Tag Archives: Fred Vogel

EVIL Has Now Been Digitized. “August Underground’s Penance” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“August Underground’s Penance” on Blu-ray/DVD Combo Set. Purchase Here!

Armed with a digital camcorder and a dark desire to kidnap and brutally torture, rape, and murder random people, deranged serial killers Peter Mountain and his girlfriend Crusty are now a gruesome twosome after the demise of Crusty’s brother Maggot.  The couple’s documentarized carnage continues forward near Pittsburgh where fooling around in metal clubs and on the isolated outskirts of city is balanced out with a healthy dose of basement snuff as body after body after body begins to strain their warped relationship.  What unveils is a descent of their paired destruction as Peter’s rage and undying fascination with female flesh, and internal organs, gaslights Crusty’s simmering and unhinged toxicity.  During the stretch of the Christmas holiday season, the gift of gory packages will be unwrapped and sexualized cookies will be enjoyed before the festive filleting of body parts and December dismemberments trail off into a tale of grim totality. 

Fred Vogel’s third and final film to shut the book on the story around the atrocious Peter Mountain and his extreme exploitation and degrading of people is back on limited-edition physical media for snuff salivating audiences as “August Underground’s Penance.”  Nothing short of gratuitous ultraviolence, the final chapter of “August Underground” marks another successful viscerally visual installment in a clearly digitized effort, elevating the graphic nature with ooey-gooey detail in a vividly discernible image resolution.  A reuniting four years later between Fred Vogel and his cowriter/costar Cristie Whiles after their collaboration on “August Underground’s Mordum,” the second sequel provides a level of continuity, a very low level at that, not seen between the 2001 series starter and “Mordum.”  Under Vogel’s Toe Tag Pictures banner, the company behind the trilogy, the shock realism filmmaker co-produces the film with wife, Shelby Lyn, and Cristie “Crusty” Whiles and special effects artist Jerami Cruise servce as associate producers. 

Aforementioned, Peter Vogel and Cristie Whiles lace up yet again for the Peter Mountain and Crusty show of sadism.  Vogel returns as the mania screaming and overall brute Peter Mountain, a juggernauting maverick amongst murderers with no moral principles, a cynical constitution, and a weak-ish stomach that can’t handle his own gutting of bodies as Mountain, like in the first two features, wretches and coughs and nearly loses his lunch in most graphically intense scenes of spilled blood and guts and other appalling perversities.  Whiles’s Crusty is a carbon copy counterpart, a demented love interest under a loveless veneer, but the Crusty character certainly has evolved between “Mordum” and “Penance” as the coquettish amoralities at the beginning devolve shown in an unconventional narrative way with rough-hewn rough cuts that avoid structuring time and guiding in segues.  It also doesn’t help that the two often have screaming matches or are yelling at their lifeless victims to get a better understanding of melting down mutual relationship based on common callousness and, probably, rough sex, just the way they individually like it.  This is how Peter Vogel circumvents a “Mordum” repeat; not that “Mordum” was terrible as it did convey a Mountain, Crusty, and Crusty’s on the suicidal brink brother Maggot breaking down whatever threadbare bond that kept them for killing each other, but “Mordum” departs with uncertainties surrounding the characters in that memorably haunting final sequence.  “Penance” then takes the two remaining nihilists out in the backyard to basically shoots them, figuratively speaking, to put them out of their misery in an artistic way, as if to say, “that’s it.  I’m done.”  Like previous “August Underground” films, killers are centrically focused with not a lot of repeat characters popping in and out (because they’re all being snuffed out by the killers)  but those played victims round with Selby Lyn Vogel, Jeremi Cruise, Anthony Matthews, Rob Steinbruegge, Ed Laughlin, Matt Rizzutto, Autumn Smith, and Trevor Collins.

While Vogel and Whiles psychopathic performances will make your skin crawl, the real star of “Penance” spurts onto the floor, oozes from the entrails, and has a nasty crunch sound when being sawed into.  I’m speaking of none other than Jerami Cruise’s nauseating blood, guts, and all the colorful viscera in between practical effects that extinguish any kind of comfortability you might have had going into the scene.  Animal intestines are once again used to for seamless builds.  The lines between what’s real and what’s not has no definition, is smoothed over well into the folds, or is vaguely blurry at worst that when the cutting, gouging, severing, perforating, slicing, or whatever other harmfully human puncturing wound words come into the scene, your mind is your greatest enemy unable to tell the differences in the gruesomeness acts all of which are accentuated by Vogel’s dry heaves.  While the story itself begins to shutdown “August Underground’s” pseudo snuff run, the third entry is as much as a regurgitation of the previous two installments peppered with noticeable yet minor differences that less often than more separate themselves from each other.  One of the biggest, advantageous differences in “Penance” is the move away from the fuzzy standard definition analog tape and into the digital world with a widescreen ratio camcorder that details more of the ghastly dissections and without any modifications to the camera, a cleaner sense of raw realism is better conveyed. 

I remember a time, not too long ago, when the “August Underground” films were nothing more than rumor, urban legends of the physical media world, lost archetypes of extreme horror seemingly nonexistent to the everyday joe, like me, and only those who are close to Vogel and his Toe Tag family or willing to fork over large amount of money for a long out of print and rate copy were the lucky ones to ever experience the trilogy. Yet, now, we’re living in the golden age of physical media, paradoxically smackdab at the height of new age and ever-growing streaming platforms, and Unearthed Films has released all three films onto a 2-disc Blu-ray and DVD limited collector’s set. The Blu-ray is an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, 2K scan on a BD50 while the DVD is a MPEG2 encoded, dual-layered, DVD9. Obviously, switch from tape to digital video makes is a tremendous step for image processing and clarity as “Penance” tops the trilogy with a better pixel resolution, a wider angle (1.78:1 aspect ratio), and much less quality degradation than analog. All the nasty bits and pieces are visual described in great realistic detail in what is an ungraded showing of a full-on display not for the weak of stomach. The raw image, even with all it segued pauses in between scenes, punctuates practicality over the conceptual nihilistic serial killer construct. Unearthed Films preserves that through the looking glass, unfiltered video with more than sufficient capacity. The English language uncompressed PCM 2.0 stereo mirrors the same caliber with a home video disharmony of an onboard camera mic that manages well to create distance where needed also while capturing every innate surrounding sound element, such as the whooshing of passing cars, Mountain’s echoed screams in a confined basement, or the overburdening decibels of daunting death metal. There’s a steady amount of low-level interference too that doesn’t hurt the variable levels of dialogue depending on where the principals are and what they’re doing. Between the Blu-ray and DVD, the hi-def format has more capacity for bonus features with most of the new bonus material on the Blu-ray. What’s on both formats are a new audio commentary by special effects artist Jerami Cruise, producer Shelby Lyn Vogel, director Fred Vogel, and Ultra Violent Magazine editor Art Ettinger, a second commentary with Vogel and editor Logan Tallman, a third commentary with the Toe Tag Team, and a fourth commentary with just Fred Vogel. Also included of both formats are a behind-the-scenes documentary Disemboweled and the feature’s very own commentary track, deleted and extended scenes, music video Poppa Pill – “The Murderer is Back,” music video Rue – “The Locust,” original trailer, and new extended photo gallery and teaser outtakes. Exclusively to the Blu-ray is a conversational interview with editor Logan Tallman, going through the nuts and bolts of the most disturbing scene with Peter Vogel, superfan Rob Steinbruegge’s experience and bit role in “Penance,” a new Zoë Rose Smith, creator of “Zobo with a Shotgun” and editor-in-chief of Ghouls Magazine, interview with Peter Vogel, a second new interview with Peter Vogel Voyage to Perdition with Severed Cinema’s Chris Mayo, a discussion roundtable with Peter Vogel, wife Shelby, Logan Tallman, and Ryan Logsdon moderated by Dave Parker, and Unearthed Films’ Stephen Biro’s new interview with Peter Vogel to wrap it up. The physical presence of the release clearly states its homicidal intentions with the thin cardboard O-slipover of Peter Mountain caressing power of his bound and bloodied victim. The clear Blu-ray Amary case displays new, religious art spoofed cover illustration by San Diego artist Paul Naylor; the religious art also continues on the reverse side of the cover with a marred icon of the Virgin Mary being engulfed by the darkness. With the DVD punch-locked at the right and Blu-ray at the left, there’s really no room for an insert to be crammed in but the silver lining there is the pseudo data-cast captures of notable scenes that are the disc pressed art. Unearthed Films’ release is region A locked (region for the DVD is not listed but assumed to be region 1), is not rated, and has a runtime of 81 minutes.

Last Rites: While ever so slightly different from the previous films, “Penance” is more of the same snuff but in its truest, purest form legally allowed on video. Unearthed Films are match made in a human abattoir, like the tacky peanut butter and bloodred jelly. Their collaborated, limited collector’s set release of “August Underground Penance” is nothing short of phenomenal and, if you’re lucky and quick enough, grab all three before they disappear back into obscurity.

“August Underground’s Penance” on Blu-ray/DVD Combo Set. Purchase Here!

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Limited Edition “August Underground” Ready to be Received! 

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

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

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

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

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

Limited Edition “August Underground” Ready to be Received!