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Limited Edition EVIL to the Extreme! “August Underground” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / DVD/Blu-ray Combo)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Limited Edition “August Underground” Ready to be Received! 

A young farm owner invites his quirky, video-taping friend into the soiled and confined basement of his home where he keeps a nude, young woman gagged and rope bound to a chair, previously been tortured, and covered in her own blood and filth.  Both feeling giddy with excitement over their new plaything, the two sociopaths revel inflicting more torment and pain on the woman while her boyfriend’s mutilated and dead corpse is being dismembered in the next room.  When their basement plaything expires after days of neglect, the two joy killers hit the New Jersey and Pennsylvania turnpikes and backroads to continue a merciless killing spree of whomever stands in their path.  Convenient store clerks, hitchhikers, prostitutes, even their tattoo artist and his twin comic book enthusiastic brother are not safe from their chockful of callous carnage and every moment is recorded via videotape for reliving the moment in posterity. 

As far as underground horror goes, Fred Vogel’s “August Underground” is about as extreme and underground as they come and still be recognizable amongst the most casual of horror fandom.  Vogel’s inaugural written-and-directed, pitilessly violent, exploitation begins a direct-to-video trilogy of torture-on-tape with SOV quality, imparting grisly shudders to the unfathomable amount of blank-labeled VHS cassettes through man’s stowage, collecting dust bunnies and remaining unseen over the years to the horrors the magnetic tape just might behold.  What “August Underground” essentially boils down to is a raw day-to-day look of two maniacal serial killers on a free-for-all of a butcher’s market, the shooting locations stretch from the recesses of Vogel’s hometown of Warren, New Jersey and all the way to the surrounding back roads and isolated areas of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Self-produced by Fred Vogel and co-producer John A. Wisniewski, “August Underground” set inaugural voyage on the blood red sea for Vogel’s Toe Tag Productions in 2001.

There is a severe lack of story for Vogel’s debut and that’s no oversight or a sign of omission of a subconscious creativity.  Most normal, everyday people video-record with the intent on not making a feature-length film but rather to capture memories and store them away for another day.  Vogel strives for that realism here where a plot is, for lack of a better word, pointless for the depicted atrocities where the sole purposes is to exhibit dementedness and insanity.  The same can be said about the cast of nameless characters.  The freeform recording does not spout off introductions or make references to monikers to, again, portray as much as organic conversation or realism as possible to further skewer an already gore and violence skewed imagination into thinking what we’re seeing is authentic and inconclusive of its entertainment purpose.  Fred Vogel, under his so-called porno stage name of Peter Mountain, plays the main principal dressed in arrogance and apathy as he’s recorded in a thumbed selection of runtime filmed by an equally bad-natured, sociopathic friend behind the camera, played by a post-release distancing actor under the pseudonym of Allen Peters.  The two complement each other in a Beavis and Butthead friendship kind of way with Vogel in synch with his character’s bloodlust as well as the burly bulk while camera buddy perversely watches, giggling to his friends’ blood shedding exploits.  Their relationship feels like a lonesome outlet to do harm and senseless killing makes the connection firmer, more enjoyable, in the easiest opportunities of a rural area where bored people do evil just to pass the time.  Vogel sets up a series of scenarios rather than plotting acts of a linear story in what becomes an anthology of anarchy that has us climbing down the manhole of maniacal mischief.  Mania is soaked into every inch of “August Underground” and that fits snug and makes warm the scattered story into a much more coagulated coherency.  “August Underground” rounds out the victims, I mean cast, with AnnMarie Reveruzzi, Erika Risovich, Randi Stubbs, Aaron LaBonte, Ben LaBtone, Victoria Jones, Alexis Iris, Stephen Vogel, Dan Friedman, Casey Eganey, Kyle Dealman, and Andy Lauer.

“August Underground” is ugly, nasty, grimy, sordid, perverse, tasteless, callous, and not shot with technical or detailed perfection.  “August Underground” is also unique, bold, unafraid, successful, gory, realistic, practical, and not shot with technical or detailed perfection that’s actually, in its own way, gorgeous.  “August Underground” is all those things and more with its rough-and-ready, extreme exploitation that will be polarizing amongst horror fans and not be a film for everyone’s taste or collection.  Frankly, there are worse underground and extreme horror films out there in the world, but “August Underground,” through the disgusting trices of dismemberment, force feeding of feces, and vomit inducing snuff, has somehow ,at least in this reviewer’s humble opinion, who like in a Dr. Seuss line, has been here, there, and everywhere within the horror spectrum, slipped through the veil of obscurity, having a foot well positioned in the land of the universal acknowledgement where many genre fans putter around with the same old formulas.  The depth of this story is so shallow that digging any deeper into the themes and the possibilities isn’t necessary with its home-made movie facade of people joyfully torturing and killing people being already horrific enough. 

For certain to go out of stock and out of print into physical release obscurity once again, Unearthed Films’ limited-edition collector’s edition of “August Underground” is the 2-disc DVD/Blu-ray combo set to act on right now. The AVC encoded, high definition 1080p, BD50 comes from a MiniDV print, often considered the transitional format from analog and to digital in a tape format with lossy compression. Presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.33:1 aspect ratio, don’t expect image quality to be pristinely detailed and sharp as the MiniDV maxes out at 720p resulting in both, standard and Hi-Def formats, having indistinguishable presentations. Resembling the amateur, at-home movie, scaled down tape quality renders ghosting which shapes and details are bleary and the coloring resembles ember or incandescent with a warm, red-and-yellow layer. What we don’t see much of is a ton of tracking, static, or a ton of noticeable interlace but blacks can be prominently spotty with the horizontal bars. The lossless on-board MiniDV English audio is a PCM 2.0 that doesn’t extend beyond the limits of the camera’s microphone, but the clarity fairs well with clean and commanding dialogue with a natural range between the proximitous cameraman and his killing machine star of a friend in front of the camera. Also, equally interchangeable between the physical formats with what’s made to be a rough recording, discernible differences are minute at best. The Blu-ray and DVD have many of the same special features with the Blu-ray containing a few more frills over its format counterpart with a new Dave Parker interviewing Fred Vogel as well as a separate interview with Vogel and Mike Watt of Rue Morgue Magazine, another new interview with Fred Vogel from Severed Cinema Revisiting Infamy. The formats shared bonus content includes never before seen and new material, such as the original screener version of the film that comes with watermark and a slightly different color grading, a new audio commentary by Fred Vogel and Ultra Violent Magazine’s creator Art Ettinger, a new 10 questions with Fred Vogel answering some of the longstanding queries surrounding the film’s realism achievements and behind-the-scenes permissions and achievements, and a new Toe Tag Masterclass that compares storyboards with the screen version. Archived bonus content include audio commentary with Vogel and actors-producers-brothers Aaron and Ben LaBonte, another commentary track with Fred Vogel alone, an audio commentary by the witty, giggly “Killer,” Hammer to the Head closer look at “August Underground,” on location behind-the scenes, a behind-the-brutality of the film, outsiders’ perspective take in a Too Real for Comfort discussion, an introduction by director Fred Vogel, photo gallery, and trailers. The limited-edition collector’s set comes with a cardboard slipcover with a blurry, interlaced still of Vogel’s character wrapping a forearm around a gagged-girl’s throat while peering into the camera, but it’s the clear snapper case’s front cover that’s more developed with a graphic pencil-graphite illustration of the same slipcover image with more visible mutilated skin and visual weapon of human body destruction. Front cover is also reversible with an interlacing black-and-white image of the main killer. Both discs also sport two different art presses with the Blu-ray mirroring the slipcover image while the DVD has nearly the identical position of killer and victim but with a whole new victim. The region A locked edition has a digestible 70-minute runtime and is, of course, not rated. I would never say Unearthed Films has been diluting their pool of extreme underground gore and guts horror, but their “August Underground” release puts the brazen company back on the mondo-macabre map with definitely a too real for comfort twisted depravity and an au naturel sense of debauchery.

Limited Edition “August Underground” Ready to be Received! 

The EVIL Fat Man Delivers a Sack Full of Slaughter in “Christmas Cruelty!” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Oh, Its Starting To Look a lot Like “Christmas Cruelty! on Blu-ray!

Eline, Per-Ingvar, and Magne are three close and eccentric friends preparing for the jolliest time of year, Christmas. Concocting a unique Christmas spirit of their own with scarring passers dressed as Krampus and brewing an alcohol infused cocktail, the unconventional celebration reflects their individual perspectives on the holiday: a knowledgeable Eline embraces more traditional values, Magne goes against the grain with a loose grasp on the concept of it all, and the lack of mental acuity for wheelchair bound Per-Ingvar leaves him in naive, gullible belief. All the while the friends prep the groundwork for a Christmas party, a homicidal sociopath tracks and records their every movement, habits, and personal attributes and when Christmas comes, the meticulous and brutal serial killer dresses as Santa and infiltrates what turned from being a joyous bash into Santa bashing in heads with a hammer, decapitates party guests, and rip-roars a chainsaw with blood splattering apathy.

It’s that time of year again to ride the Christmas slay down the hills covered with blood-red snow. Santa, usually a sign of pure good and jovial togetherness, is transformed to embody terror and evil across the holiday season. In 2013, Norwegian filmmaker Per-Ingvar “PIT” Tomren (“Bonzai Motherfucker!”) and his co-director Magne Steinsvoll (producer of “Killungard” and “Lyst”) not only star in another Yuletide horror that yields itself to violence and blood but also adds their perspective entry into the vast Scandanavian subgenre of ole’ Saint Nick, or an imposter of the jolly fat guy, going postal in the worst possible way. Tomren and Steinsvioll work into their debut feature film off a script penned by principal co-star Eline Aasheim as well as Janne Iren Holseter, Anita Nyhagen, and directors Tomren and Steinsvoll. Originally entitled “O’Hellige Jul!” in Norwegian, the 2013 released “Christmas Cruelty” is a Stonewall Productions and presented by DC Medias under the producing credits of Magne Steinsvoll, Kim Haldoersen, and Raymond Volle (“Saga”).

Instead of hiring an outside cast for a serial rapist and killer Santa flick, why not just star in the film yourself? In order to get their feet wet in film production as well as learning the rigors of acting, Per-Ingvar Tomren, Magne Steinsvoll, and Eline Aasheim essentially portray themselves as the three friends spending unique quality time together during Christmas. Per-Ingvar works into the script the corporeal truth of this delicate skeletal structure that battles brittle bone disease aka osteogenesis imperfecta. Confined almost entirely to his wheelchair, Tomren curbs his wellbeing for the sake of art as the filmmaker doesn’t exempt himself from the various physical altercation scenes to have a stuntman take the glory. The same kind of sentiment can be said for Eline Aasheim whose character must endure an invasive attack, one that’s deeply uncomfortable and intimate in nature surrounded by a virtually an all-male cast which includes offscreen friendships. Then there’s Magne. If Per-Ingvar and Eline embodied metaphorically everything that is good about the Christmas spirit, Magne was the complete opposite as a complaining, sexist, and indelicate sourpuss living in the moment rather than grasping his own barbed attitude. The malarky between the three friends on screen is perhaps very mirrorlike offscreen as there is a comfortability level with each other performances that keeps the dynamic on the edge of combusting but yet you never feel like a change in their relationship will ever mount, keeping their friendship close, tight, and compact. The outsider, the Serial Santa, is played mid-50’s Norway actor Tormod Lien. I mention Lien’s age because he is older than the other principal characters and that plays into his character’s wisdom as a family man who takes notes on who’s halls he will soon deck. Calm, organized, and deviant, Lien plays into the apathy without a twinkle of empathy and engineers a bloody show of planned homicide with some comedic bits put on by Lien when Serial Santa has to go off script because of interruptions.

In my mind, there are two types of Christmas horror films: the uncanny universe where Santa, or something related to Santa, such as his toyshop elves or Krampus, world’s lives and breathes in a twisted malevolency while the other type resides in fact with sociopathic and mentally unstable Santa impersonators who go on a merry murdering spree. “Christmas Cruelty!” falls in that latter category with serial killer, dressed as Santa and a grotesque mask, gatecrashes the good protagonists’ party for the nefarious primordial urge to hurt, rape, and kill. Maybe even dabble in a little cannibalism. “Christmas Cruelty!” is a lump of extreme exploitation for next level nihilism. I’ve seen my fair share of messed up movies, but the Tomren and Steinsvoll defiling picture doesn’t even have a millimeter of morality. Without a theme, a message, or a basic point, “Christmas Cruelty!” is hollow atrocity for the sake of shock and slaughter. The principal goods are either too afraid to help each other, too unwilling to help each other, or are too conceited to even take notice that something is amiss. Instead, it’s the Serial-Santa who has his ducks in order, unabashed to simply walk into a room and start his plan of cold-hearted perversion, but before even getting to that moment with deliciously diabolical practical special effects that can produce a gut-wrenching impact, the story goes static with the principal goods chitchatting about history of Christmas, their likes and dislikes of the season, and nursing a hangover from hell. This portion to build character doesn’t actually build character as we’re skirted around victimized trio’s reason for to deserving of our sympathy. Yeah, there’s a person with learning disabilities in a wheelchair and a young woman with an inkling of a moral compass but I find them aimless, sleepwalking through life, and without purpose.

Christmas comes early with the release of “Christmas Cruelty” on Blu-ray home video from our friends at Unearthed Films and MVD Visual. Presented in 1080p with a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio on an AVE encoded BD50, Unearthed Films rendering of the transfer goes without a hitch, but the stylistic choices of Tomren and Steinsvoll are an eyesore with a mustard yellow overlay intended for a grindhouse veneer that also correlates with the large font and embossed opening credits. Much of the details and natural look are lost in the yellow tint. The erratic editing is supposed to reflect Serial Santa’s fragmented mind which idiosyncratically finds footing but can be off-putting to its experimental quality. The Norwegian language DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound mix reflects no issues with depth and range despite having limited need for both and has mostly clear dialogue albeit some obstruction from the soundtrack that is heavily integrated into the sound design and becomes a character in itself with a blend of English-lyrical Christmas themed tunes, instrumental string melodies, acoustic solos by Magne Steinsvoll, generic rock tracks, and folksy jamming that ends with the loud roaring of a chainsaw slicing through body parts. The bonus features include an audio commentary with co-director Per-Ingvar Tomren and producer Raymond Volle, retrospective interviews in How Cruelty Changes Our Lives featurette, blooper outtakes, photo gallery, The Last Rebels hit “Endless Highway,” an interview with Morten Haagensen, “Tradition” short film, Press Conference, a watch-a-long session with Flesh Wound Horror, and teaser trailer. The Unearthed Films menu options were a bit cumbersome to navigate when trying to play the movie as the next screen goes to the three audio options – either two commentaries that run along with the film and the play movie without commentary, but the options are not terribly intuitive and had to go through the options before I was able to play just the movie. The physical release comes in a traditional blue snapper case with the soulless, dead eyes of the Santa mask illustrated with liver sports and aged wrinkles on the front cover. Unearthed Films’ release comes not rated, region A encoded, and has a runtime of 94 minutes. Probably not the perfect holiday gift for the conventional horror filmgoer, “Christmas Cruelty” is difficult to ingest and digest as not only an extreme exploitation film but as a film as whole, but with the callous chunks of coal and the striped blood red candy cane of scrumptious special effects, the Norwegian definitely offers a good stocking stuffer.

Oh, Its Starting To Look a lot Like “Christmas Cruelty! on Blu-ray!

Prostitution Might Be the Oldest Profession but Killing People on Camera is the Evilest! “Snuff Tape Massacre” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on



Pick Up This Nightmare Fuel of “Snuff Tape Massacre” on DVD at Amazon!

Two killers are employed to do what they do best, to make a snuff tape.  Brokering the deal is Brand, a middleman serving on the behalf of a unknown client and relaying the job’s details to his contracted filmmakers.  The casted stars of their next production is a young pregnant woman who works at the home for the disabled and one of the residents, a 15-year-old deaf-mute girl who can’t utter a single sound due to her extreme incapacitated condition.  Pretending to be making a documentary about the disabled, the two killers were able to gain the women’s trust, easily drug them, and move them to a secluded location where the sadistic torture and affectionless murder show begins.

Straight torture and gore with no cinematic style or undertone depth is not every moviegoers preferred cup of tea.  For this gore hound, I can take it or leave it but would enjoy the darkest recesses of human sadisms and fantasies more if something was more germane to the reason for gore, but as far as Juval Marlon’s “Snuff Tape Massacre” is concerned, what you receive is a single perspective propelled by unsympathetic maliciousness, nihilism, and a taste for that metallic sweetness of blood.  The Germans are fairly well known for their insensitive, uncouth, and extreme films from the likes of directors Olaf Ittanbach and Jörg Buttgereit.  Does Juval Marlon have the blood and guts to be on the same level?  His written and directed 60-minute independent feature, also known as “Stermgewehr,” (“rifle” in German), aims to be a gruesome shocker under Marlon’s own befitting Beheading Films banner.

Obviously, none of the following names will be a part of a familiar, household cast fixture.  These types of gorging gore films usually have a small and conversant with each other cast of at approximately a hand full of willing actors and actresses to possibly mar, or better yet castrate, their acting aspirations with needless disturbing content that’s ironically overstated as well as understated.  “Snuff Tape Massacre” has a total of five members in the cast and out of the five members, only one uses a first and last name. The others go essentially dark with their real or full names anonymous to the world because who would ever in their right mind want to be associated with a movie about a snuff film? Thomas Goersch is the only full name credited and the only actor who a respectable credit list. However, Goersch has had many publicly and critically panned low-rent features with “The Curse of the White Woman,” “Bloody Shadows,” and “Poltergeister Experiment” being just some of his most recent samples that fallen into the depths of unsalvageable dumpster fires (and this has perked my darkly morbid and unusual curiosity in bad, bad movies!). As businessman Brand, Goersch never gets his hands dirty, leaving the role and his name unscathed and to leave all death-dealings to his hired hands in a pair of automaton teenage terminators including the head Snuff Filmer (Navarro) and his unnamed companion on the trail of blood. At least Goersch has a bit of Bill Zebub underground star power in Germany, Navarro exists only in this film as the one of the two mostly shaded and masked killers who kidnap actresses Tanja and Maria V. to exploit. The ruse surrounding the kidnapping leaves what ever little effort there was to be, to make the ordeal more engaging and exciting, was left back on Brand’s phone call as the Snuff Filmer’s plan to be pseudo-interviewers for a documentary goes off without a hitch. Maria V. does find as an interviewee of a second-year social worker enthusiastic about helping but her fellow co-kidnappee in binds Tanja literally serves as a second body to humiliate, torture, and execute by two desensitized individuals that isn’t a far stretch from their rigid performances as high and tight killers.

The crux of the problem with “Snuff Tape Massacre” is that the movie is just too long. Right now, you’re sitting there, reading this, cross-eyed by confusion, and thinking to yourself, “Steven, didn’t you say this was a 60-minute movie?” The answer is, yes, I did say that, but Marlon’s previous work, of similar extreme fetishisms, have been short films and “Snuff Tape Massacre” feels very much like a short film that’s been mishappened by a rack, stretched beyond its limits to where the possibility of being recognized for what it is, an orthodox gore and shocker, no longer factors into the equation. Scenes run too long and are over kneaded to the point of losing its impactful rise. For instance, when the young 15-year-old mute-deaf girl is being threatened by the Snuff Filmer’s automatic rifle barrel as he stuffs it into her mouth in an unspoken, simulated act of fellatio, the scene drags on for minutes upon minutes. As aforementioned, “Stermgewehr” in Germain is rifle and so these scenes should have some significance importance but overall feels juvenile and executed with poor time management. Marlon obviously doesn’t have two Nickels to rub together to fund this film, using old compact, pocket-sized digital cameras to record the varying levels of video and audio quality, but the one thing us gore hunds can appreciate is the gore. We can certainly tell a fake leg, arm, and even penis when one comes on screen and “Snuff Tape Massacre” is not exempt from using more-so than obvious inner details with no arterial or vascular details whenever a leg or arm is chopped (or even sawed) off with a dull hatchet, but what can be admired is the seamless look of the leg and the arm to the actresses. We’re not talking about a mannequin’s appendages or a plastique digits here when the dragged-on interview has finally wrapped, and the real raw material begins with decent prosthetics and blood pumping mechanisms that squirt blood longer and for the duration. The most effective effect is dick-hole jab stuck on repeat until the snuffer hits what we all presume is the back off the prosthetic piece but in the back of our mind, we’re really thinking bone. It’s a crotch-grabbing, leg-crossing, dick mangling moment no guy will ever forget.

SRS Cinema is well-known for bringing schlocky shockers to the table under the guise of really fantastic and detailed artwork for the banner’s DVD covers. “Snuff Tape Massacre” is no exception here as Juval Marlon’s film is juicy enough to make the company’s Nightmare Fuel line with an unrated and extreme release presented in widescreen 1.85:1 (16:9) aspect ratio in a lower resolution of 720 pixels (due to the compact digital cameras). Though unable to tell what cameras are being utilized, there are two different cameras are being used based on the vast difference in picture compressions with one looking stronger and more detailed than the other. The onboard microphone for the English language dual channel stereo mix is a lossy MPEG audio format that really takes a hit with the inconsistent background noise and electronic interference with a straight hum throughout when Marlon’s industrial sampler score is not substituted for sole audio dominance. Like many other SRS titles, the only special features included are SRS trailers for their catalogue unless you count the aforesaid artwork design of an illustrated half-naked bathtub victim with eyes of kitchen knife-stricken terror as part of the special features package – see below. “Snuff Take Massacre” is considerably low for a repeat viewing, but there are enough scenes that will undoubtedly make you recoil and squirm and that, my gory compadres, is worth the sole price of admission.

Pick Up This Nightmare Fuel of “Snuff Tape Massacre” on DVD at Amazon!


EVIL Will Scrape You Clean Right to the Bone in “Scavenger” reviewed! (MVDVisual – Cleopatra Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

A ruthless post-apocalypse world consists of killing others for their vital organs and sell them on the black market to earn a living or to score the next high.  The latter is the life Tisha lives as a bounty hunter assassin sustaining through a bleak existence of the next job and another hit.  When a new job brings her ugly past to the present, no payment is necessary as she gladly assassinate a smutty bar owner and brutal cartel head.  Things don’t go as planned when Tisha winds up naked on one of grimy sex mats of her target’s whore house after encountering and being seduced by Luna, the boss’s best laid side piece stripper and confidant.  The assassin must fight tooth and nail to survive on her filthy course to truth-hurting vengeance.

A complete ball of filth and fury is how I would begin to describe Eric Fleitas and Luciana Garraza’s sordid wrapped “Scavenger,” hailing from Argentina with wild west undercurrents in a post-apocalypse wasteland that makes George Miller’s barren lands look like Disneyworld.   Titled originally as “Corroña” in española,  the filmmakers also pen the violent screenplay alongside a third writer in Shelia Fentana to produce their very first feature length credit together that clocks in at 73 minutes, and 73 minutes is plenty enough to be entranced and be gorged by the anarchist sleaze, galloping gore, fast cars, and loose whores.  The trio financially self-produce “Scavenger’s” journey to silver screen fruition while Ronin Pictures provides special effects work that can rival the best independent productions. 

The role of Tisha is not a pleasant one, no role in where the protagonist being raped is pleasant to begin with, but to compound the character with a nasty drug habit, a gruesome vocation, traumatically scarred past, and be the objectifiable plaything for a bunch of society-fallen degenerates, Tisha’s fortitude had to be uncompromisable and her sensitivity dialed way down to zero in order to survive in her cutthroat world where not even your bodily organs are safe.  In steps Nayla Chumuarin, a fresh face Argentinian actress unknown to the majority of general audiences, ready to slip into a demanding role antithesis to Mel Gibson’s Max Rockatansky that’s only similar in a very few ways.  Geared in masculine attire, sporting a pixie cut, and gleaming with sweat and dirt from head to toe, Chumuarin offers up an intriguing anti-femme fatale in a more cold shouldered assassin vibe with a fast barb wired cladded car and who can handle herself around all types of antagonists, even those two times her size and are a disfigured mutant!  Tisha tracks down Roger, a brothel and bar owner who has ill-fatedly crossed paths with Tisha in a previous life.  Played by Gonzalo Tolosa, the mohawk-sporting Roger abides by his own set of rules unless they’re coming out of the sensual viperous mouth of Luna (Sofia Lanaro), Roger’s stripper girlfriend with a true sense of the femme fatale archetype.  Together, Roger and Luna call the shots and lust suck each other faces in the torment of Tisha who by the end of the film just wants to waste them both from the face of the post-apocalypse Earth.  Fleitas and Garraza purposefully and rightfully omit much of the backstories from most of the film and slide them in, crashing down like a house of falling cards, right on top of not only the characters but also the audience in a moment of realization and shocking truth from everything that has happened in the story up to that climatic end.  “Scavenger” rounds out the cast with Tisso Solis Vargas, Denis Gustavo Molina, Norberto Cesar Bernuez, Vanesa Alba, Rosa Isabel Guenya Macedo, and Gaston Podesta as the Mutant.

“Scavenger” is pure debauchery nonsense.  A gore loaded free for all.  The story is about as ugly as you would expect with the exploitation of carrion from those slowly succumbing to death in one form or another.  “Scavenger” is an entertainment juggernaut doused in corrosive material that will either disgust or amuse, depending on your temperament, with no middle ground to balance.  Characters are driven by unadulterated greed or rage, even the heroine of vengeance who just a few scenes prior stabbed a man in the back to harvest his organs, without one morally redemptive character to relieve the incessant current shocking the mind’s nipples with searing voltage.  Fleitas and Garraza slather in a laissez-faire fashion the exploitation veneer of grindhouse muck to serrate the unsavory snaggleteeth even sharper, but there are points where too much of a good thing becomes bad to the film’s health.  As such is with the licking of the face motif.  Like Quentin Tarantino and his obsession with closeup shots on female’s feet, Fleitas and Garraza shoot a handful of scenes of sexually engaged males lapping the sweat and pheromone droplets from the faces of their carnal conquests in all types of scenarios from rape to consensual.  The saliva wet, grainy muscle just slides right across the soft flesh covered cheekbone in more scenes that I cared to count in what seems more like a filmmaker fetish than an object necessary to overboard the obscenities.  It’s a weird action to call out but happens more than just a couple of occasions and between different characters.  The pacing’s fine albeit a few nauseating slice and dice editing that doesn’t take away or hinder in abundance understanding the progression of Tisha’s journey, but definitely causes a bit of blurriness on the heroine’s perspective of whether what she’s experiencing is a nightmare, a flashback, or a bad trip from whatever narcotic she withdrawals from that once injected speeds her into a kill monger. 

If what I’ve gone over doesn’t entice you, I can tell you this much.  “Scavenger” is perhaps the best Cleopatra Entertainment film release I’ve seen up-to-date.  The subsidiary of the independent record label, Cleopatra Records, Inc, in collaboration with MVD Visual release the South American grindhouse-fest film on a 2-disc Blu-ray and Compact Disc set featuring the film’s soundtrack, including music from Rosetta Stone, The Meteors, The 69 Cats, Philippe Besombes, Damon Edge and more with a full artist list on the reverse side of the cover liner along with alternate cover art of the film.  Presented in a widescreen 16:9 ratio, don’t expect a high-definition output with a homage to grain and a warm high-key contrasts to augment the desert outward show under the eye of Sabastian Rodriguez.  Negative space is only used for intense shadows to cloak the lurking menace around every corner.  There’s a variety of shots, including some great wide shots and crane angles, that sell “Scavenger” beyond the frenzy of blood-soaked and furrowed brow closeups.  There are four audio options available:  a dubbed English 5.1 surround and a 2.0 stereo as well as the original Spanish dialogue track in a 5.1 surround mix and a 2.0 stereo.  Unfortunately, the Spanish tracks do not come with option English subtitles so if you don’t understand the language, you’ll need to sit through the always awful English dub; however, this particular dub track is not obviously horrendous.  With all the Cleopatra Entertainment titles, the soundtrack sticks out like a sore thumb to promote their investments with high quality sound but also in true Cleopatra Entertainment titles, the lack of bonus features continue with “Scavenger” with only a theatrical trailer and an image slideshow.  “Scavenger” is a particular breed of film where you just flip your mind’s decency switch to off and gladly watch the world burn in depravity to get your jollies off.

Own “Scavenger” on Blu-ray and Soundtrack CD combo Set!

Money is the Root of All EVIL! “Beasts Clawing at Straws” reviewed! (Blu-ray / Artsploitation Films)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

A middle-aged man working a meager job at a gentleman’s bathhouse finds a Louis Vuitton bag full of money when routinely checking the storage lockers at closing.  Unsure about what to do with the money, he stows the bag away in the backroom and continues a moral, yet pauper’s, life while dealing with financial and family troubles at home.  Meanwhile, a border customs agent finds himself in severe debt with an unstable loan shark after his girlfriend skates and disappears with a large borrowed sum.  With a week to come up with the money, plus interest, he calls upon his distant cousin to assist in scamming a scammer who illegally came into some money, but things go awry when an overly friendly and clingy cop begins to snoop around.  Lastly, a prostitute grinds tirelessly to work off a large debt her abusive husband continues to blame her for with night after night beatings.  She jumps into bed with a young, handsome foreigner and her eager to support female boss to off her husband and collect the insurance money.  Yet, these troubled souls find that sticking to their convictions doesn’t always bode well as the unexpected happens in a blink of an eye.

The Asian film machine has mastered the art of the crime thriller from a proven track record that began with Akira Kurosawa films, if not even before that, and has chronically grown stronger, and sometimes more peculiar, with choice stylistic elements, suggestive themes, and extreme violence that has garnered, to much disdain, Westerner attention over the last 20 years with films like Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy” and Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s “Internal Affairs” being Americanized with a Hollywood remake.  With that being said in an upward trend of remakes spilling over the edge, there would be no eye-brow raising surprise if the introductory film, the tri-narrative crime drama idiomatically titled “Beasts Clawing at Straws,” from South Korean filmmaker, Kim Yong-hoon, will one day grace the English silver screens in a diluted variation of a Brad Pitt featured carbon copy.  Based of the Keisuke Sone neo-noir novel of the same name, Kim Yong-hoon’s pulpy impression of against-the-wall misdeeds is dog-eat-dog dark comedy gold.  “Beasts Clawing at Straws” is produced by Jang Won-seok (“The Gangster, The Cop, and The Devil”) and is a production of Megabox Plus M films (“Zombie for Sale”) and B.A. Entertainment.

The three prong, greed-catapulting narrative converge characters separately at first and then string them linearly together when the picture becomes clearly what exactly each one of them is chasing, but every story is magnetized to a single focal point, a person under immense pressure, stress, and the malice forces that thirst for their humility, kinetically embarking on the bad choice choo-choo steaming toward the station of vary bad things.  Bae Seong-woo stars as a downtrodden Joong-man, a middle-aged man stuck in the rut of poverty with a geriatric, browbeating mother, a fatigued wife, and busting his rump in a dead end job.  Seong-woo combats himself as a man tight rope walking the thin line of ethic principles when opportunity knocks at his door, but his ill-timed strike to grab life by the balls blows up in his face in a farce of instant karma leaves him less than what he had before.  Then there’s a Tae-young, a comfortably Governmental positioned customs agent facing a different kind of hardship when his ex-girlfriend, Yeon-hee, disappears with a borrowed lump sum of a gangster’s money and he’s left on the fence.  “Illang:  The Wolf Brigade’s” Jung Woo-sung plays into the desperate stench of the superstitious and ambitious customs agent.  Slightly cradling the severity of the situation, Jung amply positions Tae-young’s dilemma that resembles spearfishing in a barrel and he’s the fish.  The last story follows the abused wife Mi-ran, played reservedly by Shin Hyun-bin as a desperate woman looking to bank her soon-to-be dead’s insurance money.  When Mi-ran is abetted by motive-dueling pair of instigators, she finds that paying her debt can be more severe than ever imagined.  While sitting back and basking in the stir-craziness of the leads’ turmoiled chaos, the best characters of the film are the supporting roles of Kim Jun-han as an intestine devouring, fanny-pack wearing henchman, Park Ji-hwan as Tae-young’s bumbling, but begrudgingly loyal distant cousin, and Jung Man-sik as a breezy mobster with a cherry, yet malevolent disposition.  Youn Yuh-jung, Jin Kyung, Jung Ga-ram, Bae Jin-wong, and Heo Dong-won round out the cast.

Non-linear yet interconnected in story, “Beasts Clawing at Straws” hawks a Tarantino layered thriller with colorful deplorables from all walks of life and luxuries.  Kim Yong-hoon nourishes the unbridled, free-for-all nature of diving into the murky, shark-infested waters uncaged and tethered with cuts of raw steaks dangling from the pelvis area in this two wrongs don’t equal a right account of mistrusting desperation and misguided optimism.  Kim’s style echoes the likes of the popular “Pulp Fiction” filmmaker along the lines of shooting techniques and a frank view of violence to tell the frantic clutching of hanging onto what is left of tattered lives and borrowed time while disavowing pure, unadulterated nihilism by at least giving characters a grain of hope.  With any non-linear, multiple moving part films, individual aspects tend to become lost in order for pacing and “Beasts Clawing at Straws” doesn’t fall into the excluded category as factors that play into the main quandary are left hanging, such as in Yeon-hee’s circumstantial results of jetting off with a mobster’s money as the assumption is there, but nothing is fully concrete in her storyline.  The same indiscernible spousal battery stemmed from Mi-ran and her husband’s severe debt that leads to transgressions beyond marital misuse isn’t privy to the audience of how circumstances come about surrounding their predicament and we’re forced to speculate and shoulder an explanation that doesn’t quite feel justified.  However, neither of the slapdash developments hinder “Beast Clawing for Straws’” steamrolling posture to get that desirable bag full of problem-solving, filthy lucre. 

Artsploitation Films delivers a stylish and avaricious South Korea crime drama with “Beasts Clawing for Straws” into the U.S. Blu-ray home video market. The not rated BD25, high-definition 1080p release is presented in a widescreen, 2.39:1 aspect ratio, and nears the epitome of flawless. Aside from the picture slightly flickering, more noticeably on solid colored backdrops, the hue palette is absolutely gorgeous with the neon lights of South Korean cities, the breathtaking silhouettes of the natural mountains adjacent to a lifelessly still lake, and the variety of settings from an airy fish house to a modern, symmetrically designed bordello denote a keen eye by Kim Tao-sung. The South Korean language 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio surround sound couldn’t be any better with a crystal clear aptitude for strong dialogue balanced in front of a robust soundtrack accompanied by deep range of ambience from fire crackling to the faint hint of rain drops audible from inside a restaurant, solidifying the depth package as well. English subtitles are available along with an English dub track in a dual channel Dolby stereo. What’s lacking with this release is bonus material as there is virtually nothing besides four Artsploitation trailers and the film’s own theatrical trailer. Parlous and deadpan funny, “Beasts Clawing at Straws” amazes as Kim Yong-hoon’s first time effort with the technical grace and the story construction that has been a paradigm for only a handful of notable directors able to execute an impeccable result.

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