Tag Archives: Coven of the Black Cube

Elizabeth Bathory Evokes the Birth of EVIL! “Blood Bitch Baby” reviewed! (Blood Sick Productions / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Blood Bitch Baby” Now Available!

What if Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer who bathed in virgin women blood to obtain youth, didn’t die in a prison cell?  What if Bathory was alive and well, living agelessly as one of the demon Asmodeus’s handmaiden to do his bidding, such as selecting a chosen woman to birth the Antichrist?  The countess does just that by posting a job position of caregiver with Jenny, a unemployed woman with an abusive, greedy boyfriend, responding to the ad.  Selected as the chosen one, Jenny is marked with Asmodeus’s symbol that grants her the power of strength and a craving for human flesh and blood.  After devouring her boyfriend, she meets Iris, a homeless lesbian who witnesses the expedited birth of the antichrist soon after meeting her.  Can Iris and a professor of parapsychology stop the second coming of Satan or will the world be condemned to the Hell on Earth. 

The professional relationship between long time schlocky, low-budget horror director Donald Farmer (“Cannibal Hookers”) and the independent, modern day scream queen Jessa Flux (“Murdercise”) has gone beyond the limitations of a working relationship and into more along the lines of friendship and respect as the two have collaborated on a total of six completed productions from 2023 to date with “Amityville Aliens,” “Darbie’s Scream House,” “Debbie Does Demons,” “Bigfoot Exorcist” and “Shark Exorcist 2:  Unholy Waters.”  The sixth film is the one we’re going to look at today, “Blood Bitch Baby,” aka “Wicked Witch,” provides Flux the opportunity to play a notorious historical figure, the Blood Countess herself, Elizabeth Bathory.  The 2024 released film is also written by Donald Farmer and, if you’re familiar with the cult director’s work, there’s very little money invested into what’s considered a horror spirited feature that takes some liberties with the story.  “Blood Bitch Baby” is produced by the “Coven of the Black Cube” director Brewce Longo under his Blood Sick Productions company.

Jessa Flux might headline the movie but that doesn’t make “Blood Bitch Baby” a solo effort as the energetic cast is entirely occupied by Donald Farmer alternative and willing regulars.  Angel Nichole Bradford takes the protagonist lead as the abused and job-seeking Jenny who falls into Bathory’s classifieds trap, ensnared and bewitched to be the biological mother of the Antichrist.  Bradford co-stars in “Crackcoon” and “Darbie’s Scream House” alongside Flux and the petite, auburn-haired actress, in contrasts the voluptuous, curly-blond Flux and who also has a hand in special effects and makeup on these multi-hat productions, has a knack for acting that isn’t monotonic, flat, forced, or with limited range as often some of these cult B-movie actors can produce in attempt to be melodramatic.  When there’s usually Flux and Bradford in the same film together, Mel Helfrin isn’t too far behind as the third into this triple threat of titillating terror.  Helfrin, a vet of horror schlock, also starred in “Darbie’s Scream House” as well as “Night of the Dead Sorority Babes” with Jessa Flux.  The trio really do live up and liven up every scene with enthusiasm for budget horror, hamming it to death for the sake of blood, guts, and sex within its thin plotline structure that often veers off course.  More Farmer regulars in Claude D. Mills (“Debbie Does Demons”) and Joe Casterline (“Shark Exorcist 2:  Unholy Waters”) find themselves in the mix as bite victims of demonic forces.  There’s overperforming, bad performing, and some decent enough thespian to keep progression from staling but there’s definitely a comfortability and jelling within the troupe that sets expectations on a low-level production and a horrendously hackneyed and expositional script.  Jessie Youngs, Ronnie George (“Deadly Dealings”), Fallon Vendette, Marilyn Paige, and Kimberly Cole Zemke (“Debbie Does Demons”) costar. 

“Blood Bitch Baby” is an alliteration title that makes about as much as the film’s original alliteration title of “Wicked Witch” when considering the story has Jessa Flux in a prologue setup surrounding Elizabeth Bathory’s life post-virginal blood bathing.  Bathory’s deal with demonic forces gives the 16th-century woman what she’s always wanted, youth and beauty, but the agreement is never spoken of again in what’s an integral piece of important backstory to volley the immaculate conception (unless you consider Jenny’s nightmare of a demon raping her the act) of the antichrist.  That’s the theme for the entirety of the film as the story veers and swerves off-course away from a film setup to be about Bathory when really it’s about Jenny as a vessel for antichrist and those around succumbing to the infernal forces that dragon-headed hand puppets in this cost-efficient production.  The film is so strapped for cash that flesh wounds that should result in gaping hole actually grow a slab a raw and discolored meat overtop.  When Jenny eats her boyfriend’s eye, there should be an empty eye socket but what’s there is tumor growth.  The same can be said about Bathory being slashed or bitten in the face by the demon baby as instead of perforating scratches down her face, she too grows a bulbous mass.  Other randomized are added to try and add depth but are terribly too threadbare to fully attach itself with any kind of impression or influence, such as Keller, a Professor of Parapsychology who just randomly shows up at the right place, right time, and Iris, the dope-smoking lesbian who happenstance into a relationship with the recently unattached yet devilishly tranced and impregnated Jenny.  Iris isn’t essential to the story which makes her essentially just a body for sex appeal and for the kill counter.

Blood Sick Productions gives Elizabeth Bathory a lifelong change at more malevolence and death in “Blood Bitch Baby” now available on Blu-ray home video.  The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD25 is riddled with colorful gel tints that play havoc in the details, reducing skin and fabric textures with smooth splotches of image posterization.  When using natural lighting or unfiltered key lighting, the details better render through to illuminate the little details, such as skin imperfections and granulated texturing on all surfaces.  Hue changes run rampant with cinematographer Curtis Everitt can’t pin down a singular style, relying heavily on a multi-color use of tinted lighting to feign supernatural surrealism but when edited, the colors change and there are times when there is no coloring at all in certain frames.   The English LPCM 2.0 Stereo is adequate for the release with clear dialogue until the amplified volume static, that’s not filtered out, comes into play, losing some fidelity out of the dual channel.  The audio is overall flat but that’s expected with the mostly closeup and extreme closeup shots that innately don’t have depth.  Range is limited as well with mostly a talking head narrative and ADS demonic creature sounds.  Mike Treblicock and Tim Ritter’s soundtrack pours into the channels nicely, overtaking when needed, such as the dream sequence, and balanced where needed to be defined.  There are no English subtitles available.  Bonus features include a Donald Farmer video introduction with Kasper Meltedhair standing adjacent to him as agreeable arm candy, behind-the-scenes photo gallery, and Blood Sick Productions trailers for other distributed and produced films.  There’re also bloopers in the after credits.  The standard Amaray Blu-ray comes with killer gory artwork by graphic artist Rick Melton.  There is no image on the reverse side of the sleeve, and the disc is pressed with Jessa Flux’s colorfully tinted Bathory face.  Not rated and region free, the Blood Sick “Blood Bitch Baby” has a runtime of 68 minutes. 

Last Rites: Donald Farmer has always been a king of underground, independent schlock horror but over the years, Farmer’s work has tapered from passion projects to more undistinguishable indies with hammy performances and shoddy effects that has “Blood Bitch Baby” cribbed.

“Blood Bitch Baby” Now Available!

Romance, Arsenic, and EVIL from the “Coven of the Black Cube” reviewed! (Blood Sick Productions / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Don’t Take a Drink from “The Coven of the Black Cube!” See On Blu-ray!

In a romantic tale brewed in turmoil and death metal, Violet’s relationship with girlfriend Gumby has spiraled into rocky territory.  Meanwhile, a coven of witches, the coven of the black cube, use a façade storefront to sell their arsenic infused potions to women who patron the store looking for spells, elixirs, or anything they can get their hands on to give them their just desserts.  Along with a steep price for the potion, the coven’s intent is to also extract the hearts from the corpses for black ritual purposes.  When Violet meets Clover, one of the coven witches, she’s smitten with their newfangled friendship, entrusting Clover enough to naively purchase the potion that only truly works if the other person actually loves them back.  Violet’s plan backfires when the potion takes Gumby’s life but in tragedy she finds solace, warmth, and love from Clover as the two find a stronger connection than before.  Yet, Clover’s coven doesn’t see their amorousness as conducive and plot against Violet and her inner circle who know a little too much of their murderous plans. 

“Coven of the Black Cube” is the 2025 alternative-goth romance horror from Brewce Longo.  The 2024 released film is Longo’s third full-length feature film behind “Blood Sick Psychosis” and that timeless – or was it tasteless – holiday classic, “A Corpse for Christmas.”  Longo pens the shooting script from a story concept by Longo, the film’s costar Zoe Angeli, and Josh Schafer, a VHS aficionado with producing involvement in the VHS documentary “Adjust Your Tracking” and videotaped themed adult animation film in “The Magnificent Kaaboom!!! VHS.”  “Coven of the Black Cube” takes a shine to Schafer’s enthusiasm for the antiquated media format as Longo devises an analog appearance from shooting with a VHS camcorder.  Longo and cinematographer Michael DiFrancesco serve as executive producing financiers of the lo-fi and underground horror production with “Busted Babies’” X Menzak and Charles Smith as co-producers. 

At the dark heart of the story, two women devoid of true love are a piece of a larger pie of characters and while Morrigan Thompson-Milam (“Debbie Does Demons,” “XXX-mas”) and Zoe Angelis (“Flesh Eater X,” “A Corpse for Christmas”) play the characters on opposing sides of the morality scale who find a connection of desire for each other’s comfort and company, there is often a focus on Milo, the laissez faire pot shop, VHS, and pizza-making entrepreneur, and his frustrated wife looking for husband humiliation.  Milo’s a long haired, mustached, glass-wearing, dope smoker with a penchant for Carl J Sukenick movies and the finest college combo of cold pizza and warm beer.  “Pigshit’s” Josh Schafer cowrites in his character’s love for the underground and obscure horror in a retro-VHS format and instills an uncouth yet gentle behavior for a likeable Milo, but Milo’s is benign to “Coven of the Black Cube’s” theme as well as his wife’s (Annie Mitchell, “A Corpse for Christmas”) distaste for his uncivilized and disinterested spousal conduct.  There’s segment has little value other than to be another coven case of trying to get rid of one’s husband and to be not a good friend, but just a floating friend to Violet and Gumby (Kasper Meltedhair, “Darbie’s Scream House”) that supplies them weed from time to time.  We’ve seen Angelis before in more X-rated material from extreme indie filmmaker SamHel’s short films “Vania” and “LoveDump” but her role as Clover takes it down a notch by only going full nude for a steamy moment, exposing just enough yet plenty for a lead into sex scene that fades to a black transition just before getting down with Violet.  Clover and Violet relate to effectual romance that’s organically not sustainable due to the coven’s strict unwritten policies on privacies with Luna (Aja Long) as the representational face of the coven head who will do what is necessary to keep their practices a secret.  The cast fills in with Tina Krause (“Bloodletting”), Joe Swanberg (“You’re Next”), David ‘The Rock’ Nelson (“Blood Sick Psychosis”), and Chris Seaver (“Scrotal Vengeance”).

Underneath the darkling foundation and it’s deathrocker-and-hillbilly rock scene, “Coven of the Black Cube” has perfected the notes of being an analog horror in the modern, digital age by actually using era specific filming equipment to achieve a natural aesthetic with tracking lines, interlaced blocking, and a low-bandwidth process with magnetic tape decay resulting in color shifting and bleeding of the warmer tones produces a nostalgic exactness, an infinite times better aged look through proper medium than a digital image could ever try to reproduce through  being played back through a VHS recorder or any VHS filter.  High praise for a more than accomplished film aesthetic can only push its success so far as the story, a dark-and-grim queer romance, struggles to keep focus with a disjointed narrative, diluting too much of the Violet and Clover rising relationship within the killer-coven context.  Sidebar scenes of Milo’s substory, subjecting his wife’s disdain for his change over the course of the marriage and the subsequent consequence of her plot to do harm to him, dissent the story’s core queer love affair tone too much and too heavy-handily while keeping an overtop cloud of wicked witchcraft whirling about between murdering men, selling pernicious beauty products and services, and holding dark rituals involving a coffin, torture of manhood, and ill-effect open-heart surgery.  Gore effects are moderately effective, especially with the back alley penile canal probing that’ll have all the men cross their legs in fear but also include disemboweling and heart removals.  One item that really digs under the skin, nagging for it to be further explained, is the significance of the black cube.  It’s symbol is worshipped but is still an ambiguous cause or idol the coven sees fit to follow; however, a little research suggest Longo’s story pulls inspiration from the occultist and magical religion Cult of the Black Cube that has been segmented over he course of time, one of those segmentations being blood sacrifices in order to harvest souls for possibly Satan and that closely resembles the filmic plot. 

Blood Sick Productions receives the high-definition Blu-ray treatment for “Coven of the Black Cube,” distributed by MVD Visual.  Encoded onto a BD25, the AVC encoded, 1080p Blu-ray, presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, is an analog enthusiasts wet dream being shot on magnetic tape rather than digital, creating all sorts of color bleeding, interlacing issues, and fuzzy imaging that can both be an instilling nostalgia of reminiscent low-budget 1980s horror and a videophile’s ultimate night for apex image quality.  Longo’s intentions were for the former, a love letter to the VHS era, under the cinematography of Michael DiFrancesco who knew how to correctly light and angle certain shots ot appear vivid, such as in the nightclub scene where Violent and Clover meet eyes, and for the rest of the film use the inherent camcorder’s constraints to let the low resolution and limited color range to take the wheel.  The English PCM 2.0 stereo has a stronger mix than expected in contrast to the video quality, filling in the dual output with unrefined and flat but clear and prominently forefront dialogue, nonetheless.  A killer metal soundtrack is the film’s pride and joy, dispersed throughout appropriately emotionalizing and accentuating the type of scene, with performances from Sing Slavic, Fishgutzzz, Slasher Dave, ShitFucker, Blank Spell, Xarissa, Sorrow Night, deleter, Heavy Temple, Soft Teeth, and more, a full list is inside on an inserted one-sided sheet in their respective band fonts.  Other physical properties of include a harsh pastel and crudely demonic illustration by Paul Barton.  Inside with the insert sheet, the disc is pressed with a giant black cube, bordered with archaic rue figures in a bloodred backsplash.  Encoded special features include a commentary writer-director Brewce Longo, writer-star Zoe Angeli, writer-star Josh Schafer, and director of photography Michael DiFrancesco, a behind the scenes look, and the trailer.  The region free encoded disc has a runtime of 97 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: An alternative witchy tale for the alt-scene, “Coven of the Black Cube’s” nostalgia for the analog and the misandrist femme-fatales marks a different kind of cauldron-stirred potion for the black cat and broomstick subgenre but there’s an imbalance of story here that’s difficult to ignore with its wandering path that takes focus away from the significance of the black cube, trading defining substance around the coven’s existence for a quick cementing romance.

Don’t Take a Drink from “The Coven of the Black Cube!” See On Blu-ray!