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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!

EVIL’s Blonde, Beautiful, and Without Genitalia! “Darbie’s Scream House” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Uh Oh Darbie! “Let’s Go Buy “Darbie Scream House” on DVD!

In Doll Town, Darbie is the most popular doll around.  Blonde, beautiful, and busty, Darbie lives a perfect plastic existence.  When her boyfriend Ben wants to plan a surprise birthday bash for Darbie, Tripper, Darbie’s helpful yet gossipy little sister, interprets Ben’s interactions with Darbie’s friends – Danger Darbie, Ditzy Darbie, and Rodeo Darbie – as infidelity despite no evidence of sexual activity, as well no doll in Doll Town having genitalia, and reports back to Darbie with the unpleasant news.   With her perfect world seemingly crumbling down, Darbie pledges to rid Doll Town of her now ex-best friends by taking a big knife to them in vengeful spite, turning her dream life into a spiral nightmare based off a simple misunderstanding and an obsession with contentment, that drives her insane and no one from her friends to boyfriend Ben, to even her sister Tripper, are safe from her accessorial wrath.  

Former, or current depending on how you look at it, alternative adult content creator turned this next generations cult film scream queen, Jessa Flux (“Murdercise,” “Onlyfangs”) co-writes and co-produces her latest venture “Darbie’s Scream House,” a comedy-horror lampooning of Mattel’s Barbie universe.  Flux’s independent film talents hop aboard a legendary name of the same market in Donald Farmer.  The “Cannibal Hookers,” “An Erotic Vampire in Paris,” and “Hi-8 (Horror Independent 8)” filmmaker co-writes and produces with Flux while helming at the seat of the director’s chair.  Together, Flux and Farmer materialize a plastic doll world full of jealousy, rage, scandalmongering, debauchery, and homicidal tendencies.  Crowdfunded through Indiegogo, the campy horror parody.  The 2026 film is a production of Stratosphere Entertainment. 

Not only collaboratively writing and producing the feature, but Jessa Flux also stars as the titular character Darbie, the buxom queen of Doll Town with an amiable personality up to a point.  That point is when boyfriend Ben comes under the scrutiny of Darbie’s nosy, troublemaking sister, Tripper.  Claude D. Miles has collaborated with Farmer and Flux on a few other projects, such as Donald Farmer’s “Debbie Does Demons” and “Scream Queens Weenie Roast,” and between Flux and Miles, their rapport doesn’t seem forced as it’s flexed to work as comedic love interests in a parody setting.  Ana Xaden, another indie alternative horror actress, also has worked with Farmer, Flux and Miles on “Scream Queens Weenie Roast” from the year prior, turning the trio into a regular entourage for the “Cannibal Hookers” director.  Xaden also busts out along with Flux as the two become elementary with their dialogue, by that I mean their conversations, whether written in the script like this or just the style of acting incurred by spontaneity upon filming, has an artificiality to it with monotonic delivery and exposition.  Funny thing is, you only really see this flat conjecture between Darbie and Tripper, and maybe even a little bit from Ditzy Darbie (Ashleigh Amberlynn, “Night of the Dead Sorority Babes”) but that’s more expected because of her dunce character.  Ben conversing with Beach Blanket Ben (Joe Casterline, “Shark Exorcist 2”  Unholy Waters”), or any other minor male character, has more natural back-and-forth without any fabricated flavoring, and it’s curious to think that maybe “Darbie Dream House” has a layered depth to that nuisance that speaks to the fake talk and gossip associated generally around women and men letting it, generally again, hang all out.  The cast rounds out with Mel Heflin (“Scarlet Rain”) as aggressive lesbian Rodeo Darbie, Fallon Maressa (“Bloodrunners:  Vampire Wine”) as Dream Date Darbie, and Kasper Meltedhair (“Hooker with a Hacksaw”) as a Doll Town reporter with Kimberly Lynn Cole (“Bloodthirst”) listed in the credits but her scenes cut and placed in the special features’ deleted scene. 

This is not one of those This Is Not Barbie:  An XXX Parody type of film but “Darbie Scream House” very much cold have been with it’s dolled up and naked-positive female cast, male characters with bad wigs and depraved names like Sleazy Steve, and a premise around creeping sexual promiscuity.  However, blood axe-wielding aggression, reared by jealousy, fill in the gaps to level up a cheap stag production to a barebones indie horror that doesn’t take itself very seriously in this meta-existences for the chief characters who are playable dolls of a young, imaginative young girl but who are also moving autonomous with their movements and affairs that are not sanctioned by Barbie or Mattel for that matter.  “Darbie” is a different kind of female empowering doll but in the same breath lacks the informed judgement of a jump-to-conclusions partner, insecure and obsessive over people and ideals.  “Darbie Scream House” caters to that what if scenario if Barbie didn’t have mental positivity and broke into sociopathic tendencies?  The core of the story is there but does heavily rely on the gratuitousness of Jessa Flux, Ana Xaden, and Ashleigh Amberlynn to carry it over the finish line, yet the shoddy effects, poor acting, and mishandling of the meta perspective sink this Donald Farmer production like cemented pink platform and rhinestone shoes. 

This is a no playtime, you can be anything Barbie movie with a house in Malibu and driving a pink convertible.  This is “Darbie’s Scream House,” a bizarro, alternative universe mined form the same vein as the classic children’s characters, such as Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, and The Grinch, turned into monstrous villains of your nightmares.  “Darbie’s Scream House” is right up Wild Eye Releasing’s alley with plenty of against-the-grain filmmaking, attitude, and shlocky satire, now available on a DVD home video that’s an MPEG2 encoded DVD5 with 720p resolution.  Even if you’re player + television combo can upscale the quality, the image quality is limited to the commercial grade equipment with passable delineation and detail that offers immersive detail but gets the job done. Lots of the details are washed away also but the use of blue or pink saturating gels that flood tense moments of Darbie’s life on the downspin and much of the exteriors are ungraded, using natural the deflection of natural light to the best of their ability.  The English PCM Stereo 2.0 carries an unbalanced depth that’s inconsistent on keeping characters dialogue level within the shot.  Those closer to the camera often have strength priority with the second person only a step or two back sounding as if they’re a good ten yards away in the closeup-to-medium marked shots.  The recording mic also can’t sustain sounds beyond its limitations, such as screaming that breaks the reproduction into bits of static and distortion at high peaks.  Special features contain a blooper reel, a deleted scene, and feature and other Wild Eye Releasing trailers with the physical package sporting an embellished, AI generated cover, which I aways appreciate the fluffing-up of an indie film.  In this instance, the art doesn’t stray from the truth per se but aggrandizes the finer details quite a bit; however, the nice touch here is the Barbie font used for the title.   The reverse sleeve image inside the clear Amaray isn’t afraid to be gory with a severed head from the story that has been lightly touched up for effect.  The not rated DVD is region free for all players and has a runtime of 75 minutes, enough to satisfyingly slay. 

Last Rites: Jessa Flux’s “Darbie’s Scream House” skewers Barbie into an unperfect, deranged universe of emotional unstable killer toy dolls but leaves much on the table of possibility and has a hard time gluing together an airtight campy story that’s too reliant on the kink than the gore.

Uh Oh Darbie! “Let’s Go Buy “Darbie Scream House” on DVD!

An EVIL Re-Imaging of a Donald Farmer Classic! “Savage Vengeance” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Savage Vengeance” now available on DVD home video!

Best friends and law students Tara and Meghan take a much needed depressurizing road trip and run into a Ronnie and Thom, a pair of locals with car trouble looking for assistance at the nearby gas station.  Hesitate to offer a ride, Tara agrees to their proposal of a life for sleep accommodations at Ronnie and Thom’s lake house in the Ozarks.  A serene lake and a drink in hand relaxes Tara’s foremost suspicions about the sketchy couple who seemingly chill and all about a good time catering to Tara’s stressed out needs.  The next thing Tara remembers is waking up to Ronnie and Thom standing over her, tied up, and her and Meghan threatened to become dinner for a pair of bloodthirsty cannibals who’ve just about wrapped up their previous viscera meal, but Tara isn’t as innocent as she appears as she shares the same killer instinct as her captors.  A struggle ensues, the tables begin to turn, and what was once prey has now become the predator!

A re-imagining of Donald Farmer’s 1993 original of the same title starring “I Spit On Your Grave’s” Camille Keaton, director Jake Zelch takes a pun-intended stab at “Savage Vengeance” with a twist in the schlocky sordid and dark tale by replacing Farmer’s original motivation for revenge for cannibalistic carnage.  “The Haunting of Mia Moss” and “The Dark Web Tapes” director helms Farmer’s story as a base while attempting a revamp and build upon with new characters and new plot devices along with contributing screenwriting by “Another Evil Night’s” Jason Harlow and “Lycanimator’s” Sébastien Godin.  Shot in Tennessee, “Savage Vengeance” is a production of Zelch’s Missouri based company, Unreality, and is produced by the filmmaker and headlining star Tamara Glynn (“Halloween 5:  The Revenge of Michael Myers”) with Donald Farmer and Curtis Carnahan as executive producers, marking the third feature film collaboration between Carnahan and Zelch.  Stratosphere Films handled the theatrical distribution.

Zelch’s “Savage Vengeance” has an identity problem.  Having reformulated the original premise, which doesn’t offend me as I think reinventing the wheel can sometimes be fresh and creative under the same directive title, the script has trouble nailing down a proper principal by shooting, by my count, three different segments disconnected from each other and with three different protagonists leading the charge in each.  Tamara Glynn receives top bill despite only garnering about 10 minutes of screen time in the beginning due to much of the opening footage being lost due to backup hard drive failure, according to Zelch on the director’s commentary.  The “Terrifier 2” and “Halloween 5” actress is essentially captured, chained, and trying to find a way out after waking up in a scarce-looking attic but because of her aforesaid credits, the DVD front cover banner head makes for a great advert sell point.  Instead, modern scream queen Roni Jonah (“Kill, Granny, Kill!,” “The Bloody Man”) becomes the runtime face of “Savage Vengeance” as Jake Zelch intends for the girth of the story.  Jonah, as Tara, paired with Jasper Evans as best friend Meghan heading toward an in schtook situation not only the cannibals on the road ahead but internally with rape, pregnancy, and a dysfunctional love triangle that has more to do with illicit lust than love with Tara’s boyfriend David (Dave Ivan), a theme much closer to the original essence of Donald Farmer’s rape-revenge exploitation.  However, what’s assumed is taken for granted and not utilized to all its pathways the concept could have complexed the characters rather than freezing them in a face value understanding.  That understanding comes a tool against cannibals Ronnie (Kat Underwood) and Thom (Cody Alexander, “Eat the Rich”) who are your typical crazed anthropophagus antagonists, as well as sadistic sodomist as we see with Adam Freeman’s (“Debbie Does Demons”) character, of film.  When these characters meet and try to be merge an acquaintance or friendship, in Tara’s shoes, I might just be a little more judgmental of two heavily tattooed wanderers, the male sporting a knife sheathed in holster around his backside as he walks around his wifebeater tank-top, handing out to me mysterious drinks on their isolated, rural property.  The whole setup doesn’t do the story justice to Tara’s decision making but then again, she’s not as pulled together as Zelch’s useable footage relays.  The third segment pops up after initial closing credits with Jessa Flux (“Debbie Does Demons”) to possibly offer up an imminent sequel “Savage Vengeance 2:  Better Off Dead, starring Flux.

Almost seems unfair to cover and review Zelch’s “Savage Vengeance” because of so much of the footage being forcibly cut and the shot narrative going through essentially restructured surgery to make pieces segue and make sense on screen.  Honestly, the recut doesn’t work, leaving too much unanswered and too much to decipher to put a solidified stamp on the series of events.  Thus pushing forward the abridged cut may warrant an impartial review until a more definitive, complete cut sees the light of day.  The material “Savage Vengeance” shows currently splices together the MPEG files that survived the great blue screen of death and transfer fail, such as with the Tamara Glynn opening that’s only connected by the brief present of Ronnie eating cat guts and Thom surprising and looming over Glynn before her deafening scream.  The additional footage explained by Zelch added context to the cannibals and provided a memorable kill to setup the tone of Zelch’s homage to late 70’s rural horror.  Fortunately for Zelch, horror fanatic brains are wired differently, able to fill in most of the gaps of a formulaic building blocks; however, the success of this can also be attributed to Zelch’s scramble editing to make a semi-intelligible story with what’s left contextless of the low budget nitty-gritty.  Another highlight is the blood with pretty-penny special effects from the multi-hat wearing Kat Underwood and her colleague Erin Felts who drum the gore the best they can with prop dummies for splitting in two, a whistle dogged dildo-penis gag, and saucy blood and guts to give the film the edge it needs to tribute Farmer’s ferociously.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, I do applaud SRS Cinema’s time, effort, and creativity in the physical media artwork as the gorgeously dripping blood, sex, and horror pulp is quintessential eye candy for fans in what is typically a microbudget and mediocrity poor effort in the graphic cover art department of terribly arranged and hack job compositions. None of that rubbish here with many of the SRS Cinema titles, including “Savage Vengeance” on DVD.  The 1.85:1 widescreen and 720p standard definition presented DVD5 might have a deliciously illustrated cover but the film itself is marred by the artificial VHS overlay of tracking lines and macroblocking, especially when Zelch aims for a 70’s exploitation veneer that was mostly 16 or 35mm.  Instead of a grainy-laced, dirt-spotted, cigarette-burned, and scratched up celluloid frames, or a resemblance of something akin to it, “Savage Vengeance’s” aesthetics only bask in the softer details of lower resolution clarity and in the ethereal of a delicate lighting that eliminates shadowy contours that offer depth.  Frame rate also seems to be slow down some sporadically throughout as well as the erratic focus as if you’re coming out of sleep and trying to regulate your eyes from dark to light.  The English Dolby Digital 2.0 audio mix stems from the onboard, built-in camera mic that captures the surroundings which has pros and cons, such as diluting the dialogue to a subdued audible.  Not a ton of balance from the surrounding environment when augmented sounds, like the zaps of the electric fence or the overpower roar of chainsaw decibels that don’t change in closeups or wide shots, make their way into the fold.  No subtitles are available.  Bonus features include a Jake Zelch commentary with scene-by-scene backstory and explanation as well as the full explanation of his lost footage, actor Adam Freeman commentary that revolves around his acting craft, male nudity on screen, and his opinions of rape and sexual assault in general, a gallery slideshow, and the feature’s trailer.  Aforementioned, the illustrated cover of Tamara Glynn looking slyly and sexy holding a blood chainsaw is primo quality on front of the standard DVD case.  Inside lies no insert and with the same image on the disc art. Until a completely restored version of director Jake Zelch’s vision, the filmmaker’s “Savage Vengeance” can barely stand as perspicuous testimony of an uncalled for 30-year-reimagining.

“Savage Vengeance” now available on DVD home video!