Tag Archives: comedy-horror

Dump Buckets and Buckets of Water Back into this Dry EVIL Well. “Ring Shark” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Ring Shark” Now Curses the DVD Market! Own It Here!

For the subscribers of her Youtube show, vlogging social media influence Kanamasa and her co-host search for a stone well rumored to be in a haunted forest surrounded by unfriendly villagers who aggressively ward off unwelcomed visitors.  Upon discovering the well, a shark-like creature emerges suddenly and bites Kanamasa, scaring them off.  A few days later, another pair of Youtube investigators of the Psychic Investigations Big Summer learn of Khana’s disappearance after her last video surfaces of what looks to be a shark fin and then a ghastly body surfaces from within her bathtub, attacking her bikini-garbed body.  Seeking the truth and eager to find Khana, the investigators conduct interviews with “shark” experts and attempt to visit the same well only to be shooed off by the villagers until, finally, they’re able to reach the same spot and experience the same sharp-teethed horror lurking within it.  Unknowingly, that same supernatural terror of the well had follow them home. 

Sharksploitation has admittedly gotten out of hand.  The beloved horror subgenre that began with Steven Spielberg and Bruce the mechanical monstrous shark who terrorized the beaches of Amity Island have since drowned in its own watery subcategory of the ocean’s maneater predators with microbudget ineptitude that takes the shark from its natural ecosystem and rehomes it in a miscellany of nonsense locations, such as on land, in the weather, and even circling in toilets.  Well, today is the day we’ve come across a movie been assimilated into that same fatuous collective with “Ring Shark,” aka “Well Shark,” aka “Ido Shark.”  The Japanese, found-footage comedy-horror is the first of a trio of incongruous shark films released between 2023 and 2024 by Taichiro Natsume with “Love Shark” and “Last Shark” to follow, connected by the Big Summer team of Psychic Investigators.  Natsume also wrote and produced the feature.

Unfamiliar with the Psychic Investigator Big Summer series, which there’s uncertainty if Big Summer is a Japanese comedic troupe, equivalent to the Broken Lizard of America, what “Ring Shark, or “Ido Shark” begins is a series of various haunted case probes by the Big Summer team, which in this film in particular include actors using modifications of or using their actual names as characters in the story, such as director Taichiro Natsume being the single male lead in the group under character name Daiichiro Natsume.  Daiichiro Natsume can be a bumbling, yet persistent fool when it comes to the mysterious case of Kana-san with his steady motif of exclaiming his love for big boobs and determination to resolve the mystery.  He’s joined by colleagues on-and-off screen in Momoka Asahi and Chihiro Nishikawa, the latter not to be confused with Chihiro Nishikawa of JVA.  While Nishikawa and Natsume continue the running gag conversating about big breasts, Momoka Asahi enters the picture much later as the third investigating team member when Natsume goes down with a well shark bite infection that haunts him from the inside out and puts him in the hospital.  From there, Nishikawa and Momoka take the reigns on investigation by not only tending to Natsume’s dwindling health but also interviewing internet paranormal sleuths Hiroshima Freddy, a Japanese horror influence in real life, as well as Black Story Kuro, who I imagine is another influencer but couldn’t confirm it.  Typically, the Japanese language has a ton of fluid inflections and tones that dictates situations and mood, but “Ring Shark” avoids much of the vocal ups-and-downs with a consistently level tone of flat and dry humor peppered with fear, arbitrary bickering, and a pinch of kawaii to sustain a semi-serious documentary style investigation.  Maya Mineo, Issei Kunisawa, Yacch Chara, Daiki Mizuno, Honey Trap, Umeki, and the wrestler known as The Shark fills out the cast.

“Ring Shark” is “Blair Witch Project” meets “The Ring.”  The latter having the most prominent appearance as the at home media, that was once titled, or probably is likely titled in Japan, as “Ido Shark,” is marketed for U.S. consumption because every moviegoer is either well versed or knows of Hideo Nakata’s “The Ring” series and its heebie-jeebies Samara spirit.  Instead of a cursed tape that summons Samara out of the depths of her murdered resting spot, a well, to kill anyone after a week of viewing said tape, “Ring Shark” only real connective tissue to “The Ring” is that there is a well in the story and a murdered girl’s body was dumped inside.  That’s it.  From there, the structure is more to the tune of “Blair Witch Project” with a pseudo-found footage of one social media’s disappearance igniting the Psychic Investigator Big Summer team to check it out after the tape is brought to their attention form Kanasama’s co-host.  The docu-style incorporates dry wit of interviewing shark experts, creature academics, urban legend connoisseurs, and thorough analysts and researchers, as well as themselves as angry villagers and a supernatural hand puppet shark head subverts their stratospheric sublayer with soul-chumming results.  Yet, none of everything just said really clicks in a flimsy and slapdashedly put together microbudget story derived for effect for true and absurd exploitation of sharks gone wild. 

“Ring Shark” swims right into SRS Cinema’s well-house with a brand-new DVD from the microbudget cult film distributor.  Upscaled to 1080p, the MPEG2 encoded, single layer DVD5 presents the Big Summer production ion a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Though upscaled to 1080p, the cell phone footage renders stretched limitations under the light of low-budget constraints.  Night vision and poor lighting coupled with closeups-to-extreme closeups, and shaky camera work dematerializes story-important images.  Natural lit and stationary camera work provide cleaner visuals in what is mostly a deluge of exposition and regular camera angles without atmospheric makeup.  The Japanese language Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo provides lean composition with ample inherent surrounding ambience, picking up the natural wildlife chirping in the background, the vocal amplification of someone talking through a microphone, the hustle and bustle of a restaurant, etc. Dialogue isn’t impeded by the commercial phone camera recording that creates a rather good reproduction and diffusion of sound amongst the space.  Added audio effects, such as the shark’s growling or snarling, does feel unnaturally alienated from the rest of the audio but works to the film’s advantage despite the obvious hand puppetry.  English subtitles are burned in but do synch well and appear error free. There’s also what looks to be double English subtitles along with Japanese title cards or subtitles that are a part of the Youtube investigation and often coincide with the main English subtitles in a distracting, screen space absorbing real estate. The Japanese electro-rap graced static menu, which samples Lil Jon’s Yeeeah, contains no bonus feature selection; instead, the bonus content is right on the main menu with short film “Shark of the Dead” (8.26 minutes) and the “Ring Shark” trailer.  I love bad movie cover art and SRS Cinema’s “Ring Shark” is no exception with smokey-eyed, electrically charged, and monstrously toothy shark breaching from a little stone well underneath “The Ring”-font film title.  The disc is pressed with the same image and there are no inserts included.  The barely hour-long film, clocking in at 63-minutes, comes not rated and has a region free playback.

Last Rites: “Ring Shark” is a monumental prosaic mockumentary aimed to swell Sharksploitation into further ill-repute and disrepair with an unfunny and uninteresting undertaking of underwhelming pastiche.

“Ring Shark” Now Curses the DVD Market! Own It Here!

There’s No Cutting Out This EVIL! “Brain Tumor” reviewed! (MVD Visual & Whacked Movies / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Watch the Deadly Growth of the “Brain Tumor” on DVD!

World-renowned but virtually unorthodox and cursory neurosurgeon Dr. Seymour Caligari removes yet another brain tumor with relative ease from a cancerous-afflicted patient.  After the large golf ball sized tumor is discarded for oncology dissection and study in the lab, the once lifeless biological malignant specimen escapes from the medical pan and starts violently attacking people on a rouge killing spree.  Having absconded the hospital grounds, the tumor continuously stays on the hunt for its next meal, devouring the distasteful locals surrounding Dr. Caligari’s mansion home.  Caligari, his son Dash, and stepdaughter, Kitsie, who is an alcoholic and is also oddly dating her stepbrother, soon find out that the nearby, forest hiding tumor is growing into a large, tentacled, and toothy ball with bloodthirsty, feeding frenzy tendencies and it’s up to Caligari’s family to reconnect whole their interfamily relationship faults if they want to stop it before it consumes more victims. 

A practical schlock tribute to the pre-1980s monster movie, this 2024 release “Brain Tumor” embodies every bad, mutated cell that defined the ridiculously slathered B-movie creature features of yore, the ones that aired late enough to be seen by the burning the midnight oil few and were described with every exclamatory interjections and horrifying, vocabulary descriptors you could think of to put shock, terror, and fear in large, screen-to-screen filling grotesque font.  Glen Coburn, who’s directorially debuted with the “Blood Suckers from Outer Space” in 1984, wrote and directed his latest comedy-horror cheapie in nearly three decades since his last feature.  The American-made picture reteams Coburn with Bret McCormick whom both helmed a segment in the “Tabloid” horror anthology alongside the third co-segment director, Matt Devlan.  This time, the “Repligator” and “The Abomination” producer McCormick designs Coburn’s tumorous creature, much like the body-bred monster of “The abomination,” with “Tabloid” actress Kay Bay producing the film under Whacked Movies, distributed by TinyBig.

“Brain Tumor’s” schtick is part half-century ago creature feature and part absurdist humor brought upon by the cast of caricature characters beginning with Dr. Seymour Caligari in off the cuff remarks and off topic comments that no one patient wants to hear while in the middle of brain surgery, which, if I’m correct, requires you to be awake depending on the type of operation.  Behind Caligari is an actor who is usually behind the camera in Bil Arscott, cinematographer for “Christmas of the Dead” and gaffer for the Ryan Kline black market human meat selling comedy-horror short film “Meat.”  Perhaps the less sensationalist absurdist in the entire picture, Arscott is joined by Jack Mahoney and Sydney Hatton as son Dash and stepdaughter Kitsie who embody the light “Cruel Intentions” incest between siblings. Yes, I know they’re stepsiblings but there’s still a creepy factor about it.  Plus, Kitsie’s mentioned on multiple occasions about her alcoholism but that sidebar aspect her character doesn’t flourish or become problematic.  Dash tries to convince himself his father has nothing to do with the recent string of murders while Kitsie’s devil’s advocate reign of suspicion marks the doctor complicate.  In the end, none of the complexities amount to anything in a fiery fight finale of man versus malignant tumor with casualties in between from mostly interesting yet throwaway characters in biopsy researcher Phoenix Leach (Danielle Wyatt), Caligari’s medical assistant Freddy (Aspen Higgins), a bordering predo-priest Father Bud (Matt Tucker), and 2000’s indie scream queen Anjanette Clewis (“Witchcraft 13,” “Suburban Nightmare) in perhaps the only gory scene in the entire film.

At eye level, “Brain Tumor” is nothing more than a quirky horror-comedy conjured up with slim conceptualization from Coburn seeking to spend a shoestring budget.  Not a ton of substantial story inside this framework of a cantankerous killer tumor with a vaginal mouth, snakelike tentacles, and a single ocular just above the vagina dentata.  With no mutational cause for the creature’s resulted effect, the titular terrorizers mostly skulks in nearby bushes and grabs those stupid enough to leave the confines of their home to check out that weird sound.  Following a formulaic path similar to monster movies of the 1950s modernized to reflect with a jab of a politically divided climate and a liberal sense of humor, “Brain Tumor” fails to that semblance of an under-the-veil of Golden Age cinema veneer classified by those archaically rendered B-films, substituting the strived charm of making the most of it with farce and satire just like most modern movies that more-or-less mock what once was for a serious creature feature.  Without the presence of significant monster mayhem and without the presence of a personality, Coburn’s creature metastasizes into too many benign lumps that it causes a deficiency in entertainment, horror, and for it’s intended comedy. 

“Brain Tumor” arrives onto DVD home video from rising physical media distributor MVDVisual in distributive collaboration with Whacked Movies.  The MPEG2 encoded DVD5 is upscaled to 1080p from the standard 720p resolution.  Picture quality doesn’t hold many qualms through an ungraded and brightly lit digital compression.  There’s an artificial quality to the rudimentary visual effects that emits a plastic and hard-edged surface without a smoother blend into the frames.  Color density is quite sharp against the off-and-on emerging details when green screen tactics are not being utilized or the scene is not overexposed with natural lighting.  Audio specifications are not listed on the back cover, but my player has identified the English language mix encoding as an uncompressed stereo 2.0.  Digital audio retains a crisp and clean reproduction albeit the feedback crackling during higher pitched screaming.  Dialogue renders clean, free of obstruction, and with prominence over the other encoded tracks and despite it’s microbudget, an onboard mic doesn’t seem to be used here based off the clarity and depth of sound.  There are no subtitles available with this feature as well as no bonus content in this barebone, feature-only release.  The unsigned illustrated front cover art is neat though, an above average Ghana-like design that’s more accurate to the film’s storyline.  Aside from the sexy front cover, that’s about the sum of “Brain Tumor’s” physical allure with no insert accompaniments and a disc art pressed with partisan screengrab of the monster. The 76-minute feature comes unrated and is region free. 

Last Rites:  While I applaud the use of a stationary, yet tangible, bio-organic mutated creature instead of a visual effects atrocity, “Brain Tumor” is terminally fated to be a miss amongst fans both old and new with too little monster, too little gore, and too little sense to save itself from itself. 

Watch the Deadly Growth of the “Brain Tumor” on DVD!

Awesome Boy and Bludgeon Man Fight EVIL at “Slaughter Beach” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

July 4th Is Here! Time to hit “Slaughter Beach” on DVD!

Ralph and Barry are best buds.  They’re best buds freeloading off Barry’s father’s shore house during the height of Slaughter Beach’s Summer season.  When Barry’s father becomes annoyed by his adult son and friend’s loafing, his ultimatum to them is to get a job or get out, but the touristy destination of Slaughter Beach has nearly become all but a ghost town as businesses and tourism shut down or come to a slow crawl after a string of mysterious disappearances along the beaches and boardwalk.  Barry’s idea to become vigilante crime fighters, under the hero names of Awesome Boy and Bludgeon Man of the duo’s moniker The FenderBenders and hoping to resurrect the once booming vacationing hotspot back to its full former glory, reels in a boatload of trouble when a salty, horseshoe crab fisherman behind the disappearances casts his deadly fishhook line toward the wannabe crime fighters to make chum out of them and anyone else who crosses his path. 

“Slaughter Beach” is the buddy horror-comedy and slasher set on the American Eastern shorelines of not the actual Slaughter Beach of Sussex County Delaware but actually shot 25 miles north in the more populated Rehoboth beach.  The 2022 released, Daniel C. Davis written-and-director feature is “The Scarecrow’s Curse” and “X Knight Escape from Warp Hell” actor’s third film in a decade span.  The Delaware-born, Wilmington University graduate continues his grow his independent filmmaking career in his home state and the surrounding metropolitan, tri-state area.  His latest directorial lands him on the Eastern beaches of Delaware with filming done mostly at night during the tourism offseason, allowing more wiggle room for shooting, less hassle from onlookers, and a better chance at snagging shooting locations that would be, perhaps, heavily trafficked during peak months.  “Slaughter Beach” runs under Davis and Brett Taylor’s production company, Clockout Films, and is produced by the two filmmakers alongside Jim Cannatelli (“Yester-Years”).

“Slaughter Beach” is amazingly well dialogued in the comedy context for a low-budget, independent feature and without the principal leads, the hapless and hero-lite buddies, of Jon McKoy, who I still recall his similar performance in “Easter Sunday,” and Ethan Han, in his debut feature film role, “Slaughter Beach” would have flop hard like a fish out of water, gasping for a watery breath.  Between McKoy and Han, Ralph and Barry’s antics are contrived out of dunce energy with good intentions that slow churns infectious wit to character likeability.  Their crude innocence faces impossible trials when against a foe that tests their trying not-very-hard heroic vigilantism on the shore’s boardwalk.  Jim Cannatelli, yes, producer Jim Cannatelli, dons the Sou’Wester hat and chest waders for the crazed Fish Man Sam’s crusade on hooking Lilith, the mythical and monstrous horseshoe crab, with his special human bait from wielding a weaponized line and lure and fishhook to gut and chum his victims.  In an appearance very similar to The Fisherman in “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” Cannatelli’s twist hits the old seadog stereotype complete with nautical vernacular and is a fine comic book antagonist to the campy, counterpart sideshow that is Ralph and Barry.  However, the standoff between good versus evil is held to the very end with Fish Man Sam angling boardwalk and beach patrons to their deaths, that’s closer to shooting fish in a barrel with support bit parts performances from mostly Davis casting regulars, such as Amy Lynn Patton, Michelle Qenzel, Keith Crosby, Shawn Shillingford, Heather Street, Kiyneeanay Dykes, and Ethan Han’s actual father, Oscar Aguilar, playing Barry’s dad.

There’s no shortage of zaniness, slapstick, or waggishness in Davis’s “Slaughter Beach.”  Same goes with the horror façade that’s well framed around the comedic core.  “Slaughter Beach’s” terror won’t be a trepidant of tension or knock off your tacklebox with fright, but Davis shows obvious signs of paying attention to the what-works in horror motifs with the crafting of looming angles, danger-building and coherent editing and score, and a villain that might be a caricaturable and an exaggeration vocally but appears damn right creepy in the background as the obscured and shadowing lurking fisherman.  A gory practical effects décor by Trauma Queen FX special makeup and effects artist, Isabelle Isel, elevates the feature’s victim pool to an anticipation level amongst the audience to see what Fish Man Sam has in store next for his ice chest full of horrors.  While visually alarming and usually frightening in nature, the villainous veneer and gore-soaked effects are not excluded from the comedy tone with the fishing themed gallows humor that’s about as ridiculously funny as it sounds.  What isn’t as fleshed out as hoped was Fish Man Sam’s obsessive and radical pursuit of bagging the giant horseshoe crab he’s bestowed as Lilith.  Its an important motivation factor that drives the deranged angler left to swim upstream and doesn’t elaborate and relay Ralph and Barry’s foe sympathetically as a man on a mission.

The Clockout Films production has been picked up by the longstanding zero-budget genre label, SRS Cinema, for the at home DVD release.  “Slaughter Beach” is MPEG-2 encoded onto a single-layer DVD5 with a 720p resolution and is ungraded.  With nearly zip on the hue saturation and stick with a lower resolution, “Slaughter Beach” is able to compress adequately, suppressing any major artefact issues to lesser posterization, and keeping a soft, yet relatively clean image that doesn’t focus on stylistic highlights but rather draws all the attention onto the buddy heroes and the gore.  Lighting is retained by the array of brightly lit Boardwalk bulbs, some specialized muted-colored uplighting for a slightly retro feel, and natural lighting, reducing much of the beachy backdrop to a black void that centers the characters without much depth to delineate within the widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  The English LPCM 2.0 stereo track musters enough strength from the blemish-free boom recording.  No crackling, hissing, or any other kind of distortions on the dialogue or LFE layers, suggesting that care was put into the audio, and it rightfully shows a coherent and competent mix with alternative-punk-ska tracks from The Jasons, Station, and Skatune Network.  Dialogue clear, clean, and prominent.  There are no optional subtitles available.  Special features include a feature length commentary with a roundtable, ride along discussions with director Daniel C. Davis, stars Ethan Han and Jon McKoy, producer and principal Jim Cannatelli, and director of photography Brett Taylor.  Also included is a raw footage gag reel and SRS trailers, one of which is for “Slaughter Beach.”  The extremely detailed and aesthetically illustrated cover art gives the physical DVD a lucrative eyeful but the release do not credit the artist, nor do I see a signature hidden inside the tonal shades. The region free SRS DVD has a runtime of 80 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: “Slaughter Beach” is more than a head in the sand thriller; the Daniel C. Davis horror-comedy paces to deliver timely laughs as well as casting flesh-ripping, barbed lures that easily hooks us for more giggles and gore.

July 4th Is Here! Time to hit “Slaughter Beach” on DVD!

Gaudy, Superfluous EVIL Sits in Your Living Room and Destroys Your Family. “The Coffee Table” reviewed! (Cinephobia Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Coffee Table” Would Look Good in Your Living Room! Purchase It Here Today!

Jesús and Maria are new parents with a beautiful baby boy.  Maria has been eager for a baby and sent through several medical treatment for the bundle of joy while Jesús continuous rides the fence about being a father.  When the baby arrives, the boy becomes a source of usually one-sided bickering and jabbing contention as Maria feels Jesús could be a better father to their newborn son.  When they move into a new apartment, they find themselves in a furniture store looking at a gaudy glass coffee table Maria can’t stand the sight of, but Jesús very much can’t live without.  While Maria steps out to shop for an upcoming luncheon with Jesús’s brother and young girlfriend, Jesús briefly stops assembling the table to take care of the baby until a tragic accident happens that reshapes everything and everyone Jesús cares about, and impels him to bottle in the tragedy, hiding it in extreme guilt from his wife and guests, as he struggles to find the right moment to relieve his soul. 

Marriage is hard.  Parenting is even harder.  Choosing a coffee table should be a delicious piece of decision-making cake but for director Caye Casas choosing living room décor can be deadly.  The “Killing God” director follow up his debut feature with the 2022 released domestic disturbing comedy-horror “La Mesita Del Comedor,” aka “The Coffee Table.”   Casas cowrites the film with Cristina Borobla, her first screenwriting credit but not her first collaborative effort working with the director as the vocational Art Director has been involved in Cases’s other works, such as “Killing God,” his 2017 short “RIP,” and amongst others.  Maria José Serra (“Amigo Invisible”) and Norbert Llaràs (“Killing God,” “The Perfect Witness”) put their producer café mugs onto “The Coffee Table” with the hailing from Spain production companies La Charito Films, Alhena Production, and Apocalipsis Producciones. 

Much of “The Coffee Table” is set inside the tiny, newly moved into apartment of Jesús and Maria who even though rag on each other’s opinions and one of them don’t necessarily favor being a parent, deep down the unlikely pair do have a strong love attraction that swims upstream against the repelling.  In the roles of Jesús and Maria are David Pareja, whose worked with Casas inner circle before with “Killing God,” and Estefanía de los Santos with an unforgettable, characteristic raspy voice that magnifies the role tenfold.  Both Pareja and de los Santos are comedically bred with a long list of hilarious Spanish features to prep them to see the gut-punching, black humor of what’s to come in “The Coffee Table.”  Frankly, there’s nothing negatively to report in Pareja and de los Santo’s flawless, funny, and unfortunate family dysfunctional performances surrounding their love-hate relationship and the knot of culpability and the bliss ignorance contrast that’s delineated between them.  Floating into the mix of repressiveness are side stories that become assimilated by the untold tragedy, such as the neighbor’s daughter (Gala Flores) with an intense belief Jesús loves her, the smarmy coffee table salesman (Eduardo Antuña, “Killing God”) who also have an interest in Jesús, and Jesús’s brother Carlos (Josep Maria Riera, “RIP”) and his barely 18-year-old girlfriend (Claudia Riera, “The Communion Girl”) being ribbed for their own odd couple relationship and giving a surprise announcement of their own. 

Though a comedy and a horror, I didn’t find “The Coffee Table” all that funny but more so quirky, outrageously bold, and shockingly hard-hitting instead.  Horror, definitely without a doubt, comes through but not in a typical to be scared or to exact fear way with any of the conventional themes to support its harrowing weight.  The horror that uncoils is every parent’s worst scenario, the underlying nightmare that grabs the soul and squeezes until every drop of anxiety is wrung out of our wet bag of bones and meat.  The incident itself is gnarly and unspeakable but the post-trauma slithers in a nasty case of guilty conscious, shame, and fear that can freeze someone to the spot to where they clam up, sweat profusely, stomach twisted, and have self-harming thoughts from the conjoined cause and effect of having to tell your partner the most terrible of news and see their composure, their affection flush away in a blink of an eye.  Casas able to string along the aftermath to extract a feature length film without it ever approaching critically forced or farfetched, adding on and expanding upon the luncheon or Jesús’s wiggling through painfully with excuses on why Maria should leave the baby sleeping peacefully in their room.  The passively aggressive sparring atmosphere quickly turns into colossal tension and hopelessness through the mechanism of dark black comedy.  As a parent myself, “The Coffee Table” evokes great sadness and mental strife of the situational possibility, the greatest horror of all time.    

The cruel film by Caye Casas arrives onto a Cinephobia Releasing DVD. The MPEG2 encoded, upscaled 720p, DVD5 comes in at being the eleventh release for the Philadelphia based, eclectic independent film distributor. And, boy, is it a doozy. For “The Coffee Table’s” image, not the two, artificially gilded naked women holding an oval shape, unbreakable pane of glass, the feature’s picture quality renders about as good as any single layer capacity unit can decode in a digital age with modest details, muted hues, hard lit, and a good amount of spectrum banding in the darker areas. Not to fret, however, as there’s plenty to discern with a film that isn’t reliant on details but more reliant on hitting you wear it hurts, heavyheartedly. The Spanish language Dolby Digital 5.1 uses a lossy compression that, again, suitable to the movie’s means of conveying a contortioned, ruthless story defining the very meaning of a no way-out, no-win situation. Dialogue really is key for this type of narrative to work and progress and does come through fine without an ounce of earshot hinderance. Also, not that type of film that provides a breadth of range or depth as much of the layers express in a very near arrangement, as expected in a concentrated setting of Jesús and Maria’s apartment home. English subtitles are optionally available, and they synch up and pace well with only one noticeable grammatical error. Not much in the way of special features as only Cinephobia Releasing trailers fill that spot and there is not mid or end credits scene. The 90-minute film’s DVD release comes not rated and has region 1 playback. Other regions are untested, and the back cover does not state the official region playback capacity.

Last Rites: Caye Casas and Cinephobia Releasing has the cajónes to not table this wonderfully bleak black comedy-horror from reaching audiences far and wide. “The Coffee Table” is a painful reminder of just how fragile life can be, much like a cheapy made piece of tawdry decor from China.

“The Coffee Table” Would Look Good in Your Living Room! Purchase It Here Today!

Slacking Off at School is Grade A EVIL! “Cutting Class” reviewed! (MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Cutting Class” Available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray at Amazon.com

Paula Carson seems to be the eye of affection.  The popular, walk-the-line student and high school cheerleader finds fast-and-loose fun as the girlfriend of jock and overall jocular lesson slacker Dwight but is also pursued by Brian, a loner recently released from the mental hospital after killing his father, and even the quirky principal Mr. Dante who can’t careen his aberrant attention away from his lovely young student.  When faculty and students go missing and the vice principal is found brutally murdered, the recently released, convicted criminally insane Brian becomes the prime suspect and flees the scene, but days later coming out of hiding, Brian pleas with Paula to help convince people he’s innocent of the crime and not responsible for those missing.  Suspicions and accusations disperse in many directions as a killer continues to thin out the student body with Paula stuck at the center of the killer’s chaos. 

Many of today’s A-lister leading men have had a role in a horror film at one point in time early in their careers.  Before being the face of the latest “Ocean’s 11” films, George Clooney starred in “Grizzly II:  Revenge” and “Return to Horror High” in the 1980s.  Before being a lovable halfwit with good fortunate in “Forrest Gump” and the voice of Woody in “Toy Story, Tom Hanks’ debut feature was “He Knows You’re Alone,” a horror-thriller about stalked woman unable to escape a serial killer.  Then, there’s Clooney’s “Ocean 11” co-star Brad Pitt and he’s no exception to the rule with “Cutting Class,” an American high school melodrama with strong hints of the slasher genre helmed by a not-so-American director in “Excalibur” adaptation screenwriter Rospo Pallenberg from the United Kingdom.  The script is penned by Steve Slavkin which would turn out to be his one and only feature film work before remaining in television.  Shot in Los Angeles, the April Productions and Gower Street Pictures film is produced by Donald R. Beck and Rudy Cohen, who the latter went on to produce “Feardotcom” and “The Black Dahlia.” 

A youthfully green Brad Pitt joins the remake of the “The Blob’s” Donovan Leitch and “The Stepfather’s” Jill Schoelen in an unfolding love triangle of student shenanigans, peer pressure, and murderous suspicion.  Pitt plays Dwight, a popular basketball stud with a carefree attitude that’s slowly being chipped away by his parents, teachers, and even girlfriend Paula to be more responsible and forward thinking.  As Paula, Schoelen indulges herself into the perfect student who is studious, kind, and beautiful that attracts seemingly all walks of school hallway life from peers to teachers and doesn’t even bat an eyelash about it either by obliviousness or just likes to lap up the attention.  Leitch as the school misfit Brian Woods dons the oversized black blazer and soft-spikey hair to give his character more of an edge, but the script is thin on showcasing Brian to feel like an outcast or even makes the protuberant effort of a character convicted murderer, mentally unstable and recently deinstitutionalized.  Leitch crafts his own approach to elevate Brain Woods into that persona while teetering the line of being a suspected bad or good guy for the approx. 90 minute runtime.  Acting legends Martin Mull and Roddy McDowall are integrated into more cameo roles that are running gags on the comedic side of “Cutting Class’s” genre blend.  “Clue’s” Mull, playing as the district attorney and Paula’s father going duck hunting for the weekend, has an orbiting role that surrounds the whodunit trunk narrative with subplot intercut scenes after he’s been perforated with an arrow and crawls back to civilization, amusingly frustrated and weary as he continues to be passed by and stepped on while in the muck.  McDowell’s absurdity is illuminated in a different objectifying light as a sock-covering mic sniffer with a giddy perversion for Paula.  See McDowell gawk at the stretched panties of a bent over Jill Shoelen made me personally feel really uncomfortable, perhaps I still see McDowall as the heroic Fearless Vampire Hunter Peter Vincent from “Fright Night” and can’t unseen him to be anything else, especially a smirking, sexualizing oddball.  “Cutting Class” fills out the cast with Brenda James (“Slither”), Mark Barnet, Robert Glaudini (“Parasite”), Dirk Blocker (“Prince of Darkness”), Eric Boles (“C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud”), Nancy Fish (“Exorcist III”), and Robert Machray.

Prefacing this review’s analysis, I understand “Cutting Class’s” campy comedy intentions before its backlot slasher sublet.  The smell of teen palaver and mischievous comedy odorously laces the late 80’s production and its eccentric character, more so with the latter of the two.  This also includes sexual perversities to run rampant in what was then a free-for-all of anything goes types of behavior.  Character Paula Carson, the near epitome of good high school student, becomes the lust of every principal male character with a hypersexualization of her innocence.  Paula, cladded with a short skirt and white panties, can’t get through many of her earlier scenes without being objectified.  She’s penned to bend straight over, exposing her panties, and have Principal Mr. Dante gleaming with a grin and gawk in his hots for the student, caught half naked washing her hair over the bathtub, caught in a conversational scene with suspected killer Brian Woods, and is repeatedly pleaded with by Dwight to take advantage of her father being not home for extra circular activities.  Not to forget to mention constantly being googly eyed by all three throughout the picture.  It’s funny how this particular perception becomes the one thing to catch my eye and discuss as it speaks to the kind of depraved person, I am but also factors into what “Cutting Class” really is, a dumb movie.  The sit back and enjoy the ride type of teen-comedy, semi-slasher hits upon most of the benchmarks expected of a Pallenburg slasher made in a America with a fair amount of personal style and not enough connective tissue to strengthen the bond between the two battling genres.  For example, the out of left field satire of Martin Mull’s swampy trek back to civilization has the detached sensation of an out of place running gag, lost amongst the rest of the film by the lack of detail (Mull’s character is shot with an arrow but has seemingly healed miraculously as he’s able to crawl and walk back to the suburbs) and spatial awareness (Paula’s class fieldtrip to the very same swamp Mull’s character was shot, making the area appear in proximity to the high school and suburbs instead of isolated backwoods).

MVD Visual, through the MVD Rewind Collection, proudly presents “Cutting Class” on a new 4K UHD and Blu-ray 2-disc set. Both scans of the 35mm original camera negative are from the Vinegar Syndrome 2018 restored print; however, MVD’s LaserVision Collection edition is the first fully functional 4K resolution with a HEVC encoded, Ultra High-Definition 2160p, BD66 as well as tagging along an AVC encoded, High-Definition 1080p, BD50. Can’t complain at all about this print despite negligible differences other than the increased resolution in HDR10, a format that often misrepresents true image fidelity with irregularity. Yet, we don’t see that that really here with a shade darker image that results rounder delineation on the characters and objects. Same can be said about the 1080p, a crisp image defines mostly through. There are rough patches of varying grain levels within the 1.85:1 aspect ratio presentation that leave a scene or two looking optically haggard for a brief moment as if stretched and overly granulated. Grading design has a natural 35mm film saturation that’s robust with a vast range of hues that don’t bleed or run together, sticking to distinction rather than attempting to be fancy to a fault. The audio options on both formats include a lossless PCM 2.0 mono and a lossy Dolby Stereo. For better fidelity, the uncompressed PCM really opens up the English inlaid audio mix by appealing to vigorously clear and forefront dialogue with ambience and soundtrack firmly encroaching but stays firmly moderate in the depth. There’s a nice breadth of effects captured, such as the machine shop climax with isolating each cutting, sawing, and drilling tool’s specific sound in its specific space. English subtitles are optionally available. Special features mostly reside on the Blu-ray disc as the UHD’s capacity is limited to just 66 gigabytes, barely enough for higher dynamic resolution feature with the only additional supplementary being the HD theatrical trailer. On the Blu-ray, a quite a few Vinegar Syndrome produced content is encoded into this release in what practically a mirrored 1080p copy with an interview with actress Jill Schoelen who, in summing up her discussion of “Cutting Class,” would love to erase this film from her memory and career bank, an interview with Donovan Leitch and his experiences hired in on the role as well as working with the cast and crew, a Kill Comparisons featurette that contrasts the edited and unrated feature kill scenes with additional seconds added into for more gruesome, lingering effects, the VHS retailer promo Find the Killer and Win, and the original theatrical trailer. Also included is the 91-minute R-rated edit with the shorter death scenes, but I don’t understand why anyone would want to watch something edited. Like the first three MVD LaserVision Collector’s Editions, the fourth entry is incorporated with retro finesse that doesn’t stray away from original marketing elements. The cardboard O-slipover views as a porthole into the original poster art of the three principal characters. A black Amary cover houses the same cropped encirclement of the characters but with a solid black other rim while inside the 4K disc (right side snapper) and the Blu-ray (left side snapper) each pay tribute to the laserdisc era in their own way. The insert houses a folded mini-poster of the slipcover design. The front cover is reversible with a complete poster element reduced to fit centered on the design with a wooden school desk serving with pencil, paper, and ringlets of blood as the border design. Unrated, region free, and with a runtime of 91 minutes, “Cutting Class” is worth skipping your school studies.

Last Rites: A highly favorable and upgraded release for the Brad Pitt startup campy teen slasher that confirms to us the actor hasn’t changed his acting method in the last 35 years, but “Cutting Class” doesn’t stand out amongst the masses of similar 80’s ilk with a fickle way of handling the nebulous and illusory villain killer on school grounds and an obtuse comedy angle too out of alignment to be risible. The only option left is to sit back, hit play, and soak into the mindless meat-and-potatoes.

“Cutting Class” Available on 4K UHD and Blu-ray at Amazon.com