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Become Internet Famous From Being Buried Alive by Evil! “6 Plots” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Seven close friends use “Screen It” to live stream online a drug and alcohol bender while partying hard at a vacant swanky home. When Brie awakes in a quiet, dark room of the luxurious house with no sign of her friends, she believes an odd prank is being played at her expense, but when she receives a frantic call from one of her frightened friends trapped inside a wooden box, Brie becomes their only hope of survival. She realizes that her six friends were abducted and buried in wooden boxes around the city, all of which contain it’s own deadly nightmare coinciding with each teen’s personal life. To heighten the tension, their fates are live streamed on the internet for the world to witness. Brie must connect the dots, find the pattern, and save the survivors before they all perish alone.
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Australian survival horror “6 Plots” capitalizes on popular teens being terrorized and murdered by a game mastering and mysterious sadist. The story, devised along with live streaming online the six teens’ fates, stems from director Leigh Sheehan and was commercially penned by the newcomer Tim C. Patterson. Alice Darling stars as Brie, the girl left untouched to save her shallowly engrained friends, along with “Wolf Creek 2” star Ryan Corr, Penelope Mitchell (“The Vampire Diaries”), Eliza Taylor, Emily Wheaton, Joey Coley-Sowry, Damien Harrison, Andrew Clarke, and PJ Lane. “6 Plots” introduces characters to face their fears, putting them up against a destined wall of death if unable to overcome challenges inspired by their own lives. Though the challenges are no where near the legacy of the “Saw” games where players have an opportunity to win their freedom themselves by sacrificing something dear to them and are constructed with their good fortune resting in the hands on one sole person, Sheehan’s race against the clock suspense thriller loses steam, never establishing momentum to strike the edge-of-your-seat nerve.
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Conceptually, placing unconscious disrespectful teens claustrophobic coffin structures and strategically scattering them along a small island coastal town only to direly drown their body and minds in a game of their own primal fears sounds amusingly devious. To pull off a grand recipe of intertwining cruelty, time would be the most difficult obstacle to hurdle and the plan’s organization and successfulness was ultimately determined on whether or not Brie and her friends were having a party at some random swanky house, which was on the verge of possibly being canceled priorly stated by one of the characters. Time spatially speaking, getting all six of her friends completely setup in boxes miles a part from each other would have taken most of the night, pending on how many hands were involved, and the story indulges a, perhaps, 3 to 4 hour workable time frame from each of seven passing out unconsciously due in part of whatever their drugs were laced with to the time they wake up alone in a confinement of darkness with only an element of personal fear accompanying them. In short, and this might spoil the end for a few readers, The Flash was able to accomplish casket coordination without much hassle. Just kidding…
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The biggest issue with “6 Plots” is the story never really comes to a head, never really providing that spark-lit surge of intensity at the point of apex. Instead, the course of action flounders at a lifeless flat line when a moment of clarity for Brie dawns upon her and she figures out the bedeviled jokester’s pentagram pattern, simply by hooking up to the internet and plotting lines onto charts of the island of possible casket locations. Brie made their tormentor’s Russian signal jamming plan the most elementary scheme to deconstruct and solve to date, but that’s due in part to poor character development as well. We know absolutely zilch about Brie, except for the facts that the daredevil rides a motorcycle off road, gives the local authoritative putz a run for his money, and likes to partake in drugs and alcohol. That’s basically all the information we’re given about Brie’s character and, somehow, a character who traditionally would have been nixed right about now was able to unravel a plan much too elaborate for her primitive Netgear hookup intelligence. Not even her tech savvy friend, Marty, could keep up with Brie’s uncanny genius, remarking a couple instances where Brie outthought his intellect about their predicament.
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Sheehan’s directorial style hinges upon a fair amount on the horrendously oppressive alternative music soundtrack and mawkish scenes of melodramatics with an example being after witnessing the horrifying demise of one of the teens on live stream, Sheriff Gary awkwardly drops the phone and hastily crosses the room to give Brie a clutching embrace as they both sob in each others’ arms. I’ve seen less over the top performances in soap operas. Certainly a first where melodrama meets tech horror, I found the technology to be sorely obsolete, especially for a film produced only four years ago. “6 Plots” was for sure a champion for Apple products, focal pointing on MacBooks and a Safari internet browser, but, yet, iPhones are rarely used and, instead, a healthy combination of Brie’s Blackberry and Sheriff Gary’s flip phone ultimately saves the day, proving that the latest and greatest tech gear can’t save you from a casket and can’t aid you in murdering people any faster.
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Lionsgate home entertainment label delivers the 87 minute Eagle I production onto DVD and Digital Video with a widescreen 2.35:1 presentation and an English 5.1 Dolby Digital audio mix. A high point of this “6 Plots” DVD is the video quality, though now fairly standard with current films in their home release formats. Image quality pops with detail and clarity bringing out the worst specifics in the poorly illustrated representation of the antagonist on ancient cell phones. Audio, again, lies in the realm of modern day conventions, albeit the down under accents are sometimes difficult to decipher. From the start, survival horror “6 Plots” quickly snuffs itself out from ever materializing into, what could have been, a gripping thriller by burying the best parts under a 6-foot deep layer of indigestible fluff that’s rudimentary right to the bone.

Go Graveside with “6 Plots” on DVD!

Put Evil Into Submission! “From Parts Unknown” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Charlie, the daughter of a famed pro-wrestler named Daddy Bison, witnesses the tragic and accidental decapitation death of her masked father while in the ring. Years later, Charlie labors for a video game corporation with underhanded values, but she still feels the call to wrestling, secretly competing and honoring her father’s memory in moonlight matches despite her lover’s wishes. When her corrupt employer illegal obtains Nano byte technology to engineer into their latest wrestling video game entitled ‘From Parts Unknown’ in order to financially steal from gamers, Charlie accidently becomes more involved than just being an innocent bystander. A side effect to the Nano bytes turns people into a horde of flesh hungry monsters on the cusp of being let loose and only Charlie can pile drive a stop to the infected corporate white-collar workers and vicious female wrestlers from embarking on a worldwide takeover.
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It’s Bloggin’ Evil is familiar with director Daniel Armstrong’s work, reviewing the Australian born director’s 2013 roller derby slasher “MurderDrome” on the Camp Motion Picture’s home entertainment label. Armstrong’s latest horror installment, 2015 released “From Parts Unknown: Fight Like a Girl,” blends a healthy dose of wrestling into the terror folds. However, this body slamming, drop kicking horror film was produced and completed by 2009, years before “MurderDrome” hit the market, and was shelved in a period of postponement because of post-production reasons, but the Strongman Pictures team bouts with more than half a decade of delays to eventually release “From Parts Unknown: Fight Like a Girl,” a complete horror-comedy battle royal!
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With a DIY façade, a talented actor pool dedicates themselves to undertake the high flying, death defying professional wrestling moves of PCW, Professional Championship Wrestling, in Australia and, I must confess, the actors looked legit. There’s an indescribable amount of pleasure and respect that goes into actors braving the chance of injury and accomplishing their own stunt work. Kudos to lead actress Jenna Dwyer for her stunt work to which in an example of her character, Charlie, is air-flung across the square ring and into a metal cage and she falls behind the ropes, landing hard on the mat below. The stunt looked fantastic. To coincide with the physical performances, Armstrong’s script uses slapstick comedy that’s heavy on the satirical undertones. Ross Ditcham’s a good character to spotlight as his role of Frank is the story’s buffoon, branded as being the best friend who doesn’t get the heroine girl of his dreams while running wildly whenever danger, or a brazen female supervisor, is hanging on his coattails.
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The combination of performance and wit does hunker slightly from being overshadowed by the wonky cinematography. Every applied color of the rainbow saturates various scenes to, perhaps, wash away the dull gray and white tones of the minimalistic warehouse location or to attempt to upscale production value, but the extreme use of this method conflicts with sharp image details, leaving an opaque and blotchy picture. There’s also some odd framing from either the production or postproduction distribution that’s disrupts the clarity of the actions in the scenes. On the plus side, a solid, passable effort was put forth for the gory special effects, especially when Josh Futcher’s Misha violently implodes the head in of one of the henchwomen with a fire extinguisher, splattering upward a healthy amount of blood while Misha quoting, many times, Ash from “Army of the Darkness.” Tack on superimposed electric current superpowers, a tactical high-powered Uzi, and a little person donning a luchador mask and tights and “From Parts Unknown” tickles all the right parts of your delinquent, shameless senses.


Story wise, a loose introduction semi-torpedoes the backend of Charlie’s growth and embattlements, albeit the killer effects and various degrees of solid acting. The convoluted scenes of stealing the Nano bytes and sprinkled in segments of the Bison Daddy’s fate attempt to set up two simultaneous merging narratives that end up not meshing well or delivering the intended message. After the progression surpasses the Nano Byte mishap, the story starts to take shape, forming more coherently and appropriately to pit our lovely Charlie against an apocalyptic foe, setting up define characters, and setting the stage for an all out slobber-knocker! When Charlie and her mortal allies have the odds against them when rivaled against superhuman opponents, a clear indication that’s just more than good versus evil. Under the surface, Charlie is faced with life adversaries: her unethical boss, an advantage taking supervisor, and other female wrestlers. All of which become flesh eating maniacs and want to rip Charlie apart.
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“From Parts Unknown: Fight Like a Girl” has pinned a DVD distributor with the indie label Camp Motion Pictures. The not rated DVD contains a short film “Post-Apocalyptic Chic,” “Fight Like A Girl” music video, Haunted by Humans Music Video, Demented music video, and a trailer vault. Like previously mentioned, the posterized video quality is noticeable within the confines of darker color hues and, especially, in the blacks. The LCPM 2.0 mix audio quality goes in and out with rocky levels of dialogue and ambiance. Graced with an ozploitation with great collaged cover art, Daniel Armstrong’s “From Parts Unknown” and Camp Motion Pictures are a wrestling match made in a hell in a cell! The best wrestling horror film since Mexico’s El Santo films!

“From Parts Unknown” on Amazon.com!

Gory Evil Experiments With Life and Limbs! “The Curse of Doctor Wolffenstein” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on


All Doctor Victor Wolffenstein wanted to accomplish is to invent an occult practiced serum that would permit eternal life, but his pure genius was corrupted by an egomaniacal drive during his time of research in a small village of 1930’s Germany. When Dr. Wolffenstein began gruesomely experimenting with the body parts of the resident dead, local inhabitants labeled him an abomination against humanity and God and sought to expunge him from life by cutting out his tongue and burying him alive in a wooden coffin. Before his ultimate fate, Wolffenstein injects himself with his latest serum batch and curses the villagers prior to his damnation. His serum works, giving the malevolent doctor decades to perform his vital experiments for the next 80 years, but portions of his body start to decay and rot. To keep his tissue viable, this time he steals body parts from the living!
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Director Marc Rohnstock’s German gore film “The Curse of Doctor Wolffenstein” finds residence on a callously displayed Blu-ray/DVD combo set courtesy of the blood aficionados over at Reel Gore Releasing. While the premise sounds like nothing more than one deranged doctor’s thirst to slice and dice at his little black heart’s whims, running parallel to Wolffenstein’s monstrosity narrative done in the dank dull light of a mad scientist’s bloodstained lab is the declining story of five young partygoers living life to the fullest travel to a rave festival and when their car breaks down in an eerie and isolated village, beginning the Rube Goldberg process of landing on the front door step of Doctor Victor Wolffenstein’s castle home. The two stories are structured almost purposefully divisive to distinguish on one hand the relationship ups and down of Mike, David, Tina, Jenny, and Emily and while on the other hand, the good doctor straps victims to his cold metal slab, performing invasive experiments on them, and finishing them off by slashing right into the thick of the noggin with a machete, solidifying a hard motif that eventually becomes a the doctor’s MO.
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A big part of the Rohnstock 2015 gore film is Wolffenstein’s numerous machetes to the cranium kill that explodes a geyser of dark red blood all over the place. The special effects and makeup by Oliver Müller literally had the blood rushing to brain, splitting the skull to unleash the blood splatter, and Müller does offer a bit more than sustaining as a one trick pony. Realistic arm dismemberments and reattachments, decapitations, exploratory surgical openings, and much, much more are a part of this gore-God’s repertoire. So much gore is present that gore itself becomes a character. That’s saying something since Rohnstock exploits his short lived, ill-fated red shirt characters that roster many recognizable Germans such as porn star Lena Nitro and one of the great gore and shock directors Olaf Ittenbach!

Without a doubt, “The Curse of Doctor Wolffenstein” is a labor of love that subtly borrows from the films of the director’s fandom. There’s a bit of “Evil Dead,” a piece of “Night of the Creeps,” and a flair of Hammer Horror in a mix that defines Rohnstock’s writing and director perspective and style. As the co-founder of the film’s production company Infernal Films, Rohnstock and his Infernal Films team have free reign over the overall structure, style, and tone of this fantastic flesh filleting of a film. What Infernal Films couldn’t really control was the relatively young cast of Isabelle Aring, Robin Czerny, Roland Freitag, Stephanie Meisenzahl, and Julia Stenke whom are pitted against the dual role performance of Mika Metz, playing a miserable mechanic and Doctor Wolffenstein.
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Reel Gore Releasing’s gorgeously slipcovered 2-disc Blu-ray and DVD combo release doesn’t hold back standing behind a flick that gallops in blood, bares it all with female nudity, and even has an orifice invading creature with enough ooze to lube it’s way down with ease. Video quality wise, the image is heavily showcased in a cyan hue that’s feels unnatural. The day or brighter scenes look good enough for hi-def in the widescreen presentation in a 16:9 aspect ratio. The German DTS-HD 5.1 option with optional English subtitles is flawless in all areas of the audible tracks. There is also a DTS-HD 2.0 with optional subtitles. Bonus features include a showcase reel in a behind-the-scenes featurette, a German only bloopers reel, “Trapped & Stabbed” short film by director Marc Rohnstock, the film’s trailer, and a still image slideshow. Gore films have always been a hit or miss with this review, but “The Curse of Doctor Wolffenstein” has reclaimed my faith in the intensity of content that’s not suitable for most viewership in one way or another.
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“The Curse of Doctor Wolffenstein” Blu-ray?DVD Combo! Get your GORE on!

Takes Evil to Know Evil. “The Anatomy of Monsters” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Timid sociopath Andrew patrons alone at a low-end bar, sipping delicately on straight whiskey and waiting for the perfect opportune moment to approach the right lonely woman. Andrew is not looking for a one night stand. Andrew is on the hunt for a victim, but when the night’s odds don’t seem to be in Andrew’s favor, a lovely young woman approaches him at the tail end of the night and begins to make small talk. After a night of coincided flirting, the woman seductively invites Andrew back to her motel room for some provocative foreplay, but before Andrew can move in for the kill, he suddenly realizes that the woman might just be as more of a sociopath than he could ever imagine by turning Andrew’s moment of a gratifying kill into her tragic tale of a more experienced and assured killer.
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Suspense thriller “The Anatomy of Monsters” is the sophomore film from the multitalented writer-director Byron C. Miller and stars Tabitha Bastien, Jesse Lee Keeter, and Connor Marx in a twisted narrative involving love, death, and the struggle between the two. Miller, unfortunately, wrestles to keep buoyant the scope of his story contained as scenes teeter when holding an airtight structure as Bastien’s character, Sarah, asserts her mortal coil. Her plight doesn’t grasp the attention needed to draw in an audience; instead, the back and forth between her present plea with Andrew and her past of leading a double life of affliction with whether to act on her killer instinct with the love of her life or not either passively regresses or just stands completely in place, not moving a motivational inch to take the much needed mile in making us believe in Sarah’s tragic love story and the story is actually, well, tragic by not building the passion between Sarah and Nick, played coyly by Connor Marx, as they just hunker inside Nick’s quaint apartment, affixed to his bed or couch while contemplating their instantaneous love for each other.
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A part of the film’s indelicate sting comes from Tabitha Bastien’s performance. Sarah, in the very definition of the character’s persona, is a sociopath which denotes a monotonous person to be without empathy, to have an ice cold demeanor, and to be calculating in their actions. While Bastien epitomizes a sizable amount of emotionlessness, her presentation leans a bit more toward being ingeniously staged, emitting a phoniness that doesn’t naturally crossover. If I didn’t know better, I would have guessed Bastien was a T-100 cybernetic organism underneath a flesh and blood outer layer from “The Terminator’s” apocalyptic bleak future. What Bastien does attribute very well to “The Anatomy of Monsters,” aside from her mechanical display, is a pair of piercingly bright eyes set upon a unique belle face akin to that of the nice looking girl next door you peeping tom on through the cracks of your window shades. Jesse Lee Keeter opposites Bastien with a more genuine approach that favors a Michael C. Hall similarity complete with a kill kit. Keeter’s Andrew is an example of well-written hesitation, exhibiting more of a killer’s struggle to maintain a low profile whereas Sarah leaves nothing to the imagination, baring it all out on the proverbial table with the extreme potency of egocentric cockiness.
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Along with Miller’s stationary script, the industrial rocker’s sporadic editing technique can be best described having a short-sighted attention span and his shaky handheld camera visually impairs the viewing pleasure of one monster’s monstrous thirst for death. “The Anatomy of Monsters” feature does play the role of being the quintessential independent product, but without stability and patience, Miller’s artistic craftsmanship suffers heavily from the technical aspects with really the only exception stemming from the minor gore scene during Andrew’s brief description of past murders, committing to a solid neck piece mock-up that realistically seeps blood in order to get the good throat slit shot.
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A fond blend of John McNaughton’s “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” and Showtime’s “Dexter,” “The Anatomy of Monsters” is slated for a DVD and Video on Demand release on November 15th from the Philadelphian distributor Artsploitation Films. Certainly a film that’s an attestant to an American-horror, Byron C. Miller explores the corners of the dark and deranged minds associated with serial killers while meddling through the conventional intimate affairs of the masses, spurring an atomically explosive situation from a slowly, simmering boil. Though technically unattractive with arguably underwhelming and sulky performances, suggestions of a greater notion leaves behind an everlasting scar tissue from the necessary urges and the unquenchable desires of a killer can be appreciated.

Watch The Anatomy of Monsters on Amazon Video!

“The Orphan Killer” Blu-ray Combo Pack This December!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Gore Reel Releasing and CAV Distribution is slated to release Matt Farnsworth’s “The Orphan Killer” on Blu-ray/DVD combo come 12/13/2016 and you can pre-book the title on Election Day 11/08/2016!

““The Orphan Killer” is a tour de force murder flick that defies classification. It goes far beyond current trends in gore and breaks open a new suffering genre of horror. Marcus Miller is a serial murderer hellbent on teaching his estranged sister Audrey what it means to have family loyalty. His lessons are taught in massive doses of vulgar and unimaginable pain. Throughout her brutal torture we learn that Marcus is not the only Miller with Killer in the bloodline as Audrey proves to be a formidable adversary.”

Cast: Diane Foster, David Bachhaus, Karen Young, James McCaffrey, Matt Farnsworth


Special Features Include:
Behind The Murder – Exclusive Video Diary
Trailer
Teaser
Music Clip
Slideshow

Blu-ray/DVD combo Specs:
SRP: $34.95 UPC: 881190600498 Cat: RGR004
Color 83 minutes In English with Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese subtitles
All Regions Widescreen Anamorphic 2.35:1 DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround

Pre-order “The Orphan Killer” today at Amazon!