Tag Archives: gore

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!

Prancing Forest EVIL Will Seduce You to Death! “Devil Times Two” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Devil Times Two” on DVD from SRS Cinema

A forest encircled convent hidden away from the Milan population undertakes an occult responsibility to keep bloodthirsty and callous demons from entering the human world.  On the verge of retiring, Father Ernesto Taro, a once formidable force for good who exorcised a powerful demon decades ago that cost the lives of many in his fellow cohort except for Mother Dolores, takes on a younger understudy to be his replacement, the ambitious Father Chuck Bennet.  Father Taro and Bennet were summoned by Mother Dolores when grisly body of a young hiker is discovered.  A pair of former Nazi sadists turned Netherworld demons come to Father Bennet in a vision and are suspected to be the carnage culprits.  Souls are at stake and the world is on the brink of falling into darkness as the Returnees are only the right hand of a more profound evil itching for complete and utter omnipotence. 

“Devil Times Two” is an Italian-made, demonology-contextualized horror from Italy writer-director Paolo del Fiol.  Having purveyed grindhouse horror in anthological means with previous films “Connections” and “Sangue Misto,,” del Fiol branches out into his solo feature-length narrative set in the 1970s as a faux lost film recovered onto VHS from the only known syndicate televised program on Telelaguna to account the terrible tale full of profane hostilities, sexual stimulating supremacy, and, of course, gore in the interlacing recognition between the popular devil, demon, or hell on Earth inspired movies and the obscenities connected to eurotrash and sleaze movement of the 70s topped a hint of Japanese adulation, a motif heavily sprinkled into the film carried over from the director’s previous work as well.  Underscored by the tagline Quado le Tenebre escono al Bosco, or When Darkness comes out of the Woods, “Devil Time Two” once again pits religious good versus irreligious evil in this Himechan Movie Production self-produced by Paolo del Fiol.

Characterized as the titular pair, Returnees Jasmine and Umeko are the ethereally evil duet of diabolical detriment who seemingly float in and out of the material world as alluring succubi, seducing prey into their web of demonic lust and languish.  Some turn up grotesquely inside out while some others disappear, saved for later for special ritualistic planning.  Erika Saccà, an Italian fitness instructor in her debut role, plays the blonde Returnee Jasmine in a sleeveless, lowcut gown and with nearly ever kill, exposes and massages her augmented bosom with underboob scarring in a change to showoff her toned physique, and Reiko Nagoshi (“Re-Flesh”) wears a kimono without any unveiling of skin but does a bit of thrust-damage on her quarry that initially and inexplicable appears to be a strange phenomena when everyone in the scene is a woman but becomes apparent there’s something unholy and very “War of the World’s” alien under that traditional Japanese garb.  Saccà and Nagoshi wear many hats in this product but also don’t have the dialogue to hoist their demonesses higher.  The dialogue is left with the trio of convent gatekeepers in Father Taro (Enrico Luly), Father Bennet (Paolo Salvadeo, “Occultus”), and Mother Dolores (Amira Lucrezia Lamour, “Re-Flesh”) in what becomes a deeper understanding of their backstories around Father Taro’s deadly bittersweet exorcism decades ago, his on the sly and subtle affection for Mother Dolores, and Father Bennet’s questionable rise to supersede Father Taro, laying a foundation of doubt within the current gatekeeper.  While I like the contrasting dynamics of the two factions within the cast, I found the discourse overly bulk and tedium between the trio of piety that strung on scenes way too long with way too much talk that it ultimately suppresses the pacing when every little detail has been uncovered and explained. All the casted bits in between are slaughter fodder with Denise Brambillasca, Alessandro Carnevale Pellino (“The Wicked Gift”), and Martina Vuotti in non-defying death roles.

Paolo del Fiol’s unaccompanied and independent deluge of demonian debut has doses of phantasmagorical imagery sublet by its more shocking and odd immolation of incognizant individuals unlucky enough to cross paths with the Returnees. Likely to have never seen, Fiol’s film very similarly compares to James Sizemore’s “The Demon Rook” by creating unique mythos not reliant on a religious bedrock and use independency as an advantage for showcasing practical makeup and effects and while “The Demon Rook” would overwhelm with prosthetic made-up characters, “Demon Times Two” focuses attention more on the guts of the matter, the gore, but though not pernicious enough to the story, the eyeball sucking, throat lacerating, or intestine exposing bloodshed is prosaic panoply that won’t outshine in the sea of subgenre synonyms. Aforementioned dialogue scenes can be a slog to get through with many exchanges overstaying its course between the pious gatekeepers, especially between Father Taro and Dorlores, and that hurts the pacing to pick up the gore more frequently for more potency. Instead, exchanges are more elucidations that go around-and-around to where we’re lost on the mounting reveal of the Returnees’ mission and master which turns out to be visually more stimulating and visceral in the last ten minutes than in the first 100 minutes of runtime. The backlot lore is Fiol’s greatest achievement simulating a 70’s style grainy movie caveated as only broadcasted once on December 8th, 1983 (a few days before this reviewer’s birthday) and never seen again until it’s VHS recording is recovered.

Under a pretense of being a buried lost film, under the tribute of a grainy and scratched psychotronic celluloid, and under the falsity of genuine huge knockers, “Devil Times Two” is twice baked into a classic contemporary dish served by SRS Cinema on DVD. Arriving on the SRS Cinema: Extreme and Unrated Nightmare Fuel label, “Devil Times Two” is nothing short of being a modern-day emulator of once was with suitable grain overlay, a hazy, if not washed, overcast grading, and trope-laden atmospherics with dense fog, unnerving dissonances within earshot, and blood brilliantly cut with pseudo Telelagua commercial programming of brief adverts until returning to regular scheduled programed checked in and out by a gondola and it’s gondolier in dusk silhouette. Presented in a pillar box 1.33:1 aspect ratio, the fuzzy and non-delineated details are not a punch to the salient gut as the intent here is to be obscure, opaque, and ominous in nature and in technique bathed in 480p. The Italian PCM is the exact recreation of a time period post-dubbing with the actors re-dialoguing their performances as it was common practice in most motion picture industries, especially Europe, at the time. ADR is clear but not necessarily clean to recreate that shushing and crackling of an older recording. The subtitles are also forced or burned into the film with the sole Italian audio option. Bonus content includes what is called Backstage, a raw filming look into the production shoots and behind-the-scenes footage with no real direction or cosmetics, a photo gallery, a trailer with English subtitles, and other SRS Cinema released trailers. The SRS Cinema DVD front cover resembles mock-70’s, thick-red font with a bare woman’s back dressed in a painted Satanic symbol within the border of a VHS-esque rental casing with rental stickers. Inside the amaray case is a pressed disc with an extreme close up and crop of the same front cover with no insert in the adjacent slot. Pacing burdens this release, especially in its near 2-hour runtime with a clock-in at 114 minutes which is approx. 24-minutes too long in my opinion and the film comes not rated and has region free playback. No matter how much arcane the content is, or how grotesque the horror show, or how much perversity and skin can be unclothed, “Devil Times Two” has difficulty retaining a flow of fascination in a rather windbag approach to a rather devilishly good salvo construction.

“Devil Times Two” on DVD from SRS Cinema

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!

Amongst the EVILs of Digital, Analog Rises from the Grave! “Night of the Zodiac” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

A Mock VHS Retro on a Mock VHS Retro DVD!  “Night of the Zodiac” from SRS Cinema!

A bizarre and grotesque dream about the once notorious Zodiac killer inspires Richard Gantz to create a movie worthy of his idol’s praise.  With little income and having just lost his girlfriend and his job, Gantz is on the brink of being homeless and unable to materialize his dream into reality until he receives a mysterious, unexpected phone call.  The Zodiac killer got wind of his project and is offering support to finance and bestow guidance to Gantz’s film as long as the struggling, yet eager, filmmaker can crack Zodiac’s cipher and stomach the enigmatic task before him.  Gifted the Zodiac’s iconic mask and murder knife, Gantz sets out to record his first kills that pays homage to his aging idol but his mentor wants him to be creative with the new chapter worthy of the Zodiac name and gathering a whole new set of slaves for his paradisal afterlife.  When Gantz hits a barrier of inspiration, he solely becomes reliant on the Zodiac’s encouragement that has become few and a far in between. 

Susana Kapostasy is who I like to label a mad genius.  Many filmmakers have attempted to create antiquated formats of yore with watered down imitations, but for the Michigan-born videographer and editor-by-trade Kapostasy, what has been a challenge to most to faithfully recreate has simply become second nature for the video production enthusiast.  Scraping up any and all elderly video camcorders she could find, the “Metal Maniac” director wrote-and-directed her sophomore feature film “Night of the Zodiac,” pulling inspiration from one of the most notorious unsolved murder cases in America by the Zodiac Killer in San Francisco.  From the West Coast to the Midwest, “Night of the Zodiac” is filmed in and around the backdropped Detroit area for the Zodiac’s next round of sliced-up slaves – only in the creative, moviemaking sense, of course.  The 2022 film has the spitting image of a 1980s/1990s SOV with ghastly, gory effects, a killer hair metal soundtrack, and video characteristics that’ll have you trying to adjust the tracking setting on your DVD/Blu-ray player.  The Johnny Braineater Production is produced by star Philip Digby with Kapostasy serving as executive producer alongside co-cinematographer Apollo David Zimmerman.

Stepping into the shoes of the infamous serial killer to embark on a theoretical continuance of the real life mass murdering character is Philip Digby.  Channeling his best Jeffrey Dahmer vibe in looks alone with a crazed and obsessive personality suited for Charles Manson, Digby plays a hodgepodge of America’s most notorious killers, adding his own flare for film into the fold to make him a full-fledged psychopath, as he internally celebrates the moniker after his disparaging roommate/Landlord (Victor-Manuel Ruiz) labels him with an ear-to-ear grin and a nearly whoopie jump for joy.  Digby’s eccentric mania thrusts us beyond a threshold we didn’t even realized we had crossed from the very first opening dream sequences of a rotting, coffin-thronged corpse oozing maggots and putrid viscera and, believe it not, my opinion is this thrust doesn’t do justice to Gantz’s character because of the lack of foundation of setting up viewers with an inbred psychosis that puts into question, how did he survive this long without killing someone before?  Dreams are power but are they powerful enough to twist a seeming normal film lover into a frantic frenzy of vile fates and videotapes?  I think only Freddy Krueger can answer that.  Gantz goes around town slaughtering people in parks, in their driveways, and even makes one very bad magician (Derek Dibella) wish he requested to hire Gantz as a videographer for a promotional video disappear as Gantz strangles him to death.  “Night of the Zodiac” completes the cast with Logan O’Donnell, Mark Polonia (director of “Splatter Farm”), Tim Ritter (director of “Truth or Dare?”), and Benjamin Linn as the voice of the Zodiac.

From the video production veneer to the set decorations and locations to the characters themselves, “Night of the Zodiac” perfectly captures SOV horror in this modern day time capsule.  Not until the credits, when I see master craftsman of SOV horror filmming, Tim Ritter and Mark Polonia, appear in the cast credits did it dawn on me that what Susana Kapostasy had accomplished was a labor of love for the niche market, resurrected four decades later and revered by horror fans who were likely still in diapers or weren’t even born yet – maybe to go as far as not even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes.  Yet, there were clues to “Night of the Zodiac’s” contemporary construction, such as the opening title which had a clean, well-polished illustration and Kapostasy’s film is very self-aware by slathering horror in every recessed corner with mountainous stacks of VHS tapes, posters, and  and often, perhaps every other scene, displayed tribute to filmmakers, like Ritter and Polonia, who were still counterparts and establishing themselves as independent videotape artists during the 80s-90s.  This self-awareness harnesses more comedic relief than horror, accentuated by Gantz’s matter-of-fact imbalance, and the humor loosens the reins on “Night of the Zodiac’s” cold cruelty a tad but what the gore spools back in audiences by spilling lots of blood. 

SRS Cinema releases “Night of the Zodiac” onto DVD with a single layer encoding and presented in a throwback letterbox 1:33:1 aspect ratio.  Kapostasy uses a slew of equipment – Cannon XL2, Sony Video 8 AF, Panasonic AG 450, JVC GY X2BU, JVC GY X3, Panasonic AG 456, Panasonic AG 196, Sony CCD FX 330, and a Sony VO 4800 U-Matic S VTR – with some be more present-time cams run through U-matic VHS playback to degrade for SOV quality.  The intentional SOV has a variety of distinct looks with distinct quirks that flexes higher magenta levels in earlier scenes as well as tracking lines and aliasing artefacts.  Detail levels also vary but the overall VHS brands generally remain the same with soft, indistinguishable contours with also a surprising amount of depth and hue range.  The English Dolby Digital 2-channel (2.0) mix can sound boxy at times and come accompanied with a piercing, underlining interference.   Telephone conversations have no distortion depth so the other person on other line sounds present in the room.   The soundtrack from Anguish, Locust Point, and the brunt of it provided by Stoker is metal madness but does overshadow the dialogue when shredding through the scenes.  Dialogue is often clear, but again, no depth and echoey.  There are no subtitles available for this release.  Bonus Features include an audio commentary by director Susana Kapostasy, star Philip Digby, and costar Victor-Manuel Ruiz that goes over a lot of technical aspects of “Night of the Zodiac’s” look and how they obtained the gore and blood for the film, a Tim Ritter conversation about how he became involved with Kapostasy’s video enthusiasm and provided analog input, a blood cannon showcase that’s instructionally descriptive as well as you’ll see Kapostasy’s foot accidently go into the 5 gallon Homer bucket, a gore score Ouija board gag, recreating the Zodiac cipher, and the trailer.  SRS Cinema’s release dons a retro VHS design front cover with an exact and beautiful illustration of Gantz’s copycat Zodiac attire with a cropped version of the front cover on the disc art inside the traditional black snapper case.  “Night of the Zodiac” has a runtime of 86 minutes, is not rated, and has an all-region NTSC playback. Difficult to immerse oneself into a half-a-century old unsolved murder while sticking to glorifying merely the guts and gore, “Night of the Zodiac” stuns more qualitatively with video techniques thought archaic and obsolete but Susana Kapostasy steadfast proves otherwise in her undying love for the flawed, yet nostalgic format.

A Mock VHS Retro on a Mock VHS Retro DVD!  “Night of the Zodiac” from SRS Cinema!

To Do EVIL, You Must Pay EVIL a Ton of Euro. “La Petit Mort 2: Nasty Tapes” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Step Back into La Maison de “La Petit Mort” for a Sequel that’s Hard to Stomach!  

La Maison de la Petit Mort’s doors remain open under new management, continuing to serve the dark web public interest with a wide variety of snuff services.  For the right price, a fantasy-driven in-person torture show can be arranged for your liking, and one can be an commanding observer or one can get their hands dirty in participatory play where anything goes and pleasures are on-demand.  The German snuff house expands their reach to a global level with live webcam shows that can be directed by the high price paying patron and the leather-cladded vixen staff carry out their illicit instructions exactly.  A robust menu of dark pleasures, displayed on a new showreel of select gruesome services, are available at the simple transfer of a money wire or cash in hand for the depraved to make their fantasies a reality.

In 2009, German born director Marcel Walz helmed a linear, three-act narrative of tourists laid over in the big city winding up at patronizing a dark and dingy dive bar, La Maison de la Petit Mort, only to be abducted as inventoried stock for the rich to exploit in a slew of murder perversions.  Five years later in 2014, Walz returns for a sequel, “La Petit Mort 2:  Nasty Tapes,” with reprising principal actress Annika Strauss co-writing the film alongside Walz as well as stepping back into the sadistic black platform shoes of Dominique, one of the two lovely ladies with a lecherous and violent vocation.  The direct sequel that follows a day-in-a-life of the snuff house’s employees making an advert showreel does not follow suit in the way the first film was structured.  Instead of a linear, chronological narrative, “Nasty Tapes” evolves into an anthology of different kill archetypes for the marketing video. Walz’s Matador Films serves the production oversight with Harald Schmalz (“Collar”) coproducing the anthological torture porn feature.

“La Petit Mort 2: Nasty Tapes” doesn’t seen a whole lot of return on the original cast.  The tourists were all mangled, mutilated, and murdered, the original Monique bit the dust in an escape attempt, and the first Maman rode off into the sunset rich with blood money.  Instead, and among other things, “Nasty Tapes” folds a new treatment of terror with the same old eggs and flour by reinventing itself into an anthology type, introducing a new, blonde Monique (Yvonne Wölke, “Bad End”) into the batter, and disclosing the new owner of the freaky, fetish club, a feminine man by the name Monsieur Matheo Maxime (Mika Metz, “The Curse of Doctor Wolffenstein”).  Annika Strauss is the only original cast member to reprise her original role of Dominique, the brunette to Monique’s blonde and who showed slight inkling of hesitation before being summoned to torture and murder.  Strauss doesn’t buck the character trend as Dominque still displays disgust on her face when slicing a man’s facial features in a Picasso style portrait.  Yet, Dominique remains loyal to the Monsieur and to the La Maison de la Petit Mort by committing the atrocities without question, unlike the regular administrative bookkeeping and housecleaning she regularly remains vocal in opposition in what’s a slither of dark humor contrast between her gruesome work compared to mundane work.  Unlike Cyanide Savior singer Manoush, who was a very convincing merciless club owner Maman, Mike Metz plays a very different, more layered proprietor portrayed as someone who sees the work as a paycheck to fund his deepest desire – to be a beautiful woman just like his wife Jade Maxime (Micaela Schäfer, “Sky Sharks”).  That’s about the gist of complexity the sequel has to offer with much of the thinly laid foundation is bricked up by a compilation of back-to-back kill scenarios that involve some extreme genre directors as special guests, such as Uwe Boll (“House of the Dead”), Dustin Mills (“Bath Salt Zombies”), Mike Mendez (“Big Ass Spider!”), and the late Ryan Nicholson (“Gutterballs”), taking part in the clandestine, underground activities in-person or on the web.  The film fills out the cast with victims and victimizers in Armin Barwich (“The Terror Stalkers”), Bea La Bea, Babriela Wirbel (“Plastic”), Nichol Neukirch, Marc Rohnstock (“Necronos”), Thomas Pill (“Moor-Monster!”), Kai Plaumann, Markus Hettich (“No Reason”) and the twins, Barbara and Patrizia Zuchowski.

When going into a German gore film, such as “La Petit Mort 2:  Nasty Tapes,” you have to go into It having an affinity for, or at least an understanding of, complete shameless representation of torture and killing of another human being for the simple and pure joy of the act.  In other words, you have to be somewhat sick in the head.  For me, personally, the sickness is rooted out of admiration for special effects and how the F/X artist(s) can create a realistic depiction of an unofficial autopsied anatomy. Filmmaker Ryan Nicholson, who passed away in 2019 of brain cancer, not only had a role in the Marcel Walz sequel, but was also the special effects artist, following in the footsteps of one of the notable German underground special effects artists, Olaf Ittenbach (“Premutos:  The Fallen Angel”) who had done the graphic gags on the first film with head turning results.  Nicholson, with a credit list that has a foot in independent productions and more mainstream, Hollywood productions, such as “Final Destination” and the remake of “Blair Witch” from 2016, doesn’t disappoint and keeps the blood, guts, and stringy sinew seamless in a gruesome pageantry of death that rivals and continues Olaf’s original stamp.  Beyond the glossy surface of a blood glaze, “Nasty Tapes” is nothing more than a kill-after-kill anthology with no concrete premise for either of the individual slaughter vignettes.  Title cards setup the kill moments with basic victim descriptors, such as married status, age, and how much their life has been paid for, but doesn’t humanize them in the least, creating zero compassion for the unsuspecting abductee fated for something far worse than death.  Instead, Walz flips the script with more background on the clients with ipre-and-post interviews of their most intimate time at La Petit Mort.  This structure can be monotonous as there’s nothing else to look forward to or to absorb empathetically as a viewer in an anthology that simply glorifies the leisure time of an undisturbed murder.  

As a nail-pulling, nose-cutting, drill-holing, lip-stitching, dick-scissoring, gut-stabbing anthology, “La Petit Mort 2: Nasty Tapes” is a gory, good time and is even better now in high-definition with a 1080p Blu-ray release from Unearthed Films The AVC encoded BD25 looks as good as can expected for a shaky cam, hectically edited, and filthy dark German gore film presented in a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio.  Details are oleaginous wet with blood and tissue that incongruently with the Roland Freitag’s gloomy yet suppressed cinematography and Kai E. Bogatzki discordance and chaotic editing technique that is supposed to elicit extreme shock but consequently results in a loss of the intended grisliness.  Unearthed Films‘ release exhibits no issues with compression, but the hues and tones appear to fuse in the near eliminate of some contours where there should be some.  The German-English DTS-HD 5.1 mix can be score heavy, especially a hard and energized Tekkno title credits from composer Klaus Pfreundner that’s distinctive German, but “Nasty Tapes” has profound focus on its core selling point – torture.  The very few scenes of intercut dialogue shots spliced into the client’s sociopathic session are well understood and do have prominence over the score, as well as the ambient milieu of screams and the integrated flesh destroying Foley, despite the cam-esque quality of the pseudo-testimonials.  The burned-in English subtitles under the German Language only are synced well without error and with consistently good pacing.  Disc extras include a behind-the-scenes making of cut out from the main camera, an alternate torture scene, a behind-the-scenes still gallery, a short advert of a naked woman strung up by her arms and being stapled with signs, and Unearthed Films trailers.  The Blu-ray physical features don’t stray to far from normal Unearthed Films releases with a standard Blu-ray snapper case with grisly cover art of a marred victim’s plucked out eye and a Jade Maxime holding a bone saw and wearing ripped fishnet stockings and black lingerie.  The pressed disc art has the rehashes the back cover image of Monsieur Maxime wearing a venetian mask.  The Blu-ray comes unrated, region A locked, and has a manageably sufficing runtime of 83 minutes to not overkill the overkilling.  Transparent in its surreptitious atrocities, “La Petit Mort II: Nasty Tapes” subsists as Marcel Walz charnel house of horrors with a new revamped anthology approach to razzmatazz special effects wetwork without any due remorse. 

Step Back into La Maison de “La Petit Mort” for a Sequel that’s Hard to Stomach!