Tag Archives: exploitation

Everything is Bigger, and EVILLER, in Texas! “Deep in the Heart” reviewed! (Fun City Editions / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Deep in the Heart” on a Fun City Edition Blu-ray! Here for Purchase.

Boston born Catholic Kathleen was raised in a good home by Irish immigrant parents.  Having moved from the liberal Northeast America to Dallas, Texas, Kathleen finds employment as an American history teacher at a local high school.  She meets born-and-raised Texan, attorney, and gun enthusiast Larry Keeler at a colleague’s outdoor barbeque and the two casually see each other off and on with Kathleen not interested in something more serious with the charming and handsome, budding attorney, but Larry believes Kathleen’s too uptight to see how madly desirable she makes him and rapes her at gunpoint when he can longer steady his urges, proclaiming her sexual hangups and rigidness as faults against her immense drawing of sensuality during post-coital.  Reporting her attack to law enforcement and her Catholic priest for prosecution and spiritual relief, both agencies fail to side with Kathleen’s trauma based on the facts of the case and God’s ever-tolerant forgiveness toward everyone.  The anger seething inside impels her to chop off her long, blond hair, dress more matronly, and join a handgun gun club after Larry continues to casually insert himself into her life like nothing ever happened and down the barrel’s site, Kathleen plots her vengeance. 

If there was an ever a more culturally relevant and timely film today produced and released decades ago, encapsulating the worst parts of American history, “Deep in the Heart,” aka “Handgun,” is that very film.  Through the perspective of the expatriate filmmaker Tony Garrett, having been born and raised in a country without an intense gun culture, “The Prostitute” English writer-and-director entrenches his outsider take on America’s unique, and unhealthy, gun fascination around an equally powerful systematic rape culture that ignores the severity of the transgression and assigns blame to the victim and, in turn, has the attacker come out unscathed due to being an upright citizen and a pillar of the community amongst his, also male, peers.  Filmed entirely location in Dallas in 1981 but not released in 1983, Tony Garrett co-produces the film with American producer David Streit (“The Prowler”) under United Kingdom production companies EMI and Kestrel Films where American distributors were eager to bank off the sexy rape-and-revenge thrillers of “Ms. 45” or “The Last House on the Left” but received a more thought provoking and provocative thriller that analyzed more of a problematic inward of U.S. culture and global societal toxicity. 

A daunting and difficult role for any actress to play, Karen Young had captured the epitome of a formulaic victimized women in an injustice system for her first major feature-length role.  Young, who went on to have roles in “Jaws:  The Revenge,” “Daylight,” and “The Orphan Killer,” embodies the American dream of the young, educated woman, Kathleen, from humble beginnings living away from home and having a career as a high school teacher in Dallas, Texas.  Kathleen’s American dream is crushed by the methodical mentality of Larry Keeler, representing America’s grasping of the past of taking what you want, even if that means by way of force.  Keeler is played by born-and-raised Texan Clayton Day (“Osa”) with a fast-talking, full of himself reproach to a debut performance that involve rape at gunpoint and being fully nude with your equally green costar.  Garrett’s able to convert the two inexperienced actors into raw talent, extracting their singular qualities into a combined effort of a sordid cultural subtext and cat-and-mouse rape-and-revenge suspenser.  Kathleen’s transitional arc from the shy and innocent Catholic outsider to the hate-filled, pro-gun, self-serving vigilante proved to be a dazzling gem of range and moxie pulled from the rough depths of untapped talent and getting to that point is a journey expressed vividly and thoroughly to build up both characters’ constitutions without a ton of exposition or visual insight.  Keelers intentions never slip but we understand through his conversations with Kathleen he’s a gun advocate and collector, he’s a good-time, good ol’ boy party animal at a colleague’s bachelor party at the Foxy Boxy – a Women’s see-through T-shirt boxing competition, and he has overt charm pasted thick with insincerity with out on dates with the high school teacher from Boston.  “Deep in the Heart” is centrically designed around these two principals with an already established built around gun-toting, fast-and-loose, and blinders on male dominated environment inhabited by smaller, yet key roles from the denizens of Dallas.

“Deep in the Heart” is not the sexy, rapey, glorified femme fatale film every will think it is.  “Deep in the Heart” is what Tony Garrett understand and believe in from the interpretation of dark side, misguided American values and how those cultural thorns that prick into the side of the free world change the course of all that is good and pure in the foundational basis America is built upon.  Engrossingly tied to modern day hot topics, Garret had incredible foresight or, maybe, was just brazen enough to go against the grain being an foreign expat shocked by not only the legal system but by the backwards ideas and beliefs of everyday citizens in different regions of the country.  In not only the rape but the whole pre- and post-rape setup is surrounding Kathleen’s inquietude is noticeable and uncomfortable to watch.  Men and women alike should feel icky of the transpiring contexts of spirituality failure, justice system failure, and an overall human being failure that lets Kathleen suffer in silence without the hoopla of scandal and punishment.  Instead, Kathleen’s bottled anger works inward toward a radical, retribution fix, resurrecting her from downtrodden ashes like a phoenix carrying a six-shooting revolver poised to a point of no return in DIY selfcare. 

Fun City Editions understands the power from “Deep in the Heart” by showcasing a new, restored transfer for their Blu-ray release.  Restored in a 4K scan from the original 35mm camera negative, making its first Blu-ray appearance globally, “Deep in the Heart” is stored on an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 and presented in an anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Not a whisper of image infraction, “Deep in the Heart” has a gorgeously graded picture that sees hardly any signs of aging or wear and the Fun City Edition’s restoration keeps the elements in alignment with the feature’s period of a late 70’s to early 80’s harsh filmed layer.  Color hues are vibrant and bold without appearing washed, presenting near perfect textures on clothing, skin, and environment and darker scenes keep contours and some details present without being completely dense or lost in any compression banding and splotches.  A lossless English DTS-HD mono track is more than ample audio for a very tight knit thriller mostly for indoor acoustics.  Exteriors capture the and highlight the appropriate milieu ambience, managed well within the single layer monaural to keep dialogue front and center.  Dialogue does not go without some crackling and hissing but not enough to be a nuisance, just noticeable.  Mike Post’s soundtrack is eclectic between night club boogies and harrowing hangers.  English subtitles are optionally available.  Special features included are a newly recorded audio commentary by Erica Shuliz, co-host of the Texas-based Unsung Horrors podcast, and Irish filmmaker Chris O’Neill providing in-depth insight and analyst of Tony Garrett’s underappreciated film, a brief archive interview with directory Tony Garrett on his perspective route as an outsider looking at the celebration and de-celebration of guns in America, an image gallery, and the theatrical trailer.  Tactile elements and striking rigid slipcase art from graphic artist Tom Ralston makes this Fun City Edition highly desirable as the U.S. title “Deep in the Heart” graces one side and the U.K. title “Handgun” can be found on the back (or front depending on how you look at it).  Sheathed inside is a clear Blu-ray Amaray casing with reversible cover art of three different country posters from the U.S. (primary) and U.K. and Japan (on the inside).  Disc is pressed with more Ralston imagery while the opposite side insert is of a 10-page color booklet with a new essay from film critic and author, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas.  Rated R with a region A playback, “Deep in the Heart” has a runtime of 99 minutes. 

Last Rites:  “Deep in the Heart” is an important film.  For some, the rape-revenge thriller can be either be eye-opener and another reminder added to the long list that America is gun crazy and legally not perfect.  For others, those expecting the sleazy, sexy rape film followed by the subsequent gratuitous violence will quickly go limp by Tony Garrett’s call-it-as-he-sees-it narrative that, for an intensive purposes, coincides with the rest of the world’s perception. 

“Deep in the Heart” on a Fun City Edition Blu-ray! Here for Purchase.

EVIL Sentences You to the Torture Dungeon and his Bedroom! “Night of the Blood Monster” reviewed! (Blue Underground / 4K UHD + Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Night of the Blood Monster” on 4K + Blu-ray is Here and On Sale!

After the death of King Stewart, 17th century England went into asunder chaos with the ruthless, usurping King James and the rightful, exiled King William of Orange who sought to return and topple King James’s authoritarian rule of a false claim to monarchy.  During the beginning and at the height of the revolution, Chief Justice George Jefferies presides over witchcraft cases with extreme and unethical prejudice, subjecting them to the torture chamber for what is labeled a ‘thorough examination” of their heretic ways, and eventually sentencing to public execution.  When the sister of one of the condemned women attempts to flee the country with a nobleman’s son, Jefferies learns of their dissidence and sends his henchmen to fetch the lovely woman to exploit her within the context of his own licentious litigiousness but closer and closer do the rebels and William of Orange’s men come to men like Chief Justice Jefferies who believe their power, influence, and proximity to God will save them from the noose.

A 17th century Eurotrash period piece forged out of mostly flesh and wolfish self-importance, “The Night of the Blood Monster” is yet another reteaming of Jesús (Jess) Franco and Sir Christopher Lee based loosely on historical context despite Lee’s best efforts for the contrary.  Also wildly and otherwise known as “The Bloody Judge,” and not to neglect mention the exorbitant unofficial titles from around the globe like “Witch Killer of Broadmoor,” “Throne of the Blood Monster,” and “Trial of the Witches” to name a few, the Spanish-German-British coproduction, cowritten between Jess Franco and Enrico Columbo (“Hell Commandos”) is a biographical interpretation of the Chief Justice George Jefferies and the brief span of his cruel litigator’s life set against an epic regime kerfuffle and grimy, exploitation barbarity.  The storyline concept was imagined by longtime Jess Franco producer and overall B-movie votarist Harry Alan Towers (“99 Women,” “The Blood of Fu Manchu”) alongside Columbo and Arturo Marcos (“She Killed in Ecstasy”) under production firms of Fenix Cooperative Cinematografica, Prodimex Film, and Towers of London Productions.

In yet another instance similar to Jess Franco’s “Eugenie” of a prior year or two where Christopher Lee channels the spiritual embodiment of a pain-and-pleasure pundit connected to the Marquis de Sade yet is unaware of the actual skin-and-sleaze that’s happening all around him while he crafts his melodramatic character, “The Night of the Blood Monster” has Lee conduct a stern symphony for Chief Justice George Jefferies’ conceited righteous carnage, living true to the factual George Jefferies designation of a hanging judge.  Lee is ruthless and cold while proper in public as he peeps beautiful bosoms and skirts from afar.  His costar, the gorgeous blonde with soul pierce eyes in fellow “Eugenie” thespian, Maria Rohm, who was also Harry Alan Towers wife at the time, definitely wasn’t clueless about the more undressed scenes, going full frontal in a couple of occasions with one of the supposedly with Lee as the exploiter of her beauty and circumstances.  However, Lee is never shown and only Jefferies’ hands are seen caressing Rohm’s character’s, Mary Gray, bare skin with post-event moments alluding to the implied affect.  Yet, there’s plenty of well-scripted dynamic play for Lee to bounce off against, which Franco is good at in his work as long as his at least 75% of the work makes it to the screen and not too terribly chopped up and spliced for the sex appeal and gratuitous blood.  Milo Quesada (“The 10th Victim”) swings a mean bastard sword as one of Jefferies head knights of dirty work, Hans Hess (“X312 – Flight to Hell”) is more vanilla than complex as the rebellious nobleman son and Mary Gray paramour Harry Selton, and Leo Genn, who initially wasn’t supposed to play the Lord Wessex, really cements Lee’s genuine performance with his own as the aristocratical, oppositional counterpart to Jefferies sadism.  “Night of the Blood Monster” rounds out with Peter Martell (“The French Sex Murders”), Margaret Lee (“Asylum Erotica”), Howard Vernon (“Angel of Death”), and Maria Schell (“99 Women”) as the clairvoyant old woman Mother Rosa living in the hills. 

Like “Eugenie,” “The Night of the Blood Monster,” and most of Franco’s scripts and films, the historical accuracy you must take with a grain of salt.  Though the underline basis of historical figures and perhaps time periods are more-or-less on point, there’s a greater number of misrepresentation of events or an imprecise use of period appropriate props and costuming that is deemed close enough by a fast-and-loose industry standard. Yet, with any Jess Franco film, the modern-day consumer is not expecting award-winning and emotionally moving cinema but rather fleapit flicks of the fleshy kind with handfuls of equally perversive cruelty.  “The Night of the Blood Monster” fits the bill perfectly with a dressing that, to the untrained eye, would pass historical surroundings, give tribute to sordid bygone figures, and revel in its own unabashed filth outside the interpretations of its own core group of filmmakers.  On one hand I feel bad for Christopher Lee who didn’t know, maybe, that the edification of the character was being twisted into something more carnal but on the other hand, the man has been in quite a few Franco and Towers productions to have learned by then.  However, Franco does depict a remarkable presence of a low-level epic with fabricated Classicism set dresses and interior architecture while keeping the budget down by having multiple scenes of men on horses gallop through an unrecognizable, middle-of-world forest.  With that said, the story doesn’t have perfect fluidity with a choppy sense of tempo that fails to coordinate our specific concepts of time.  Seasons don’t change yet months pass between the wrongful execution of Alicia Gray and the impending arrival of William of Orange’s invasion. In all, there’s a brilliance in the behind the face value and a heart to make Chief Justice George Jefferies the worst person possible yet the timing feels off and the story suffers for it.

I’m curious to understand why Blue Underground used the title “Night of the Blood Monster” on their new 2-Disc 4K UHD and Blu-ray set instead of their previous DVD that had the less-generic-more-fitting title “The Bloody Judge.” No judge-ment here really other than “Night of the Blood Monster” isn’t as catchy. The 4K UHD is HVEC encoded, 2160p high-definition, on a double layered BD-66 presents a new 2023 Dolby Vision HDR 4K scan that is gorgeously sharp in detail of interior structures, brighter exteriors, and even the dungeon scenes invoke the dewy coldness and bloodletting squirms. The skin tones can get a little funky at times with an overly warm, and orange-ish, glow not conducive to elements around the ambiance. Other than a few instances of the skin tones, the grading is overall rich in saturation where we get some really nice and thick contrasting reds and yellows with no artefact inference that cause distraction in darker spots or around the edge of objects. The Blu-ray format offers a lesser immersive picture with a lower pixel count but the compression decoding around 35-38Mbps and the compilation of transfer as well as the high-definition pixels is worth the combo set alone. The English language DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track has lossless compression that renders a clean and unfiltered fidelity in dialogue and in the other audio composited audio layers. Granted, some actors are dubbed due to the international co-production with German and Spanish natives not speaking their native tongues but the dub itself, especially in Lee’s own dubbed track, is one of the better inlaid and integrated tracks compared to most with not a load of static feedback. Blue Underground was able to obtain a cut that is the complete and uncensored version of “Night of the Blood Monster” by combining multiple transfers but in adding additional scenes of nudity and blood from a German transfer, the English dialogue track does briefly switch over to German with burned in English subtitles for two segments. English, French and Spanish optional subtitles are available. The 4K UHD carries with it three historian audio commentaries: 1) Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson, 2) Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw, and 3) David Flint and Adrian Smith. The Blu-ray carries a bit more. Including the aforementioned commentaries, there is also deleted scenes and alternate scenes that rework scenarios or add stylistic choices, an archival interview Bloody Jess with Jess Franco and Christopher Lee, an interview with Stephen Thrower, author of “Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco, in Judgement Day, an interview with Alan Birkinshaw and Author Stephen Thrower as they discuss producer Harry Alan Towers in In the Shadows, and rounds off with trailers, TV spots, and still galleries. What I love about this new Blue Underground UHD+Blu-ray combo release is not only the picture but also the cardboard slipcover, a remarkable blend of film factuality and gratuitous sleaze of half-naked and scared women chained up in the dungeon with the embossed tactile title “Night of the Blood Monster” in bold gothic lettering. The same image graces the front cover of the black 4K UHD Amary case but if you do want “The Bloody Judge” title, you can reverse the cover art and there it is but with a different, less fun front cover art that’s more in tune with the narrative. Each disc, punch locked into its own side of the interior case, is pressed with a different illustrated image, 4K being the same as the slipcover while the Blu-ray is more Lee and Executioner focused. No inserts or books included. The not rated, 103-minute release comes region free on both formats.

Last Rites: The verdict is in! “The Night of the Blood Monster” now has the best-looking, most-complete version possible with a new, uncensored cut from Blue Underground. Christopher Lee heralds in hopelessness in squalid measure while holding his nose up high as one of England’s most notorious magistrates to ever rule and the brazen Jess Franco brandishes brilliance that glints through the cracks of an overrun production.

“Night of the Blood Monster” on 4K + Blu-ray is Here and On Sale!

A Eurotrash Mosaic of EVIL. “Jailhouse Wardress” reviewed! (MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Jailhouse Wardress” now on Blu-ray!

After the fall of the Nazi Reich post-World War II, one of the more cruel SS-Officers, Muller, is dispatched to South America where he establishes a women’s prison camp and appoints a likeminded, lesbian female warden with strict punitive measures if the inmates don’t fall in line and follow the rules or instruction.  While Muller governs the area, disorder courses its way through the camp when a plea letter to the state, describing in detail the horrors inflicted upon the women at the camp, such as torture and private cells for sex with the inmates, is intercepted before leaving the premises.  At the same time, a young, newly processed inmate, who had killed her rapist uncle in self-defense, plans a daring except.  The once well-oil authoritarian sex prison quickly becomes unraveled by unruly prisoners who’ve had enough with the eternal inhumane debauchery and with the exterior assistance of Jewish liberators and assassins, freedom is all but knocking at the door.   

Hot off the heels of Neon Eagle Video’s Blu-ray release of “Kill Butter Kill,” a Taiwanese rape-revenge narrative that’s been jumbled up with re-edits to engender a whole new structure, we dip into another Blu-ray remix, soaring from Asiatic East to the Western Europe with “Jailhouse Wardress,” a Alain W. Steeve hardly directed women-in-prison schlocker pieced together from three earlier Nazisploitation and caged-women exploitation features with barely any new footage used a binding agent to construct a concentrated concentration camp plot.  Steeve, a pseudo-surname for Alain Deruelle, a pornographic director who did helm “Cannibal Terror” under the name Alain Thierry, hodge-podges a new sordid camp exploitation picture out of already near the bottom-of-the-barrel features that sparked very little lewd cheekiness of sleazy Nazi oppression and the perversities of a hard labor with hard bodies in a women’s prison camp.  France’s Eurociné is listed as the production company but unsure if there was any company backing or shooting the new spliced-in footage since Eurociné outfitted the trio of features used to make up more than half of “Jailhouse Wardress;” these films included “Barbed Wire Dolls,” “Last Train for Hitler,” and “Elsa Fraulein SS.”

Unlike “Kill Butterfly Kill,” much of the new material shot for “Jailhouse Wardress” incorporate different actors into already established roles of the component films and with the scenes going back and forth between new and archive footage, keeping up with a fluent narrative is more difficult than said.  For instance, two different actors play Nestor; Germany’s Eric Falk (“Blue Rita”) footage from sparingly used from the “Barbed Wire Dolls” and most of Nestor’s scenes lie with X-rated and softcore French actor Didier Aubriot (“Naked Lovers,” “They Do Everything”) barking the orders and taking what he wants from the freshly instilled and scantily uniformed actresses inside the cages with Pamela Stanford (“Blue Rita”) and Nadine Pascal (“Zombie Lake”).  You can tell their scenes are newer, fresher, with more color emitting from a different film stock and camera combination compared to the brief, desaturated appearing scenes of Eric Falk who never touches the women prisoners in Beni Cardoso (“Scalps”), Lina Romay (“Female Vampire”), and Martine Stedil (“Marquise de Sade”) who bare a lot of undercarriage bush as a gratuitous rite of exploitation culture.  Much is lost not only in a re-dubbed soundtrack of the source films but what’s also lost heavily are the character attributes that left behind from the original films, such as the prison director’s (Monica Swinn, “Love Camp”) brutish lesbian demeanor with “Last Train for Hitler’s” Ingrid Schüler.  This type of devolving reshapes the characters for worst, takes away much of their cruelty and passes it along to predominantly to the newer footage of Teresa and Lola at the naked mercy of the newer Nestor.  “Jailhouse Wardress” fills out the archive and new footage German, French, and English nationals cast with Eugénie Laborde, Bob Asklöf, Michel Charrel, Peggy Markoff, Paul Muller, Sylvie Darty, Ronald Curram, Maria Cavour, and the archive presence of Jess Franco in a normal camera speed slow-motion flashback death scene as Uncle Jess in this particular feature.

“Jailhouse Wardress’s” old, new, or however you wish or feel compelled to describe the mismatched footage ultimately compromises the plot by the cut-and-paste hack job.  A slight attempt can be seen made to align new and old footage for sequence editing but without a seamless grading and more similar costuming, the events never feel in the same space, creating more a schism between the two material footages rather unifying for a common narrative.  Subplots, such as the imposter prison doctor or the Jewish hit on the Governor, are more prominent than the actual foundational plot so there’s a hindrance of uncertainty to what should be the main premise, including the Nazi angle that seems to vanish without much of a fuss, and the brain works in overtime trying to follow one scheme to then have to jump to another without traversing that pivotal straight line that connects the dots, leading to a complete mental shutdown due to exhaustion and confusion.  What doesn’t help matters is the arterial lifeforce, the purposeful exhibition of exploitation, the whole reason why we watch through our subconscious sadistic eyes women become slaves to ruthless perverts, is severely castrated on a couple’s sexploitation scale.  Much of what is shown is solo work; women lying in bed bottomless or are stripped nude for only a few moments of touching or taking by force without much of a fight.    

The ”Jailhouse Wardress” receives the high-definition Blu-ray treatment from our friends at MVD Visual as part of their MVD Classics label.  The AVC encoded, 1080p, BD25 suits the patchwork Alain Deruelle (and Jess Franco in archive footage only) feature.  While the 2K scan looks pretty darn good for a schlocky eurotrash pastiche, the print used is a gut-punch to videophiles hard-pressed on image quality and preservation.  Presented in a more consolidated pixel count of 1.42 aspect ratio, the print, or at least the “Barbed Wire Dolls” was originally in the European aspect ratio of 1.66:1 as you can see the letterboxing during the titles and they eventually expand out, stretching the image.  The print is in rough shape in its spliced up format with its seam-showing different graded parts that creates a back-and-forth inconsistency.  “Barbed Wire Dolls” is shades darker, grittier, and less definable than inserted shoots.  There’s an abundance of print damage too from frame damage to vertical scratches, mostly early into the runtime.  With the inconsistent picture quality, grain never looks healthy as the amount fluctuates and, often times, becomes more an interference of higher contrast exposure in darker portions.  Both audio options are in an uncompressed PCM 2.0 mono format and you listen in with dubbed English or in the combined original and dubbed French.  Not the flawless audio to ever come across but neither is the worst but what’s inlaid is untouched mix that contains all the hissing, crackles, and pops that blight the audio thread.  Yet, dialogue remains intelligible, thanks mainly to the dub work I suppose, but if you don’t mind Pamela Stanford’s sounding like Smeagol than this audio dub is for you.  English subtitles are optionally available and they synch well enough with a couple of grammatical errors.  The theatrical trailer for “Jailhouse Wardress” is the only direct bonus content available with other eurotrash trailers accompanying.  The packaging is quite eye-catching of an illustrated Nazi-patronized burlesque show front cover inside the traditional Blu-ray Amaray case.  The back cover has the more confounding composite artwork with still captures from neither of the films used and stock image marketing that have little or nothing to do with the film itself.  Inside content is barebones with the BD25 disc stamped with the same front cover art.  The Blu-ray comes not rated, region free, and has a merciful 75-minute runtime. 

Last Rites:  Exploitation fans will find “Jailhouse Wardress” lacking that je ne sais quoi.  The interlocking of multiple prints is like unwelcome visible scar tissue, glad it’s there to heal the wound but unsightly to look at.  As for filling in one’s gap in the Naziploitation and Women-in-Prison collection, “Jailhouse Wardress” isn’t a must-have main ingredient for the diehard fans but for an aficionado completist, MVD supplies the goods with a Hi-Def option.

“Jailhouse Wardress” now on Blu-ray!

The Home Recordings of a Pure EVIL! “August Underground: Mordum” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray/DVD combo)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“August Underground:  Mordum” Limited Collector’s Edition!

Uncompassionately deranged serial torture and murderer Peter Mountain is back.  Along with his maniacal partner Maggot and his depraved sister Crusty, whose also Peter Mountain’s girlfriend, the terrorizing trio videotape their exploits with no shame and with no end from no matter how mundane to no matter how gruesomely vile.  Rage and lust mix together with sociopathy and psychopathy, resulting in a dangerous combination for whomever crosses their path.  Shocking glimpses of their killing spree reflect through the lens of their camcorder, capturing every kidnap, imprisonment, confinement, rape, mutilation, torture, and eventually murder of their sadomasochistic onslaught onto every random, unlucky soul but with every moment of madness captured, their no so friendly friendship verges ever closer toward a volatile collapse when Maggot and his sister Crusty hook up from time-to-time and the perpetually aggressive juggernaut Peter Mountain is on the brink of breaking more beyond his broken mental state.

The return of Peter Mountain marks the return of shock and gore director Peter Vogel with “August Underground:  Mordum,” the 2003 sequel to Vogel’s unnervingly raw depiction of depravity and exploitation in “August Underground” released two years prior.  Not a traditionally subsequent sequel, “Mordum” is a standalone entry with only the presence return of Peter Mountain to connect the two stories together, but “Mordum” initially didn’t start out as a sequel and only morphed into a feature when Vogel was requested to shoot gruing material for the aptly named death/gore metal band Necrophagia and the band’s lead singer, Frank “Killjoy” Pucci, suggested to turn the material in a follow up film of “August Underground” with Killjoy co-wring alongside Toe Tag Picture’s Vogel, Christie Whiles, Michael Todd Schneider and Jerami Cruise.  What emerged felt like an organic chapter in Peter Mountain’s found footage mausoleum of bloodlust mayhem.  Shot in and around the Pittsburg, Pennsylvania area, “Mordum” is a production of Toe Tag Pictures under executive producer Jerami Cruise.

2001’s “August Underground” brought a terribly raw image to the independent cinema fold that house realistic depictions of the utmost evil and perversion.  So much so, a few of the cast members decided to not use their real names.  For Peter Vogel, a follow up film was like another day walking in the park as a proud papa of his villainous protagonist Peter Mountain, an eclipsingly large and laughing feverishly fiend of a man who preys on the cries and screams of his victims.  “Mordum” introduces us to two new actors into the fold with Christie Whiles, who would reprise Mountain’s girlfriend Crusty in the third Entry “Penance,” and Michael Todd Schneider (“I Never Left the White Room”) as Crusty’s brother Maggot.  It’s not exactly made clear if Maggot is a returning character, the hyena chuckling man behind the character played by pseudonym Allen Peters, or not.  In either way, Whiles and Schneider are equally as vicious on screen as Vogel but invite a whole of a hell a lot more nudity, non-simulated genitalia fondling, and induced vomiting to give “Mordum” that extra mile of stomach-churning, eye-adverting discomfort.  As the fluids deluge in scene-after-scene of massacre depictions, the triple threat come across a like-minded individual, played by the person who very much encourage and inspired for the sequel.  The late Frank Pucci, aka Killjoy, the front man for Necrophagia plays an equal with a slaughter shed full of rotting, putrid corpses, beheaded babies with maggots, and prime meat tied and lying in wait for him to butcher as his leisure.  “Mordum” offers up a slew of victims in different abattoir and snuff scenarios, casted with a rising makeup artist in a pre-crew acting role Midian Crosby (with makeup credits including “Halloween Ends,” “Cop Car,” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”) and Elmo Painter in the vomit and viscera evacuation scene, Rick Kundrach and Tim Grubjesik as unfortunate junkies, as well as Chris Shaw, Shelby Lyn Vogel, Allana Sleeth, Dave Brown, Erika Schultz a few pseudonyms in Daisy, M. Kadath, and E. Jay, and with Ultra Violent Magazine editor Art Ettinger.

Similar to the first film, “Mordum” has no plot in it’s a series of found footage flashes in the day in the life of a serial killer.  This approach makes what you’re having to behold for 70-minutes that much more plausible and realistic and what you’re seeing is quintessential gore porn.  “Saw” wasn’t the basis of the coined term.  No, my sanguine licking friends.  Fred Vogel pioneered that course three years earlier with his sick and twisted show of seminal underground.  The only reason why Vogel wasn’t at the top of the gore porn list was because none of his films had mainstream theatrical runs.  However, literally, “Mordum” contains that borderline porn element of exposed and molested nudity, the below the waste naughty parts that don’t see a tone of skin-to-skin action, and there’s certainly enough gore to go around and around and around and around again.  Some of those smaller gore elements were real, such as skin cutting.  Another element that makes “Mordum” effectively morbid is the special effects work by Vogel, Jerami Cruise (who has gone on to do major studio films from his extreme horror indies), and the late Ryan Nicholson (director of “Gutterballs” and who also was a special effects supervisor on a wide scope of studio and indie films) who provided many of the dismembered and grimed up dummy props framed through a standard definition, commercial camcorder for the Necrophagia music video.  If no story arises, one hell of a damn good show must come out of the horrific footage and Peter Vogel and the Toe Tag team achieve diabolical decadence with stomach content-emptying pizzazz.

Unearthed Films and Toe Tag Pictures have teamed up to release limited edition releases of Peter Vogel’s “August Underground” trilogy.  “Mordum” receives the royal physical release treatment with a 2-disc, Blu-ray/DVD, Limited Collector’s Edition.  The Blu-ray is an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 can only be so detailed with a shaky, consumer cam but the image could not look any better, or gruesome.  Presented in a pillarbox framed 1.33:1 aspect ratio, RGB color model leans more toward warmer reds, yellows, and greens so you don’t get an authentic color scheme on objects or skin tones.  Darker scenes render nicely enough despite the MiniDV magnetic tape’s e-interference compression artefacts and some tracking lines onto digital recording that makes the image jittery/jumpy, but all the in-your-face closeups, low-quality picture quality adds to “Mordum’s” rancid-sensing realism.  The English PCM 2.0 audio track has copious clarity for its unrefined, raw built-in mic recording that comes with some crackling and echoing if the decibels rise during screaming or shouting and the built-in can’t handle the received input. Depth is lossy with the range of the recording and range doesn’t factor into play as dialogue pushes through whereas the low-budget constraints leave the action audibility left to the imagination. Subtitles are not available on either format. The limited-edition regurgitation of the sequel warrants a ton of special features in its inauguration to the mainstream masses. Both formats share most of the extras but the Blu-ray features many more. Brief Dave Fogel touchpoints on certain aspects of “Mordum’s” obscure longevity Mordum Lives!, the climax’s most disturbing visuals The Most Disturbing Scene, and an ode to Necrophagia’s front man Remembering Killjoy dive into those specific nuts and bolts of involvement, a new interview with Michael “Maggot” Schneider A Family Affair of Love and Hate which also includes The Ravenous music video from Necrophagia, offering some more cut scene insight, a sit-down interview with between Unearthed Film’s Stephen Biro and Tog Tag’s Jerami Cruise on the gruesome special effects work on a budget of literally what was lying around, Necrophagia’s promotional video of Rue Morgue Disciple, a new Rue Morge Disciple Behind-the-Scenes gallery, deleted and extended scenes that prolong the violence of the most graphic, extreme scenes and add another level of behind-doors sexual deviation to near pornographic heights, the U.S. premiere from 2003, a brand new extensive photo gallery, original animation work, and trailers while the Blu-ray includes these features, also on the hi-def disc is a new interview with Ultra-Violent’s editor Art Ettinger and Allana Bleeth who both have small roles in the film, a new interview with Zobo With A Shotgun’s Zoë Rose Smith interview director Fred Vogel, filmmaker Dave Parker interviews Vogel as well, Severed Cinema interviews Vogel too in Snuff Purgatory, a new mockumentary and its trailer for Sickcess: A Necrophagia, and a Zombie Demo from Flashback Weekend circa 2004. On top of the special feature filth, the physical aspects of the release come in a clear and traditional Blu-ray snapper case housed inside a cardboard slipcover showcasing the infamously disturbing scene. The same scene is also illustrated on the Blu-rays cover art with reverse cover art providing a rough-and-ready composition alternative of the same scene. Both disc arts are pressed with camcorder blurry images of depicted carnage. The region A/Region 1 locked Unearthed Films combo set has a runtime 91 minutes and comes, obviously, not rated. If looking for the original 3 from Hell, Peter Vogel’s “August Underground: Mordum” assembles three monsters to ever savage the screen with their horrible, unspeakable acts of sadism. The unabashed Unearthed Films rightfully doesn’t lubricate our hole of curiosity, sodomizing our prurience with the metallic taste of blood and madness.

“August Underground:  Mordum” Limited Collector’s Edition!

Norwegian EVIL Has Women Issues! “The Thrill of a Kill” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Enjoy the “Kill” on DVD now Available on Amazon.com

Out of work Kimsy and her irritated mother butt heads over Kimsy’s lack of effort in trying to find a job and help out with responsibilities around the house.  After a particularly nasty argument, Kimsy storms out to walk off her frustration in the quiet surrounding woods.  Instead of lowering her blood pressure, Kimsy’s blood runs scarred and runs down her head as she’s knocked out and picked up by a playful serial killer with an irreparable hate for women and takes gratification in degrading them by any means possible.  Sadistically bred by unconditional motherly abuse, the killer treats each of his prized possessions like dogs to submit to his every beckon and call.  Kimsy’s mother and sister, Camilla, grow concern for Kimsy who hasn’t returned home and set off to find her.  When they realize she’s been abducted, they’re able to track her to a remote, vacant cabin used as a kill house and as they set foot inside the cabin to save Kimsy, a killer lies and waits to strike. 

Lars-Erik Lie’s Norwegian torture porn, “The Thrill of a Kill,” resonates with the old and true proverb, what comes around, goes around.  Filmed in and around Norway’s largest ski destination and resort, the Scandinavian mountain town of Trysil becomes the backwoods abattoir for the director to set his exploitation workshop for the bleak Norse horror.  “The Thrill of a Kill” is the first feature length fictional film from the Norway-Born Lie who has digs into the indie underground and gory storytelling, self-funded by his own banner, Violence Productions, and is coproduced by Morten K. Vebjørnsen and Arve Herman Tangen, Morten Storjordet, and Linda Ramona Nattali Eliassen serve as executive producers.

Dichotomizing “The Thrill of a Kill” into two stories set during two different time periods, Lars-Erik Lie’s focal point is not the hapless victims caught in a deadly spider’s web of perversities.  Instead, Lie’s story formulates the theory on how the sociopathic killer was ill-nurtured into a monster with an interweaving plot set in 1968 of a young boy (Carl Arild Heffermehl) neglected and abused, verbally and physically, by an alcoholic and sexually promiscuous about town mother (Sonja Bredesen) who would bring home another town drunk to bed. Missing his (deceased?) father and tired of being bullied by his own mother, the boy mental state snaps like a twig under immense emotional, family-oriented pressure and descends into a murderous madness. Years later and all grown up, the maniac mountain man abducts young women as a direct result of the hate toward his mother and her mistreatments. Arve Herman Tangen becomes the goateed face of the grown man gone haywire. Tangen develops his character with purposeful intent and with a nonaggressive tone to persuade his bound quarry to remain subdued. The role is nothing short of typical that we’ve seen in other films of its genus where a screwed-up child-turned-adult runs a deviancy amok sweatshop of imprisoned flesh and torture devices and Tangen really adds nothing meaningful to derangement. In her debut and only credited role, Kirsten Jakobsen, former Model Mayhem model from Oslo, succumbs to being the unlucky alternative girl, Kimsy, that runs into the big, overwhelming man while strolling through the forest. One would think Kimsy would have suffered brain damage after being struck and knocked unconscious not once, not twice, but three times by the killer who undresses her after each time with the third and final blow putting the final touches on his toying with the girl and bringing her back for a visit to his hen house of brutalized women. After the first blow or two, Jakobsen doesn’t show that much concern for Kimsy’s attentive wellness or concern as Kimsy continues to just wander as if nothing major has happened. Camilla Vestbø Losvik is a much more reliable and realistic rendition of the situation as Kimsy Sister, Camilla. As another alternative and attractive woman, Camilla shares a strong kinship with Kimsy despite their mother’s disciplinary differences toward them, to which eventually their mother (Toril Skansen) comes around as the patron saint of motherly worriment that’s likely a contrasting parallel to the killer’s unaffectionate mother. With an ugly-contented subgenre, “The Thrill of a Kill” has various compromising positions for its cast with rape and genital mutilation that there’s some shade of respect give to those who can mock play the unsettling moments we all are morbidly curious to see. The film rounds out with a lot of half-naked women strung up in bondage or chained to the wall with Linda Ramona Nattali Eliassen, Veronica Karlsmoen, Veronica Karlsmoen, Madicken Kulsrud, and Ann Kristin Lind with Raymond Bless, Niclas Falkman, and Jarl Kjetil Tøraasen as drunk, male suitors.

“The Thrill of a Kill” recreates the simulacrum of SOV horror as Lars-Erik Lie pulls out his handheld video to follow Kimsy’s journey through the jollies of a madman and the mother and sister’s rout out for their lost Kimsy. The beginning starts off with a zombie-laden dream sequences that places Kimsy in a field with a killer and his mutilated corpses that reanimate in a bit of foreshadowing of what’s in store for the spikey haired damsel. By dismissing her vividly horrifying dream of diminutive meaning, just like she does with everything else, Kimsy falls easily into the killer’s hands signifying one of the films’ themes to never take things for granted, especially those things that are important to you as exampled later on in the story. That’s about as much purpose I could pull from out of Lie’s film that floats like a feather on surface level waters. There is one other tangential offshoot Lie attempts to explored but never fleshes out fully is the unbeknownst to Kimsy and Camilla’s perverted hermit of a father who lives on the outskirts of town. Their mother thought he would have insight on Kimsy’s whereabouts but instead he tries to forcibly coerce Kimsy into his shack for involuntary lovemaking and then the exposition ensues after Camilla barely escapes his axe-chopping in (sexual?) frustration clutches. That exposition literally goes into a tunnel leading to nowhere and doesn’t alter the actions of Camilla or her mother to do anything different, expunging any kind of knowledge to utilize for a complete character arc and just comes to show Lie’s written bit parts don’t define the narrative of learned opportunities or gained instinct but rather are just additional sleazy show. The same sleazy show can be said about the rape scenes as they won’t ascertain the intended reaction of squeamish uncomfortableness. Now, while rape is no laughing matter or accustomed at any degree, there’s a level of numbness to these scenes that carry a severe flat affect to doesn’t display the anguish, the terror, or the hurt these women are going through as the killer decides upon himself to violate them. There’s literally no fight in these undrugged, still vigorous, young women who have just been snatched and made into his plaything and while some seasoned BDSM partisans may get aroused, the emotional receptor in me wants to empathize what their strife agony, but maybe that’s why the film is titled “The Thrill of a Kill,” to be an emblem of fun, cheap thrills.

Coming in at number 70 on the spine, the Norway schlocker-shocker, “The Thrill of a Kill” lands appropriately onto the Wild Eye Releasing’s Raw & Extreme banner. The 2011 released film finds a vessel for its North American debut over a decade later after its initial release and presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, with vertical letterboxing on 16×9 televisions, despite the back cover listing a widescreen format and being released in 4:3 is a bit surprising as other countries display in anamorphic widescreen and the lens used in the film is definitely anamorphic as you can tell with flank falloff that distorts the image and makes the picture appear rounded. Color grading is slightly washed and lives in a low contrast. Again, I have to wonder how aesthetically different the transfer is on the outer region product. Soft, SOV-equivalent details don’t necessarily kill the image quality, but you can obviously notice some pixelation in the frame inside the shack and in wider shots of the landscape amongst the low pixelated bitrate. The Norwegian Golby Digital Stereo 2.0 comes out clean, clear, and about as full-bodied as can be with a two-channel system. Some of the Foley is overemphasized production which comes off sillier than the deserving impact of a thrown punch or a meat hook going through the lower mandible. English subtitles are burned/forced into the picture but are synched well without errors though the grasp maybe lost a little in translation. Bonus content is only a trailer selection warehousing select Raw & Extreme titles, such as “Hotel Inferno,” “Acid Bath,” “Morbid,” “Bread and Circus,” “Absolute Zombies,” “Whore,” and “Sadistic Eroticism.” Continuing to achieve maximum controversial covers, Wild Eye Releasing doesn’t hold back for “The Thrill of a Kill” DVD with a crude, yet fitting DEVON illustrated cover art that is a platterful of unclasped splatter while in the inside is a still frame of one of the more tongue biting scenes. No cuts with this unrated release and the film clocks in at 85 minutes with a region free playback. A grating gore gorger with mother issues, “A Thrill for a Kill” redundantly recalls our attention back to the subservience of what makes horror horrifying and while what terrifies us is pushed aside, the free-for-all fiend-at-play treats the death-obsessed to a buffet of blood and defilement.

Enjoy the “Kill” on DVD now Available on Amazon.com