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Never Trust a Script Written by an Egotistically EVIL “Scream Queen” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

This Chainsaw’s Made for Cutting! “Scream Queen” on Blu-ray!

Malicia Tombs, an acclaimed horror actress known for B-movies and bad attitude, bursts into a wreckage of flames when her car sudden explodes after storming off the set of her new movie, “Scream Queen,” in which she wrote and starred as the titular character.  Part of the cast and crew were devastated by the accident that had cut their own career short while others were relieved the egotistical Tombs had perished despite publicly feigning grief over the loss of a genre fan-favorite.  Months later, the small cast and crew receive a mysterious invitation to gather at a creepy mansion butlered by Runyon.  When their host is unveiled as to be a very much alive Malicia Tombs, she offers them a lucrative sum of money to finish the film they’ve started but with a new script.  As the guests read through the new treatment, the cast and crew realize their present moments read just as their being played out in the script, even their deaths. 

If there was ever a single face deserving the representative distinction within an overpopulated categorized scream queen genus, Linnea Quigley would be that green-eyed, blonde-topped, beautiful face with an infectious smile.  Quigley worked with an array of filmmakers, ranging from some of the most renowned cult films of all times amidst reams of horror movies for nearly half a century (yes, we’re feeling old now) to the most independent of the independents films never having really receive the proper exhibition format or audience attention.  To what would be a delight to Quigley’s fanbase, one of those obscure features is Brad Sykes’ “Scream Queen,” a late 90’s filmed, 2002-released, SOV, U.S. slasher written-and-directed by the “Camp Blood” and low-budget filmmaker with Quigley in mind to play the scream queen character Malicia Tombs, now available, officially, on Blu-ray.  “Scream Queen” is the first major project for Brad Sykes in a collaborating effort in not only as a director but also as a co-producer alongside David Sterling of Sterling Entertainment.

“The Return of the Living Dead” and “Night of the Demons” Quigley puts on another memorable and wickedly fiendish performance as the haughty genre scream queen Malicia Tombs who superiority has gone to her head as she embraces her designation to an exact mania, displayed early on when her character’s character attempts to choke-kill another actress despite the numbered scene not being a death scene and Malicia harps on wanting to continue with the resembling act of murder.  As much as Malicia Tombs embraces the killer instinct inside of her, Linnea Quigley very much embraces Malicia Tombs without having to take her top off and despite having less screen time than her costars.  While Quigley fades in and out of the linear story, the narrative progresses with livelihood hardships of the now out-of-work cast and crew who relied heavily on that small film to boost their acting and filmmaking careers.  That crop of characters falls short tipping into their expectations, aspirations, and even their relations to be just slasher fodder for the mysterious maniac roaming the house.  Jenni (Emilie Jo Tisdale,” Escape from Hell”) and Devon (Nova Sheppard) are inferred romantic roommates who sell clothes on the side of the street to make ends meet post failed film but don’t have surmountable direction to either be a full-fledged couple to sympathize or seem terribly concerned about opening their own clothing shop other than what would be a bad decision to reside at the mansion overnight.  Again, no sympathy there either.  The special effects goof Squib (Bryan Cooper churns chuckles relentlessly by relating more to his crafted effects dummy more than people, marking him conclusively comedy relief as well as fated for death that, like in life, no one takes him seriously when he shows up gruesomely mutilated.  The other principal actress across from Tombs is Christine (Nicole West, “Dimension in Fear”), a buxom blonde tired of secretary work succumbing to lead man flirtations in a dark and scary house where every shadowy corner is lodged with threat.  The pair fall into that horror character cliché of have sex, will die, quickly downgrading their pre-professional relationship into nothing more than dark house desire.  Director Eric Orloff (Jarrod Robbins, “Evil Sister 2”), a presumed spin on the Awful Dr. Orloff and perhaps hints at his motives, seems to be stuck in angsty avoidance and melancholy stemmed by what could have been with Scream Queen but that also peters to a gross negligence end of an arc waste.  Rounding out the cast are a couple of special bit parts played by prolific Full Moon Entertainment and overall horror movie screenwriter C. Courtney Joyner (“Puppet Masters III,” “From A Whisper to Scream”) as a televised homicide detective and Kurt Levee in a quasi-return of his character Runnion from “Evil Sister” but alternatively spelled “Runyon” in “Scream Queen.”  

Though obviously and definitely not the first to do this, “Scream Queen” humors metacinema measures built upon horror tropes and spherical plot points that redirects the story back upon itself for a killer effect.  The feature has no issues making and poking fun at itself within a campy context albeit the usually grave apprehensions of a true scary slasher movie that’s less campy of which a scream queen is born – think Jamie Lee Curtis in “Halloween” or Neve Campbell in “Scream.”  Bryan Cooper not only portrayed the foolish effects guy persona but also actually did a lot of the gore gags for the film, achieving very detailed inlaid gore prosthetics for a smalltime picture with an axe embedded into a chest and a mangled face to name a few.  The story itself feels a bit rough and ready as it slips into supernatural obscurity and, as aforementioned, character setups flounder to a stagnation, killing instantly the miniscule arcs that were structured prior to their mansion gathering in what becomes a slapdash of serial offing that wraps up the story post-haste without much cat-and-mouse tension.  With that said, “Scream Queen’s” unpolished plot had once mirrored its fallowed physical release until recently but now witnessing its birth out of twilight has been multitudinous worth the wait. 

Another of Linnea Quigley’s lost films has been resurrected from the format graveyard by Visual Vengeance with a new Blu-ray release of “Scream Queen.”  The Wild Eye Releasing sublabel release comes with an AVC encoded, high definition interlaced scanned and director approved 1080i transfer from the 480p tape elements on BD50 capacity and comes also with the qualitative joys of a standard definition shot on video experience.  SOV tape upconversion can never completely eradicate the imperfections associated with tape and we also know this going in courtesy of Visual Vengeance’s standard practice of a fair warning before the film, but the overall “Scream Queen” presentation passes as clear content despite some minor tracking blips, 1.33:1 aspect ratio, original lower resolution, and scan line visibility, which is smoothed out nicely by the 1080i conversion. Exteriors and brightly lit scenes take on more shape compared to darker and low-lit areas that become like a void in standard DEF, which also hits the natural grading into a washed-out drab.  The English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo labors to maintain some form of auricular strength but often nearly goes dark to where certain Linnea Quigley monologues periodically go silent for a few seconds, so the dialogue isn’t entirely clear but when it is, it’s relatively clean. There’s no hardiness pop in the audio track, staying suppressed throughout, and having little-to-no range or depth to the compile contexture. Some electro-interference throughout but nothing to be bothered by considering the grade of the SOV. Optional English subtitles are available. Special features include a commentary with writer-director Brad Sykes, a new behind-the-scenes documentary Once Upon A Time Horrowood that’s mostly Brad Sykes going through the stages of making “Scream Queen” and his recollections of his first big time produced film, a new interview with star Linnea Quigley, a new interview with one of the three various editors Mark Polonia (director of “Splatter Farm”), an original full-length feature producer’s cut of “Scream Queen,” a behind-the-scenes image gallery, Linnea Quigley image gallery, snippets from the original script, original trailer, and other Visual Vengeance distribution trailers. Along with the hearty software special features, hardware physical features include a six-page trifold with behind-the-scenes color photos notes by Weng’s Chop Magazine’s Tony Strauss and beautifully illustrated with dripping blood, a chainsaw, and Linnea Quigley on the front cover, a folded up mini color poster of a scantily-leathered Linnea holding one of the film’s murderous weapons, retro stickers, and your very own Four Star Video plastic rental card. All of this great stuff is stuffed inside a clear Blu-ray Amary case with a pressed disc art of a bloody illustrated Linnea sawing some unknown guy’s face off. The same illustrated graces the front cover in an expanded form and under a different hue. If you don’t like it, which I would be hard-pressed if you don’t, the reverse side contains one of the original cover arts with, again, a scantily-leathered Linnea holding that murderous weapon. The entire package is sheathed inside a rigid O-slipcover with an extended view of that chainsaw scoring with a bloody spray the eyeball from some guy’s face. The 13th Visual Vengeance release comes region free, unrated, and has a runtime of 78-minutes. Lost vintage now found and digitally revived to give us even more Linnea Quigley than we knew we needed with a meta-film shows initiative and fit special effects but swerves off trajectory into a more-of-the-same pathway. 

This Chainsaw’s Made for Cutting! “Scream Queen” on Blu-ray!

Eric Bana Embraces EVIL’s Infamy! “Chopper” reviewed! (Second Sight Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Mark “Chopper” Read is one of Australia’s bestselling authors.  Read is also one of Australia’s most notorious criminals having wrote his autobiography in prison.  The pathological criminal’s life begins in the H Division of the Pentridge Prison in the late 70s where he quickly establishes himself a leader of a small three-man gang and viciously murders a rival leader at the chagrin of his acolytes, Jimmy Loughnan and Bluey Barnes.  When Jimmy turns on Chopper, stabbing him multiple times and then accusing him of attacking first, the ordeal has a subtle effect on the wildly shrewd and wayward Chopper who 8 years later is released with massively suppressed paranoia as old flings and old acquaintances are believed to be going behind his back or contracting a kill order on his head.  Under the delusions of working for the police, a paranoid, suspicious-filled, and unpredictable Chopper takes the opportunity to revisit old accomplices, such as the treacherous prison mate now turned drug addicted family man Jimmy Loughnan, after rumors circulate of Loughnan’s involvement in placing a contract on Chopper that results in conspiracy and murder.

Not to be confused as being completely autobiographical, or even semi-biographical, “Chopper” is a highly-stylized and self-proclaimed embellished account of the late Mark Brandon Read.  The Australian feature written-and-directed by Andrew Dominik (“Killing Them Softly”) was once the highest grossing Australian films of all time and still marks as a predominant, early 2000 release to accentuate Chopper’s high energy, erraticism, and violent behavior along with a stellar, method-acting performance from the lead star Eric Bana, who before turning into one of Hollywood’s most recognizable Australian actors was a former sketch comedian and stand-up comic.  Shot in Melbourne, Victoria, “Chopper” is produced by Michele Bennett and Michael Gudinski (“Wolf Creek,” “Cut”) with Al Clark (“Gothic”) and Marin Fabinyi (“Bait’) as executive producers under the state funded Australian Film Finance Corp. as well as Mushroom Pictures and Pariah Entertainment. 

As mentioned, Eric Bana, star of Ang Lee’s “Hulk,” and having villainous roles in the J.J. Abrams “Star Trek” prequel and “Deadfall” alongside Olivia Wilde, helms the titular character with a plumped-up version of himself, grows a wicked handlebar mustache, and engrosses himself into the peculiar persona that is Mark Brandon Read.  “Chopper” really puts Bana’s range on display with a crucial to success performance and the actor lets Read sublease headspace in what is an aberrated humor and darkly concerning ball of a biography.  Bana manages to make Chopper likeable yet terrifying, funny yet ferocious, and human yet monstrous as an unpredictable juggernaut of paranoia and survival that only knows how to protect himself by thwarting violence with violence.  Chopper mingles with other unsavory, carnivalesque characters in his journey through a jailbird’s life with what he considered his number one mate in prison Jimmy Loughnan (Simon Lydon, “Blackrock”), an old foe in Neville Bartos (Vince Colosimo, “Daybreakers”), and druggie girlfriend Tanya (Kate Beahan, “The Return”).  In Chopper’s post-near death eyes, enemies and friends are now subject to his suspicions, making him truly lonely in his own world of crime.  Performances shepherd in waves of volatility, intensity, and even immodest humor that force the scenes between them and Chopper into a pool of frigid and death-calling ice water, yet somehow, in the same breath, Dominik is able to take those performances in “Chopper” and turn them into one-giant joke at Read’s expense while still managing to keep afloat some sort of baseline truth to this period in time of his existence.  “Chopper’s” cast fills out with other colorful roles from Dan Wyllie, David Field, Gary Waddell, Hilton Henderson, Kenny Graham, Brian Mannix, Sam Houli, Robert Rabiah, Skye Wansey, and Terry Willesee. 

Most Americans will likely never understand “Chopper” as the comedy Dominik intends.  Bana does so damn good at his job, especially in his feature film debut, and Dominik’s black humor becomes murky by subsequent and sudden jerks toward humanization that audiences will grasp in different directions on how they’re supposed to feel and relate toward a character who stabs a man to death in the face and then cry in compassion for him or beats his girlfriend and then next scene unzips his pants and pulls out his manhood under the bar countertop to show his now ex-girlfriend while talking to two police investigators about his delusions of undercover responsibilities at the other end of the bar.  In its two-tone theme of the 1970’s thin, assured, and incarcerated Read and the decade later bulkier, paranoid, and free Read, “Chopper” has paradoxical and against the grain tones of wildly encompassing visualized thoughts stitched stylistically in the same fashion for pure entertainment value to symbolize Read’s emotively internalized expression.   Though fully linear, Dominik’s narrative structure can also be off-putting to audiences, digging into the entertainment value with crude edits and choppy segues that hardly shapes a timeframe and that can be tough for viewers invested in a particular storyline only to be abruptly pulled out of it and placed into another decade and an entirely different situation altogether.  Then again, “Chopper” essentially has no conventional plot other than the fleeting, distinct stages of a bumpy and insecure Mark Brandon Read’s course through crimes of contract and charisma of character. 

“Chopper” arrives onto a Second Sight Films Limited Edition Blu-ray set and a Standard Edition Blu-ray in association with Vertigo Releasing.  This reviewer was able to get hands on the Standard Edition that’s an AVC encoded BD50 with 1080p High-Definition resolution of a 2K graded, restored scan presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  A steely graded first act leads into vivid variability with color, matching Chopper’s descent tenor from shaking stability to a rocky road of mistrust. Decoding at a bitrate of approx. 23Mbps, Second Sight Films’ scan has elevated the details within the tumble of stylistic choices that closely symbolizes specific Chopper eras in which a very different Chopper is exclusive to one or the other while retaining a great amount of natural grain of the 35mm print. Audio specs include an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 which, though lossy, has great compressed fidelity mostly in the dialogue department. Plenty of reverberations captured onsite at the Pentridge Penitentiary scenes that add a slither of realism instead of isolating solely the actors’ discourse. Dialogue itself is clean and clear without obstruction. When moved past Pentridge, the environment layers are scaled back to more isolated effects driven by the actors, i.e. gunshots, scuffles, etc., and so we lose that bit of realism deeper we go into Chopper’s psyche and the soundtrack from “Deliver Us From Evil’s” Mick Harvey pumps a little harder. Optional English subtitles are available. Though missing out on some of the physical lot in the bonus content, the standard release still offers a bountiful built-in special feature of old and new with fresh commentaries by Australian critic and author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Australian film scholar Josh Nelson, new interviews by writer-director Andrew Dominik Stand-up Comedy and Violence, new interview with composer Mick Harvey Not your Typical Film Composer, and a new interview with editor Ken Sallows A Tale of Two Halves. Archived bonus material regains new life and traction with commentaries from Chopper himself Mark Read and one with Andrew Dominik, a behind-the-scenes that sees raw film footage and cast and crew tidbits, a Weekend With Chopper is raw and untouched home video footage of Andrew Dominik and Eric Bana spending a couple of days with a wildly excited Read giving anecdotal accounts of his prison life and discussing his disbelief with a film where the subject is himself, and deleted scenes with optional director’s commentary. This particular Second Sight release comes off a little different than past dispersions in physical attributes with a clear green Amary Blu-ray case, something I have not seen before from the UK label. Detail illustration of Eric Bana as the titular Chopper holding a gun to his head in ebullience is quite striking and explicit in its purple-green coloring. Inside is what you roughly get with any standard release with no insert, but the disc is pressed with the same cinereal-alike art representing one of the Chopper’s frequent locations in the story. ”Chopper” is regionally locked on B for the feature that has a 94-minute runtime and is UK certified 18 for strong bloody violence and very strong language. Unlike any criminal to have ever lived and to have ever been represented on screen, “Chopper” wily tussles with Western audiences despite the dedication of Eric Bana but the work and the film can’t be denied as anything but great about an unusual man in a hyper dramatization that pierces more truth than fiction and now Second Sight cements a next level, Hi-Def release to better legitimize the irregular gang member and thug Chopper into cinema homes around the globe.

Eating Disorder? More Like EVIL Disorder! “Binge and Purge” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Binge and Purge” on SRS DVD Home Video!  This One Is Hard to Keep Down!

Three former police officers now private sector detectives find themselves embroiled in a cannibalistic frame up by the police state in a near dystopian future.  Their no choice, self-preservation investigation leads them to a group of models who consume people in order to stay vibrant and young as if frozen in time.  The mastermind behind the models’ ravenous new diet is a former Nazi science experiment-turned-fashion designer who has not only spread his indelicacies throughout the fashion world but also into a corrupt authoritarian police department helmed by a sordid chief.   As more and more people succumb to the ghastly craving of human beings, the rebellious detectives embark on an ambitious plan to cut off the head of the snake by working up the fashion designer’s human-hungry hierarchy but are they too late to stop the meat-eating madness?  Has the world been forever infected by the touch of pure evil? 

The first Christmas horror film review of 2023!  Brought to you by the Canadian-born, “Meat Market” trilogy director Brian Clement, the filmmaker’s written-and-directed third feature, “Binge and Purge,” is the 2002 genre melting pot of action, horror, and comedy set in an undisclosed urban jungle of North America where a person’s legal rights no longer exist, beauty and fashion insidiously influence, and normalcy becomes rebel factions’ reason to fight tooth and nail to hang on to it despite the coursing corruption and taking refuge from repressive authorities on their tail.  While sounding glum and despondent, Clement’s addition of black humor adds a loose layer of lurid levity to the bizarro-world society mirroring our own that teeters toward a path of culture and humanity deterioration with radical political and influential figures.  Once considered being the third film in the “Meat Market” series and alternatively known as “Catwalk Cannibals” in other countries, “Binge and Purge” is produced by Clement under Frontline Films. 

One thing to note about SOV independent production is the impressive number of cast involved.  The large cast helps manifest Clement’s ambitious dystopia and chaos-riddled world.  Without it, “Binge & Purge” would have been too anorexic to sustain selling grandiose on the cheap.  Typical formula for flesh-eater films persists with secluding a handful of principal roles, majority only speaking roles, fleshed out with an epic apocalypse contextualization of little-to-no dialogue, story arc, or any other sort of prominent screen time stock or background characters in a horde of the undead in crude bloodstained suits.  Clement establishes good guys and bad guys clearly but doesn’t necessarily the focal characters with an ebb and flow pattern between the three detectives May (Tamara Barnard), Vanzetti (Stephan Bourke, “Exhumed”), and Number 11 (Fiona Eden-Walker), who we gather was a former highly trained operative so engrained into the training and operations that her name was lost or forgotten, reduced to a number and the troupe of man-eating models under the eternal fashion designer Karl Helfringer (Gareth Gaudin). The models consist of not your slender-hip vixens with shaved down noses and hungry-looking figures but rather the curvy, pin-up types to wet a seemingly heathy appetite. Moira Thomas, Samara Zotzman, Amy Emel, Becky Julseth, Terra Thomsen and Melissa Evans lavish in so much delight over the sticky glop and spilling intestinal scenes of shoulder-to-shoulder cannibal chow downs that there isn’t an ounce of hesitation or disgust before enamel stabs into the fresh viscera but where the enthusiasm mostly falters is with the monotone dialogue deliveries with hardly any swing in inflection, tone fluctuations, or any kind of gesturing during the more emotive occurrences. “Binge and Purge” rounds out with Robert C. Nesbitt and Chuck Depape respectively as a fashion magazine reporter turned human hungry minion and the coke-snorting corrupt police captain.

“Binge and Purge” is more than just a Christmas horror.  Amidst the meandering storyline of touching points in time and space with numerous characters and flashbacks skating on thinly laid context ice, such as the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, Nazi experiments of the 1940s, and how America became a police state, the girth of “Binge and Purge’s” main coarse actually spans across the end of the holiday season in that week between Christmas and New Year’s, approximating a Y2K scare vibe of total chaos and confusion by way of cannibalism contagion instead of a feared computer bug, but that’s one area lacking in Brian Clement’s production laced with insatiable consumerism and consumption with in regard to really hyping up the cheerful holiday atmosphere to become besmirched by the corrupted filth of dirty cops, a plague of death, and a conspiratorial coup by high fashion.  The occasional Santa hat makes an appearance in a model shoot and the end of the year countdown denotes the pinnacle of a MP5 massacring finale, and though I can’t be certain, even the soundtrack sound to be distorted versions of the perennial Christmas classics, but that’s the extent of Clement’s holiday backdrop that would have easily fissure a chasm between “Binge and Purge” and the next low-budget cannibal shocker.  If you’re going to set the film during Christmas, deck the freaking halls, man!  Where Clement bedecks the film is with blood and gore that sees stringy sinew and a high body count’s insides become outsides over an encircling of edible entrails and on literally finger food trays.  Another shining highlight area is the action with agreeable submachine gunfire and the creative pyrotechnic-flares for explosion special effects that does rich up production value, inching the film more toward a magnetic, practical effect-laden, SOV spectacle worth the viewing calories. 

Shot on S-VHS, SRS Cinema gets their hands on the best master print director Brian Clement could carve out of his body of work. The MPEG2 encoded DVD presents the feature in 1.33:1 pillarbox aspect ratio in a 480p resolution. S-VHS master looks pretty darn good despite the caliginous reflection that produces more shadows and illumination on the tape, even if S-VHS offered better illumination as a format, and a lower, poor resolution than S-VHS’s Betamax predecessor. Still, this print has enough delimiting factors to produce a well-oiled image suitable for public distribution with a mix of neon warm and soft color capturing and crude lighting for maximum gritty-palpable product. The English LPCM mono track also has admirable lossless fidelity with a bitrate decoding of 192kbs, that has come typically standard, and greatly appreciated for audiophiles, on SRS releases. Some scenes are better than others, but the dialogue does retain some tail-end hissing and can be soft in spot. Otherwise, dialogue renders clearly enough. The release offers no subtitles. Bonus features include an archived audio commentary and a new SRS cinema produce audio commentary both of which include a self-deprecating Brian Clement going through his “least favorite” work’s production wishful do-overs, where the cast are nowadays, and his favorite gags and setups, a handful of deleted scenes, a slideshow, a new SRS cut trailer, and other previews for other SRS distributions. SRS Home Video release is mocked up with a retro VHS box-impression Amaray DVD case complete with graphically printed-in Please Be Kind, Rewind and Horror stickers. The not rated film has a runtime of 83 minutes and is region free. Nowhere near being a bulimic gorge for expulsion to empty one’s cinematic capacity, “Binge and Purge” is fully digestible grubby grub of horror, action, and comedy. 

“Binge and Purge” on SRS DVD Home Video!  This One Is Hard to Keep Down!

Amusing Little EVIL Enjoying the Carnival Rides! “Ghoulies II” reviewed! (MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Next Time You Sit On the Can, Check the Bowl First!  “Ghoulies II” on Blu-ray!

The travelling Hardin Family carnival has been on a steady decline through the years.  The Hardin Holdings group, aka Mr. Hardin, dispatches his young senior accountant and son, Philip Hardin, as authoritative proxy to ensure sustainable profit.  One of the longstanding attractions, Satan’s Den, lies headfirst on the chopping block with a dismal profit rate.  Determined to recover and avoid being permanently shut down, Larry, his drunk uncle Ned, and actor Sir Nigel Penneyweight won’t give up so easily despite needing a miracle.  That miracle comes in the form of the Ghoulies who hitch a ride on Satan’s Den’s trailer while escaping persecution.   The pintsized demons bring the slowly withering Satan’s Den back to lucrative life but at the deadly cost of the patrons and carneys who fall victim to the Ghoulies impish behavior.  Larry vows to rid the amusement on their infestation after uncle Ned perishes at the demons’ tiny hands but Philip has glimmering money signs in his eyes. 

They’re back!  The Ghoulies return as masterless nomads after a failed attempt of abduction by a devout crusader aiming to destroy the pagan evocations and wreak mischievous havoc on a two-bit amusement park suffering from low attendance.  The late Albert Band, father of Full Moon’s Charlie Band and director of “Dracula’s Dog” and “I Bury the Living,” took over the reins from first film director Luca Bercovici and helmed “Ghoules II,” a vastly different kind Ghoulies tale of terrorizing totality based off the Charlie Dolan story and a polished script from “Re-Animator’s” and “From Beyond’s” Dennis Paoli.  Filmed entirely in Rome, and mostly in a soundstage, where Empire Pictures headquarters were located, the 1987 sequel was the last Ghoulies venture from executive producer Band and his Empire Productions empire before Vestron oversaw the subsequent sequels.  Albert Band produced the feature with Frank Hildebrand (“Once Bitten,” “Project Metalbeast”) serving as associate producer. 

With the contestable exception of the five prosthetic creatures receiving a dust off and sprucing up paint job, none of the lively characters from the first film return for the sequel in what becomes a principal clean slate.  The story starts off with who appears to be a man of God fleeing on foot with a bag over his shoulder from three cloaked cult acolytes.  There’s never a reference to this escaping man (Anthony Dawson) or the shrouded cultists in torch-in-hand tow but does arouse a bit of enigmatic energy around the Ghoulies misadventures through the human plane and happening upon the likes of two opposite side of the spectrum carneys who are also related between the long-in-the-tooth and drunk Ned by the loveable character actor in Royal Dano (“Killer Klowns from Outer Space,” “Spaced Invaders”) and his big top tenderfoot nephew Larry played by Damon Martin.  Ned’s alcoholism combined with stress over possibly losing Satan’s Den makes causes him complexity within his closest confidants for when he happens upon the Ghoulies after citing an incantation, he’s also in a drunken stupor, and so he words of exciting, or maybe even warning, fall on deaf ears as intoxicated imaginations that result in a pity for his dependency.  As Larry and the Shakespearean line spewing Sir Nigel Pennyweight (Phil Fondacaro, “Willow”) continue with setting up the ragamuffin that is the antiquated Satan’s Den, they let Neg wander despite suspecting his delusions of demons due to the pressures of one carnival hotshot Phil Hardin (J. Downing, “Robot Wars”) who has come to town to clean up his family’s carnival act with threatens of shutdowns and layoffs.  Hardin’s your typical weight-throwing antagonist with a pompous attitude and wandering eye for the most gorgeous girl under the tent, in this case it’s with Larry’s love interest Nicole (Kerry Remsen, “Pumpkinhead”), a once great high-wire performer turned belly dancer for the departmental freakshow act.  Nichole’s hidden talents, buried deep beneath past personal pain, will undoubted be utilized for climatic gain as all chaos breaks loose on carnival grounds with the Ghoulies break free of Satan’s Den menagerie of cardboard and latex-crafted horrors.  “Ghoulies II” rounds out the cast with Jon Pennell, Sasha Jenson, Donnie Jeffcoat, Donald Hodson, Dale Wyatt, Romano Puppo, Ames Morton, Michael Deak, and Full Moon actor-turned-director William Butler (“Night of the Living Dead” ’90, “Baby Oopsie”).

Along with a new set of human characters, “Ghoulies II” also freshens up the trajectory by focusing less on the black magic that saturated the plot of the first film and relying more on the gremlin-like playfulness of the Ghoulies themselves, rightfully giving way into the very creatures of the title. There’s some magic involved but only to the extent that doesn’t have the Ghoulies rely on a master to evocate them from the Netherworld or for the dark powers to be used to perpetuate wickedness upon others.  Instead, the ghoulies are depicted utilizing their skillsets, such as flying, oral expelling sticky-gunk, super-strength, and chomping, which obviously lead to more of a micro-level apocalypse of carnage; however, the print obtained for the MVD Blu-ray release is the edited down version for theatrical circulation so some, not a lot mind you, of the gory bits have been taken out and this makes the storyline stutter with misplaced time with rough segues and an imbalance of edits that aren’t as smooth.  From what I’ve seen, the minuscule timed deleted scenes are not much more violent or gory but add just that tad more context to the next scene instead of our brains working to connect the dots on what should be a brain shutoff, entertaining creature feature.  Yet, you can’t deny the sequel’s appeal that has turned to center around the little demons assiduously but managing to keep the same, steady pace of ferity and gothic skim of mise-en-scene from the first.  Puppetry is retained for that palpable product while also introducing stop-motion, a visual effect that has served Empire/Full Moon well throughout the years and is only used sparingly to wet the limitless capabilities of our miniature monsters to roam free in open spaces. 

“Ghoulies” return with the sequel to MVD’s Rewind Collection as Blu-ray release number 53 on the spine. The AVC encoded, high-definition, 1080p Blu-ray is presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. A virtual carbon copy of the first film in regard to a well-preserved print, the sequel isn’t noted in having a 4K restoration scan like the antecessor release number 52 but the 2K scan offers an abundancy of positive picture rendering with a seamless color grading that isolates distinction and range as well as a tangible details, especially on characters and the ghoulies alike who are often gleaming and show off every nook and cranny ridge on their dark, hairy bodies. Aforementioned, this print is the theatrical cut, missing some gruesome elements for the sake of a broader audience, and while most of the print is near flawless, there is one dunk tank scene that’s cropped and noticeably marred with horizon creases in the brief airtime. The English LPCM uncompressed 2.0 stereo mix caters to every audible necessity of the “Ghoulies” soundtrack, ambience, Foley, and dialogue. The latter is clean and clear with prominence over the rest of the layers though I wouldn’t label it flawless with some echoey segments, almost a doubling effect, that might be due to the soundstage vibrations at Empire. Ambient track provides a wide range with exact depth with the example being inside Satan’s Den of horrors where doors creak, motorized bats fly overhead, and other models of haunted house spookery, along with an underlining carnivalesque soundtrack by Fuzzbee Morse (“Dolls”), is the epitome of a great sound design suffused together. English, French, and Spanish subtitles are optionally available on this release. Special features include an introduction by screenwriter Dennis Paoli, which is also available as a standalone at the play feature option, More Toilets, More Terror: A Making of Ghoulies 2 is a retrospective lookback with select cast and crew, an interview with Dennis Paoli Under a Magic Moon, the gruesome deleted scenes, a photo gallery, and theatrical trailer. Physical attributes include a VHS retro-esque mockup of the original poster art on a cardboard O-slipcover, fitting for the sub-bannering Rewind Collection. The same image graces the front cover of the clear Blu-ray Amary case, but the cover art is also reversible with one of the film’s most memorable smoochy-kiss moments plus title above. The disc is art pressed similar as the first film, a laser disc veneer on the Blu-ray top. Opposite side is the folded poster insert of the slipcover front image. The region A playback release has a runtime of 90 minutes and is rated PG-13. “Ghoulies II” retains that same diabolical energy as the first film but channels it very differently into the very titular creatures that puts them at the forefront instead of being just an afterthought in a sequel that celebrates their uncontrollable knavery and loving every second of it.

Next Time You Sit On the Can, Check the Bowl First!  “Ghoulies II” on Blu-ray!