Tag Archives: dvd

Midnight Showing of the Lost EVIL Tape Will Be the Last Thing You’ll Ever See! “Transmission” reveiwed! (Jinga Films, Danse Macabre, MVDVisual / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Transmission” Transmitting to Your Television on DVD!

A Santa Mira elderly man sits in a dark room with a glowing television illuminating his silhouette.  As he channels surfs through the night, amongst what’s being broadcast over the airwaves is a bible-thumping televangelist, a children’s puppet show, an 80’s teen romance comedy, a live local news broadcast of a hostage situation and a documentary on the investigation of the disappearance of notorious cult horror film director Frank Tadross Roth pursued by his granddaughter Rachel and her boyfriend.  Going deeper into Ross’s disappearance through archived interviews with the director and crew, on set raw behind-the-scenes footage, and the examination of Ross’s quest for an obscurely treasured videotape by an occult group, the director’s pursuit of, and his eventual unearthing, of the tape become the push for his last and recently discovered film Transmission, thought to have been lost in a building fire after his suspected involvement of the film’s lead actress murder.  Going back and forth between the channel programs builds a sinister, terrible dread that will soon be revealed to terrorize all those glued to the set. 

Late night television has never been so bodingly evil!  Channel surfing transmits an anthological approach between mockumentary and found footage in this uniquely crafted scrolling of boob tube terror entitled “Transmission.”  The 2023 horror is from writer-director Michael Hurst, the English director behind a pair of franchise sequels in “House of the Dead 2” and “Pumpkinhead 4:  Blood Feud.”  His latest venture takes twist to a whole new level different from his repertoire of linear independent horror with backlot dark legend surrounding an occult obsessed horror filmmaker.  Hurst also produced the film, his first in over a decade since 2017 with Andy Hurst’s (“Are You Scared?,” “Wild Things: Foursome”), alongside other self-employed filmmakers with the How to Kill Your Roommates and Get Away with It” producing duo Robbie Dias and Pat Kusnadi.  New Blood Productions serves as the production studio.

“Transmission” traverses in guile under TV guide pretenses of local channels, channeling the horror through the back and forth of unsettling, televised channels that have a familiarity of broadcast shows – sponsor subsidized children shows, perfunctory local news, and black and white sitcoms – but there’s more than what meets the eye.  The film uses recognizable genre names to get the message across with “Sleepaway Camp’s” Felicia Rose in her most vanilla action news reporter role, “Scary Movie’s” Dave Sheridan as an over-the-top protective father caricature in a teen romance comedy, and “The Road Warrior’s” Vernon Wells at the center of the amassing occult suspense as the missing notorious horror director Frank Tadross Roth.  Over the years, Wells’ performance has tapered to a subtle crawl of expression as if the veteran actor is now just running through the motions of the everyday hired gig that’ll headline his name, unlike his former wide-eyed and eccentrically villainous roles in “Commando” and “Innerspace,” but “Transmission” suits his stern act portrayed in video flashback as an occult maniac and peculiar director gripped by the search of an arcane, dark sect’s perniciously videotape.   Spearheading the effort to track down the filmmaker is his granddaughter Rachel, played by Nicole Cinaglia (“Death House”) with an inexplicable character shifting of gears from curiosity and intrigue from the documentary to the frantic and fearful ramblings of a paranoid hostage taker in the new story stemmed by her findings surrounding her grandfather’s disappearance.  There’s potential gap there in the lack of development, or rather the lack of acknowledgement overall, with Rachel’s parents as it’s just a grandfather and granddaughter affair without the recognition of those in between.  There’s also a gap in Rachel’s attained information about the sect, the videotape, and her grandfather’s endgame as she seemingly has more knowledge about the insurmountable otherworld evil on the horizon but how she got there is a few clicks short to fully bridge.  Sadi Katz, Del Howison, Marcella Di Pasquale, Ben Kaplan, Hunter Johnson, Raymond Vinsik Williams, Jennifer Nangle, McKensie Lane, Jessica Cameron, Charles Chudabala, Michael Glenny, Christopher Bryan Gomez, Ruby Reynolds, Ben Stobber, Mark Schaefer, and Robin Hill fill out the channel surfin’ cast of characters.

“Transmission” has a neat story structure built upon components with the premise being a movie inside a documentary while amongst a flipping through the broadcast waves that coincide with another movie as well as television shows, podium preaching, puppet skits, etc., to which is then wrapped up inside and latched onto another movie, a metanarrative with a preamble setup.  The Roth directed Transmission, presented for the first time on Malvolia’s spooky late night show (an Elvira rip) is a space horror off-brand for the filmmaker that mirrors vaguely the reality outside the boob tube but told through the Rachel Roth investigative documentary that builds the timeline pieces while flipping back and forth between the late night movie and the documentary as well as the scroll through every other broadcastings of paralleling programming in what feels like an antiquated prelude to the cable guide button on a tube television with depicted content that resembles much like what programmed over-the-air decades ago down to the very staticky outlines of porn stars expertly doing their fleshy vocational craft in snowy pixelations.  The edited series of a varietal shows creates an erratic unsettlement with an atmosphere churning over the idiosyncrasy content of what’s eventually to spoil or come to chaos by Transmission’s, or rather ”Transmission’s,” twist ending and what a fairly good twist ending it is, even with the slightly ham-fisted acting, by pulling off misdirection as you think you know where the finale is heading but the forces of evil seep through with a backup plan. 

Jinga Films, Danse Macabre, and MVDVisual present “Transmission” onto a MPEG-2 encoded, upscaled 720p (but upconverted on my player but since this title is shot digitally the image appears fairly good to begin with), DVD5 and presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  As stated, imagine quality has a fair amount of detail and intended panache interference amongst a broad range of different aesthetic styles and gels through the varied televised broadcasts from static and grain filters to colorless sepia, to filming scenes on television screens, and to other mock-electrical afflictions inside a digitally shot story truck to intermittently snap normality and cause a rising fear of curiosity amongst the TV goers.  Throughout the picture, there were no noticeable true compression issues with the picture.  Some scenes felt slightly stretched by that I chalked that up to filmmaker style when rendering various programming for the narrative.  Though not listed which format is used, the player registers an English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo.  With imitating the perspective of someone watching television, audio tracks are distinguished with a flat concave that elevates the pitch but disperse through a single channel.  Emitting through a dual channel stereo, the audio can discern potently through, providing clarity.  When looking at the perspective, we’re either the old man watching the television or when inside the show itself watching from the fourth wall in and subsequently the strength and tone change often quite a bit, creating a rich depth when done correctly.  English subtitles are optionally available through the moving menu.  The DVD is essentially a feature release but there are other Jinga Film trailers that include, “Iconic,” “Tonight She Comes,” “The Protos Experiment,” and this film, “Transmission.”  The DVD comes in a standard single, push-lock, black DVD case with single-side cove art that I personally found gratifying when considering the film as it speaks to the abnormal and drawing glow of a brightly illuminated television in place of a head on top of the shoulders of an opened-armed cultist with a pleasingly red and black contrast.  The DVD is pressed with the same yet cropped image.  “Transmission” has a R rating (no singled-out rationales but there is some language and nudity), has a runtime of 74 minutes, and is region free for all players.

Last Rites: There are no mixed signals from “Transmission’s” gradual rise to impending cosmic doom with an exceptional Lovecraftian twist to nightcap this Michael Hurst channel-hopping and ominous occult production.

“Transmission” Transmitting to Your Television on DVD!

Business and Pleasured are Ruined by EVIL’s Obsession! “Tulpa: Demon of Desire” reviewed! (MVDVisual / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Tulpa: Demon of Desire” Now on DVD!

Lisa Boeri is a career-driven businesswoman successful in locking down deals and achieving financial gains in a fast-paced, no-holds barred global market as she slaves away from dawn to dusk at the office, but when the sun goes down, Lisa releases the stresses of occupational hazards and her thirst for carnal desires at an exclusive, hidden-away nightclub where sexual fantasies range from BDSM to orgies while esoteric mystic and club owner Kiran trains her to release her Tulpa, an inner being of sensual self-exploration and freedom, through ecstasy elevating drugs.  When Lisa comes across printed news reports of her club sexual partners being brutally murdered by a serial killer, she must warn Kiran and her last partner before another body makes the press but Kiran isn’t too keen on making public private identifying information that goes against club rules and Lisa must do whatever it takes to investigate who and why would want to murder her intimate encounters. 

“Tulpa:  Demon of Desire” is a contemporary giallo from “Shadow” and “The Well” director Federico Zampaglione attempting his hand at the sordid Italian genre that has come to cult infamy over the past few decades with a regained revival and following on physical media.  Zampaglione co-wrote the script with father, Domenico Zampaglione, and Giacomo Gensini, the writing collective’s second collaboration behind the 2009 thriller “Shadow.”  Also known in Italian as “Tulpa:  perdizioni mortali,” the 2012 erotic giallo is a glow up of the everyday modern giallo that doesn’t try as hard as other productions that lean strictly toward being an homage to notable films and directors, “Nightmare Symphony” comes to mind as a compliment to Lucio Fulci’s “Cat in the Brain,” aka “Nightmare Concern” with a fairly identical storyline, rather than be self-serving toward its own identity within the subgenre context.  The producer behind Tinto Brass’s “Cheeky” and Zampaglione’s “Shadow,” Massimo Ferrero, returns to produce “Tulpa:  Demon of Desure” under his studio company Blu Cinematografica and IDF, Italian Dreams Factory.

At the center of a murder’s relentless focus is conservative promiscuous lead character, Lisa Boeri, played by Claudia Gerini who has had roles in Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ” and Chad Stanhelski’s “John Wick:  Chapter 2” as well as reteaming with Zampaglione for his last film “The Well.”  Gerini’s versatility proves its worth in “Tulpa” as Boeri’s required to be business professional and quick witted and then is contrasted against her carnal rendezvous that’s no longer has in control of herself.  There’s a freedom from the business shackles that takes place but when her night world comes crashing down in a heap of bodies, Boeri finds herself unable to focus on anything else other than the lives of her anonymous sleeping partners.  Club owner Kiran (Nuot Arquint, “Shadow”) is a bit of an odd bohemian duck with his psychosomatic holistic spirituality and the biochemical, psychedelic drugs he pours into his clients’ drinks.  The rest of the Italian cast are a series of rotating characters that, unfortunately, don’t flesh out enough to warrant when becoming intertwined into a killer’s web with to note Ivan Franek (“T.M.A.”) as the last sex-partner to be a killer’s crosshairs and Boeri has to save, Frederica Vincenti as Beori’s envious coworker out for her colleague’s scandal, and Michela Cescon (“I Am the Abyss”) as Boeri’s best friend outside of work and play as well as Pierpaolo Lovino, Michele Placido (“The Pyjama Girl Case”), Giorgia Sinicorni (“Canepazzo”), and Piero Maggio (“The Vatican Exorcisms”) rounding out the rest of supporting company.

Zampaglione’s giallo attempt is coursed with suspense with a masked, gloved killer targeting a beautifully flawed woman complicated by her own sexual exploration and reach inside a world that’s viewed as taboo as it is tantalizing with sexual delight.  The director fashions Boeri’s alternative and secretive lifestyle as a self-harming vice, much the same way as illegal drugs or excessive alcohol, done in the shadows and hidden from friends and family.  There’s a moment in the midst of Boeri’s desperation search for her last partner’s name where an adversarial colleague learns of her sex club nightlife and aims to expose her, turning her private venture public through means of blackmail.  Eventually, more than one type of obsession over Boeri comes into play and the bodies pile up because of the unhealthy nature of the meddlesome and malevolent.  Though taut when tension bred from a killer whose maniacal plan involves and extends to a torturous and gruesome end against those hovering in Beori personal bubble, a couple of key catalysts are not cleared very well.  One of the individual obsessions over Boeri falters right at the end with a quick cut that doesn’t allow breathing room for comprehension of what went down and, perhaps one of the more complexing and important outliers that strays off the narrative from off the straight and narrow, a supernatural sign of power, perhaps the Tulpa force in practice, that gives the story a taste of Lucio Fulci giallo, such as “The Psychic.”  Yet this revelation of an ability receives lukewarm reception that cases the story’s drive into a wait-a-minute of mystical puzzlement. 

“Tulpa:  Demon of Desire” arrives onto DVD from MVDVisual in association with Danse Macabre and Jinja Films.  The upscaled from 720 to 1080p MPEG-2 encoded DVD9 is presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Bathed in warmer tones of yellow, green, and red that often blend into a confluence of orange, Guiseep Maio’s noir dark veneer engages a sordid world of sophisticated sleaze and maniacal murder, creating a side-by-side dualism of Boeri’s day-and-night lifestyles.  Details are soft for this upscaled DVD as if the format slightly shimmers to keep focus on textures and delineations, the vibrant gel coloring for eliciting illicit behaviors doesn’t help either, but the release manages to produce a discernible image without the strain of compression issues and still convey Zampaglione’s visual aesthetic of a darker, viscus blood, heated shades of fervor, and a higher contrast to intensify shadows.  The English and Italian PCM 5.1 Surround Sound mix caters to the score and dialogue layers rather than creating worlds with ambience audio.  Though the dialogue is not listed as Italian on the DVD backside, there is a sizeable chunk of the dialogue in Italian with English subtitles, but the feature is mostly in a heavily accented English language.  The overall dialogue is clean without interference other than the accents and is prominently positioned, but still integrated in, amongst the other layers with a timed Francesco Zampaglione (last name incorrectly misspelled on the DVD back cover with missing the I in Zampaglione) and Andrea Moscianese exotically haunting score that works to not overpower the dialogue and plays into the sex-club and giallo themes  English subtitles appear to have no flaws and are paced well.  For a side note, I would suggest using the English subtitles to get through the Italian accents that can be challenging at times with certain actors.  Special features include a “Tulpa” behind-the-scenes featurette that interviews cast and crew, the official trailer, and two trailers for two other Federico Zampaglione productions – “Shadow” and “The Wall.”   The MVDVisual DVD release is a perfect example of less is more with a black background with a contrasting silver and intrinsically cracking Venetian mask and white logo with a blood-tipped spear.  The standard, region free, rated R release comes with no other physical or encoded attributes in its 84-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Honestly, a kill-focus blood overtakes the slim waist of sex in what’s supposed to be a blend of both motifs as the title suggests in”Tulpa: Demon of Desire,” but this modern-day giallo from those who did the niche subgenre the best, the Italians, is still worth viewing calories.

“Tulpa: Demon of Desire” Now on DVD!

Luther the Berserk has EVIL Plans in the Bayou! “The Naked Witch” reviewed! (VCI / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

A string of horrific murders of beautiful women becomes the study of a six-person team of paranormal researchers who head down to the Louisiana swamplands surrounded by notorious superstition and urban legend for once being the home of witchcraft.  One of the researches, Tasia, is a sensitive, a highly psychic receptive woman and student of team leader, Dr. Hayes, to sense the area’s extrasensory waves thought to be behind the murders, especially the ones of a satanic ritualized nature.  On the isolated island, encircled by swamp and gators, a powerful Satan acolyte known as Luther the Berserk seeks to spellbound Tasia to complete his coven of witches and evokes the help of Jessie, a haggard crone with the ability of mind control over those with sensitive abilities.  One-by-one, the researchers are being picked off for the blood ritual and it’s up to the survivors to stop Luther before it’s too late.

A bold psychotronic of the 1960s, “The Naked Witch” has a tingly macabre aura about it that’s not swinging, swanky, nor is it groovy.  Also known primarily as “The Witchmaker,” there’s a thick circumference of dread and darkness surrounding the William O. Brown written-and-directed picture.  Brown’s sophomore film behind the 1965 “One Way Whaine” comedy about Hawaiian babes and bank robbers is a stark 180 degrees four years later that showcased the filmmaker’s range from laughs to terror on the cusp of the early days of the Satanic scare.    “The Naked Witch” has also been reissued as “Witchkill,” The Witchmaster,” and “The Legend of Witch Hollow” and while Brown’s film goes by many monikers, one thing is for certain is the film was shot partially on location in the mucky swamps of Louisiana during exterior locations whie the remaining interiors were in a Los Angeles studio.  The U.S.A. made film was produced by Brown with L.Q. Jones serving as executive producer and released independently under LQ/JAF Productions.

Personally, horror films like “The Naked Witch” that were produced through the 1950s and into the 1960s always share mixed feeling that can only be described as from “the content is revolutionary for Americana horror post-World War II cinema” to “the stiff, exposition acting just doesn’t work with the grim nature of the ahead of its time story,” and as Marty McFly once said back in 1955, “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet.”  There’s nothing inherently bad about “The Night Witch’s” acting other than the lack of emotional weight from the troupe needed to lift up and be on the same level as the story that includes hanging half-naked women upside, slitting their throats, and drinking their blood out of chalices in a coven on satanic confluence.  “Revenge is my Destiny’s” John Lodge is the exception that goes against the stagey type of stilted acting grain as lead satanist apostle Luther the Berserk, flashing devil hand gestures and acting like a wild man in his ravaging role that’s ambitiously true to character and subtly perverse in blood and in lust. The same passion portrayal of character is not extended the principal leads of “Green Acres’” Alvy Moore and “Deep Space’s” Anthony Eisley playing a pair of opposing scientists – Moore as the more supernaturally open-minded Dr. Ralph Hayes and Eisley has the rigid in rationality Dr. Victor Gordon.  Their conflict of beliefs creates another subplot satellite that abides by superstition and lore as well as the division it produces, a decent representation of the overall contrarianism inside people as a group, then you have Tasia, a medium struggling with her powers being pulled in two different directions.  The European heritage and Canadian born blonde knockout Thordis Brandt steps out of the saucy side role and into one of her more prominent performances as the Sensitive who is manipulated by Luther’s unholy powers over the coven.   The coven and researcher cast rounds out with Shelby Grant, Tony Benson, Robyn Millan, Burt Mustin, Warrene Ott, Helene Winston, Carolyn Rhodimer, Larry Vincent, Patricia Wymer, Del Kaye, Diane Webber, Valya Garanda, Gwen Lipscomb, Nancy Crawford, and Sue Bernard. 

“The Naked Witch” is not as graphic as one would assume with such a scandalous, provocative title.  Again, you must remember, the film is originally titled “The Witchmaker.”  Yet, for a 1960’s horror, William O. Brown’s satanic sorcery picture is too advanced for the era’s mostly puritanical audience.  I’d even go as far as saying “The Naked Witch” borders the line between the foggy and gloomy atmospherics and set productions of Gothic Hammer and the ever-close-to-the-edge designed no nudity or graphic death coverups of an early Russ Meyer production sans the zany cartoon sounds and the rapid-fire editing.  An abundant of dread hangs in the air of starched collars and secretary skirts that conjures more than just the Devil’s presence in the bayou but a heavy dealt hand of a no-win situation full of desperation and death.  The story itself evolves from the brutal, ritualistic killings of strung up and stripped naked young, beautiful women to a more focused objective of converting Sensitive Tasia into a full-fledged witch that completes Luther’s coven and resurrects his master for a diabolical Hell on Earth.   The broader strokes of “The Naked Witch’s” narrative places the fate in the hands of a group of students and naïve ignoramuses playing catchup to what’s really happening under their noses.  Of course, alarm bells never go off and panic never really sets in for the group of survivors after each death in what is more like an aw-shucks and move on reaction.  Granted the team is stuck on the island for a few days with no way to call for help but that doesn’t mean being not proactive or being crippled by fear doesn’t have a place amongst them and in the story, especially missing opportunities within the researchers to turn on each other by way of Luther’s manipulating witch, Jesse, who herself has her own drastic motivation with a blood ritual that make her young again. 

“The Naked Witch” is fairly cladded with atmosphere and ghoulish intentions instead of the mentioned nudity but the new VCI 2-Disc Format Blu-ray and DVD release provides the bare essentials with a restored 35mm archival print into 4K-UHD scan.  Presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, the grading is rich and overall image and details look pleasing with depth in most scenes and grain is era appropriate appeasing.  Skin tones shade a little more toward orange but maintain within spec but on the higher end of a RGB.  The print has sustained some damaged with a slew of scratches, dust and dirt, and cell burns peppered throughout and can be a nuisance but nothing terribly critical to warrant narrative loss or a complete loss of viewing pleasure.  The English Dolby Digital Mono track offers little to try and immerse viewers into the swampy bayou and that’s a real shame since visual elements are detailed.  There’s minor background noise is palpable but not distinct to warrant attention.  Dialogue and the Bolivian born and “The Town that Dreaded Sundown’s” Jaime Mendoza-Nava’s gypsy-esque and minor key brass and percussion score are the heavy hitters in this presentation.  Dialogue has insignificant hissing and crackling but as a whole, the track comes over clean enough to firm pass well over grade.  Option subtitles are available.  The only encoded bonuses are a 2024 commentary track by film enthusiast and artist Robert Kelly and a poster gallery that include not just “The Naked Witch” but other 60’s horror pictures.  VCI’s standard Blu-ray incasement has one-sided still picture and illustrated compositional artwork that roughly produces the madness incarnated with the DVD on right and the Blu-ray on the left inside, individual pressed with images from the front cover.  The region free disc has a runtime of 99 minutes and the film is rated R.

Last Rites: “The Naked Witch” has no skin in the game in its necromancy ways but finds the fog of dread easy to become lost in with interesting characters and a ghoulish witch and ritual vise gripping it on both ends on a verge of being something more.

“The Naked Witch” on Dual Format DVD/Blu-ray from VCI!

Milan Has All the Best Short Film EVIL! “Drag Me To Fest” reviewed! (Rustblade / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Hurry! Grab the Limited Edition Copy of “Drag Me to Fest” Before Its Gone!

An outpatient nurse is requested by an old woman leaving by her lonesome.  Always forgetting and troubling eccentric, the humble nurse finds he’s in way over his head with a clearly unstable, possibly delusion woman, until the truth of her hidden secret unveils a web of horror.  A young couple looking to help a lonely farmer find themselves erecting a sheep fence as well as maintaining the upkeep of a strange rock formation known as a Tursemorkel that emits ooze out of black orifices and soon find the psychological and physiological energy from the Tursemorkel is more than they can withstand.  An elderly couple, tucked away inside their roadside camper trailer, whips up a finger-licking meaty stew made from all natural, locally sourced ingredients as they watch the nightly news’ top story of a missing person.  A man answers the doorbell and finds a package on his step, scratching and crawling out is a festering corpse eager to play with him.  A priest with an obsessive bug collection has him turnaround when a recently caught rare beetle toys with his mind.  Dafne, a young woman lost in another state of mind, is in the presence and in the arms of her own, personal demon. 

These bloodcurdling tales are the latest batch of horror shorts from the annual Milan, Italy hosted Drag Me to Fest.  The festival brings together Italy and international filmmakers to submit their unique brand of terror.  The 2024 lineup were submitted to the Milan collection in 2023, hit the festival the following year, and has now been compiled onto a home video release for North American audiences to enjoy and cower in teeth chattering fear under its namesake title, “Drag Me to Fest,” from Italian distributor Rustblade Records in association with MVD Visual, a subsidiary of MVD Entertainment Group.  Norway’s “Vevkjerring,” or “The Weaving” by Øyvind Willumsen and “Tistlebu” by Matthew Valentine kick off the anthology followed by Italian filmmaker’s Riccardo Suriano’s “Long Pig”, Julie Gun’s “Dafne is Gone,” and Jacopo Vismara’s “Il Coleottero” and finally rounding out with Japanese director Nori Uchida’s “For What the Doorbell Tolls,” all of which are self-produced.

Three countries, six distinct films, and all packed into the unusual side of ambiguously horrifying elements contained inside six short films.  Each character is curated to fit inside the narrative design, no matter how outrageous or avant grade the message is.  Willumsen’s “The Weaver” is a more straight forward, common structured horror of building up tension in an already uncomfortable situation of a friendly, living assisted male nurse Henrik (Fredrik Hovdegård) knocking on the doorstep of a haggard and kooky old croon named Gudrun, played devilishly and disgustingly by Isa Belle.  The next four episodes become a bit vaguer in their intentions of madness, purgatory, survival, and obsession that intends to either harm or transfigure into something beyond the dimensional standard.  “Tistlebu” aims to transfigure as a young city couple (Sascha Slengesol Balgobin and Sjur Vatne Brean) look to connect with nature and their curiosity, coupled by intrusive misuse and sexuality, toward an earthy pillar of energy inside a widow’s (Oda Schjoll) barn enraptures them into something more primordial, literally connecting them to an omnipresent natural world that’s much bigger than their insignificant need.  Uchida provides his own one-of-a-kind performance based immensely off Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” by playing not only the hero but also the decaying plaything that arrives at the hero’s doorstep in one’s mirrored rotting of loneliness.  “Il Coleottero’s” Don Antonio (Mimmo Chianese) has a crisis of faith that become sidetracked by his diligent hobby of entomology when his prized find, a rare beetle, suddenly disappears from his collection.  Chianese finds the balance between being a disenchanted priest and an anxious man hunting for the beetle that got away and that will eventually destroy him.  Julie Gun’s “Dafne is Gone” is more operatically finessed with interpretive dance between Dafne (Giulia Gonella) and a demon (Jason Marek Isleib) that’s completely absent of dialogue, stagecraft visualized, and characteristically naked to showcase Dafne’s descent into the Demon’s spellbinding movements.

The collected and presented works are not the highest dollar productions but do encase a prosthetic practicality as seen in Willumsen’s “The Weaver” with a shedding of an exterior layer into a more grotesque freak of nature while Uchida takes the tribute route using filleted flesh and milky contacts, along with LFE tones and grading, modulated vocals, to accomplish his own version of “Evil Dead” without the presence of Ashley Williams.  The others are not as cut and dry with their infinite interpretational insights that likely will speak more on a personal level than a glossy buttered popcorn one that requires little effort to absorb.  “Tistlebu” and “Dafne is Gone” entrench themselves in their respective unknown and modern art by providing very little in the one thing they both have in common, a shared sense of unsettlement.  There’s also an undertone of sexualism as if it equates to the very beast that entrances, which in these shorts is the Tursemorkel, which is a large surface growth that emits an allurement of safety and gratification, and, in comparison, to the demon, perhaps her own visceral demon, that frolics to breach Dafne’s temptation, drawing her closer to his own colorfully neon netherworld in a production of warmly dark euphemism.  “Il Coleottero” is perhaps the best understated undercurrent between the skepticism that plagues man and his faith.  Shot mostly naturally, tension is built on Father Antonio continuous deviations from his religious duties, distracted in his homilies and divine surroundings, by the mere fact of a lost beetle, a beetle, similar to the appearance of a Stag Beetle, that toys with him.  One could assume the beetle represents a test from God to challenge the priest’s diversification balancing his faith between realism against spirituality, to quote biologist J.B.S. Haldane, and I paraphrase, if the creator had made life, it must have been inordinate fondness for beetles because of their profound species diversity.

“Drag Me to Fest” has now hit DVD home video for the first time in its 3rd annual run with a limited edition to 500 copies courtesy of Rustblade Records, routed through the North American distribution channels of MVD Entertainment Group under their MVDVisual label.  The region free release, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, is encoded onto a MPEG2, upscaled 1080p, DVD5 with palatable average of image quality in its varying degrees of filming equipment, lighting, and technical know-how to get the intended look without suffering cinematography faux pas.  Compression wise can be a different story but, generally, “Drag Me to Fest” has an adequate presentation albeit a less-than-desirable color saturation, especially Gun’s “Dafne is Gone” that implements warm neon primary coloring in a high contrast, hard light emulsion.  Skin and pattern textures vary from short-to-short, but the delineation is there to not blend depth nor create solid, smoothed out surfaces.  Valentine’s “Tislebu” relies heavily on the rolling hills and greenery farmscape to enact its character qualities for an Earthy or terrestrial mystery important to the sentient and engrossing formation.  The Italian, Japanese, and Norwegian language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo offers a passable mix that doesn’t elevate the atmospherics or construct tension to the max but neither does it flounder or lay waste to the support of the shorts.  There’s not a profound amount of leveled depth or creative sound design to fabricate space as much of the dialogue and environment resides in the foreground, and the dialogue does render over clean and clearly with forced errorfree English subtitles, but the focus is primarily on moving the story in a matter of minutes for some of the shorts, leaving narrative devices, such as characters and the effects, to drive the story and its tension.  The DVD is a barebones released that does not come with any encoded extra content, but the slim, trifold jewel case does depict a grouping of cherry-picked ideas from the shorts in a green bath illustration from graphic artist Gonz and has individual taglines and color stills for each short.  The 92-minute anthology is unrated. 

Last Rites: Abroad anthology with a goal to highlight and amplify short filmmaker voices, “Drag Me to Fest” finishes up from the main screen and extends to home video for the first time! Rustblade and MVDVisual illuminate the cinema obscure for the general public and we’re all the richer for it!

Hurry! Grab the Limited Edition Copy of “Drag Me to Fest” Before Its Gone!

Who is This EVIL Named “Dariuss” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD – Extreme and Unrated)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Find Out Who “Dariuss” Is With this SRS Release!

An experimental vision quest of loss, grief, and death takes refuge in a small English town, inside an old and quaint English house.  A mother grieves for the loss of her child, sobbing uncontrollably and mindlessly wanders with distant stares as the heart pains for her child.  The grandmother, doing what she can, comforts her daughter’s newfangled distraught nature while the husband, grieving in his own isolated way, stays out late at night to drink himself into a stupor.  When madness lurks about their home and intrudes upon their privacy, a vile and heinous loss of life bathes a depraved lunatic in their fluids.  Neither mother, father, nor grandmother is safe from terrific travesty in corporeal form.  A sickness has arrived to cure the inconsolable, eradicating them slowly of the pain in the most painful of ways imaginable, and doing it all with a bloodstained maniacal grin stretching from ear-to-ear.

A hellish loop of defeating pessimism, “Dariuss” fringes the black void areas around reality and escapism that evoke the uncomfortable nature of people and the unpredictable tides that turn for the worst when already at rock bottom.  “Dariuss’s” brackish, brainsick narrative is the brainchild of Guerrilla Metropolitana, an Italian artist crafting his underground and dark cinemaverse of misanthropic mayhem and esoteric eroticism.  The writer-director Metropolitana lives and creates out of London, UK and “Dariuss” is his 2023, debut feature-length film behind an oeuvre of distressing shorts of human imperfection and immortality encroached by a constant line of madness.  Metropolitana not only self-funds and produces his film, where he achieves total control to push back against not only major studio norms but also conventional independent stratagem, but provides the avant-garde cinematography, unorthodox editing, an experimental score and sound design, and even costars the trench coat covered naked body of the antagonistic killer. 

One element to not forget to mention before going through the cast is that “Dariuss” is completely without dialogue.  Metropolitana’s sound design manipulates and repeats many sound clips, such as the plops of water droplets or the high-pitch lip trilling, to fashion an uncomfortable audio sensation sporadically strung throughout that parallel’s the coupled low tumbling score and baby laughter, the later more so when referring to child loss or the abhorrent reincarnation of the child.  Ila Argento holds the majority screen time, especially since the pregnant woman credited as Sarah Isabèl is also Argento as well in some sort of meta crafting or illusion, and she plays the grieving, depressed wife wailing, screaming, and just distantly starring in vast quantities and in a daze of mirrored or painted inversions about the English home.  “Dariuss” is more than just extreme performance art as it embodies interval wretchedness associated with trauma, or in this case more specifically, loss through a reverse world looking glass.  As the wife is tended to by the grandmother, played with apneic conditions and posturing concern is Marie Antoinette de Robespierre, Archibald Kane’s the husband role is scantily around for a father who just lost a child and when the father is in frame, he’s idling in his car drinking, or rather gulping, from a bottle.  Both the grandmother and father roles are a part of Metropolitana’s message of a shattered family structure of insincerity and disconnect. Feeding on that dysfunction is the childlike maniac, played by Metropolitana himself, with rapacious amusement off the back of the household’s suffering.  Almost as if the maniac is a reincarnation of the lost child, perceived by play like antics in a nearly naked and hairless state and audible by the babylike, post-introduced laughter, returning home to exact horrific horseplay on his family involving rape and murder and cannibalism alongside the frolicking and breast milk chugging.  

Let’s preface with an important fact that “Dariuss” will not be everybody’s cup of tea; in fact, Metropolitana’s film is more like bitter black coffee with a pungent, sour smell as a narrative series of images, like a splayed, taped together string of polaroids, giving godawful glimpses of grief and gore.  Sounds and images repeat that beg for madness to emerge out of the nouvelle vague filming style, experimenting with various inverted images, mirrored and angled shots, different types of aged filters and strange lighting, various camera speeds, and oddly framed shots will subject audiences to pricklier sensory sensations than the depicted violence and gore, which is graphically ghastly and extreme with necrophilia and cannibalism.  Story structure also veers into non-linear territory but the gist of the acts is present, if not loose and equivocal for open interpretation and choice cinema characteristics that stray from normal convention, to mold a beginning, middle, and end in only a way Metropolitana can construct by contrasting melancholic grief with stagnating indifference, with a maniacal pleasure of a sandbox of sinew, and, in way, comical by way of the insanity with disturbing imagery mixed with playful mischievousness. 

Just who is Dariuss?  That’s the obstruse person perhaps at the centermost of this ghastly, grisly story that’s now on DVD from SRS Cinema as a part of their Extreme and Uncut label.  The DVD comes MPEG2 encoded, 480p standard definition, 5-gigabyte DVDR that showcases a wide-range of filters, inversions, lighting designs, grading, and you name it, “Dariuss” likely did it of cinematography techniques that stay in the rough patches of eccentricity rather than being comfortable in the fairways.  Picture quality fluctuates and varies depending on the aesthetic chaos methods being deployed, leaving behind not the sharpest looking picture with noticeable pixelation on anything above a 32″ television but not enough of an eyesore to be an imperceptibly deterrent.  Depth has fair spatial qualities but range and saturation is pretty limited to an anemic neutral palette to only when the monochrome or higher contrasts are not in play. The LPCM 2.0 stereo contains no organic matter, meaning that none of the sound is captured within the scenes, as Metropolitana modulates, manipulates, and modifies singular notes and tones for creepy and ear-splicing effect. This also pertains to the soundtrack being completely devoid of dialogue to give the auteur complete authority of how his film she be heard and every bit of that sound design is front loaded and high-powered but to an intended unrefined audio art. English captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing is available. Special features encoded are a behind-the-scenes still gallery and SRS trailers while the standard Amaray comes with an SRS illustration of the film’s original one-sheet, transposed to the disc pressing. There are no inserts included nor slipcover. SRS Cinema’s release is region free and has a runtime of 62, ideal, or even a tad bit too long, for this type of experimentation.

Last Rites: Not to be confused as a nail-biting, popcorn thriller, “Dariuss” will only speak to a select few able to bend the mind to impressionistic, dark eroticism and savagery, both qualities of which Guerrilla Metropolitana has and depicts in droves.

Find Out Who “Dariuss” Is With this SRS Release!