” poster in a mockup of a VHS case; however, this particular Rewind Collection cover composition has less flair to sell the VHS facsimile. Inside cover art of the clear Blu-ray Amaray case contains the same poster sheet but is reversible with a less-is-more one sheet. In the insert section is a folded mini-poster of the primary cover art and, opposite, the BD50 is pressed with a plastic-patterned, VHS-tape motif. The region free Blu-ray comes unrated and has a 99-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Overall, a gratifying A/V and physical presentation of a mid-90’s, mid-level action-thriller encompassing a showcase of Mark Dacascos’s leading man chops as well as a different side to Tony Todd that isn’t encapsulated in the supernatural during the height of his career.

“Sabotage” on MVD Visual’s Rewind Collection Blu-ray!

This is Not Taylor Swift’s “EVIL” Hit Song. “Cruel Summer” reviewed! (Scream Team Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Cruel Summer” on Blu-ray Home Video!

Heather and Felissa have planned the perfect weekend party for summer kickoff.  The custom invitations are set for their friends to cordially request their attendance for an 80’s themed murder mystery at Heather’s aunt and uncle’s cabin home.  Upon their arrival, the stock up on booze and groceries, fake knives and masks are in hand, and the game is about to begin, but little do they know, the surprises and terror in store for them are not manufactured by the rules of a party game.  A masked serial killer is heading straight for their night of fun and games, killing anyone who steps in his path, including other tourists, locals, and even the law enforcement called in to check on the party noise levels.  When friends suddenly disappear throughout the night, that strange feeling of derealization takes over and worry sets in that something other than being passed out from partying too hard has happened to them and that same fate will soon happen to them. 

Let’s face it.  All horror nowadays is rooted by the inspiration from horror long ago.   Originality has all but faded from the conceptual ideas, script pages, and in what the camera records.  Independent horror filmmaking is basically devotion digitized and the easily accessible equipment has turned every kid, who grew up watching Todd Browning, George A. Romero, and Dario Argento, into splintered, hackneyed versions of their favorite directors.  Most indies either follow similar formulaic narratives and styles or cast and cameo acting icons to draw upon homage or headlined sales, but for Scott Tepperman’s 2021 Indiegogo-funded slasher “Cruel Summer” there lies little effort in either department despite the film’s throwback claim.  The “Nightblade” and “Hell’s Bells” director based in Tallahassee, FL is not opaque with the 80’s obsession he integrates into his COVID production under his cofounded Los Bastardz Productions with Jim O’Rear.

If looking up “Cruel Summer” on IMDB.com or any other online movie database that lists the cast and the associated character names, a trend might pop out at you but might not be evident at first.  Since I personally try to avoid looking up or researching films or watch trailers to sideline any kind of preconceived biases, I began to pick up halfway through the runtime the correlation between all the character names in that they’re nods to renowned horror actors and directors.  Some examples include Ashlyn McCain playing principal lead Heather (as in “A Nightmare on Elm Street’s” Heather Langenkamp), Bridget Linda Froemming plays Felissa (as in “Sleepaway Camp’s” Felissa Rose), Harold McLeod II plays Tobin (as in “Saw’s” Tobin Bell), Will Horton plays Vincent (as in “House on Haunted Hill’s” Vincent Price), and Scott Tepperman plays Gunnar (as in “Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s” Gunnar Hansen.  There’s also references to Barbara Crampton (“Re-Animator”), Doug Bradley (“Hellraiser”), Robert Englund (“A Nightmare on Elm Street”), Tony Todd (“Candyman”), Linnea Quigley (“Night of the Demons”), Katheryn Bigelow (director of “Near Dark”), and William Lustig (director of “Maniac”).  While not an entirely novel idea to use genre names as characters, what’s wholly impressive is this scale of use but the characters themselves more-or-less dawdle without progressing the story or adding much substance.  Once the friends arrive at the house, not much else happens between them and no individual or group character arcs take shape and flesh out, leaving just potential fresh kills for a family of whack jobs with a loose tragic and traumatizing backstory with an incongruitous twist in family relations.  “Cruel Summer’s” cast rounds out with Jimmy Maguire (“Hell’s Bells), Paul Van Scott (“Shark Waters”), Jim O’Rear, H. (Hannah) Marie, R.J. Cecott (“House of Whores”), Keith Bachelor Jr. (“Survival of the Apocalypse”), Kim Casciotti (“I Dared You! Truth or Dare Part 5”), Ashley Casciotti, Abby Graves, and Aria Renee Kenney.

Not to be confused with the popular titular track by the teen enthralling, mega popstar Taylor Swift or the teenage angsty and melodramatic, anthological seasoned series of the same title that once starred Kevin Smith’s daughter Harley Quinn Smith, “Cruel Summer” has loose ties to the other two media consumptions with a rudimentary display of teenage complications that turns full blown slasher in a matter of minutes, ranking the indie horror as bottom shelf goods.  Cruelty lies within the character treatment in an unsatisfactory means to character’s life and/or their demise among a slew of plot holes galore, such as where are Heather’s talked about Aunt and Uncle who own the house?  Why are the killers suddenly interested in the house and the current occupants if they’ve been living next door or in the area all this time?  Is it just happenstance that the killers have imbedded kin in the group of friends travelling to this very house?  My head spins with questions that don’t play out with answers in what is truly a cruel movie that really doesn’t display the ostensible season of Summer with characters in unseasonal jackets, sweats, and flannel and staying in-doors to play in-door games.  Returning to what seems to be an epicenter of importance, the house feels keystone to the merciless slaughter, yet in the same breath, the explanation of executions doesn’t make much sense in the grand scheme of insanity cases, pulling the lynchpin on the narrative structure to have the story collapse on itself by relying on a cock and bull outcome in a slack climax.   

Scream Team Releasing, a distributor who I’ve praised the positive reviewed releases of “Dude Bro Massacre III” and “Rave,” is also home to “Cruel Summer” on Blu-ray home video.  The AVC encoded, high-definition, 1080p resolution BD50 maintains detail composure fairly well with a decoding bitrate average of 30Mbps albeit some fluctuation in the bitrate between exterior lit night scenes and the interior lit scenes.  “Cruel Summer” is more reliant on natural lighting where possible without hyper stylizing with color grading and misfitting CGI blood, resulting in a natural veneer that looks uninspired but adequate for the budget.  There is some minor splotching/banding in darker spots that is the extent of compression issues. The English language Dolby Digital stereo 2.0 mix has difficulty with sealing the rough-and-ready sound design when splicing multiple takes. Dialogue renders over nicely enough but the filtering out of extra elements, such as wind and echoes, that sneak into the recording and though a little background adds a bit of verisimilitude, there’s just too much start and stop audio files and there too intertwined within a varying levels of volume amplitude and varying levels of depth delineation, sometimes muffled or stifled to a softer mix. There are no subtitles available on this release. Bonus features include A Not-So-Cruel Summer featurette with cast and crew interviews, a glimpse behind-the-scenes that goes around scene setups and getting some background on what they’re doing at that time, an audio commentary with director Scott Tepperman going deep into every scene and their backstory with opinions on his cast but eventually Tepperman cuts out near the unveiling climax and he’s just silently watching the film with some snickering or sinus clearings to keep us aware he’s still there, Scott Tepperman, Jim O’Rear, and some of the cast’s Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign fundraiser spiel for a new kind of 80’s slasher, another Indiegogo proof of concept video and pitch, the cast and crew divulge their favorite slasher flick, the grindhouse trailer, and the trailer. The Scream Team Releasing is not rated, runs at a slim 78-minutes, and has region free playback. Don’t sweat over “Cruel Summer” in what is a lukewarm, low-budget slasher with little-to-no curb appeal and the only thing going for the Scott Tepperman feature is the filmmaker’s enthusiasm for 80’s horror which has seemingly been misplaced from the 80’s inspired film itself.

“Cruel Summer” on Blu-ray Home Video!

When Your Shame and Guilt Turn EVIL! “Prey for the Devil” reviewed! (Lionsgate / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Prey for the Devil” on Blu-ray home video.  Purchase a Copy Today!

The rite of exorcism has been strictly performed only by Catholic priest; a decree enforced by the Church for more than a century.  At the Saint Michael the Archangel School of Exorcism in Boston, Massachusetts, Ann, a young nurse caring for suspected possessed individuals, finds herself bound personally to a demon from her childhood.  An opened-minded Father invites her to study exorcism as an observer only, but when Ann is able to connect to beyond the demon of a terminally possessed little girl, her theory on exorcisms goes against Church doctrine.  Unable to officially help the little girl without agitating trouble, Ann performs back-alley exorcisms to prove her theories correct, bring her findings to the Church, prepare herself against a demon hungry for her soul, and save the life of a girl bound for transport to the Vatican where she will surely expire.  Ann’s past and present collide in a battle between light and dark with a young girl’s life hanging in the balance.

Possession and exorcism movies have become rather formulaic in the last two decades with more than most being derivative as surpassing the bar on William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” has been an uphill battle, but, in my opinion, director Daniel Stamm has figured out a path to make the wavering subgenre emerge from the depths of the Netherworld and take possession with a different angle. “Prey for the Devil” is a terrifying tale by screenwriting partners and brothers Earl Richey Jones and Todd R. Jones, the first horror work from the “Rio” and “Johnson Family Vacation” writers, and the script, under the original working title of “The Devil’s Light, is designed by “Halloween H20” co-writer, Frank Zappia.  The Hamburg, Germany-born Stamm returns to the demonically charged, demon possession genre having found moderate success with fans in his 2010 pseudo-doc/found footage film “The Last Exorcism.”  More than a decade later, Stamm is still sending young girls up climbing up the corner of walls in his latest exorcism themed entry produced by the Jones brothers, Jeff Levine, Jessica Malanphy, and Paul Brooks under production companies Gold Circle Films (“Slither,” “Blood Creek”) and Lionsgate (“Saw” franchise).   

“Prey for the Devil” has an embattled protagonist facing two opposing fronts – one fowl demon hellbent on devouring the Godsent Ann from the inside out and one the Church solely for being a woman wanting to practice what’s been appointed as a man’s vocation. Jacqueline Byers has been penned to play the curious and targeted nun and the “Bad Samaritan” actress doesn’t disappoint being the center of attention without overstepping conceitedly into Ann’s habit. The story never feels like it’s Ann, paralleling similar to the overall theme of looking past the surface level demon and understanding the person’s state of consciousness that might have invited the demon inside. Byers evokes more curiosity of a woman drawn to exorcism because of her own past involving an abusive mother (Koyna Ruseva) who, when listening to the voice inside her head, would hurt child Ann with a tough tugging, decorative comb. In Ann’s way is the Church represented by Sister Euphemia (Lisa Palfrey, “The Feast”), Father Quinn (Colin Salmon, “Resident Evil”), and Cardinal Matthews, played by the late Ben Cross (“Exorcist: The Beginning”) who would succumb to cancer after the completion of his role. With a trifecta of solid performances, the Church opposition lacks fortitude in coming down hard on Ann for not only taking a shining toward a priest’s appointed aptitude, but also for performing an unauthorized exorcism on a desperate priest’s sister. Her desperate priest friend, Father Dante (Christian Navarro, “13 Reasons Why“), is a sympathetic friend without much skin in the game of sticking his white collared neck out for Ann. “Prey for the Devil” introduces the teenage actress Posy Taylor with a chillingly consumed Natalie who has a strong semblance to Regan when demonized to the fullest and in a while gown. The film rounds out the cast with Nicholas Ralph, Keith Bartlett, and “Candyman’s” Virginia Madsen as the psychiatrist using science to disprove possession.

“Prety for the Devil” sets the stage strong by defining from the very opening credits that women were forbidden to perform the rite of exorcism. There’s even back support from Sister Euphemia giving her glares of disapproval and a library that limits the access to priest approved restricted texts, but Ann slides into the realm of exorcisms when little push back that begs the question why no other nun ever attempted to enroll in the demon extraction rituals course? Perhaps being set in the permissive Boston and not the draconian Vatican might have something to do with it, but the theme of inequality is ultimately suppressed and dispelled from the story, leaving Sister Ann to face a one-front battle against the unholy creatures of the underworld inhabiting those closest to her. For supernatural special effects, the computer visual imagery renders a meticulously blended and seamless compositional execution from a team under VF/X supervisor Laurent Spillemaecker (“Overlord,” “Martyrs’). The mesh of reality and virtual reality becomes indistinguishable to the point where good scares scenes come about as a result. There are plenty physical effects that are joint into a pivot from the visuals and the motions don’t have an ounce of clunkiness to them. While we touched upon the theme of inequality of women in the Church, “Prey for the Devil’s” other theme revolves around a fairly common one in films today – guilt or shame. The new angle the story provides ceases to look at possession not from a demon focused level but to reach in and try to convince the person within that they’re at fault for whatever it is they grieve in shame for and to tell them whatever the case may be, no fault is put on them. Novel enough to be interesting, guilt and shame will forever be vilified and demonized, literally, in most horror. For “Prey for the Devil,” the element of anguish proves to be more powerful than most who utilize it, capitalizing in on the power of being overcome by it, and turning it into a nasty, soul-swallowing distemper one may not come back from. This is why Virginia Madsen’s psychiatrist character exists, to provide that presence of psychosis and other mental disabilities that sometimes appear to be demonic in nature to the naked, untrained eye. The story does well to create an alternate universe around this idea by having the Church admit patients with undiagnosed disorders as they could be more than what meets the eye.

Not quite the nunsploitation one might be hoping for, but “Prey for the Devil” envisages self-conscious emotions as a wide-open door for pain, suffering, and unmitigated self-punishment. Lionsgate Home Entertainment presents “Prety for the Devil” on a high definition, 1080p, AVC encoded Blu-ray, DVD, and digital code release with a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. With tight quarters of Saint Michaels, a fictional location setup from Sofia University in Palo Alto, California, the anamorphic lens compacts hallways and auditoriums cylindrically, offering more space than actuality, but the format doesn’t necessarily fit this type of a film that offers no vast landscape or much depth or long shots. Not much else to say negatively about the digital image that offers a darker, low contrasted tone. The audio track has three audio options: an English Dolby Atmos, a Spanish 5.1 Dolby Audio, and a French 5.1 Dolby Audio. For the English Atmos, the format fully immerses the viewer into a complete surround sound experience with each crescendo jump scares as well as in the middle of a good versus evil quarrel. Crisp and spatial, Atmos on the release takes advantage of the infrasound to build tension where it might be lost in other audio formats and also italicizes the ambient composition into the Nathan Barr’s (“From Dusk till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter”) classical and haunting lullaby scores. The special features include an audio commentary with director Daniel Stamm and principal lead actress Jacqueline Byers, a 41-minute featurette with in-depth and retrospective interviews with cast and crew Possessed: Creating Prey for the Devil, Nathan Barr’s discussion on creating the score for the film A Lullaby of Terror, exposing the film’s visuals effects The Devil’s Tricks, a feature-length, nearly 2-hour roundtable read of the original first screenplay draft from the cast, and an Exorcist and Psychologist discussion about the possession with screenwriter Robert Zappia mediating (or maybe even moderating) the comments. The physical release comes in a traditional Blu-ray snapper case with artwork cover pictured with one of film’s rememberable scenes. Inside is the digital code slip and outside the snapper is sheathed in a cardboard slipcover with the identical cover art. Possession-exorcism films are just as tired as the zombie subgenre, but “Prey for the Devil” possesses symbolic and doleful undertones inside a superbly acted and an intriguing alternate universe story that’s not too far from the truth in one of the Church’s more confrontational, as well as controversial, methods to battle evil.

“Prey for the Devil” on Blu-ray home video.  Purchase a Copy Today!

Continue reading →