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Let EVIL Give You a Hand! “The Beast Hand” reviewed! (Cleopatra Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Beast Hand” Grabs A Blu-ray Release! Buy it Here!

A derelict criminal Osamu Kogure finds himself back in the company of his jumped parole crime boss Akira Inui, Kogure is back to being a manipulated puppet at the whims of a conceited and aggressive Inui.  When Inui persuades Kogure to give up the whereabouts of an old, reluctant fling Koyuki Igarashi, who went through full body surgery to wipe away her past with Inui, Kogure and Igarashi are trapped by Inui’s bull-headed intimidation, forcing them into a rushed heist that ends with Korgure’s hand being severed.  A syndicate surgeon grafts a deformed, experimental monstrous limb on his wound that turns Kogure into a superhuman beast when provoked.  Now gone rogue out of the surgeon’s reach, Kogure and Igarashi are hunted down across the region by a powerful crime boss’s clan to extract the success of Kogure’s new, powerful extremity but the once timid and submissive delinquent will no longer go down without a fight. 

Taichiro Natsume, the director behind the Big Summer Psychic Team shark series, such as “Ring Shark,” “Love Shark,” and “Last Shark,” moves away from the supernaturally swimming maneater terrorizing the sands and lands surrounding the creature’s resident watering well and popping up out of the bathwater of those clutched in its curse, forgoes another shark infested entry for a monstrous transplant tentacle in his latest outrageous indie horror, “The Beast Hand,” aka “Koletise käsi,” or original titled “Kemonote.”  The Japanese film is one part science-fictional body-horror thriller and one part yakuza splatter strife and is all part penned from the mixed-up monstrosity and melancholy swirling inside Natsume’s mind with cowritten efforts from Yasunori Kasuga.  Lead actor Takahiro Fukuya wears multiple production for producing the production under his studio company Eigabatake that foots the partial budget combined with the crowdfunding remaining purse pieces to bring this splatter dream to reality. 

Takahiro Fukuya invests himself full throttle into the role of Osamu Kogure leading to his real life and role to nearly be parallel to each other as Fukuya quits his day job, spends most of his money, and, likely, leads a temporary pauper lifestyle, much like his character, in order to get his vision off the ground and into production.  Fukuya embodies the weak-minded aspects of a fragile delinquent, submissive to a much more apex predator in the recently prison released, escaped parolee Akira Inui (Yôta Kawase, “Slave Ship,” “Maniac Driver”) in a take-all, give-nothing leader position in what Inui considers is his gang, completed by Misa Wada’s objectified into sexual slavery of Koyuki Igarashi.  The pink eiga actress, of such hits as “Corpse Prison” and “Black Tears,”  has lingering anxiety and timorous defensiveness for her character’s subject of sexual and verbal abuse by Inui only for it to transfigure it into a slap-across-the-face affection for the even more cowardly Kogure in an unforgettable sex scene prior to the monstrous hand augmentation.  The second half of the story rather abruptly butts into Korgure and Igarashi’s departure of the city and into more humble means of making a go of their relationship, especially now Igarashi is months pregnant after their slappy-rollick on top of the sleeping bag sack.  Character exposition of the couple’s circumstances at this point is nonexistent as Natsume uses images and exterior shaping scenes to fabricate their current, still poor, state trying to make it work until the surgeon and the gang leader come to collect their handy work.

“The Beast Hand” embarks into different subcategories of splatter subgenre filmmaking.  Natsume certainly pays homage to the Japanese gore-and-splatter films in his own miniscule way but keeps the blood down to the minimal level allowed for labelling as such, but the filmmaker invests into the hardships of the accounted characters without unleashing too many background details or story dynamic particulars to that doesn’t allow audiences to become too involved leaving characters banally wrapped in their strife from point A-to-Z.  Instead, Natsume concenters around two sides of the story;  the first being the elegancy of Kogure and Igarashi’s unlikely and oddly misshapen relationship with scenes of beach walking, comforting, cheap meals in a humble home, and of course, the slap-happy sex scene of two belittled and downtrodden people tying one off in expressive fit of passion while the second part is more tension-riddled hearty with a yakuza hunt for Kogure’s one-of-a-kind beast hand.  Both sides balance awkwardly along a sporadically dotted line of limited detail and time passed but ultimately collide at a culminating point of a beast hand slaughterhouse when Igarashi’s safety boils up the beast from within Kogure, tracking “The Beast Hand” as a horror with to some extent a rivulet of romantism often clunky and riddled with holes. 

Cleopatra Entertainment distributes in association with Reel Suspects the Blu-ray release of Taichiro Natsume’s “The Beast Hand.”  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, BD25 decodes an anemic picture presented in widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Visually, “The Beast Hand” has nothing going for it other than a clean experience with no aliasing, minor banding, and other immaterial compression issues.  The lack of color pop and the feather washed grading dampen with a lifeless aesthetic toward a Japanese splatter subgenre that’s literally soaked in a manga style or pop art.  Dialogue renders over cleanly and with clarity in a Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo that syncs timely with the forced, grammatically errorless English subtitles.  Immersive qualities are limited to the two front channels that are vigorous only during the intermittent action full of Lou Ferringo Hulk snarls and growls when Kogure goes full milky-eyed beast mode and good squishy Foley as stomachs and heads are eviscerated and sliced down.  Bonus features are typical run of the mill for Cleopatra Entertainment with a cache of trailers for the company’s recent releases.  There’s also marketing promo clips for “The Beast Hand” but in Japanese without English subtitles.  The standard Blu-ray Amaray encases a decent, and uncredited, original photoshop illustration that is, however, partly inaccurate, and awkwardly arranged with a beast hand resembling nothing like the body horror hand transplant in the movie.  The cover feels like right off the commercial printer, raw homemade art.  Inside is the same art pressed to the disc with no other accompaniments.  The region free, not rated Blu-ray has a runtime of 77 minutes. 

Last Rites: As far as J-horror goes, “The Beast Hand” has average appeal inside a strung along story and not enough absurd Japanese off-the-wall concepts and violence to stand out amongst the crowded subgenre.

“The Beast Hand” Grabs A Blu-ray Release! Buy it Here!

EVIL Won’t Let You Just Kill Yourself Even If You Wanted To! “Violator” reviewed! (WildEye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Violator” on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing and MVD Visual!

Desperate to track down her sister Naomi who becomes involved in an online social media forum about mass suicide, a woman’s investigation leads her on a train ride to a small village on the outskirts of the city.  There she meets Red Sheep, an internet handle for the mass suicide form greeter for those individuals seeking to give up their life willingly.  Returning her to the abandoned house where congregated patrons of their own demise wait for forum members from all over to gather before stepping into the afterlife, but the beneath the surface of simply drinking the Kool-Aid together is a wretched plan of death and self-inflicted suicide is not in the ill-fated stars for the group now sequestered in an isolated town. 

When the film is titled “Violator” and the very first images on the screen are flashing title cards, warning of violence and depravity from what you’re about to see, then a graphic intensity bar has been firmly set with the expectation that disturbing content is afoot.  The Japanese 2018 released horror-comedy comes from the cyborg-splattering mind of “Meatball Machine” writer-director Jun’ichi Yamamoto and is a continued part of the tokusatsu horror genre peppered with familiar Japanese motifs of mass suicide, samurai sword, oral fixations, and all with a pinch of Kabuki!  Yamamoto is no stranger to the Kabuki culture as he works in a callback scene and line from his 2008 actioner “Kabuking Z:  The Movie” into “Violator’s” evil eviscerating and executing entrapment.      

I wouldn’t call “Violator” aces in acting, but I’m not speaking to the general known fact that Japanese portrayals are often over-the-top exaggerated, and I’m referencing more toward the lack of selling the bizarre by any means possible.  The cast more than often feels like a rehearsal and robotic to the point where picking out cues can be almost a game.  Most of the cast are once overs or have a select history in the indie-tokusatsu market.  The biggest name in the film also has the shortest screen time with Nikkatsu Roman Pink film actor Shinji Kubo as the leader of the pact who lures lost souls to the abandoned house of doom.  Kubo doesn’t make or break “Violator,” but his character is pivotal in turn of events that alters the course of a few particular principals. Mai Arai plays the worried sick and searching woman tracking down her sister Naomi (Sora Kurumi) before she makes a grave suicidal mistake. Along the way, Arai’s character bumps into a mixed company of varying personalities revolving around their own death – one early 20-something young’un treats her suicide like the next cool thing, another ostentatiously can’t commit, and while another couldn’t be bothered by anything else surrounding her and plays it cool. The small village inhabitants are just as diversified and as quirky as the emotionally haphazard suicidals but with special, supernatural abilities to absolutely mess with their minds until satisfying their morbid, high-on-death munchies. Shinichi Fukazawa (“Bloody Muscle Body Builder In Hell”), Shun Kitagawa (“Prisoners of Ghostland”), Kanae Suzuki, Anna Tachibana (“Corpse Prison”), Ichiban Ujigami, and Rei Yatsuka round out “Violator’s” cast.

With a provocative title and a stern, flashing warning for taboo content, “Violator” starts off slow and continues so until about 3/4s into the film. Yamamoto glides not the sliced underbelly with murderous rage and profane callous through sexually and wicked means. No, Yamamoto builds each individual character, giving the what’s usually throw-away victims the time of day with a prolonged preface before their death that sets in who they are, what mindset they’re in, and, instead of just being collateral damage, what catalytic action becomes their ultimate undoing. By providing singular personalities, Yamamoto instills a breadth of subconscious care amongst the audiences that unintentionally react with the pangs of sympathy for the less naive during their demise to a straight up I’m glad they’re dead death because of their horrible unprincipled being and them dead makes the world a better place. Eventually, Yamamoto turns the keys to rev up the havoc as the death pact suicide squad disband into distinct, slasher-esque junctures to make good on the promise of building the character to give them a proper cutthroat curtain call and it’s about this time “Violator’s” pre-film turpitude caution actually applies with strange ritualistic kabuki decapitation, a virginal last-gasp cunnilingus before a protruding vaginal spear pierces through the skull, and a toy doll becomes a literal eye-opener for a suicide documentarian. Idiosyncratic in their own right, the kills are a violent spectacle that make “Violator” memorable enough to not forget it, but there’s far worse inflammatory material out there in the world of cinema that “Violator’s” handful of okay kills doesn’t exactly set off our internal omigod alarms.

“Violator” is the kind of off market brand and violence-laden film that fits like a glove with indie distributor, Wild Eye Releasing, in association with Tomcat Films (“The Amazing Bulk,” “Mansion of Blood”) and is perhaps one of the best releases out from the shlock usually produced from the latter company. With a muted colored and basic arranged DVD cover mockup that evokes every suspicion of an unauthorized release, I couldn’t love this cover any more than I already do with the promising depiction of a hysterical bloodbath and the singular moments represented in the collage of carnage and madness don’t stray away from the truth. The not rated DVD is presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio with a runtime of 72 minutes. DVD image quality is not terrible with a rate of decompression hovering around 6-7 Mbps, but still a little fuzzy in particular scenes with more than one character present and a in low-lit show production, that can hinder the viewing. The Japanese language PCM stereo track has no real flaw to speak of with a good synchronous English subtitle track and no detectable compression issues other than the lack of surround sound audio strength. The metal soundtrack also didn’t align, or rather clashed, with the mise-en-scene, added for just the sake of adding to make the story edgier. Bonus features include only a scene selection and trailers on a variable menu. Coy and different, “Violator” thinks outside the box with a simple supernatural revenge narrative that penetrates slowly at first but then really rams in the sudden disarray without a precautionary moment to lube up first.

“Violator” on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing and MVD Visual!