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Disguise as the Dead to Defeat EVIL! “The Shadow Boxing” reviewed! (88 Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Corpse Herding Isn’t Easy in “The Shadow Boxing.” Purchase Your Copy Here!

Corpse herder Fan Chun-Yuen has studied Master Chen for years, learning the ritual incantations and mastering the nuances of getting the dead home to their loved ones for proper burial.  What should have been a routine corpse herding goes astray when the last arrival of a corpse, a bald man, seemingly has issues following the simple incantations and master Chen’s leg is broken during a misunderstanding over gambling winnings at one of their resting pitstops.  Being left with no choice, Fan Chun-Yuen must herd the rest of the hopping corpses, publicly feared as hopping vampires, to their terminus with the aid of aspiring corpse herder and an undeterred woman Ah-Fei.  At the same time, criminal overlord Zhou, a casino owner, and a corrupt military leader are in search of a moral sub-lieutenant who can foil their plans and who has seemingly evaded all military checkpoints in route to Zhou, leaving the corpse herding understudies in the middle of a danger. 

The jiāngshī, or hopping vampire, is the Chinese version of the living dead, whether be a vampire, zombie, or a ghost in the country’s folklore.  In Chia-Liang Liu’s 1979 comedy-actioner “The Shadow Boxing,” the horror element of the jiāngshī is reduced to no more than a few false scares on the Chinese cultural collectiveness of superstitious fears.  Originally known as “Mao shan jiang shi quan” and also known as “The Spiritual Boxer II,” the film is considered a quasi-sequel to also Liu’s 1975 “The Spiritual Boxer” but only in association to the director and one of the principal actors and not a direct, character-connecting sequel by any other means.  The late “Human Lanterns” and “Demon of the Lute” writer Kuang Ni pens the script with Kung-fu comedy in mind amongst seedy corruption aimed to thwart tradition and principles, shot in Hong Kong by Celestial Entertainment on the Shaw Brothers studio lot, and produced by younger Shaw brother, Run Run or Shao Renleng. 

The actor who carries over from “The Spiritual Boxer” is “Dirty Ho” star Yue Wong in the role of corpse herding apprentice with a bad memory, Fan Chun-Yuen.  Wong’s character is a likeable learner who has the skills to be great at his vocation but lacks the confidence without being tethered to his master, played as drunkard and obsessive gambler by Chia-Liang’s brother, Chia-Young Liu, a longtime stunt man (“Once Upon A Time in China,” “The Savage Killers”) and actor (“The Return of the One Armed Swordsman,” “Five Fingers of Death”).  Fan Chun-Yuen tries to keep his sifu on a straighten arrow and focus on the task on hand and Wong and Chia-Liang invest that dynamic wholeheartedly while maintaining their sense of strength outside military force and criminal brutality to be masters under the flags of good and just.  Between them, a level of trust and reliance is displayed through their fighting casino goons and military soldiers where Wong needs his master to shout commands of the vampire style due to his bad memory.  There’s almost zero context on why that is but adds a melted layer of slip-in, slip-out comedy to make it unusually entertaining.  An understudy of the understudy and borderline love interest comes from Cecilia Wong (“The Hunter, the Butterfly and the Crocodile”) as Ah-Fei, a friend of Fan Chun Yuen who doesn’t want an arranged marriage but has an underscoring coyness with Fan Chun but their misadventures delivering the beloved bodies to grieving relatives proves to be difficult and much of their shenanigans to try and make their “mastery” believable in order to deliver the goods gets in the way of that amorous connection.  Also in the way are the corruptive forces hellbent to track down Chang Chieh (another Liu brother in Gordon Liu, “Kill Bill”) before he foils their transgressions, coinciding with performances from Lung Chan, Han Chiang, Wu-liang Chang, and Norman Chu.

“The Shadow Boxing” finely blends the chop-socky action with mystical folklore and comedy that’s not overly slapstick or buffoonery.  A serious layer runs through the middle of story and while the line chart fluctuates between peaks of let-loose Wing Chun and then violent sway the other direction with fleeting spikes of death and ghoulish shades, there’s never a tiresome tone of stagnating acts as Kuang Ni’s script develops and progresses upon the micro and macro dynamics of good versus evil characters, especially how Ni slyly introduces audiences to the last and bald corpse and it’s diverging acts of not exactly following incantational direction, in a mistakenly, humorous way.  The off feeling is there of baldie being of some importance but not until more third-party clues come to light halfway through the runtime and it’s by then the lightbulb begins to flutter and anticipatory wait for exposure begins.  If looking at “The Shadow Boxing” on a more comprehensive scale in the martial arts genre, the pace of fighting emulates too much on the lines of choreography counting.  Slow and herky-jerky, there’s not a smooth transition of moves in either of the individualized faceoffs or in the group skirmishes that doesn’t reflect well upon the stunt department as martial arts is the centerpiece of the action.  Every other aspect of creating tension and levity with the action works perfectly only to be lopsided by the sudden starts, stops, starts of checklist kick and punches. 

88 Films’ North American label lands the new high-definition release of “The Shadow Boxing” with an AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50.  The transfer is processed from the original negative and presented in the original Cinemascope aspect ratio of a 2.35:1.  The anamorphic lens used compresses the image, creating a spherical or rounded out sides on tighter shots, a known issue for the lenses of those times.  The 35mm negative has won the test of time with a near spotless print that 88 Films sharpens the color palette and defines the broader details with texture lacing, decoding the image at an average of 33Mbps.  There are times the details appear too texturally chiseled with the Shaw Brothers’ set backgrounds exposed as obviously painted backdrops, see the final showdown fight.  A single audio, uncompressed output of a LPCM Mandarin 2.0 mono is offered on the release.  The track comprises enough overlapping range of effects to sturdy the sound design almost as if it was an innate recording.  The instilled post effects have the traditional Chinese martial arts flare of whacks and thunks but added with greatly synchronous care whereas the dialogue, though clean and present at the front, has the expected timing issues with an intensity level that doesn’t quite match at times.  English subtitles are optionally available.  Surprisingly, this is one of the few 88 Films releases without special features other than the original trailer.  Instead, the label elevates the physical release with a limited-edition stunning monochromatic and illustrated cover art by Mark Bell with subtle tactile elements on the cardboard O-slipcover.  The same image is showcased as the primary clear Amaray cover art but with slightly more color added to it while the reverse sleeve features the original Hong Kong poster art.  The LE also comes with 4 collectable artcards, though they’re more still image cards than art.  The not rated, 101-minute runtime 88 Films release is encoded for only two of the three regions with an A and B playback.

Last Rites: Hong Kong cinema has been fast, loose, and either furiously funny or folklorically fist over hard-hitting fist and Chia-Liang Liu’s “The Shadow Boxing” takes into account both now on a format pedestal with a new Blu-ray release from 88 Films!

Corpse Herding Isn’t Easy in “The Shadow Boxing.” Purchase Your Copy Here!

Demonic Nuns Want Virgins to Resurrect EVIL! “The Convent” reviewed! (Synapse Films / 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

4K and Blu-ray “The Convent” Demonically Entering Your Soul! Buy It Here!

A woman strides into a convent carrier a can of gasoline and a shotgun during the sacrament of Eucharist between priest and nuns.  After setting the humble nave ablaze, she unloads shotgun shells into all the screaming bodies.  40 years later, a group of Greek life college students look to make their Greek letter mark on the same derelict convent now swarming with urban legends and ghost stories.  When a virginal student is kidnapped by wannabe Satan worshippers, they accidentally open the gate for dormant demons to arise through the corporeal vessels of the dead.  The possessed dead slaughter all in their way to seek another virgin, one that will embody their unholy master until this plane of existence.  The only chance for survival is to track that now woman from four decades ago to finish what she started after 30 years in an insane asylum, to blow away the demonic beasts of Hell!

At the turn of the century in the year of Lord of 2000, a year some Christians believed marked the 2,000th anniversary of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, saw another reincarnation of Hell passing through Catholic sacred ground from the creative culinary of profanity director Mike Mendez.  The one of a handful of creative talents behind the “Satanic Hispanics” anthology film and the native Los Angeleno helmed “The Convent,” his third directorial in horror behind breakout pyscho-hit “Killers” and the male-chauvinist be damned horror-comedy “Bimbo Movie Bash,” from the Chaton Anderson’s debut script full of sacrilegious imagery, glow-in-the-dark veined demons, and the dark comedic charm of early 2000s.  Shot entirely in Los Angeles, the demon-comedy is produced by Anderson and Jed Nolan (“Jurassic Women”) on a microbudget from executive producers Ryan and Roland Carroll of Alpine Pictures (“Dark Honeymoon”), Elliot Metz, and Rene Torres, who served as associate producer on the cult favorite, “Night of the Demons.” 

The collegiate characters are not only surrounded by twitching, carnage-dishing demons under the nuns’ habits but they’re also surrounded by headlining genre greats Adrienne Barbeau (“The Fog,” “Swamp Thing”) and, briefly, Bill Moseley (“The Devil’s Rejects,” “Texas Chainsaw Massacre II”) and gangster rapper, the late Coolio.  Barbeau doesn’t lose a step being the beautiful badass we all know and love from her reign as an 80s-90s scream queen, shotgun barreling down demons left and right as her character’s 40-years-senior self from the Nun-torching and blasting opener, the accused certifiable crazy lady called to action in Christine.  She’s called to once again stop a demonic Catholic kerfuffle she immobilized from spreading four decades back by a new set of naïve, older teenagers looking to get high, get lucky, and get the kicks.  Joanna Canton, who had three seasons in her on “That 70’s Show,” battles back-to-back with Adrienne Barbeau as Clorissa, the lead principal of the trespassing teens.  Canton is joined by story boyfriend Chad (Dax Miller, “Blood Surf”), story friends Biff (Jim Golden), Kaitlin (Renée Graham, “Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth”) and Frijole (Richard Trapp, “Re-Cut”), story little brother and abuse-taking pledger Brant (Liam Kyle Sullivan, “Rideshare”), and story gothic bestie of another life time in Mo (Megahn Perry, “The Perfect Host”) whose been ostracized by mostly Clorissa’s friends and even a little by Clorissa trying to escape a gothic lifestyle for more fit in “normal.”  A dark and spooky night in a rundown convent transforms into a night of terror when Satan Worshippers Sapphira (writer Chaton Anderson, “Wither”), Davina (Allison Dunbar, “Browse”), and Dickie-Boy (“Kelly Mantle, “The Evil Within”) are led by so-called Satanist expert and a poorly 17th century speech replicator Saul (David Gunn, “Killers”).  “The Convent” does have dynamic trope characters, ranging from jock, to druggie, to cheerleader, to goth, and to the nerd, following formulaic footsteps to face forces of ferocious, fanged demons and doing it oh not so well and oh so gloriously bloody.  Casting rounds out with Oakley Stevenson, Larrs Jackson, and Elle Alexander.

Mendez’s “The Convent” has a real identity crisis issue walking in the familiar territory that closely resembles Kevin Tenney’s “Night of the Demons.”  Hell, I would go as far as stating Mendez’s Y2K-personified horror is a near step-by-step remake of Tenney’s 1988 demon possession carnage in an abandoned structure film.  However, minutia differences, a fall of Catholicism theme, and the addition of a motorcycling, demon-destroying Adriene Barbeau keep similarity nuances at bay and the acquainted plot lively and entertaining with a glow-party, nightclub maquillage on the demons to give them a fascia of techno-effervescence veins.  Mendez also adjusts the demons’ movements to a rapid twitch with increased frames per second and having the actors jerk their movements in a wild array.  Seems a little bizarre at first but the effect grows on you, and you can’t imagine “The Convent” demon without the spasmatic shots, as their glowing eyes set on seek-and-destroy roam from dilapidated hallway to dilapidated hallway, succumbing to the evil spirit’s will after the life force leaves the body.  Themes of an evil Catholic perspective will challenge those with a Christian value upbringing, especially with nuns and priests being gunned down and torched, and more character specific concepts of personal growth in deciding what’s right versus what’s popular run a paced course of dispersed too late to fix what’s already broken. 

As part of the Mike Mendez 4K UHD double bill release from Synapse that includes his individual inaugural film “Killers,” which we will review soon too, “The Convent” comes in a 2-disc, dual format set, making it’s uncensored, U.S. debut remastered in Dolby Vision 4K from the original 35mm internegative elements.  HEVC encoded, 2160p ultra-high definition, BD66 and the AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50 rockets the previously out of print film right past a standard Blu-ray release and into the land of 4K with 2k hitching a ride.  Both formats presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the definition and color saturation advancement are a huge leap from previous DVD releases with more delineate means inside a broadly shadowed interior.  Light and shadow have now divided fully and agreeably to shapes are now more obscured or in illumination.  With that being said, details are not knocked out of this part and that’s especially surprising since director Mike Mendez supervised the 4K remastering.  Facial features do appear smoothed out, more so on the standard Blu-ray release.  UHD has a slightly better rooting out skin details and customer texturing which Adrienne Barbeau leather jacket and tight denim jeans, with all the folds, zippers, buckles, and such, seeing the most promise.  The superimposed glow f/x has rich lamination with the emanating pulses creating reflection being done well on character faces and throughout an enclosed room.  The UHD and standard Blu-ray come with an English DTS-HD master audio 5.1 surround sound from the original 16-track master audio.  Uncompressed fidelity is a complete win here for “The Convent” that seizes side and back channels with monstrous grunts and growls, and not to forget to mention the often-neglected spooky house ambience of creaks, cracks, and killer hits to the body.  A broad range helps diffuse distinct layers to the individual channels.  Dialogue renders clean and clear with no pitchiness of hissing or crackling to note.  English subtitles are available on both formats. While the UHD only has eyes for the feature, the Blu-ray has the movie plus Hell-Raising bonus content, including two audio commentaries with a cast and crew commentary with director Mike Mendez, Megahn Perry, and Liam Kyle Sullivan and a Lords of Hell commentary featuring David Gunn and Kelly Mantle in full character of Saul and Dickie-Boy, a behind-the-scenes featurette, a location featurette, a single deleted scene, gore/kill scene outtakes, the original EPK (Electronic Press Kit), a pair of promotional trailers, and a still gallery. The new primary cover art and the reverse cover art inside the black Amaray case is illustrated by Ralf Krause and Samhain1992. A 6-page essay from Corey Danna has cropped color pictures along with release acknowledgements on the backside. The not rated film has a 80-minute runtime and is region free.

Last Rites: Never intended to take itself seriously, “The Convent” has wicked style, makeup, and effects under an early 2000’s feng shui and is balls-to-the-wall nonstop with demonically dark humor laughs and the barbaric blasphemy of a savagely railed faith!

4K and Blu-ray “The Convent” Demonically Entering Your Soul! Buy It Here!

EVIL Comes to Town to Extract Your Deadly, Dark Secret. “Peter Five Eight” reviewed! (Invincible Entertainment / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Check Out Kevin Spacey and “Peter Five Eight” on DVD!

A dynamic real estate agent and her loafing husband drink themselves in an abusive back-and-forth most nights living in a small mountain town.  When a dapper new arrival observes her comings-and-goings about the community, he confronts her out of the blue with questions about a past life she’s desperate to forget.  Her dark secret remains isolated within her, even kept under wraps from her townie husband who is trying to make a change toward contributing to their relationship.  As she continues to heavily drink every night away, the stranger makes every effort to interactive with her, pushing the same questions for answers a faraway adversary seeks, as well as infiltrate the social bubble of her close friends and colleagues to try and obtain more information on the state of her mental anguish.  The closer he gets to her, the more she drinks, and her secrets become exposed toward a deadly end of the cat-and-mouse game he plays. 

Is it poor judgement to review a new film starring a blacklisted actor?  The internal struggle is real when pondering whether review consideration and shining a time-of-day spotlight on the stain considering the damage done by the main actor with sordid personal affairs made public.  This is the case with “Peter Five Eight,” a modern noir comedy-thriller that casted an ousted two-time academy award winner who we’ve really haven’t seen on the screen since 2017 after sexual battery allegations arose.  Yet, ever since this actor won the sexual battery lawsuit against his accuser, an attempt to recoup a career has bene placed in the slow cooker and writer-director Michael Zaiko Hall, a “Cloverfield” and “Planet Terror” visual effects artist turned director, adds another step toward a reel redemption and provides a curiosity to reviewers who like to be the devil’s advocate.  The 2024 released film was shot in Mount Shasta, California and is a productionally comprised of LTD Films, Ascent Films, Forever Safe and Mad Honey Productions with Hall, John Lerchen (“Vampirus”), Chavez Fred (“Hotel Dunsmuir”), and co-star Jet Jandreau producing.

That actor mentioned above is none other than “L.A. Confidential” and “House of Cards” actor Kevin Spacey in the shoes of the titular hitman named Peter.  Now it’s unclear what the “Five Eight” exactly refers to, whether to be the explicitly noted Peter 5:8 verse in the bible which reads, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour,” and that scripture is also voiced over by Spacey in film’ opening, or “Five Eight” could also refer to the Peter’s age which is noted almost inconspicuously in the dialogue when Peter is pseudo-flirting with a potential asset.  Now whether that age is in reference to his incognito, hitman persona of the passage is unclear, leaving the title more ambiguous than ever, but Spacey’s part is not so terribly vague as an expensive assassin willing to do whatever his employer requires of him.  Stacey’s rakish, twangy charm is quintessential to his more recent onscreen personas and the actor continues to enact it quite well even in a role that often feels more like a stage play than an homage to classic film noir as intended.  There’s a bit of tongue-and-cheek in every line and action cast, and not just in Spacey’s, that slips the tone of his “Peter Five Eight” into wafting black comedy and awkwardly dispositional encounters.  Michael Zaiko Hall perhaps contributes to the latter with his inability to find a way to make Stacey be suave when being suave is required, such as with his pool hall/bar dance where Stacey sings a jukebox tune with an accompanied dance on the pool table felt and imitate the actions of a trombone with a pool cue.   The scene just didn’t sit right and turned what should have been a crowd-pleasing spectacle of smooth coolness into this odd lump of Stacey peacocking around in order to attract a certain someone at the bar as part of his master plan.  Opposite Spacey is co-star and co-producer Jet Jandreau (“Next of Vampires”) as the alcoholic real estate agent Samantha, aka Sam, harboring a dark, past secret and her channeling of Bette Davis cadences and inflections denotes that noir tone they’re aiming for and sinks into melodramatics of the prosaic fashion, serving more of ear sore of lampoon the subgenre rather than resurrecting it out of antiquated techniques.  The character is built well in Sam’s overdrinking and over-paranoia the deeper into the Peter’s story of truth extraction and inevitable cleanup.  Michael Emery (“The Intrusion”), Garrett Smith (“The Gates”), Dale Dobson (“Don’t Get Eaten”), John Otrin (“Friday the 13th:  The New Blood”), and “Dawn of the Dead” remake’s “Jake Weber and “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle’s” Rebecca De Mornay play an affluent and ruthless, revenge seeker and the local real estate agent head close to Sam. 

“Peter Five Eight” likes to live in between layers and forces audiences to read in between the lines on multiple surfaces.  Sam’s escape to the mountains, to flee from her past’s problems, has little footing when husband Travis comes into play as Travis borders being a flake of a husband, a fellow alcoholic, who Sam shares her addiction by proxy or maybe uses as a crutch in an exploitative manner, but he becomes a throwaway character from never being fleshed out and same goes with Garrett Smith’s role as Sam’s ex-husband who enters the picture unwillingly but shows up a little too late to be of importance.  We also needed more from Jake Weber’s richer-the-God Lock who hires Peter to track down and punishing Sam for her past transgressions that, we assume, tragically hurt him.  Peter’s base price is a cool $50 million, and Lock even adds another $8 for Peter’s efficiency, but that egregious, astronomical figure is chased away by Lock’s mysterious career background.  A cryptocurrency motif is sprinkled into the fold, mentioned here and there by various characters in various situations, and that’s perhaps Lock’s key to success but, again, never fleshes out.  There was a real desire to enjoy “Peter Five Eight” and while Kevin Spacey doesn’t necessarily sully the film, and on the contrary entertains with flamboyant articulation, Hall has a hard time creating coherency with his wish-wash noir.

Though intrigued by the premise and Kevin Stacey’s resurrection out of being totally eclipsed from in front of the camera, “Peter Five Eight” arrives onto an Invincible Pictures DVD home release in what is a surprising dreary A/V folly.  The MPEG2 encoded DVD5 is every much the resolution of 720p with smoothed over details and you can see the outlined splotch patches on the RGB model.  Hall and director of photography Eric Liberacki (“The Pale Man”) use mostly natural lighting of the sunny mountainside community and the window-laden interiors.  Night scenes are often lightly misted with a drifting fog or smoke but the weird part of this is it’s mostly in interior sets, creating that noir illusion but mostly just plays havoc on the already suffering details.  No issues with aliasing or noise with the digital playback.  The audio oddly enough is an English Stereo 2.0.  Unsure why a surround sound mix was not in the mix, so to speak, as there’s gunplay, explosions, townsfolk chatter, car crashes, and other elements that add to the range and depth.  The compressed result is a flat, muted track that has zero vitality in its audio projection, and this is also reflected in the decoding kbps that retains a constant flatline rather than a dynamic decoding based off the action.  I have not seen this before on modern DVDs and was taken aback by its feebleness.  English subtitles are optionally available.  The only bonus feature, to which you access straight from the static menu, contains a Kevin Spacey helmed promotional featurette for the film as well as to give the audience a historical lecture on the film noir subgenre.   Invincible Entertainment’s release comes not rated, with a 100-minute return, and a region 1 playback.

Last Rites: Though weird to watch a blackballed actor back on top of the horse, but the black comedy noir that is “Peter Five Eight” is not totally sullied by his name, it’s tarnished by the aphonic character development and the poor A/V basics for the home release that continue to beat the horse with a sprained ankle.

Check Out Kevin Spacey and “Peter Five Eight” on DVD!

If Highschool Didn’t Already Have Enough EVIL In It! “Homework” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Purchase “Homework” Blu-ray Here!

Highschooler Tommy can’t take it anymore.  His friends all talk about their sexual experiences and he’s still a virgin.  Talking to a therapist to help redirect his sexual energy into something else, Tommy becomes inspired with the idea to form a rock band with best friend Ralph.  The eager students secure three classmates from the student body to round out the band, one not being the obsessed competitive swimmer Sheila whom Tommy has strong feelings.  Each band member’s lives revolve around their own sexual activities from sneaking around from their God-fearing, prudent parents, embellishing fantasy from late night tutoring sessions gestured by a hot, young French teacher, or contracting a venereal disease from a rockstar idol.  As Tommy continues to plead with Sheila to attend just playing session, he becomes sorely frustrated by not only her lack of reciprocated affection but also lack of friendship towards the rest of the group, resulting in him finding his sexual prowess in the arms of a classmate’s mother who also recounts fondly her sexualized youth. 

Not just another teen sex comedy from the 1980s, “Homework” is the provocative, controversial, and obscure teenage comedy-drama from James Beshears, his one-and-only director credit behind his day jobs of being a film sound editor on such a range of films from “True Lies,” to “Day of the Dead,” to “Porky’s Revenge.”  The script is the debut feature from cowriters Maurice Peterson and Don Safran that carves out story subdivisions from Tommy’s friend and denotes Tommy as the as the epicenter of sexual hangups.  The late, legendary producer Max Rosenberg, producer of many B-reels such as “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors,” “And Now the Screaming Starts!,” and “Perdita Durango,” secured funding for the feature alongside Robert Fenton (“The Incredible Melting Man”) with Beshears and Safran producing under the production and distribution label of Jensen Farley Pictures. 

The top bill was denominated to actress Joan Collins of the television series “Dynasty” fame, but the once voluptuous English brunette, who starred in “Fear of the Night” and “Sharon’s Baby,” sizzles in a more mature role in early 80s production with a screen time of about a third of “Homework’s” runtime.  Much of the story focuses on Tommy, played by the late Michael Morgan (“Midnight Offerings”), who succumbs to Collins’ character’s subtly and sudden sultry desires for her daughter’s school friend when helping her hang a picture.  The building up to this moment isn’t as plain on it’s face as it would seem with audiences subjugated to teenage fantasy and mature women’s reminiscence that doesn’t even hint cougar encounters.  Collins, unfortunately for you sleazoids out there, had a body double for the character’s topless scene and romantic entanglements but the then late 40s actress had plenty of curves and sex appeal to make any man, no matter than carbon-date, sweat with arousal anticipation.  “Homework” spreads the love, literally, as each band member goes through a totality of teenage sexcapades, individualized and customized to their own story’s arc, and there’s not a path of sexual conquest to be had but rather a variety situational scenarios where teens either learn the hard way, face the consequences, or leave their hearts at the door to avoid disappointment because at that age, the youth are the most impressionable and angsty with mixed up emotions.  A young cast of Lanny Horn (“Tarantulas:  The Deadly Cargo”), Erin Donovan (“Mack the Knife”), Renee Harris, Shell Kepler (“The Great American Girl Robbery”), Mark Brown, and John Romano (“Dandy”) act toe-to-toe with Lee Purcell (“Necromancy”), Carrie Snodgress (“The Attic”), Ernestine Jackson (“Aaron Loves Angela”), Bill Knight, Rosemary Alexander (“Madhouse”), Howard Storm, and Wings Hauser (“Vice Squad”) in this eclectic casting. 

What’s most memorable about the little-known production is not the sex-driven antics and mischievousness of high school boys but rather the day-in-a-life of touch choices and toucher consequences interlaced with regular adolescent customs, such as missing the cut for the swim team and beating yourself up for it, smoking dope in the school locker room, have the fantastical hots for the new young teacher, starting a garage band, etc.  “Homework” has comparable, lighter traits to the 1995, Larry Clark coming-of-age film “Kids.”  While not as crass or violent, “Homework” has high-impact themes like sexual transmitted diseases accompanied with visits to the women’s health clinic, a misunderstanding of sexual education, and, even to go as far as, the exploitation of minors to an extent and a spiral of obsession as we see with Shelia is won’t leave the pool in order to shave time off her laps, neglecting friendships, and even romantic relationship with Tommy whom ends up in the arms of her equally emotionally irresolute mother reminiscing a past of first time and exciting sexual encounters.  While the story manages to stay afloat with multiple sub-stories, technically, “Homework” falls below the conventional quality standard of the period with visible boom mics, a deficient picture quality, and lack of artistical knowhow from a new director in James Beshears.  Luckily for viewers of obscurity, lovers of the long-forgotten, and retro-adventurers, there are boutique labels salivating for the chance to revive and resuscitate these titles back into our field of vision. 

That boutique label is for those who are in the know wouldn’t expect “Homework” to be released on.  Unearthed Films brings the James Beshears film to Special Edition Blu-ray, the first time on the format, with a new 2K scan a part of their Unearthed Classics banner, numbered at 15.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high definition, BD25 presents to date the best image quality possible from the original 35mm negative shot on an Arriflex camera.  There’s slightly more grain presented on this transfer that stems from Paul Goldsmiths’ cinematography and with that there’s a loss of detail in darker scenes that become victims of black crush where delineation bleeds into the environment and darker clothing no longer renders outstanding with the proper shades.  Better lit scenes have more distinction coherency, but the color diffusion is limited and the original image retains a lower resolution akin to 720p and seldomly increases an upscaled 1080p in the 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio.  What’s notable about this release, and despite the visible equipment gaffs, is the uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mono audio mix that doesn’t reflect any kind of hissing, popping, or damage to the track.  There’s not a ton of range or depth representation with mostly interior shots containing dialogue, which is prominent and clear under the lossless compression.  English subtitles are available.  With the obscure nature of “Homework” comes with it not a lot of special features but what’s included is an archived interview producer Max Rosenberg going into detail of the film’s genesis and controversies, a promotional gallery, and the trailer along with other Unearthed Classic prevues.  Unearthed Classics’s illustrated, cardboard O-slipcover of the prefacing sex scene between boy and woman covers the same image on the standard Amaray’s front cover.  There are no inserts or other physical contents.  The rated R release has a runtime of 89 minutes and is listed as region A for playback; however, I did have my player set to region B during play and so the release is tested for A and B regions.

Last Rites:  Plenty of nudity and surrounding controversy keeps “Homework” relevant in today’s every-stimulating, ever-producing retro-release market but it’s the film’s pertinent application of teenage troubles that tips the scales to seeking this unconventional Unearthed Film’s Blu-ray release.

Get an A on this “Homework” Blu-ray Release!

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!