Tag Archives: horror

EVIL’s Blonde, Beautiful, and Without Genitalia! “Darbie’s Scream House” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Uh Oh Darbie! “Let’s Go Buy “Darbie Scream House” on DVD!

In Doll Town, Darbie is the most popular doll around.  Blonde, beautiful, and busty, Darbie lives a perfect plastic existence.  When her boyfriend Ben wants to plan a surprise birthday bash for Darbie, Tripper, Darbie’s helpful yet gossipy little sister, interprets Ben’s interactions with Darbie’s friends – Danger Darbie, Ditzy Darbie, and Rodeo Darbie – as infidelity despite no evidence of sexual activity, as well no doll in Doll Town having genitalia, and reports back to Darbie with the unpleasant news.   With her perfect world seemingly crumbling down, Darbie pledges to rid Doll Town of her now ex-best friends by taking a big knife to them in vengeful spite, turning her dream life into a spiral nightmare based off a simple misunderstanding and an obsession with contentment, that drives her insane and no one from her friends to boyfriend Ben, to even her sister Tripper, are safe from her accessorial wrath.  

Former, or current depending on how you look at it, alternative adult content creator turned this next generations cult film scream queen, Jessa Flux (“Murdercise,” “Onlyfangs”) co-writes and co-produces her latest venture “Darbie’s Scream House,” a comedy-horror lampooning of Mattel’s Barbie universe.  Flux’s independent film talents hop aboard a legendary name of the same market in Donald Farmer.  The “Cannibal Hookers,” “An Erotic Vampire in Paris,” and “Hi-8 (Horror Independent 8)” filmmaker co-writes and produces with Flux while helming at the seat of the director’s chair.  Together, Flux and Farmer materialize a plastic doll world full of jealousy, rage, scandalmongering, debauchery, and homicidal tendencies.  Crowdfunded through Indiegogo, the campy horror parody.  The 2026 film is a production of Stratosphere Entertainment. 

Not only collaboratively writing and producing the feature, but Jessa Flux also stars as the titular character Darbie, the buxom queen of Doll Town with an amiable personality up to a point.  That point is when boyfriend Ben comes under the scrutiny of Darbie’s nosy, troublemaking sister, Tripper.  Claude D. Miles has collaborated with Farmer and Flux on a few other projects, such as Donald Farmer’s “Debbie Does Demons” and “Scream Queens Weenie Roast,” and between Flux and Miles, their rapport doesn’t seem forced as it’s flexed to work as comedic love interests in a parody setting.  Ana Xaden, another indie alternative horror actress, also has worked with Farmer, Flux and Miles on “Scream Queens Weenie Roast” from the year prior, turning the trio into a regular entourage for the “Cannibal Hookers” director.  Xaden also busts out along with Flux as the two become elementary with their dialogue, by that I mean their conversations, whether written in the script like this or just the style of acting incurred by spontaneity upon filming, has an artificiality to it with monotonic delivery and exposition.  Funny thing is, you only really see this flat conjecture between Darbie and Tripper, and maybe even a little bit from Ditzy Darbie (Ashleigh Amberlynn, “Night of the Dead Sorority Babes”) but that’s more expected because of her dunce character.  Ben conversing with Beach Blanket Ben (Joe Casterline, “Shark Exorcist 2”  Unholy Waters”), or any other minor male character, has more natural back-and-forth without any fabricated flavoring, and it’s curious to think that maybe “Darbie Dream House” has a layered depth to that nuisance that speaks to the fake talk and gossip associated generally around women and men letting it, generally again, hang all out.  The cast rounds out with Mel Heflin (“Scarlet Rain”) as aggressive lesbian Rodeo Darbie, Fallon Maressa (“Bloodrunners:  Vampire Wine”) as Dream Date Darbie, and Kasper Meltedhair (“Hooker with a Hacksaw”) as a Doll Town reporter with Kimberly Lynn Cole (“Bloodthirst”) listed in the credits but her scenes cut and placed in the special features’ deleted scene. 

This is not one of those This Is Not Barbie:  An XXX Parody type of film but “Darbie Scream House” very much cold have been with it’s dolled up and naked-positive female cast, male characters with bad wigs and depraved names like Sleazy Steve, and a premise around creeping sexual promiscuity.  However, blood axe-wielding aggression, reared by jealousy, fill in the gaps to level up a cheap stag production to a barebones indie horror that doesn’t take itself very seriously in this meta-existences for the chief characters who are playable dolls of a young, imaginative young girl but who are also moving autonomous with their movements and affairs that are not sanctioned by Barbie or Mattel for that matter.  “Darbie” is a different kind of female empowering doll but in the same breath lacks the informed judgement of a jump-to-conclusions partner, insecure and obsessive over people and ideals.  “Darbie Scream House” caters to that what if scenario if Barbie didn’t have mental positivity and broke into sociopathic tendencies?  The core of the story is there but does heavily rely on the gratuitousness of Jessa Flux, Ana Xaden, and Ashleigh Amberlynn to carry it over the finish line, yet the shoddy effects, poor acting, and mishandling of the meta perspective sink this Donald Farmer production like cemented pink platform and rhinestone shoes. 

This is a no playtime, you can be anything Barbie movie with a house in Malibu and driving a pink convertible.  This is “Darbie’s Scream House,” a bizarro, alternative universe mined form the same vein as the classic children’s characters, such as Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, and The Grinch, turned into monstrous villains of your nightmares.  “Darbie’s Scream House” is right up Wild Eye Releasing’s alley with plenty of against-the-grain filmmaking, attitude, and shlocky satire, now available on a DVD home video that’s an MPEG2 encoded DVD5 with 720p resolution.  Even if you’re player + television combo can upscale the quality, the image quality is limited to the commercial grade equipment with passable delineation and detail that offers immersive detail but gets the job done. Lots of the details are washed away also but the use of blue or pink saturating gels that flood tense moments of Darbie’s life on the downspin and much of the exteriors are ungraded, using natural the deflection of natural light to the best of their ability.  The English PCM Stereo 2.0 carries an unbalanced depth that’s inconsistent on keeping characters dialogue level within the shot.  Those closer to the camera often have strength priority with the second person only a step or two back sounding as if they’re a good ten yards away in the closeup-to-medium marked shots.  The recording mic also can’t sustain sounds beyond its limitations, such as screaming that breaks the reproduction into bits of static and distortion at high peaks.  Special features contain a blooper reel, a deleted scene, and feature and other Wild Eye Releasing trailers with the physical package sporting an embellished, AI generated cover, which I aways appreciate the fluffing-up of an indie film.  In this instance, the art doesn’t stray from the truth per se but aggrandizes the finer details quite a bit; however, the nice touch here is the Barbie font used for the title.   The reverse sleeve image inside the clear Amaray isn’t afraid to be gory with a severed head from the story that has been lightly touched up for effect.  The not rated DVD is region free for all players and has a runtime of 75 minutes, enough to satisfyingly slay. 

Last Rites: Jessa Flux’s “Darbie’s Scream House” skewers Barbie into an unperfect, deranged universe of emotional unstable killer toy dolls but leaves much on the table of possibility and has a hard time gluing together an airtight campy story that’s too reliant on the kink than the gore.

Uh Oh Darbie! “Let’s Go Buy “Darbie Scream House” on DVD!

Add This EVIL SOV to Your Halloween Watch List! “V/H/S/Halloween” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Spend Halloween With What Scares You on Blu-ray!

A new soda from the Octagon company is about to hit commercial retail shelves but before it does, voluntary testing is recorded for posterity with test subjects examined as they drink Diet Phantasma, a spirt-infused carbonate drink surely to die for.  In between the mopping up of test subjects, four more tales of terror penetrate the safety of the soul.  Two high school seniors go out trick-r-treating for one last mischievous hurrah only to find themselves trapped inside with Mommy, a matriarchal creature from the afterlife that kidnaps bad children on Halloween and makes them her own kids.  A night of revelry trespass onto the mansion grounds of a past gone necromancer who communicated with the dead and when the partygoers pickup the calls from the dead, a tremendous terror can’t go unanswered nor unseen.  Another group of adult trick-r-treater comes upon an unattended bowl full of obscure chocolates only to find themselves suck into the bowl itself and inside a desolate factory where the candymaker toys with his new fun size ingredients.  A media service aims to protect children with their videography services, especially from an unidentified abductor who mutilates and kills kids, but the service may be doing much more harm than good collecting children’s information as they walk through the store.  Lastly, a waning father-and-son bond over their makeshift Halloween maze turns into a nightmare when a record incantation brings to life each of the maze’s horrifying scenarios from ghosts to zombies, to child-eating witches.

For over a decade, the horror anthology series “V/H/S” has been terrifying audiences with short, original tales that break the scale of reality and enter a new dimension of horror that illuminated the careers of modern horror directors Ti West (“X”), Adam Wingard (“Godzilla vs Kong”), and David Bruckner (“Hellraiser” ’22), to name a select few.  The concept created by Bloody Disgusting’s founder Brad Miska in 2012 has one more installment with a new focus, Halloween.  All Hallow’s Eve already has a spooky air about it with a bit of treat to counteract its trick but in the 2025’s “V/H/S/Halloween,” there’s more sinister means than there are chocolates and sweets for new blood enters the series with filmmakers Bryan M. Ferguson writing-and-director “Diet Phantasma,” Anna Zlokovic writing-and-directing “Coochie Coochie Coo,” Paco Plaza directing and co-writing “Ut Supra Six Infra” with Alberto Marini, Casper Kelly writing-and-directing “Fun Size,” Alex Ross Perry writing-and-director “Kidprint,” and R.H. Norman helming a cowritten script of House Haunt” with Micheline Pitt-Norman.  Miska returns as producer alongside Michael Schreiber (“V/H/S/94,” “V/H/S/99”), Steven Schneider (“V/H/S/Beyond), Roy Lee (“V/H/S/Beyond),, James Harris (“V/H/S/85”), Josh Goldbloom (“V/H/S/94,” “V/H/S/99”), and Derek Dauchy (“Late Night with the Devil”) making his producing debut into the franchise.  “V/H/S/Halloween” is a coproduction of Shudder Films, Cinepocalypse Productions, Imagenation Abu Dhabi, and Spooky Pictures. 

In true “V/H/S” fashion, the anthological shorts include a cast few would be familiar with, fresh faces for the grinder as each short touches Halloween night in a different, diabolical way than what we’re use to seeing.  The wraparound story “Diet Phantasma” opens with the Octagon corporate COO Blaine Rothschild being escorted into the manufacturing and testing plant devising the experiment.  David Haydn takes charge of his COO character that flashes a false grin but conveys an authenticity directive while doing it that leads a number of testers to their carbonated demise, from a cast comprised of UK and American actors.  In “Coochie Coochie Coo,” mother knows best as minor hooligan high school friends Lacie (“Samantha Cochran) and Kaliegh (Natalia Montgomery Fernandez) embark on their last night of mischief before moving away to college and stumble upon a light-pulsating house where they discover milk-induced deform adults acting like babies and their six-breasted mother has more milk to give!  Cochran and Fernandez are in the shoes of characters you wouldn’t root for as they’re more rulebreakers than young women with healthy goals and desires as they smoke weed, steal candy from children, and overall take life for granted and the two actresses do criminal-type behavior with justice, pun intended.   Underneath Mommy’s unnatural milkers, talk stature, and evil grin, all underneath a white nightgown and bonnet, is Elena Musser’s phenomenally creepypasta take on fictional lore for the short.  The Spanish-language “ Ut Supra Sic Infra” opens with a back and forth between an interrogation of sole survivor Enric and his eye-removed, bone-crushed friends strewn about a medium’s sacred chamber where Enric, detectives, and his lawyer return to unearth what went down that night.  Spaniard Teo Planell runs polar opposite with his centralized character Enric who begins in fear and ends in wicked confidence as the re-enactment of events turns into a repeat of that fateful night.   One of the more unfavorable performance stories is “Fun Size,” a quirky, corporate consuming double entendre that teleports four friends into a human meat manufacturer that turns their smallest body parts into chocolate covered goodies.  Lawson Greyson (“Herman”), Jenna Hogan (“Surviving the Sleepover”), Riley Nottingham (“The Demoness”), and Jake Ellsworth’s (“Party of Darkness”) performances hit the nail of artificiality and not-so-fun sized corniness.  The cringe acting coupled with stilted dialogue will have audiences root for the antagonist, a candy-headed, crown-wearing, suit-sporting supernatural entity named Fun Size provided with his best “Terrifier” like playfully menacing movements by Michael J. Sielaff with “V/H/S/Halloween” not being his first rodeo with the series having played Pale Face & Babysitter in the “Stork” segment of “V/H/S/Beyond.”  “Kidprint” perhaps has the most disturbing and realistic tale of a child abductor and murderer with a storyline set in the late 80s-early 90s.  Stephen Gurewitz (“The Scary of Sixty-First”) plays Tim Kaplan, owner of Kaplan’s video services where parents can record VHS tapes containing their children’s appearance and information in case they go missing for XYZ reason, and the do-gooder shop owner becomes intertwined with the real killer, someone close to him, who has access to all the tapes and all the information needed to indulge his sociopathic whims, a role “Hostile’s” Carl Garrison was born to play.  Last short shows through home video the decaying stability of a son’s bond with his father over a shared interest in what is a natural progression of coming of age with the now teen boy who’s tired of being bullied by his peers for his dad’s obsession over a Halloween haunt maze he builds every year.  Jeff Harms and Noah Diamond are father-son Keith and Zack in the throes of phasing out their once beloved bond because of teenage angst and peer pressures.  That tension and rebinding of affection is interrupted by the sudden personification of their inanimate horror show that goes straight for the throat in a show of supernatural and classically-creaturfied blood shedding within a homemade maze, leaving teenage angst to be wiped up with a mop. 

Like most “V/H/S” installments, each entry has hits, and each has misses, and this first of its kind holiday-themed ‘V/H/S” anthology produces the same effect.  Spanning across decades from the 80’s to the 2000’s with a series no longer cornered by a particular era, each SOV production produces an original tale all of which grab a handful of disturbing and unsettling content, most with a gore edge.  “Coochie Coochie Coo” and “Fun Size” are two good examples with each carrying opposite elements that make horror horrifying.  Though both shorts are my personally my least favorite of the six, “Fun Size” offers that grossly disturbing factor that invades a person’s private parts for candy making satisfaction but the while the story is short and sweet, there’s nothing shuddering about it where as “Coochie Coochie Coo” trades the vulgar gore for another unsettling factor, pure creepiness that feels like one of those cheap survival horror PC games but can jump scare the hell out of you.  “Ut Supra Six Infra,” “Kidprint,” and “House Haunt” seize a more traditional inlaid suspense with a properly encased twist moment, quickly downgrading a tense by calm story evolution to spiral out of control with madness of monsters, maniacs, and mayhem violently gnashing what’s left of a good around the campfire spooky tale.  “Diet Phantasma” is also a neat premise with an evil spirit infused soda under a corporation eager for obedience and mind control, a metaphor for soda companies running the world as we see such situations in other countries where Coca-Cola is the leading provider of clean purchasable water.  Ferguson also treats fans with an homage to Tommy Lee Wallace’s “Halloween III” by riding a similar plot but with trick-or-treat masks that kill children to resurrect Gaelic, or Samhain, sacrifices.  The COO is also seen reading a Fangoria magazine with hee John Carpenter penned off-shoot sequel on the front cover, suggesting further the idolizing connection.

Acorn Media International distributes the Shudder production onto an AVC encoded, 1080p high-def resolution, BD50.  Like it’s predecessors, the imitated and authentic SOV shoots go through periods of interlaced distortions and static snow that simulate the signal interference, tape artefacts, and low quality, low-graded detail and saturation with some shorts elbowing their way into the cleaner digital camcorder era.  No issues with the true compression of the Blu-ray format; audiences will be pleased to see they will get exactly what the filmmakers’ intended, a harried shaky cam first person view that has it’s monsters looking right back at you under a veil of vagueness and to be a hostage to the purposed angles that translate immense fear just out of frame, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio rather than the organic 4:3 framing for the stories from the 80s to mid-90s with videotape.  The English and Spanish language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio has no issue delivering a vigorous and balanced mixed layers of sound depth based on design short that may contain areas of static, a weaker strength, and certainly a lot of screaming that reaches the mics physical limits to capture and reproduce the sound.  Dialogue is clear and prominent but, like I said, lots of screaming and wailing when events turn southward that it doesn’t matter often what is being said when it all just comes out of as chaotic cacophony.  I will say that “V/H/S/Halloween” is one of the better sound designed productions with more attention to the individual layering.  English subtitles are optionally available as well as French.  Special features include a director’s commentary for each short, a behind-the-scenes featurette for “Diet Phantasma” and “Coochie Coochie Coo” that’s is a swing between mostly raw footage during in between shots and some during shots with commentary here and there, a deleted scene from “Kidprint,” “Diet Phantasma” uninterrupted without the cut-to other shorts, “Diet Phantasma” faux commercial, and a gallery for the Ferguson short.  The physical appearances have the traditional “V/H/S” themed skull front and center on its one-sided sleeve art, sheathed inside the plastic of a Blu-ray Amaray.  There are no other tangible accompaniments.  The UK certified 18 film is region B locked and has a runtime of approx. 115 minutes. 

Last Rites: “V/H/S/Halloween” has original spooky tales centered around the holiday but as a collection, this anthology is a mixed bag of often great knee-buckling terror with considerable absurd tailspin that tries too hard to be scary out of the most unalloyed.

Spend Halloween With What Scares You on Blu-ray!

Bring Those EVILLY Responsible to US! “Garden of Love” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Collector’s Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Garden of Love” on Blu-ray from Unearthed Films!

Rebecca Verlaine is the sole surviving child of a brutal massacre of her family and fellow amity commune by masked killer.  Years later, attending university and in a relationship with a professor named David, Rebecca has not been affected by the tragedy because of her post-traumatic amnesia induced response, a protective reaction by her mind.  When Rebecca begins to see grotesque images and corpses talk to her through the television, to the point of being frozen in fear, her adopted Uncle and Aunt, acting in the role of her real parents, along with David divulge the horrible truth about her father’s slaying.  Unable to shake the feeling she must visit the site of the massacre; Rebecca is escorted by police to the building where the ghosts of the television physically manifest and will slaughter all those Rebecca brings to them in retribution of their unpleasant death.  Rebecca must somehow unearth and bring to post-humorous justice their killer, but little does she know those responsible are already closely intertwined into her life.   

Director and special effects artist Olaf Ittenbach is one of the few kings of independent splatter horror between mid-1990s to present.  The German-born, “Premutos:  The Fallen Angel” and “Dard Divorce” filmmaker has accumulated gorehounds over last two and half decades with outrageous gore effects to the likes of early days Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson and subtle comedic gags inside the ghastliness of bodies being literally ripped to shreds.  The 2003 released “Garden of Love,” aka “The Haunting of Rebecca Verlaine,” is a pure example of Ittenbach never letting loose the reins of cathartic, blood-soaked chaos with a simple tale of supernatural revenge.  Ittenbach cowrites the script with Thomas Reitmair, the third writer-director collaboration behind “Riverplay” and “Beyond the Limits,” and the director has total control over his production by serving as the executive producer financier under his studio company IMAS Filmproduktion in association with Benfeghoul Goldberg Filmproduktion and producers Yazid Benfeghoul (“Sky Sharks”) and Ricky Golderg (“Beyond the Limits”). 

Natacza Boon, the English actress behind acting in a parallel Ittanbach production “Beyond the Limits” the same year, stars the adult version of Rebecca Verlaine bewildered by the truth be told after learning of her amnesia and once ghastly ghosts begin to talk to her through television sets.  Boon does a good job selling the initial fear and then transitioning into acceptance that was she’s visioning is real, real enough to absolute slaughter anyone in a spray of blood spatter when crossing its path.  While Boon is English born, the rest of the cast also includes more Ittenbach entourage American with Daryl Jackson (“Beyond the Limits,” “Dard Divorce”) playing Rebecca’s secret-holding lover David and the German native James Matthews-Pyecka (“Beyond the Limits,” “Legend of Hell”) as the initial inspector on the Verlaine massacre returning to the cold case to assist Rebecca’s need to explore her forgotten history.  Through the differing nationalities and styles each performer brings to the this splatter film, their dynamics have synergy having worked in tandem with another and despite their difference languages there is no language barrier to be broken as the film is written and shot in English with Mattehws-Pyecka, and the rest of the living principal cast of Rebecca’s adopted parents in Uncle Don and Aunt Barbara (Donald Stewart and Alexandra Thom-Heinrich), communicating with clear pronunciation.  German musician and actor, Bela B., a stage name as the punk rock drummer and vocalist for Die Ärzte, has an equally primary role that opposites Boon in portraying her murdered father’s vengeful spirit.  Real name Dirk Albert Felsenheimer, he’s depicted mostly in gruesome face-wounded makeup and ghostly milky white eyes that haunt his onscreen daughter Rebecca from beyond the grave and manifest only in the building where he died (much like that BBC show “Ghosts” but Ittenbach did it first).  Felsenhaimer’s unique facial contours make for good prosthetic balefulness and frightful fear being the head ghost who doesn’t necessarily go for the throat right away like the others.

“Garden of Love” is a cut-and-dry revenge film from the other side with not just a touch of but a full five-finger death punch of gory exaggerated explosion from Olaf Ittenbach.  Gabe Verlaine, his daughter, and his commune of bohemians have their harmony violently stolen from them, creating disharmony in the afterlife.  Their unrest is stretched outward into the corporeal world as love and peace is replaced with hate and spite in stark contrast.  Yet, and this where the little things become lost to the ridiculously entertaining blood splatter, the reason why their group returns to take vengeance is far from being elucidated.  Apparently, Gabe is also sitting on a fortune for his…well…we don’t know.  He plays the guitar but there are hints of him being a talented musician, but it’s never explained on why he’s sitting on a nest egg that’s the overarching theme of greed ingrained into the “Garden of Love” story.  What’s not ambiguous is the practical effects done with complete care in all fields from Olaf Ittenbach and Tommy Opatz (“BloodRayne,” “Black Death”) special makeup and prosthetic effects to the flawless editing work of Eckart Zeraway to piece the components of a sequence together for seamless quality and relayed purpose, such as pulling out comedy from the slapstick splatter of bodies literally being torn apart.  Let’s not forget to mention Holger Fleig’s cinematography as he captures eldritch supernaturality to emphasize the undead commune in an European, specifically Italian, way with a glowingly colorful, backlit haze that’s denotes an otherworldly tone, a tinged musing of Michael Müller’s work in “Premutos, compared to the modernist and contemporary arrangements of a clean and minimalism look with the living done without specialized lighting.

Unearthed Films delivers more Olaf Ittenbach to a 1080p high definition transfer, AVC encoded, Collector’s Limited-Edition Blu-ray, a BD50 disc.  Plenty of storage capacity to handle Fleig’s aura lighting aesthetic that’s show pristine saturation inside the 35mm stock, a format departure for Ittenbach who regularly use of video was an antithesis to pinnacle quality.  With an aspect ratio of 1.77.1 widescreen, “Garden of Love’s” imagery looks good albeit some of its sterile mise-en-scene layering of a production set, colors are touched up nicely to provide a supernatural backlit of purple and blue gel lighting, diffused through a smoke machine that greatly cues the in-and-outs of Gabe Verlaine’s crew of the vengeful dead with an accompanying gore with a stark tone of red and black, and the compression coding is easily digestible on the extended capacity disc with no signs of artefact interference to note and no interruption from a preserved early 2000’s print.  Aforementioned, this German product is entirely shot in English, recorded during principal photography, and can be presented in either an uncompressed PCM 2.0 or an uncompressed DTS-HD 5.1 surround mix depending on your setup.  Dialogue can be a bit boxy, leans little toward overexertion within the scope of the production setup, and is not the native language of a few actors but through the release encoding the mix comes out nicely balanced and clear without any distortion.  Same can be said for the milieu and the action Foley, especially during the carnage of spirits versus the coppers that highlights the perforation of body, the squish and thwack from pulverizing, and the spray of the blood, resulting in a range of onomatopoeia that too includes gun shots and atmospheric reverberate. English subtitles are available.  Extras include a making-of featurette that provides raw footage from behind-the-scene of principal photography and the special effects gags, a second behind-the-scenes featurette with cast-and-crew clipped interviews, an Unearthed Films exclusive outtake reel that runs without audio for much of it, a new photo gallery, and the original trailer.  The first Blu-ray pressings include a limited O-slip cover with a new illustrated composition artwork on the front cover of the slip and inside the Amaray sleeve that showcases exactly what you’re getting – gore, ghosts, and an otherworldly glow – presented in a dark and soul peering artistic rendition.  I did find the slipcover to be annoying too tight around the case, making it difficult to remove the Blu-ray to the point of damaging the product.  The disc is pressed to resemble a vinyl, like the one used in the film to signal the arrival of the spirits’ malevolence.  The region A locked Blu-ray comes not rated and has a runtime of 89 minutes. 

Last Rites: Fans of absurd violence and gore need to see Olaf Ittenbach’s “Garden of Love” that’s not colorfully rich in all its limbs and viscera, as well as an ethereal lighting, on a new Blu-ray release from Unearthed Films!

“Garden of Love” on Blu-ray from Unearthed Films!

EVIL is Waking Up to Find Yourself Married as a Simple Wife to An Abusive Island Fisherman. “Splendid Outing” reviewed! (Radiance Films /Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Splendid Outing” on Limited Edition Blu-ray!

President Gong Do-hee is an elite executive on top of the business world that’s mostly male-dominated profession.  Securing trade agreements, being head speaker at events, and forming relationships with male peers of other nations, President Gong is exhausted by the end of the day, returning home to regain recharge even if that means not spending time with her two children by letting the governess oversee play and bedtime.  Vivid dreams of being called to the seaside by a mirror image of herself and her therapist reminding her of her dead twin sister in relation to the dream sends President Gong on a road trip to the shore where she’s tumultuous caught up in a riot and chased by a mob only to find herself waking up to four fishermen handing her off to an agitated Island fisherman, Lee Min-Joo, who claims to be her husband.  Seeming stripped of her life on the mainland, she’s constantly under surveillance and abused by Lee’s certainly of her place under him as a dutiful wife by cooking, cleaning, hosting, and taking care of their crippled daughter. Gong Do-hae plays along, submitting to Lee’s instruction, until the right moment to escape back to Seoul where her past life may not be there anymore. 

Coursing with gender inequality, patriarchal oppression, and imposter syndrome, director Kim Soo-young (“Sorrow Even Up in Heaven”) challenges reality with a surrealistic dissociation and inescapable threat of being forcibly tied to an insufferable situation in his 1978 drama-thriller “Splendid Outing.” The South Korean film, originally titled “Hwaryeohan wichul,” is written by Cho Moon-jin (“Dying in Your Arms”) as a personal nightmare where one loses their existence and cut off from the rest of the world, essentially torpedoing their life before and being replaced or forgotten.  Kim Tae-su’s longstanding Taechang Productions (“Deadly Kick,” “Red Eye”) produces the feature from Seoul on the mainland to the adjacent unnamed islands where filming took place.

Without dishonoring or neglecting her costars’ performances, Yung Jeong-hie is “Splendid Outing’s” one woman show as the stoically exhausted President Gong.  From her POV entrance being escorted to her office where the camera turns to face her undivided business façade to the moment she steps into her affluent home with a nanny and maid, the “Village in the Mist” actress can rub elbows with elite professionals as if gender didn’t exist but there’s still this unbalanced tension that’s unsettling for President Gong, one that’s a male-driven society that flippantly places expectations of systematic conventions in regard to women’s placement within the workforce and society.  That pressure through peer misconduct induces anxiety, subverting her subconscious into a trip toward the seaside where being called to ends up being appallingly costly in a mind-boggling spirit-breaking deconstruction of herself.  This is when she meets Lee Min-joo claiming to be her husband, a brutish fisherman with an abusive hand and tongue with stereotypical, old-fashion perspective on where wife should be spending their time.  “Eros” actor Lee Dae-kun rendition of the role depicts an uncouthly aggressive and maybe even on the spectrum with his island bumpkin behavior.  Lee Min-joo’s not niceties extent beyond his mistreatment of Gong with womanizing ways and thievery.  Being trapped on the island, there’s nothing Gong can do is bide her time, time the punishment, and try to use her decision-making skills for the right time to escape but even when she does, the life that she once knew is over like it never existed before.  Those who saw her daily only see a faint resemblance in who they now considered long dead, her children have moved out of their family home with no mention of a forwarding address, and even her bank accounts of whittled down to nothing to complete the total erasure of her life after a year of living on the island.  “Splendid Outing” rounds out with significantly minor supporting roles in Lee Yeong-ha as the visiting island doctor and Kim Jeong-ian as Gong’s island daughter. 

From the opening walk-through of President Gong’s daily schedule and interactions to the oppressive nature of Lee Min-joo’s husbandry, themes of inequality stack up and out of “Splendid Outing’s” Lynchian narrative that courses like a bad dream of subdued impostorism.  President Gong single-handed success is stolen away by the cackling jabs of male perception that women should get married, someone to take care of them.  That seemingly innocent interaction brings big consequences to the executive’s psyche, inducing dreams of the seaside and her sister, and influencing a far drive to an unnamed fishing town where she doesn’t provoke to be whisked away in an unconscious state only to awake married, handed off to a stranger claiming to be her husband.  From there, President Gong is not only top executive of her class but rather in the position she has feared most – in stereotypical relationship with conventional gender roles of men providing, women working, and its askew gender dominance controlled and welded like a weapon by the uneducated island man called her husband.  Other than dreams and flashbacks during Gong’s time on the island, Kim Soo-young doesn’t lean on fantastical uneasiness to culture the effect.  The situation itself bores that sensation right into your core and frantic motions kick in to try and piece the puzzle together of how, why, and when she ended up on a strange fishing island with a strange fisherman.  Combination of her twin sister and the seashore experienced during the dream deduces possibility – perhaps her twin sister isn’t dead but just ran away?  Or perhaps President Gong is mistaken for her deceased twin and the man claiming to be her husband is her brother-in-law?  And even with sprawling open-aired island with jagged rocky hills and lush nature, a feeling of claustrophobia encompasses her as there’s no escape from the island, a hovering over every move husband, and the distance between neighbors creates a sense of confining isolation.

Coming back from dead, President Gong lost everything, or so she thought.  For Kim Soo-young and “Splendid Outing” coming back from the video graveyard, their feature fairs better, gaining all the glow-ups of a new and improved release with Radiance Films’ Blu-ray.  The limited-edition, single disc Blu-ray, “Splendid Outing’s” world-wide debut on the format, comes AVC encoded with 1080p high-def resolution onto a BD50.  The digitized transfer is produced from a 4K scan from the 35mm negative stored at the Korean Film Archive that was sent to Radiance Films for restoration at the Heavenly Movie Corp and presented to us today in an anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  Overall, the picture looks phenomenal with a natural diffused saturation, depth of focus in the details between background and foreground, and a fabric texturing that presents no challenges to distinguish.  Skin coloring appears also organic and captures enough glinty sheen of sweat and wet soaked skin and the coarse nature of a days long stubble.  The original print has survived the test of time to assist in producing a freshened up and restored transfer but there are noticeable but minor and faint instances of vertical scratching, mostly on the viewers’ right side of the frame.  The Korean language PCM mono mix offers an adequate mix that harnesses the surrounding the background noise and integrates it harmoniously in with the dialogue and sound designed or hard sound effects.   Dialogue tops the layers with a vigorous ADR that matches the movements with pleasing synchronicity, especially early on in President Gong’s routine where numerous different languages are spoken, such as Japanese and English before entirely switching solely to Korean.  The range extends from the hustle and bustle of a city urbanscape to the coastal sounds of calling seagulls and water splashes against rocks and shores.  Improved English subtitles are available with this Blu-ray.  Limited to 2500 copies, the catch them if you can special features a new audio commentary from Ariel Schudson, writer of classic gender and Korean films, a new opinion interview with “Peppermint Candy” and “Burning” filmmaker Lee Chang-dong, a new interview with assistant director Chung Ji-young, and a Pierce Conran visual essay Stranded But Not Afraid:  The Island Women of Classic Korean Cinema.”  The interviews are in Korean with English subs.  The Blu-ray comes with Time Tomorrow’s new (primary) and the film’s original artwork (reverse) with an informational technical and synopsis obi strip behind the plastic of a clear Amaray case.  The disc is pressed in the Radiance Films’ conventional single block color of mostly pink with black lettering for the title.  The insert contains a 35-page color picture and essay booklet with essays and excerpts from Chonghwa Chung, director Kim Soo-young, and Pierce Conran along with the cast and crew credits and Blu-ray release notes and acknowledgements.  The region free playback gives all nations the availability to enjoy the 94-minute, unrated mainland to island mystery and psychological thriller. 

Last Rites: “Splendid Outing” is a trip down the rabbit hole and Kim Soo-young is Lewis Carroll surrealistically asserting our Alice, aka President Gong, onto a topsy-turvy island of a have-no-say and abusive marriage, ideals and concepts not of her own nor not of her favor. Soo-yonng’s story deconstructs the consummate family idea into an utter nightmare subverted by a male influenced traditionalist society.

“Splendid Outing” on Limited Edition Blu-ray!

EVIL Pays High Dollar to Hunt, Kill, and Play With their Prey! “Game in the Woods” reviewed! (Jinga Films – Danse Macabre / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Survive the “Game in the Woods!” Buy the DVD!

After her grandfather’s death, Ash travels through Texas with her brother Ted and girlfriend Sam to his isolated ranch cabin to be the first to claim his most valuable possessions before their Ash’s cousin, Bobbie Jo.  They arrive to find the cabin unlocked but about the same as it always been and go into woods for a little rest and relaxation, enjoying nature with a little alcoholic to supplement the relief of tension between the turbulent odds of Ash’s fast-and-loose ways and Sam’s more strict conservatism in regard to their relationship.  When they found a spray painted, screaming woman with a metal collar around her neck and a bear trap lodged into her ankle, they found themselves in the middle of a hunting party of masked men with melee weapons.  Ran by The Game Warden, Ash’s grandfather leased the land for a deadly game of sadistic clients hunting down non-English speaking immigrants for sport and depravity with their bodies no matter if they were alive or deceased. 

A surely bastardized version of “The Most Dangerous Game,” a novel that’s been re-imagined many times over about one man’s obsessive hunting for man, director Mike McCutchen follows up his debut violent chase thriller film “The Next Kill” with “A Game in the Woods” as his sophomore feature that eases him into the horror and exploitation subgenre.  McCutchen cowrites the script with Drew Thomas, the first feature film writing credit for the “Sex Terrorists on Wheels” cinematographer, and is based off a story by the collaboration between McCutchen and Drew Guajardo set in the boondocks of nowhere, Texas where land is aplenty and help is scarce if cried for.  The 2024 produced picture is a product of McCutchen’s Austin, TX based Fault Pictures and is produced by J.J. Weber (“The Next Kill”) with Andrew Bragdon and Kyle Seipp serving associate producers with Lonnie Seipp in the executive producer role. 

Eleanor Newman and Emily Skeen play the lesbian couple Ash and Sam and I make it a point to call out their characters’ sexuality because it feels inherently important to the story.  Newman comes to light in the sophomore Mike McCutchen feature that takes her from out of a minor role to a key lead, if not near final girl protagonist, in the unconventional fearful female but rather head-on heroine in “A Game in the Woods.”  Skeen’s more sensible Sam becomes a quasi-damsel in distress without the distressing part but tries to formulate plans on the fly to escape her demented captors.  Ash and Sam have a palpable troubled relationship like oil and water but find themselves commingling when the right sadistic additives are involved, spearheaded by the apathetic Game Warden from John P. Crowley who also finds himself in a more visible and prominent principal role.  Crowley’s Game Warden harnesses a Bill Moseley energy and sarcastic tone but not in a carbon copy way that adjusts just enough to make confident and cocky Game Warden is own.  The lesbian portion of Ash and Sam does feel engrained into the narrative, especially with two women with shortened names for Ashley and Samantha but it also implies a male identity, as if equal sex.  All the women in the story have a common them about them too, they all have tenacity and a fighting spirit from Ash and Sam’s battling Crowley and the masked hunters to the captured women who fight and kill, to even Ash’s cousin, Bobbie Jo (Grace Robbins), who joins in on the offensive fight for survival.  There are zero helpless women, which is an amazing elemental theme and characterization.  As mentioned, all the male hunters wear masks, hiding themselves behind theiran masks, and the hunted men are tied to an object, make poor decisions, and just have no fight in them.  Even Ash’s brother Ted (Jamison Pitts) doesn’t put up resistance when confront and is more of the farting, comic relief.  Aside from the Game Warden, the male presence is weak charactered by far.  The hunters and the hunted fill out with Gary Kent, Steve Wilson, Kevin Corn, Caroline Schmitt, Doug Field, Scott Kimbrough, J.J. Weber, Ray L. Perez, Kyle Seipp, Yane Carvalho, Lonnie Seipp, Morgan Faber, and Michelle Mendiola with Lloyd Kaufman (“The Toxic Avenger”) making a cameo appearance. 

Working on one’s relationship with their partner usually takes a time, some self- reflection, or maybe even a little therapy.  For Ash and Sam, they come together be means of violence, tossed into the throes of their grandfather’s ghastly involvement in man’s flawed thirst for the cruel and unusual sadism, and though there’s never a come to Jesus epiphanic moment that they can overcome anything, the blood-soaked trial by fire is proof enough.  McCutchen immerses the women, and explosive collar device and spray-painted prey, into a whole new world of hurt in Earth’s backyard.  The clandestine organization the Game Warden works for laces are slightly untied and unkempt with the full scope of their national, maybe even international, chapters of a snuff wonderland where murder is king and nearly anything goes from chopping up bodies to molesting corpses.  McCutchen brings enough gore to the table without it being over gratuitous and overkill, literally.  Exploding heads, a chainsaw eviscerated torso, body parts strewn here, there, everywhere are what to mostly expect as the game devolves with the hunters becoming the hunted as the emotional depth is quickly pushed aside for the conflict ensued rising action, leaving no time for Ash and Sam to master their relationship troubles as the spider never contemplates life when winged food is snared in it’s web. 

From Danse Macabre and Jinga Films LTD comes “A Game in the Woods” on region free, R-rated DVD.  Encoded with MPEG-2 compression onto a single layer DVD5, the film is presented in with an upscale 720p resolution and a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Basking in the warmth of a dessert brown and tan, Cinematographer Zedrick Hamblin DiMenno opts for a natural approach aesthetic that focuses heavily on the medium-close to extreme closeup shots of gory bits and pieces of tear away flesh.  There’s nothing too terribly stylistic to note with only a hint of television glow and a momentarily use of key lighting with interior scenes.  Compression encoding goes without a hitch that captures image reproduction just find for viewing pleasures, losing only some minor background details of blended foliage and objects viewed from afar.  The English audio formats include a PCM stereo 2.0 and a 5.1 Surround.  The surround sound mix will be the preferred option dependent on your audio setup as the environment layers diffuse evenly through the back and side channels, leaving dialogue and proximity action, such as the kill scenes, to translate with full-bodied effect to squeeze out every squish and squirt from the practical effects carcass.  There are ideal pitch, tone, and range with the clear and prominent dialogue without any underlining interference or hissing effect through the clear, digital recording.  English subtitles are available for selection.  Aside from the feature trailer on the main static menu, there is no other encoded bonus content.  Though the movie is engaging enough through evisceration through torture and there’s a a glimmering theme of women empowerment, if I saw this DVD on the store shelf, the cover art isn’t attractive enough to pickup with its dark imagery of a shadowy hunter drawing his bow toward something off scene.  The façade doesn’t offer a flutter of fancy and there’s no other physical features to warrant a second glance if physical media shopping.  However, give this region free film a once over and there’s a solid film underneath’s it’s dull shell. 

Last Rites: Despite the run-of-the-mill, uninspired DVD cover, check out this sadistic Jinga Films and Danse Macabre “Game in the Woods” where the hunt is solely for the thrill to kill.

Survive the “Game in the Woods!” Buy the DVD!