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Never Weekend on Sadomasochists’ EVIL Private Island Alone! “Eugenie” (Blue Underground / 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Eugenie” is Waiting to Tell You Her Story of Perversion!  See It Now on 4K UHD at Amazon.com

A wealthy, sexually sadistic Madame St. Ange, a specialist in the Marquis de Sade’s teachings, entices to coerce the father of a young and beautiful innocent girl, Eugenie, St. Ange befriends to permit the naïve teenager to visit Madame’s private island for the weekend.  Excited and overjoyed with the idea of feeling like an adult indulging in mature activities, Eugenie is unaware that Madame and her equally as cruel stepbrother and lover Mirvel, who has been beguiled by Eugenie’s beauty, have ulterior motives and lured the unsuspecting youth into a ritualistic trap of sexual corruption and sadomasochism.  The step-siblings drug and rape Eugenie for their unspeakable gratifications only for her to awake in what only be explained as horrible nightmares of phantasmagorical encounters but when the nightmares unveil a disturbing reality when the dogmatic Dolmance and the rest of his Marquis de Sade acolytes arrive to initiate Eugenie into more than just pain and pleasure educations but to be a pawn in a murder scheme that tears the very fabric of virtue. 

Spanish director Jesús Franco, or widely known as Jess Franco, helmed an excessive number of provocative-pushing films over his nearly 60-year-career as a filmmaker before his death in 2013.  Many of the once labeled video nasties director were crafted on a tight budget with an even more so tight timeline as Franco churned out regularly mostly trashy horror and sexploitation that would more than often wind up in the projection booth of local red light district theaters for a dime and a wank.  Yet, “Eugenie” strokes a different kind sensation, one that lies in the ethereal concept of sexploitation and the ruin of youth made to order by the Marquis de Sade himself and artfully stitched by Jess Franco’s profundo knowledge of cinematic sculpturing.  “Eugenie,” or “Eugenie…. The Story of her Journey into Perversion” in the extended title, is based off the French 1795 novel, La Philosophie dans le boudoir (Philosophy in the Bedroom) written by de Sade and the script adaptation is penned by “99 Women” and “Christina” screenwriter and profound producer of film, Harry Alan Towers.  Towers also produces “Eugenie” under the pseudonym of Peter Welbeck for Video-Tel International Productions and was theatrically distributed by Distinction Films.

At the frayed edge of an already soul crusher subject matter, “Eugenie” repels against the grain of easily digestible roles,  Marquis de Sade’s characters are sadomasochist with abhorrent qualities of deception, malintent, and insatiability for a cathartic release from sexual pleasure and punishing pain.  On the other side of the coin, Franco and Towers film calls for the characters to push beyond the limits of their comfortability around the idea of drugging and raping, or being the victim of such, as well as violence and murder as part of a cult normalizing and rationalizing unrestrained freedom and ideology.  Swedish born actress Marie Liljedahl had a brief stint in erotica, as a power-seductress as the titular Inga, and only dabbled with sexploitation, “Eugenie” being that dabbled powder only once snorted to warrant a sudden disinterest in the theme altogether.  Liljedahl plays the titular character and she looks every bit the age later-aged teen with a round, youthful face, vibrant demeanor, and curvaceous like a ripe peach.  Like that knot forming in your gut spurred from anxiety, watching Eugenie exploited while in a stupor is the equivalent imaginations of what the deplorable effects and actions of a roofied drink that produces vague and foggy recollections and disbeliefs in what is reduced down to a vivid dream gone wild.  The two inveiglers at the heart of Eugenie’s virtuous destruction quickly become despicably loathed by not only their debauchery plans to corrupt good embodied but also by their snooty affluency and their acrid arrogance with the help.  “The Blood of Fu Manchu” and “99 Women” blonde beauty, Maria Rohm, and the stern faced “Succubus” and “The Vampires Night Orgy” actor Jack Taylor exemplify the essence of evil as the de Sade principled lovers and step-siblings Madame Saint-Ange and Mirvel.  The opened-ended lust Mirvel has for Eugenie morphs into a determined, nagging desire to have her at all costs, kept close to the chest by Taylor but knowing it’s simmering quickly to a head, and you can see in the Madame’s eyes that she’s either really internally pissed about Mirvel’s narrowed focus on a new toy or she’s basking in her ideology’s unchained gratification.  Rohm’s nonaligned decision maintains Madame’s sensual composure and undisclosed intentions until the shocking end.  The presence of Sir Christopher Lee in a Jess Franco film isn’t all that surprising.  The legendary, late British actor – “The Blood of Fu Manchu,” “The Bloody Judge,” and “Count Dracula” – where a handful of euro trashy and exploitative horror that were released around the same time as “Eugenie,” but “Eugenie” garishly bathed in the idea of sexual misappropriations and Lee being a last minute addition due to another actor’s ill-fate, agreed to fulfill the role without knowing how involved the nudity would ultimately land perverted cuts of the film into spank cinema houses.  Lee’s red smoking jacket, elegantly stoic composure and dialogue delivery, and his incredible ability to perform an intimidating figure without as much as lifting a finger compounds the value of Franco’s filmic adaptation to the point where I firmly believe with the original slated actor George Sanders (“Village of the Damned, 1951) in the ringleader and adherent role of Dolmance would likely have not have been half as good.  Anney Kablan, Paul Muller (“Vampyros Lesbos”), Uta Dahlberg, and Maria Luisa Ponte (“El Liguero Mágico”) costar.

Through an ocean of film filth, “Eugenie” may be the very film that proves Jess Franco is a cinematic genius in his own rite by capturing de Sade in the flesh, so to speak, with a plain-sighted fetish that diabolically hatches a scheme within a scheme.  In addition, “Eugenie,” dare I say it, almost feels like a Hammer film, especially with Lee in the picture.  The interior sets are modernly gothic with sleek and sterile furniture but garnished with large candle holders and the Marquis de Sade era sartorial worn by Dolmance’s muted followers. There’s a cadence to Franco’s story, one that leaves breadcrumb plot aspects to go against divulging a straightforward story right from the start, and the history between acquainted characters is contentious and fraught with unpleasant emotions in the act nice, play nice master sadists and the subservient help hierarchy that hints at a fraction of degrading minorities. Saint-Ange and Mirvel boatman Augustine, a black man who has his life reborn from the ashes of poverty only to be toiled as their attendant and frivolous plaything when the mood is right. There’s also deaf and mute woman brought on to be the new maid in a moment’s conversation between the siblings just to drop a dab of her presence amongst them. Augustine and the maid represent the lower class of people, a man of color and a woman of disability, to easily take advantage of just like Saint-Ange and Mirvel do with Eugenie’s innocence. France shies away being overly showy in slipping in this unjust dynamic that unfolds bit by bit as mentioned earlier of Franco’s revelation design. “Eugenie” not only dangles the attractive set locations and nudity carrot to draw attention but also invests in its talent as Frnaco the cherishes the cast of individual portrayers with longer shot moments to speak volumes of their unique objective or to pedestal them in their own keynote scene of power and, subsequently, obliteration that makes every occurrence worth noting and not just something to write off. “Eugenie” has no tears or apologies to spare but only inhuman indecencies separated by a blurred, unfettered line of sex and sadism satisfactions. This is Jess Franco at his finest.

The 1970 “Eugenie” print takes on more pixels, 2180p to be exact, with 4K UHD transfer and a re-release 1080p high-definition Blu-ray in a 2-disc set from Blue Underground. The 4K restoration from the original camera negative with Dolby Vision Hi-Def resolution on a 66GB, double layer UHD and is also on an AVC encoded Blu-ray that are both presented in an anamorphic widescreen 2.40:1 aspect ratio. Both transfers execute their respective program, offering an average frame rate of mid-high 30s Mbps, but there’s a focus issue with the transfer brought upon likely at the origin of filming and we know this because the frame rate never drops, staying consistent throughout the issue. Periods of unfocused detail come and go between edits and often in the same shot as if attempting to render delineation between the foreground and the background in order to get the shot on the fly (there are many instances Franco had limited time to shoot). Color grading, including skins tones, are natural appearing until the red tint, a symbol of when the subject matter becomes dark, eliminates and reduces vast color palette to one single hue. Both formats offer an English and French dub language 1.0 mono mix that buff enough to be ample; in fact, the mix is rather good considering the single channel with substantially clarity with no hissing, popping, or other blights on the dialogue track, Foley, or any track for that matter. Subtitles are offered in English, French, and Spanish. If you’re looking for special features, they mostly encoded onto the second disc, the Blu-ray, with Perversion Stories, a retrospective interview with the late Jess Franco, writer Harry Alan Towers, and stars Christopher Lee and Matrie Liljedahl discussing the behind-the-scenes measures and understandings of the sexploitation classic, Stephen Thrower on Eugenie, an interview with the author of “Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco,” a new interview with costar Jack Taylor Jack Taylor in the Francoverse, a newly expanded poster and still gallery, and theatrical trailer. The 4K disc also has a new commentary with film historians Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth, plus a theatrical trailer. A two-disc UHD case holds a disc on each side of the interior and the case itself sports the class naked Eugenie pose with her brown locks draped over her shoulders, covering her chest. Speaking of covering, the snapper case is sheathed in a O-slipcover with oval cutout of the front to display Eugenie with a Victorian-aged mirror border. The darkened slipcover is also prominently titled under Marquis de Sade’s novel English moniker, “Philosophy in the Boudoir” that has a regal and classic aesthetic. The unrated, 87-minute film has an all-region playback. Jess Franco distills revolutionary extravagance and couples it with the notion that youth will inevitably be corrupted by family, friends, and a group of cruel Marquis de Sade cultists in what can be construed as one of the director’s most prestigious sexploitation and melodramatic films of his oeuvre.

“Eugenie” is Waiting to Tell You Her Story of Perversion!  See It Now on 4K UHD at Amazon.com

Crawling Through the Bavarian Forest is an Eight-Legged, Seething EVIL Spider. “Venom” reviewed! (Twilight Time / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own the Limited Edition of “Venom” aka “The Legend of Spider Forest” on Blu-ray!

On holiday in a small sawmill town located in Bavarian countryside, artist and photographer Paul Greville seeks to capture the serenity of nature’s bountiful beauty. When he comes across a strange, wild woman with a spider scar on her shoulder, known as the “Spider Goddess” to the townsfolk as a curse individual, his curiosity sends him poking around the quaint, sleepy village that leads him into discovering also a rare and priceless painting thought lost after World War II. The deeper Greville digs into the mysteriously beautiful, unfettered girl and the valuable lost artifact, the more the town begins to resent his nosiness into their hidden agenda of a former Nazi scientist extracting deadly venom from the lethal forest spiders for noxious nerve gas weaponization.

Screenshot from IMDB.com

Better known as “The Legend of Spider Forest,” or “The Spider’s Venom” in the States, director Peter Sykes pulls from the madcap story cache a sticky, wacky web of lies and deceits with the unwinding-arachnid thriller “Venom” that involved mad scientists, creepy-crawly spiders, a half-naked wildling girl, and a plot planned from a World War sore loser shot in the United Kingdom as the backdrop for a Bavarian woodland. Five years before directing Christopher Lee and Denholm Elliott in “To the Devil….a Daughter,” the Australian-born Sykes was outfitting his sophomore UK feature with real, untrained, bird-eating tarantulas to be the basis of his visual terror in a mind baffling labyrinthine screenplay from the filmic exploitation brothers Derek and Donald Ford who, when not selling sex with their erotica celluloid (“Suburban Wives,” “The Swappers”), they were dappling in low-rung independent horror as such with the psychotronic “Venom” which is a co-business affair between Cupid Productions and Action Plus Productions with Michael Pearsons and Kenneth Rowles producing.

Screenshot from IMDB.com

The unlucky sap caught in the village scheming drama is liberal arts enthusiast Paul Greville understood in his thirst for solving the case of the missing medieval art by English actor Simon Brent. The “Love is a Splendid Illusion” Brent, who left acting a few years after “Venom,” finally lands a significant lead man role albeit in a rather stretch of post-war German antics horror that has more twists in the narrative than there are actual spiders. Brent exudes an uncomfortable amount of a curious confidence as he charges through the forest to track down, or rather just happen to run into by chance within the vast area of a mountainous forest, “Erotomania’s” Neda Arneric, a Serbian rugged beauty playing wildling Anna with red-hot hair atop her short frame. We are first introduced to pixie cut Anna during a flashback of a full-frontal skinning dipping frolic in the river with a young, also naked, man and while the unknown man and Anna gaze with an effervescent stars of love in their eyes, the chemistry between Brent and Arneric is about as sparkless as a dud sparkler in a warehouse full of dud fireworks as their characters are too far apart and unalluring to fall for each other at first sight; instead, Brent casts such a demanding go-getter presence with his amateur investigation into the village’s little secret, his murky intentions toward the locally feared Spider Goddess is nothing more than nearly a figment of formulaic structure. We, as the audience, literally attempt to use our own mental will power against them in order to fall in line, or in love. More infatuation buzz surrounds the sawmill boss’s cloak-and-dagger daughter Ellen with “Children of the Damned’s” Sheila Allen as a willing and brazen femme fatale that seduces the hapless artist more than once, especially during one intimate session that restores him back to full health. Although an English production shot in an English forest despite being backdropped in Germany, there is one German actor that gave “Venom” that je ne sais quo toward locale authenticity, beginning with the sawmill boss and self-proclaimed first village resident Huber, played by Gerard Heinz (“Devils in Darkness”) in his last feature length film before his death one year later in 1972. The rest of the cast predominately is English with Derek Newark (“Fragment of Fear”), Terence Soall (“Theatre of Death”), Bette Vivian and one sole Czech actor Gertain Klauber (“Octopussy) giving it all with his very convincing German accent as the village Alps only pub and inn owner Kurt.

Screenshot from IMDB.com

The sting of “Venom’s” unavailing characters is dangerously potent to a near effect of paralyzing the narrative. From Huber’s ireful small talk foreman with his own entourage of blue collar lackies to the mad scientist who doesn’t actually arrive onto the screen until the very last 10 minutes of story, in who is also perhaps the most interesting character garnering deadly spider venom and doing a little crossdressing on the side, “Venom” bears the brunt of unnecessary and disproportionate figures to be an implemented stopgap in managing Simon Brent’s screentime. Sykes teeters away from the majority of Greville’s point of view with little windows outside his perception that drop more diversional obscurity in who Huber and his operatives think Greville really is, why Greville is really there, and how can they handle Greville once he’s become too close to Huber and company’s operations. “Venom” slips unintentionally into the being a low-rent, haphazard Bond film or, better yet, a Scooby-Doo mystery without the Scooby Snacks, but there is ascot fashion. The story implies some exploitation of the mentally instable, using the “Spider Goddess'” strange behavior and her ominous ill-repute to be a warning to outsiders but Sykes conveys the latter allegorically with the destruction of pure, free love by an oppressive governing head, spreading lies about being cursed and deadly, only to find it again in a similar person, a person like Graville seeking to subvert the old wives’ tales and explore his unwaning curiosity no matter the consequences of bodily harm. I just like that Paul Greville drives off-road with a conspicuous bright yellow fiat through the forest shrubby and muck without getting stuck and without blending in.

Screenshot from IMDB.com

The skirmishing climatic finale quickly wraps up loose ends and, at the same time, is an intoxicating delirium of madness and suspense. Twilight Time delivers another Screen restored eldritch mystery onto Blu-ray home video as part of the limited-edition series licensed for a U.S. release from the UK’s Screenbound Pictures and distributed by MVD Visual. Presented in a 1080p, high-definition widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, this is a good-looking transfer with soft, dream-like overtones stemming from a well-preserve original negative with the only drawback being the edge of the 35mm stock occasionally being visible in perhaps a mishandling or misaligning of the film reel that may have also been exposed to light slightly. Other than that, only a few hardly noticeable blemishes are on the image. The English language 2.0 LPCM Dual Mono that separates the dialogue and the ambient/score tracks. You’ll find a robust vocal channel, discerning very nicely from the action, but there’s still quite a bit of hissing and popping on the tail end that denotes more attention needed for better clarity. The film is rated PG but that doesn’t mean much of anything in early 1970’s with Anne Arneric going full-frontal, along with young beau Ray Barron, in emerald green tint as well as other brief flesh scenes from Arneric, arthropod terror, some blood, and the quickest flash edit I’ve ever seen of the lower half of a post-sawed torso. Much like the “Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye” release, “Venom” also has zero special features and, as a more tangible replacement, is a 11-page booklet with color and black-and-white stills, various poster art, and an essay by author Mike Finnegan. The Blu-ray cover art is also reversible with a color still on the backside. Don’t expect to contract arachnophobia after watching “Venom” in this high concept, poor execution of cheap boscage thrills.

 

Own the Limited Edition of “Venom” aka “The Legend of Spider Forest” on Blu-ray!

A Disciple of EVIL! “The Brides of Dracula” reviewed! (Scream Factory / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Marianne Danielle travels alone on the mucky and fog-riddled roads of Transylvania, traversing from France to be a student-teacher at a prestigious dance school for girls. When her coachmen departs without warning, leaving her stranded at a village inn, the Baroness Meister extends an invitation for Marianne to stay with her an the illustrious manor house, but the sign of compassionate hospitality turns into a near deadly encounter as Marianne discovers the Baroness’ son, the Baron Meister, chained against his will in an isolated room. As Marianne is tricked into removing his shackle, she unwittingly releases a conniving vampire into the surrounding village who prays on young women, but, nearby, Dr. Van Helsing has been summoned the Transylvania countryside by the local priest to hunt down the disciples of Dracula, the most powerful vampire Van Helsing had fought and prevailed. In order for the vampire plague to not spread like a virus, Van Helsing will stop at nothing from slaying the Baron Meister to stop the metastasizing of Dracula’s curse against mankind.

Let’s take a step back into time, 1960 to be exact, when Hammer Horror brought a flair for the dramatic to iconic monsters, lush with not only vibrant color schemes, but also in elaborate production designs that scaled the imagination while evoking fear of Satan’s most prolific profaner, the vampire, in Terence Fisher’s “The Brides of Dracula.” The sequel to “Horror of Dracula,” starring Christopher Lee as the titular character, staked vitality two years after the first film’s success and sought to return Peter Cushing back into the good doctor’s shoes once again to battle evil. Shot on lot at Bray Studios and with the grand house exteriors of the nearby Oak Court, “The Brides of Dracula” had greatly masqueraded the elegance and sophistication of the gothic design, bringing settings to life with monumental attention to detail. Before the shooting draft was ready, the script saw numerous rewrites which caused the narrative to fall into numerous hands and, so, the script is built on an overlapping composition of writers, such as Jimmy Sangster (“Horror of Dracula”), Peter Bryan (“The Plague of the Zombies”), Anthony Hinds (“The Curse of the Werewolf”), and Edward Percy. Hinds financed the film under Hammer Film Productions in association with Universal International.

In stark contrast to Christopher Lee’s dark veneer that ennobled Dracula’s arcane and evil presence, David Peel brought a different kind of vampire stemmed off of Lee’s main bole as a disciple of the Prince of Darkness turned because of the Baron Meister’s uninhibited living the life of Riley. With blonde hair and a lighter complexion, Baron Meister became something of a pretty boy vampire that definitely propelled Peel into something of a sex symbol after the film’s initial release. While Peel’s terrific performance goes without wane, Baron Meister sticks out like a sore thumb with the lighter hair color and babyface dermis. The Meister is hunted down by the one and only legendary vampire hunter, Dr. Van Helsing, from Bram Stoker’s novel. Peter Cushing revives his performance from “Horror of Dracula” with a another meticulous and defining act that epitomizes the character’s nature as a knowledgeable and dignified combatant against the dark arts. Cushing versus Lee is the epic King Kong versus Godzilla faceoff that doesn’t leave much room for David Peel in a fight that’s more like King Kong versus King Koopa. The leading role went to French actress Yvonne Monlaur who, at the time, spoke really good English with a thick accent. The “Circus of Horrors'” Monlaur added beauty and innocence being ruthlessly taken advantage of as the hapless Marianne Danielle. With striking red hair and definitely a sex symbol, Monlaur was paraded as one of Hammer Horror’s finest leading ladies to ever grace their terrorizing tenure in genre. “The Brides of Dracula” has a supporting cast like none other with performances from Martita Hunt as the Baroness Meister, Freda Jackson as Baron Meister’s Renfield-like caretaker, Andree Melly as Marianne’s colleague, Gina, Miles Malleson as a greedy blowhard physician, and Mona Washbourne and Fred Johnson as the dance school’s proprietors.

“The Brides of Dracula” has lush, expensive looking production designs from Bernard Robinson that delicately acknowledge a 19th century coach and buggy society and creates a gothic tincture to brood in the bat-flying, eye-catching, blond-haired vampire sinking his canine’s into the untarnished flesh of young women. Yet, Fisher’s follow-up doesn’t add anything to the vampire etymology nor does it tack onto the mythos and, instead, clings barely to a compelling good versus evil narrative closely suited more toward one of the working titles, Disciple of Dracula. “The Brides of Dracula” bewilders as a final title that not once broaches the women stalked by the bloodsucker who seems to attack the random village virginals and, also, barely references Dracula, whom the harem of titular vampires are not at the crook of his pale elbow, but the now 60-year-old film, which I can still remember seeing on television back 30-year-ago, remains as one of the most memorable Hammer productions. Was it because of the enriched looking, old-fashion look? I’d say yes. Was it because of the soap opera designed performances that lavished in melodrama? I’d say yes. Was it because of the undertones of lesbianism, rape, and other taboo-esque themes? I’d say it was all of the above that drove “The Brides of Dracula” in not only being an opening day success but also encapsulating the legacy of Hammer Horror.

“The Brides of Dracula” is the unholy, unceremonious matrimony from hell and has come far from its run on the television with a new high definition Blu-ray collectors edition from Scream Factory, the horror sublabel of Shout Factory! Presented in two formats, a widescreen 1.85:1 and standard 1.66:1, the Blu-ray sustains the deluxe technicolor through the high-res, 1080p, video image that went through a new 2k scan from the interpositive master and absolutely appeals to the visual cortexes with an extensive color palette and very miniscule film imperfections from a super preserved 35mm stock. The English language DTS-HD Master Audio mono track is a resounding success with a grand big band score from debuting composer Malcolm Williams that juxtaposes significantly with the dialogue to only be a support device rather than be a main stage act. With many Scream Factory releases, “The Brides of Dracula” comes with exclusive and previously recorded special features included a new audio commentary with film historian Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr, a making-of the film that includes a graveyard introduction goes into interviews with the late Yvonne Monlaur, screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, assistant director Hugh Harlow, continuity supervisor Pauline Harlow, art director Don Mingaye, model maker Margaret Robinson, and producer Anthony Hinds, and rounds out with a still gallery and theatrical trailer. The Blu-ray is sheathed in a cardboard slipcover with a cover illustration by Mark Maddox and inside is a reversible front cover. Irrefutably a classic, despite some quirks, “The Brides of Dracula” is vintage vampire stock, a pedigree of it’s time, of hallmarking the classical villain in a different, blonder light.

Own the collector’s edition of “The Brides of Dracula” on Blu-ray!

Acting Evil Isn’t Necessarily Evil. “Sins of Dracula” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

output_xnW8RJ Billy, a good church-going man, reluctantly leaves his choir to join the community theater at the request of his girlfriend Shannon.  What Billy doesn’t realize is that there are all different kinds of characters who partake in the community theater – the nerdy gamers, the anti-establishment antagonizers, the gays, and, of course, Dracula.  Yes, Dracula – the Prince of Darkness.  The theater’s director is a satanic worshipper who feeds off the sins of his actors to resurrect Dracula and start a whole new world order of vampires. vlcsnap-2015-03-27-18h46m37s8 “The Sins of Dracula” film is a homage to multiple horror genre branches. Decades including the 1970s and the 1980s source the brilliantly colored and expression heavy of the Hammer horror era and combine it with the gore of video nasties marking all present and accounted for in this ode to classic horror and that’s the creative style of director Richard Griffin and his Scorpio Film Releasing company which quickly produces many independent films that hit many media platforms. My previous film experience with Griffin includes “The Disco Exorcist” that implements film stock imperfections and the hardcore porn of the 1970’s. The other Griffin film, “Murder University,” aims to create a satirical look at a murderous cult gone collegiate. Lastly, my very first Richard Griffin film was Feeding the Masses wanted to be a social political zombie following in a George A. Romero fashion. So there is no surprise here that Griffin does what he does best, but after seeing “The Disco Exorcist” and “Murder University” both which I liked in previous reviews The Disco Exorcist review here and Murder University review here, “The Sins of Dracula” warranted high hopes for Griffin to do something new and cut ties with the old, regurgitated scenes. vlcsnap-2015-03-27-18h48m14s212 Enough about Griffin, let’s talk about “The Sins of Dracula.” Just from reading the synopsis alone, one can conclude that this horror-comedy will come off as a bit outrageous, delving into and dissecting the sins of certain kinds of people who walk in all kinds of life and exploiting them for the sake of our good boy Scott’s heroic journey and also exploiting them to awake the evil Dracula. The story doesn’t waste any time putting to waste the sinfully deemed characters and going on a Godsend vampire hunting spree. At the end, most peoples’ personal views are made light of in a satirical fashion. vlcsnap-2015-03-27-18h49m10s0 Michael Thurber, a staple actor of Griffin’s, does a solid job as a Hammer horror Dracula mirroring the likes of the vampire exposed Christopher Lee. Steven O’Broin, as Lou Perdition the satanist devotee theater director, had some excellent lines and quips and made his Vincent Price-esque character enjoyable when on screen. Another of Griffin’s minions, Aaron Peaslee pranced around fairly well as a gay theater actor and his raunchy sex scene with fellow actor Johnny Sederquist was the most controversial aspect of the film. I can’t say that about the other characters. Other characters fell a bit flat and didn’t convey their characters intentions well enough to pull off a spoofy-stereotype. The fact that their characters where put to death way too early in the film doesn’t give the character a chance to make their presence more well established. vlcsnap-2015-03-27-18h47m22s202 The blood letting could have been, well, bloodier, but there is enough letting to super soak and saturate one’s thirst. Some of the scenes are restaged from the likes of “Fright Night” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” the movie. Like I was saying early in the review about the film’s originality, the lack of new material makes the likelihood of repeating a viewing of “The Sins of Dracula” very unlikely which is difficult to say about a solid homage. vlcsnap-2015-03-27-18h49m25s152 “The Sins of Dracula” is good for a one time single viewing and but lacks new and fresh material to really captivate attention. The MVDVisual DVD cover also doesn’t explicitly want you to go out and rent this title, but the disc art is amazingly detailed and you shouldn’t judge a film’s material by the cover. I do strongly suggest to check out “The Sins of Dracula” if you’re into the Hammer horror scene and into Griffin’s Quentin Tarantino homage style of directing.

 

 

Evil Science! Frankenstein: The True Story review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Frankenstein’s Creature hasn’t receive much love lately. The piece by piece monster hasn’t seen much screen time fame since the 1970s and the latest big screen installment didn’t fair too well in theaters with highly Underworld rip-off film I, Frankenstein. To get any good Creature action, we have to travel back in time to the 70’s when Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee dominated the Hammer horror gothic scene and take a good look at the British tele-movie Frankenstein: The True Story.

With the loss of Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s young brother William, Frankenstein looks for ways to cheat death. He embarks back to medical school where he meets the unethical physician Dr. Henry Clerval and together they create a new species of man from the body parts of several tragic accident victims including the mind of Henry Clerval who collapses and dies before the Creature’s “birth.” Frankenstein soon learns that his creation is nothing more than abomination that continues to decay and tries to disconnect from the whole situation until Dr. John Polidori takes upon a new creation of man.
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The two part television movie series from 1973 can really suck you in for multiple reasons. For starters, the Jack Smidght film has a fair amount of graphic content from severed arms and separate heads from their necks; a great assumption scene. Secondly, Frankenstein: The True Story is right smack in the middle of the Golden Age of the Gothic horror era and though the cast doesn’t include Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing, the tele-cast is full of life and vigor. A young Jane Seymour plays the young, beautiful tragic leading lady, David McCallaum who you might know as the doctor from NCIS and, who ironically enough, portrays a mad doctor in this film, and 1966’s Romeo & Juliet star Leonard Whiting.

The setting yells period piece and this the production value dried up that budget to the bone. The extravagant sets lends a hand to the epic nature of Frankenstein and his Creature, but this sets don’t include the natural and standard definitions of a Frankenstein mythology. For instance, yes, there is a laboratory overloaded with machines and mechanisms, but instead of electricity to bring the Creature to life, the use of the sun’s energy becomes harnessed for life which has been unchallenged by any other film (or literature) that I am aware.
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The story doesn’t following conventional storytellings. The Creature is shown as strong yet child-like, fairly usual, but then as the Creature is being discarded from society and his creator, he wonders on his own and learns how to love. With a twist catalyst in the second half of the film, the Creature’s compassion turns human and tragic. Michael Sarrazin’s portrayal of the Creature is fair to say at the least with some unintentional humor elements. I found myself chuckling at times rather than feeling compelled in a purposefully compelling scene. The child-life Sarrazin more than likely is suppose to be a bit funny and I don’t fault his portrayal to the extent as it may seem in this write up.

Second Sight release of Frankenstein: The True Story is a great edition to the label. Enriched with Technicolor and soaked with Gothic details, the film’s orgasmic battle between the creator and the creation is great symbolism between man and his creator. Though I believe the release to be heavily edited, this is still a great release.