Tag Archives: halloween

There’s No EVIL Treat with This EVIL Trickster! “The Jester 2” reviewed! (Dread Present / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Jester 2” Blu-ray Is a Must-Get Sequel!

15-year-old Max is a girl without friends and with her bordering the edge of maturity that leaves her too old for trick-or-treating.  Dressed as magician with an enthusiasm for card tricks and slight of hand, Max tries unsuccessfully to make the best of her Halloween night as school peers mock and tease her until the animated and sinister Jester comes before her to show her a trick of his own.  When Max foils his trick, the Jester’s undertaking to contractually collect souls for Devil every All Hollows Eve comes into jeopardy as he loses his power to trick others.  The Jester forces Max’s hand to play tricks on others for their souls to be collected by the end of the night before his own soul burns in the internal inferno.  As the night goes on, Max must outplay the supernatural killer whose desperate game to spill as much blood as possible before the end of the night is coming to a full carnage head.

Our review of Colin Krawchuk’s “The Jester” called it “clever, entertaining, and devilish,” concluding out the review with “The Jester” acts the whimsical clown of conscience-stricken torment with an indelible joker different from the rest of the villainy pool. Yeah, we liked it.  Krawchuk and team return for a sequel, simply entitled “The Jester 2,” that opens backstory doors for the mischievous maniac whose mask grins from ear-to-ear and knows all of the tricks of the soul reaping trade.  Only one problem lies in his path, a 15-year-old girl who may be better a deceiving than he is.  The standalone sequel doesn’t segue with the original film, creating a new whole installment that anyone could enjoy without watching the original 2023 film or it’s viral short films both films are based off of.  Krawchuk writes-and-directs to be inherently different not only from the first film but from the large slasher genre that’s seen its fair share of clownish killers as of late.  Traverse Terror and Epic Picture Group collab once again for another Dread Presents release with Epic Picture Group leadership of Patrick Ewald coproducing side-by-side with “Bag of Lies” producing team of Victoria McDevitt, Jake Heineke, and Cole Payne. 

Michael Sheffield returns with his top hat and cane as the manically mute and mischievous Jester but with a slightly different approach to the Jester’s appearance.  Instead of a Venetian mask strapped around his head by an elastic band, the sequel’s Jester has a mask that’s seemingly an extension of his face, delineated by the rivulet of exposed under flesh between where skin ends and where mask begins.  Without Sheffield’s enthusiastic harlequinade and long, drawn out glares and motionless menace through empty, black eyes of the mask, “The Jester” films and shorts would without a doubt not be as entertaining and terrifying.  This time around, the Jester has a new foe in a 15-year-old girl with puerile dreams of magic and trick-or-treating.  It’s safe to say this girl, Max, is a loner with her peers making fun at her expense, but Max, as a final girl against the Jester, is intelligent and crafty in the face of pure evil despite her ounce of fear to live and be free of his threat against those she cares for – mother (Jessica Ambuehl, “Black Mold”) and sister – and strangers, even the ones that bully her.   Making her feature film debut, the then early 20-something Kaitlyn Trentham has a convincible foot in the door of “The Jester’s” awkward teen being the equalizer against supernatural Hell spawn.  Trentham can pivot between dejected loner to confident talent to the improvising fighter in the matter of circumstances, and when one of those circumstantial events involves Max’s family, a game of wits opens the chessboard for the next few moves.  Forced to align before “Halloween” night comes to close, “The Jester 2” is exclusively between Max and The Jester, good versus evil, for most of the narrative with filler, supporting characters weaved into the pattern to support the threat of tension and a high body count a sequel can be proud of.

Sequels tend to do everything bigger with their inlaid bigger budget off the back of a successful first film.  Big name talent, bigger effects, higher body count, etc., but character and story creator Colin Krawchuk doesn’t take the bait for a bigger boat and pushes that need to multiply tenfold “The Jesser’s” presence amongst audiences down to a suppressed level.  While that might seem counterintuitive to the idea of sequels, “The Jester “thrives on story and sf/x simplicity, letting Sheffield and Trentham battle it out and drive the story of certainly a different scenario from the first film.  The original “The Jester” embodies a similar tone but the control was imbalanced to “The Jester” with a supernatural upper hand always on the pulse of his tricked prey.  The sequel kinks the hose, stopping the Jester’s paranormal flow of life and soul snatching to be humbled by his need from a mortal who ultimately has his existence hanging in this teen girl’s sleight of hands.  This creates a perceptional shift from the Jester’s omnipresence, omnipotent immortality to he’s scraping by with desperation and longshot dependency on a young teen magician with a homemade costume.  This is not to say this new installment into the Jester’s ethos and extended qualities is downgraded or is riding the exact same original wave toward a mundane surf as the kills do have incremental whimsical value and there’s certainly more of a visual effects presence than before and it’s done well to push the sequel to be a step up and forward in conjunction with the good versus evil alliance storyline.

Epic Picture Group and Dread Presents returns the Jester for another go-around of illusionary ill intention with a Blu-ray release.  AVC encoded with 1080p, high-definition resolution on a BD25 and presented in a widescreen 1.78:1, the standard for video metrics supplies “The Jester 2” with adequate levels of a color saturation on a graded scale that leans toward ever so slightly a piano black finish.  Details hover between great depth to vague depending on the focus which Krawchuk and “2 Lava 2 Lantula’s” cinematographer Kevin Duggan who play with the perspective focus in the realm of an already detail-vague and hard-lit night shoot that’s contrast heavy, obtaining nice shadows around the contours of the Jester’s mask.  Duggan is not the returning cinematographer from the original 2023 film but really channels Joe Davidson’s (“President’s Day”) style that’s near raw with graded elements and focus precision.  “The Jester 2” offers an English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and a Dolby Digital 2.0.  Much of the 5.1 is frontloaded with a trickle of atmospheric coming through side and back channels in a watery compressed copy of the track, that was likely recorded in Dolby.  Dialogues rendered clearly and cleanly, the Jester doesn’t speak anyway so much of his diegetic sounds are the ruffling swifts of his suit and hat with some walking cane taps, and the supernatural and killing ambient action has a punchy quality of a slight toon quality.  English subtitles are available for selection.  Special features include a director’s commentary, a making of featurette which is of Colin Krawchuk speaking on camera about the genesis and fruition of creating a sequel and sustaining villain with clips intercut into the interview footage, and the trailer as well as other Dread Presents’ previews.  The 87-minute Blu-ray is open to all regions for playback and is the film is not rated.

Last Rites: “The Jester 2” is the same but different and kills as a context sequel for a villain on the right path to being a successful franchise.

“The Jester 2” Blu-ray Is a Must-Get Sequel!

From the EVIL Clowns to the EVIL Scarecrow. “Die’ced: Reloaded” reviewed! (Dread / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Go Beyond the Short Film with “Die’ced: Reloaded” on Blu-ray!

As child, Benjamin ripped his parents to shreds with his bare hands after long stints of abuse, including cutting out his tongue to forever silence him.  Now as a mute man, Benjamin remains incarcerated in a psychiatric prison, quiet behind a homemade mask, and under the care of a psychiatric doctor with good intentions.  After a violent, aided escape, leaving the doctor and a nurse mutilated and dismembered, Benjamin finds himself roaming the streets on Halloween night, coming across and killing a young man for his elaborately exaggerated scarecrow costume.  The imposing killer now has his sights set on a teenage girl, Cassandra, stalking her from inside the crowded venue of a friend’s costume party to invading her family home where her father is home alone.  Benjamin becomes a relentless force obsessed with Cassandra and he will stop at nothing and rack up the bodies in unrestricted violence just to have her.

Back in 2023, the co-director of “The Dark Side,” Jeremy Rudd, created a 50-minute slasher short “Die’ced” that took its villainous maniac, a scarecrow mute with a penchant for maiming and slaughtering, and made him into a viral internet hit, snagging the attention of the creative producing team over at Dread.  Along with some meager crowdfunded capital, roughly $3,500 out of a $75,000 goal, Rudd was able to extend his written-and-directed short film into a feature length release in 2025 and rebranded the film with the slightly tweaked title of “Die’ced:  Reloaded.”  Rudd, who has a 20-year career acting in front of the camera, brings his most eyed feature to his home of Seattle, Washington, set on Halloween as the backdrop for the slasher’s body pool, and utilizes Seattle surrounding specific businesses for some of his scenes, such as The Lott Coffee shop and the A&W Bottling Company in Snohomish county as key sets.  Taylor Jones produces with Louis Gallegos and Jeremy’s identical twin brother, Nathan, serving as executive producers.

Acting as “Die’ced’s” frontman without a single line of dialogue, Jason Brooks stalks without being stealth as the deranged psych-prison escape Benjamin.  As a character actor of many faces, having donned the mask of the iconic Jason Voorhees character in a handful of short tributes, strapped on the gloves and fedora for a quick Fred Krueger, and has played the monster countless times over and over again, Brooks follows the footsteps of the likes of Kane Hodder, a part time stuntman keen on being the on-screen villain and making the role is own.  As Benjamin, there’s no qualms about the character’s imposing height and careful movements, some being gently infantile while most have an aggressive cruelty like a wild dog shaking a mouse in its jaws to literal pieces in a fit of blood spatter.   In the other corner, the final girl, Cassandra is just a seemingly normal teenage girl trying to live her adolescent life by going to parties and being a sister to brother Tommy.  However, there’s no way you could convince me Eden Campbell and Collin Fischer are playing teenagers.  Typically, a slasher high school cast would be near the edge or just over the threshold of adulthood, but Cassandra and Tommy are way too old to be high school students with an age range of mid-to-late 20s having a noticeable, natural filled out physique of maturity.  Campbell career stretch has her as a micro-scream queen of sorts from a few horror-related roles from her haunted theater debut performance in “Ghostlight” to having a significant role in the two-part Netflix series “Fear Street:  1978” based off the R.L. Stine scholastic book and with “Die’ced,” Campbell is no Lauren LaVera or Jamie Lee Curtis with her final girl character that’s pitted against a scarecrow garbed killer who’s able to take down without much to-do.  The cast rounds out with Christine Rose Allen as Benjamin’s nurse and escape benefactor, John Karyus (“Lo,” “The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol”) as an unfortunately psychiatric doctor being utterly taken apart piece-by-piece, and Nigal Vonas (“Coyote Cage”) as the Cassandra and Tommy’s father.

If analyzing “Die’ced: Reload” in the grand scheme of the slasher iconography, Benjamin, the scarecrow, boils down to being an unauthorized spinoff of Art the Clown, a completely unmistakable byproduct of the widely popular, ultra-violent “Terrifer” film and subsequent franchise about a devilish smiling clown immensely enjoying eviscerating victims in all different kind of ways.  With the same traditional traits of a brawny butcher running on vocal silence, Benjamin is compared to the fan favorites of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees by its filmmakers, but as far as costume and behavior style goes, along with the intense desire to craft art out of the entrails of his victims, the “Die’ced: Reload” antagonist has more qualitative measure toward Art the Clown with the Aguste face makeup that accentuates the odd shape of a distinct facial bone structure, the harlequin jester who revels in the pursued dismemberment and savagery of innocent parties, and the fact a girl/woman becomes the singled out and obsessed target that rivals the Art the Clown versus Sienna inextricable link.  To further the film pretentiousness, the narrative is held together by elementary school graded glue and Scotch tape with an inexplicable twist that fails elucidation and logic and a familiar narrative that also relies too heavily on the gratuitous gore elements to carry it from beginning to end, reducing the once 2023 viral short into nothing more than a too soon hackneyed concept for 2025.  The “Reload” subtitle gimmick extends the original 2023 short by 30-minutes’ worth of additional gore footage and slipping in some of Benjamin’s backstory while the narrative trunk remains unchanged, but the overall outcome bares a slapdash impression as the story isn’t as terrifying or is whole enough for the Benjamin scarecrow to scare off even a murder of cowardly crows.

”Reload” scares its way onto Blu-ray from Dread’s home video label, Epic Pictures Group, with an AVC encoded, 1080p high definition, BD25 that’s has definitively no issues with the compression integrity seeing pitch black negative space, delineated outlining, and a stable digital image quality but isn’t quite as sharp.  “Die’ced” and director Jeremy Rudd pride themselves on their retro homage to the slasher genre of yesteryear where “Halloween” and “Friday the13th” reigned supreme and Rudd tries to emulate the effect with hazy fog, low and key lighting, and plenty of corner shadowing that impairs surface details and textual outputs.  Coloring is fine but the dark tone grading hampers the hue explosion that leaves the Scarecrow, or maybe Clownish, makeup moderately subdued under the straw mop and burlap hat. “Die’ced” is presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio and without a grain filter to exact a throwback 80’s slasher.  The English Dolby Digital 5.1 audio mix offers a tampered fidelity through the multi-channel system with a weaker side and back channels to focus more on the front.  Dialogue doesn’t deny clarity and provides enough prominence to be the singled finest element of the audio design that really lacks the range for broader Halloween costumed killer on the loose in Seattle that winds up at a drinking party and a bottling factory without making a bigger splash in the audio pool.  Special features include the original “Die’ced” short film and trailer, plus additional Dread produced film trailers.  Physical packaging is a standard Blu-ray Amaray case with Benjamin’s clown-scarecrow mug menacing smiling through the arch of a bloodstained sickle garnished with one single retro VHS “Horror” sticker which perfectly denotes the extent of “Die’ced’s” throwback slashery.  Epic Picture Group’s Blu-ray is region free and presents the film not rated with an 81-inute runtime.

Last Rites: I’m not seeing the viral sensation the internet saw with a hackneyed antagonist doing much of the same as those who came before, but “Die’ced: Reload” has an extreme slasher violence appeal that can temporarily quench bloodthirst and the open ending leaves more to be explored for character redemption.

Go Beyond the Short Film with “Die’ced: Reloaded” on Blu-ray!

The EVIL Clown Takeover is Has Begun! “Helloween” reviewed! (101 FIlms / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Just in Time for the Season. “Helloween” on a 101 Films “Bluray!

October 31, 1996 – A disturbed 10-year-old Carl Cane, donning red and white lashes and slashes clown makeup, slayed his fostered before brutally axing down a healthcare social worker assigned to his case. Twenty years later, Cane has been locked away at Morton Psychiatric Prison for most of his life but still manages to be a high-risk inmate wearing the same clown makeup.  In ward of his care is Dr. Ellen Marks who endorses stringent safety protocols and has a stern bedside care for her dangerously persuasive patient.  Flash forward 20 years later during the 2016 #clownpanic craze, the mass clown sightings provide cover for Cane to mastermind his escape and influence the disenfranchised to wear his lashes and slashes maquillage and rise against all of Britain, Dr. Marks must race home to protect her daughters as they become marked in Cane’s chaos scheme of nationwide epidemic violence.  This year, Halloween is more tricks than treats in a manipulative game of incited rise against authority with a murderous madman at the helm. 

Not to be confused with the German metal band of the same name, the 2025 film “Helloween” is a UK production that’s been compared to “The Purge” meets “The Joker” from writer-director Phil Claydon (“Vampire Killers,” “Within”).  “Helloween’s” story pans briefly from 1996 to primarily set in 2016, the year when clown panic was a national news item where mysteriously scary clowns would show up in random places and projecting a menacing way about them, enough so to cause public concern.  Claydon expands upon the year-specific-craze with a killer clown motif and a coordinated attack on a nation’s infrastructure, creating national havoc while the mastermind of ceremonies stays with his bubble of motive, to completely destroy his psych ward physician in charge of his austere care.  “Helloween” is a production of Shogun Films under the producing eye of Jonathan Sothcott with Lance Patrick co-producing. 

For “Helloween” to be centered around an incitive massive violent force, one that’s purely evil, demented, wicked, etc., that character is required to be bigger than life in a show of calculated malevolence and will be ultimately the driving juggernaut key to the film’s success.  Carl Cane is that described character, an educated mental case hellbent on being a reign of chaos from the very moment his 10-year-old self, fostered and abused through the social childcare system, chops up his foster parents and social worker without blinking an eye of hesitation.  However, the 1996 boy and the 2016 man of Carl Cane showcase two different genus of the same sociopathic species as adult Carl Cane has a knack for the flamboyant flair and is a talkative taskmaster whereas his younger version is about as quiet as a calculating church mouse.  Forever the bridesmaid and never the bride, Ronan Summers finally receives his time to shine and expel his talent to the world as a prominently gaudy villain donning edgy Joker-esque clown face makeup and sporting a dirty inmate jumpsuit.  There’s always the expectations Batman will be coming down from the rooftop or creeping from out of the shadows at any moment!  Summers, who did have a small role in “The Dark Knight” as well as be a supporting actor alongside Richard Brake in “The Dare” and had numerous voice acting roles in notable videogames, such as “Dead Island 2,” “Wolfenstein:  The Old Blood,” and “Cyberpunk 2077,” has tremendous presence with a spine-shattering laugh and creates a dark arura around Cane’s ambivalent supernatural abilities.  Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott, wife of Shogun Films producer Jonathan Sothcott, goes up against the antagonist playing Summers as Dr. Ellen Marks, head of Cane’s psychiatric ward.  The “Peter Rabid” actress finds herself on the precipice of a clown barrage against her family that has its own secrets and troubles teenagers (or adult?) as there is divisive tension between the planned daughter of Leah (Caroline Wilde, “Ghost”) and the unplanned and resentful daughter Alice (Megan Marszal).  Michael Paré (“Streets of Fire”) is perhaps the biggest name, an American name, attached to the project as an investigative reporter unearthing a theorized connection between Cane and the coordinated clownpanic sightings and Paré’s about as straightforward and conventional unimpactful in performance as they come.  The cast rounds out with Shanton Dixon, Samantha Loxley (“Hosts”), and Tamsin Dean (“Everyone is Going to Die”).

Though “Helloween” borrows pieces of “The Purge” and “The Joker,” another generous portion of the inspirational pie is “Halloween.”  Not only does “Halloween” and “Helloween” share similar titling but also certain “Helloween” plot points and framed shots that resemble a clown costumed Micheal Myers expressionlessly exiting his family home after murdering older sister Judith.  Claydon’s nods may dilute the original story some but the mashup manages to curate an interesting tale of a large scale terror on a small time budget by using televised media to indicate Cane’s grandiose scheme from the confines of his impenetrable holding cell and creation tension with good, old-fashioned editing and framed shots for those jump scare and distressing moments.  One thing is for sure that hinders the large-scale scenario but doesn’t obliterate the affect it has in its entirety is the small number of locations used.  Much of the story takes place between two locations:  the Morton Prison and Dr. Ellen Marks’s home.   These two primary locations service most of the story’s core elements and, perhaps, Claydon relied too heavily on news media to spread the clown carnage rather than have it unfold in frame with not only more locations of active aggressive assaults, like we see in “The Purge” series but also hire more extras as clown faced Cane acolytes and have a number of victims suffer at the hands of clownpanic.  Set designs, colorful lighting, stark contrasting features, the rapid pace storytelling, and the performances do pick up the slack and hold onto that collapsing of society sensation in more of a localized manner rather than widespread.  The twist ending pops disjointedly with a welcomed turn of events but isn’t setup with a crucial visual or expositional detail, leaving on the table the one important puzzle piece of the considerable why rather than focusing on the exposed when and how. 

101 Films isn’t clowning around with their new Blu-ray release of “Helloween.”  AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, and stored on a BD50, “Helloween” has plenty of picture quality positives going for albeit the film’s primary color spectrum, a Spirit Halloween store amount of haze and smoke machines, and plenty of negative area shadows all of which wreak havoc of the encoding of data.  One way to judge video compression is the ability to delineate every object in the feature from inanimate to animate and there’s no questioning in the presentation as all objects have an elucidation effect that doesn’t work the mind harder than it should.  Claydon works depth to create effective highly taut moments while staying in the purge of light and hope atmospherics of omnipresent darkness.  Curiously, the Blu-ray back cover mentions the feature containing an English uncompressed Stereo PCM and a compressed English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with the extras solely being a Stereo PCM.  However, the Dolby audio icon is stamped on both back cover and DVD art.  While there’s no menu option to toggle between either feature track, my play listed the encoded audio as the PCM Stereo and DTS-HD MA 5.1 which can be concurred with by the uninhibited punchiness that heightens the scares and the eerie hallmarks of lightning cracks, creaky floors, and other loud bang sounds.  Ronan Summers’s is a proper English speaker with great emphasis on his pronunciations, much like Paré’s classic westerner approach to any situation and role, but there are some UK dialects that skirt the cockney accents and though difficult to cling to, the mix greatly makes clear the intended word or sentence without any issues.  UK English subtitles are optionally available.  Special features include a commentary track with director Phil Claydon, a behind-the-scenes featurette with cast and crew interviews going through their experiences and roles, and the film’s theatrical trailer.  There is also listed deleted scenes but there’s an issue with the encoded playback as when pressed, the option glitches back to the bonus features scene, never moving forward into the deleted scenes.  The clear Amaray case with one-sided art has a less-is-more cover art with a face closeup of Summers in a sinister expressed Cane makeup with a blade silhouette just in front-right of him.  While we’ve seen a few inconsistencies with these release – the audio track conflicts and the deleted scenes bug on the encoding – there’s one more variance with the UK rating.  The case has a UK rating of 15 for Strong Violence, Bloody Images, Threat, and Language; however, the disc is pressed with a UK 18 classification.  “Helloween” clocks in at 93 minutes and is locked with a region B playback. 

Last Rites: The energy from Phil Claydon’s “Helloween” amps up and matches Ronan Summers’s intellectual madman persona with a smoke and mirrors widespread mayhem and reliable jump scares that breed infectious tension for clowns and the disenfranchised in this quaint and modern day clownsploitation.

Just in Time for the Season. “Helloween” on a 101 Films “Bluray!

EVIL’s the Bacon, the Pork Roll, and the Scrapple All Mixed and Slashed together! “Butcher’s Bluff” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Butcher’s Bluff” on DVD from Breaking Glass Pictures!

Film students Rodger, Nicole, and Derrick decide to head to the rural Texas town of Emerald Falls and make their class project documentary around the 28 missing persons over the years and the Hogman, an urban legend of an escaped killer now roaming the woods of Butcher’s Bluff.  Bringing along their friends to make it concurring party getaway at Rodger’s family vacation cabin, the trio conduct interviews with the eccentric town locals to build a story around the Hogman myth, even ascertaining the original location for the mask Hogman wore during his first kills before escaping psychiatric prison.  The more they investigate into the Hogman, the more the locals warn them to stay away from Butcher’s Bluff but in a case of curiosity killed the cat, the documentary film students and their drug-fueled, sexed-up friends find themselves being hunted with no cell service, no help within miles, and no way out of the Hogman’s kill radius. 

Co-directors William Instone and Matt Rifley helm their first collaborative feature “Butcher’s Bluff,” a 2023 small town slasher reminiscent of the renaissance slasher movement of the 1980s, packed with practical gore effects, odd backwoods characters, a campy party of vice-riddled youth, and, moist importantly – excuse me – most importantly, T&A.  Instone, whose all-in director, writer, and producer debut horror “Jon” from 2012 brings one man’s delusions into horrifying reality, cowrites his latest grim story with writer, painter, and overall liberal arts connoisseur Renfield Rasputin.  Filmed in Texas with principal locations taking place in Bastrop, New Braunfels, and San Marcos to composition a story set in the fictional town of Emerald Falls and its rural woodland of Butcher’s Bluff.  The film is a crowdfunded venture that raised an approximate $60K to cover principal shooting and post-production costs with Instone and Rifley serving as primary producers amongst an amalgamation of crowdfunded producing backers   Instone’s Thunder Mountain Films, in association with Dull Knife Productions and Spicey Ramen Productions, go hog wild with their slasher horror. 

As if he doesn’t have enough on his plate writer, directing, and producing “Butcher’s Bluff,” Instone also portrays the main antagonist Hogman, masked with a stitched together pig head complete with cockeyed tusks and garbed with a dingy mechanic jumpsuit and tan jacket.  The Hogman is a walk-and-run chaser with a duel-sided axe and rusty, broad curved knife as main melee weapons though he’ll get his bare hands dirty from time-to-time.  Instone’s not flashy with the villain and doesn’t key-light any iconic poses, stances, or stares to incite a nerve coursing fear.  Hogman’s victims are anyone and everyone who enters the Butcher’s Bluff forest, from necking lovers (Jacqueline Hays and “Mallrats’s” Jeremy London), to lost pot farm thieves (“You’re Next’s” L.C. Holt, “Scare Package’s’” Christopher Winbush, “Girls Gone Dead’s” Shawn C. Phillips), to finally, but not limited to, the Rodger’s friends and classmates on their excursion investigation and party.  Fortunately, the group displays different caricature tropes without going full-blown cliché.  Between them you have the exuding sexy yet overly bitchy duo of Sam and Tina (a cut pixie cut but broodingly built Samantha Holland and a slender yet high-end platinum blonde Kayla Anderson), Rodger’s sex-driven, dweeb cousin Bobby (Dakota Millett) who Sam and Tina torment, the polar opposite to Bobby stud with Jake (Santiago Sky) and of course the three documentarians:  Rodger (Michael Fischer), Derrick (Johnny Huang), and Nicole (Paige Steakley), each reside in their own attribute world consistently, dying the way they live, that’s very telling of their moral fiber.  In additional to Jeremy London and Shawn C. Phillips, who have worked themselves into being staples of the indie genre films, other notable names to mention for their brief but key roles are Brinke Stevens (“Nightmare Sisters”), Paul T. Taylor (“Hellraiser:  Judgement”), Bill Oberst Jr. (“3 From Hell”), and Bill Johnson (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II”) peppered into the rest of the supporting cast to draw in fandom.

“Butcher’s Bluff” has the necessary bone structure to be a digestible slasher, checking all the elemental boxes, and Instone and Rifley manage to technically pull off a nearly 2-hour film on a crowdfunded budget.   The problem is “Butcher’s Bluff” has a hackneyed routine about it.  Instead of creating something new and wonderfully, gory and diabolical, under a distinct flag of novelly progressive storytelling, every scene feels all too familiar, a telltale sign to horror fans that we’ve seen this kind of story before.  From Hogman’s stony silence and indiscriminate aggression bores him as a Michael Myers carbon copy, a family in cahoots with a s flesh-stitched maniac plays the tune of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and there’s even a character moment of yelling What Are You Waiting For? aimlessly into the dark forest while spinning around with arms wide apart that oozes Jennifer Love Hewitt vibes.  Add in some rather uninspiring frame, shot design, and editing and “Butcher’s Bluff” very much embodies the crowdfunded costs rather than the intended crowdfunded spirit.  Now while all of this portion of the review sounds grossly negative, don’t just run for the hills to the next slasher film in line just yet as Instone and Rifley still manage to keep an engagement lock on what makes the slasher film enjoyable to behold with some decently inlaid practical gore effects, including a pleading head being sliced horizontally through from mouth to hair or a posthumous, lawn chair display of one fine girl’s nipples and eyes plucked from her body and posed on her eye-gouged out person as if giving a blood offering to the audience Gods.  There’s also the inviting gratuitous T&A from Samantha Holland, Kayla Anderson, and Jacqueline Hays that keeps the old theme motif alive within the campy slasher genre as well as keeping young boys’ dreams from becoming dry.

Breaking Glass Pictures distributes the archetypical slasher “Butcher’s Bluff” onto DVD home video.  The MPEG2 encoded, 720p upscaled standard definition, DVD9 really has a tough go with the compression capabilities as there’s quite a bit of data to encode/decode within a near full-time night shoot picture and color accompaniments that blend right into the darkness, melding out of a clean definition.  Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, banding and splotching render a difficult deciphering of data in inkier fields.  When colors do contrast or arise into lighter hues, there’s a pop of demarcation with its full potential held back by an ungraded layer.  Textures are extremely fluid throughout with the prominent skin scenes offering a decent, natural look but most scenes are fuzzy as if the upscale fights the downscaling for supremacy.  The English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound offers an adequate compression for a routine slasher with mid-level range with clear and clean dialogue overtop eerie forest soundscape of breaking branches, tree knocks, and leave crunching footsteps.  The mix doesn’t convey much depth with dialogue and ambience hanging around the front channels while medium shots and some tree knocking flirt with the side channels.  A mainstay slasher should have a memorable, tense-riddles soundtrack for the chase or create omnipresence fear but “Scream, Queen!  My Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Dinner with Leatherface” composer’s Alexander Taylor’s insipid inspiration can’t be held in the memorable bank and fails to elevate the Hogman’s imposing sheer terror.  English closed captioning is available.  Special features include a proof on concept trailer for the crowdfunding campaign that stars a handful of the actors from the feature film, such as Michael Fischer and Paige Steakley, and a behind-the-scenes music video that contains behind-the-scenes footage.   The DVD presence is standard fair for Breaking Glass Pictures with a DVD Amaray and a one-sided front cover art, which subjectively pleasing in its retrograde mockup of an illustrated Hogman looming over a scared, running Steakley (supposedly) in her white tank top and high cut shorts.  There is at least one noticeable error on the back cover that spells Paige Steakley’s name incorrectly in the credits, listing her last name as Steakely.  The Not Rated release is hard encoded with region 1 and has a two-hour runtime which can appear quite long, but the pacing was not terrible and the long runtime for an indie slasher didn’t feel overly immeasurable. 

Last Rites: “Butcher’s Bluff’s” has little to offer as far as the next novel and generational slasher but scratches the genre itch with a large body count, solid kills, and campy campers looking to buy, sell, and trade their vices for being violated.

“Butcher’s Bluff” on DVD from Breaking Glass Pictures!

EVIL Minds the Door! “Raw Meat” reviewed! (Blue Underground /2-Disc 4K UHD Blu-ray and Standard Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Raw Meat” Its What’s for 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray Dinner!

Young lovers Alex Campbell, an American studying abroad, and Patricia Wilson discover an unconscious man on the steps of a London metro subway station.  When they alert a beat cop and make their way back to the spot, the man had vanished.  Assuming the well-dressed man an alcoholic sleeping off a bender, David and Patricia move on with their lives while the police report comes across the desk of Inspector Calhoun, an eccentric investigator who recalls a recent string of disappearances surrounding the same London station.  Over the next few days, several more station related disappearances occur, forcing Inspector Calhoun to dig deeper into the mysterious circumstances involving a missing Mi-5 agent and three subway employees with David and Patricia his only witness to at least one of them.  When Patricia suddenly goes missing with her last known siting at the subway station, a concerned David explores the train tunnels that connect the last known whereabouts of all whom have vanished, leading him to a tragic history of collateral damage survival, long forgotten generational lineage, and cannibalism. 

London, England was the first to introduce the metro subway station to the world in 1863 with the Metropolitan Railway.  It seems only fitting that London be the setting for “Raw Meat,” a subterrain horror that integrates London’s metro history with the consequential hazards of an early underground railway, the insufficient costs that prove to be costly, and the pitied blamelessness of unthinkable survival from neglectful businesses.  Originally entitled “Death Line,” rebranded to “Raw Meat” for American audiences, the 1972 film is actually directed by an American, Chicagoan Gary Sherman, in his debut and would go on to helm “Dead & Buried” and “Poltergeist III.”  Based off an original concept form Sherman, one that takes the plausibility and some fact of workers being buried under a collapsed railway project and survive generationally living off the nourishment of each other in more ways than one, the script is penned by Ceri Jones and is a production of Harbor Ventures and Kanter-Ladd Productions with the late “Police Academy” franchise’s Paul Maslansky producing

I’m going to preface this character introduction with “Raw Meat” would not have been as entertaining if it wasn’t for the peak performance by a more eccentric Donald Pleasance in a pre-“Halloween” performance.  As Inspector Calhoun, Pleasence is fully in charge as an intimidating case investigator with a snarky wit, or as Christopher Lee’s MI-5 character put it, what a droll fellow you are in a stiff yet jab remark exchange interaction between the two British icons of a bygone cinema industry.  Lee’s role is only a fraction in comparison to Pleasance and would have been two big personalties too big for the meager production to contain.  Another staggeringly highlighted performance comes from an unknown in Hugh Armstrong’s portrayal of the subhuman cannibal whose fellow inbred family members have all left by deceased means, leaving him alone and the last of his kind with mumbling tunnel vernacular and unkempt open sores all over his body and face in a state of unhealthy living conditions.  Armstrong’s acted ungainliness renders the man a monster amongst society standards but also sheds a softer, compassionate light upon reflection of his forced position into a world he knowns no better about having grown up completely in the railway tunnels all his life, living off what he can scramble up which included human flesh and organs.  In contrast to Pleasance and Armstrong, David Ladd (“The Klansman”) and Sharon Gurney (“Crucible of Horror”) impress as middle ground, plain as can be, characters being two lovers in the midst of mystery, almost becoming history themselves when the man targets her to amend his loneliness in a gibberish mind the door effort to show her affection.  Normal Rossington (“House of the Long Shadows”) and Heather Stoney are the only two understated completely overstated in the film as Inspector Calhoun’s constant whips demands for bolos and tea.  James Cossins, Hugh Dickson, Jack Woolgar, Clive Swift, Gerry Crampton, Terence Plummer, and Gordon Petrie pull into the station as the remaining cast.

Hovering between the horrifying truth of early construction, underground railway accidents and the urban legend of trapped workers under tunnel collapses, Gary Sherman unearths middle ground terror somewhere in between the two with a plausible terror line narrative that not only instills recognition of the past and those who gave the ultimate sacrifice but also invites the nonfictional hunting-cannibal rising to the surface in search for food and, to an extent, companionship.  The cast elevates “Raw Meat’s” character efflorescence but there’s also other areas to illuminate its noteworthiness that take the film from out of the tunnel shadows as cinematographer Alex Thomson’s bleak tunnel aesthetic rouses filth and a sense of hardcore survival over a century.  The 7-minute tracking shot near the beginning, at the introduction of the cannibal’s tunnel home depicted with a decorum of decaying and freshly strewn corpses salvaged for their organic parts, is an astonishing backwards tracking shot without a blip of hesitation and lingering just enough to seed an unsettling undergrowth of grisly ghastliness.  The only drawback from “Raw Meat,” if looking for one or perhaps it’s not even a big deal, lies with the young couple Alex and Patricia.  It’s possible to stumble into a situation, as they did after coming off the last train for the night and crossing paths with an unconscious man on the staircase up to the surface; however, Alex and Patricia were not exactly looking for trouble or pursuing a follow up on the man’s health-and-wellbeing, God knows they argued over about their stance on helping ailed strangers in public, but they wind up having this off topic tangent about said contentious topic and rebuild the tumbled down building blocks of their relationship for a stronger bond.  Yet, lightning strikes twice in the subway tunnel and Patricia is whisked away by the tunnel ghoul in a second pure coincidental interaction that ignites Alex to make good on that stronger bond with Patrica by investigating her last known whereabouts.

Be a cannibal and consume “Raw Meat” on a new 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray 2-Dsic combo set from Blue Underground. Restored and scanned in 4K 16-bit from the original uncensored camera negative with Dolby Vision HDR and presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio, “Raw Meat” comes from out of the near total blackout of tunnelling darkness of standard definition and poorly contrasted previous Blu-ray editions with a precision of delineating crafting brilliance, adding depth of separation between object and background.  The HVC encoded,2160p ultra high-definition resolution, BD66 was well aimed to squash any compression issues, leaving blacks black and textures coarse that nearly lift off the screen.  You can actually try and count the whiskers on Christopher Lee’s caterpillar mustache.  Colors have also improved and enhanced in saturation without being overly intensifying; “Raw Meat” thrives on the dank, dark world of not only the abandoned tunnel line but also the cold and sleazed London streets.  Alex Thomson’s tunnel life aesthetic musters an earthy and dingy frontage and coupled with some hard glowing red, yellows, and the subsequently mix orange, there’s a real harrowing subterranean tone in the man’s macabre ossuary home.  The 2nd disc standard Blu-ray is AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD50.  Blue Underground’s release offers multiple audio options, including a new Dolby Atmos mix alongside the already established DTS-HD 5.1, both rendered in English.  Toggling between both surround sound mixes, there’s little-to-no difference in the immersive experience.  Atmos provides an echoier shaft experience that can be heard as directionless whereas the DTS specifies the reverberating soundwave direction based on channel markers.  Mind the Door is certainly more accentuated as it lingers through the chambers just a little more ubiquitous and chillingly underscored.  With no crackling or hissing, dialogue is clean, clear, and robust that solidifies Donald Pleasance as a master of quick wit and blunt investigation tactics as well as the track cherishing the quality of all other players involved.  Some instances of dialogue are ADR, likely due to poor record quality, resulting in an artificial separation between the action frame and the post-production recording.  Train sounds play a supporting factor and are acutely integrated into the design of a makeshift substation construction from an abandoned platform.  The other audio options include an English 1.0 DTS-HD and a dubbed French 1.0 DTS-HD.  English SDH are available.  Disc 1 – the 4K UHD Blu-ray – contains two commentaries a 1) archived writer-director Gary Sherman, producer Paul Maslansky, and assistant director Lewis More O’Farrell and 2) a new critique and analyst commentary discussion from film historians Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth.  Bringing up the UHD rear are radio/TV spots and various trailer cuts.  Disc 2 – standard Blu-ray – has all of the above on disc one plus an interview with writer-director Gary Sherman and executive producers Jay Kanter and Alan Ladd Jr. Tales from the Tube, an interview with star David Ladd, producer Paul Maslansky, and assistant director Lewis More O’Ferrall From the Depths, and an interview with the now late Hugh Armstrong, the cannibal tunnel man, Mind the Doors.  An extended poster and still gallery flesh out the standard Blu-ray’s supplemental content.  The classic poster art has been upgraded to a textile vision of blood red and half-naked men and women with blank chromium eyes within the embossed image on the slipcover and that extends to the sides and back of the O-slip.  The same illustration also graces the black 4K UHD Amaray as primary cover art, but this different variation has more natural coloring on the hair, tattered clothes, and skin tones on the white-eyed ghoulish faces.  The reverse side of the cover is the original “Death Line” titled cover art as seen on the old MGM DVD with the bearded man walking on the railway with a lit-up train to his back and a woman lying seemingly dead on the rails in front of him.  The Blue Underground release is Not rated, clocks in at 87-minutes, and is encoded to play in all regions.

Last Rites: A classic of subterranean horror, “Raw Meat” is much more than a broad line of cannibalistic terror. The new Blue Underground Ultra Hi-Def release illuminates the wretched state of being and the ugly truth of generational survival that provides a strange brew of compassion for the forced feral human who feeds on human flesh.

“Raw Meat” Its What’s for 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray Dinner!