Tag Archives: horror movies

Stick With Jordan Peele’s EVIL Social Commentary. “Afraid?” reviewed! (Cleopatra Entertainment / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

What Are You “Afraid” of? Check out the DVD now Avialble!

After going through a physical domestic violence incident with her aggressive stepfather that ended with her a little banged up and with his arrest, Sarah can’t wait to spend time with her high school friends at an isolated cabin near Bin Bow Lake over the Halloween season.  Sarah feels like a fifth wheel while her friends have significant others in their party of five, but she makes the best of the situation with anything being better than at home on the weekend with her abuse-recovering mother and unpleasant memories of her stepfather, but the boozy, time-alone getaway turns into a fight of survival when a masked killer targets them, hunting them down one-by-one.  With no cell service, the car not starting, and not a single person around to help, the group scrambles for options of escaping the killer’s malice aforethought in a rural area that wasn’t all that friendly toward their kin color to begin with. 

Claiming to have the same Jordan Peele story vibes, “Afraid?” is the Sky Palmer, aka SkyDirects, helmed urban slasher from 2025 that faces social justice issues point blank in front of a masked killer backdrop.  “Afraid?,” aka “What Are You Afraid Of?,” is the sophomore feature length film for the California-born director fashioned from his own screenplay treatment with an infused racial overtone amongst the horror trope allotment.  The PR and communications tech startup founder and film director SkyDirect’s involvement doesn’t quit there as writer-director, as he also serves as executive producer under his production company SkyDirects Flix alongside co-executive producers with Cleopatra Record’s film entity, Cleopatra Entertainment, with “Frost” and “Cocaine Werewolf’s” Tim Yasui  and Brian Perera, who handle the exclusive distribution of the film, with freelance producers Gregory Mejia and Brian Cooper, the latter Cooper having collaborated with SkyDirect’s debut feature, “Run Nixon.”

The urban thriller is cast with primarily African-American actors and Caucasian actress Rezia Thornton in a semi-lead protagonist role of Sarah with the teen girl’s harrow opening skirmish with an aggressive stepfather and she also becomes the bookend storyteller of survival stemmed from events involving four of her friends, a pair of romantic couples, looking to getaway for a weekend as a group.  Thorton’s doesn’t portray to be your traditional mayo-vanilla character as she fits socially inside the dynamic of culture that surrounds her.  Kendre Berry plays Terrence, a high school football athlete exploring the possible opportunity of collect scholarship while testing the potential distant relationship waters with Latina girlfriend Lisa (Teairra Mari).  Berry and Mari are to have a strong character bond tested by the Sarah’s flirtatious eyes for Terence and while there’s a moment of heated tiff between the lovers, they go right into the one trope you’re not supposed to do in a horror movie, do sex acts in the woods.  The contention is nothing more than a spat when Sarah’s brought in under fire from Lisa’s Latina wrath in a nearly forgotten character plot foil.  Those types of fizzling devices extend to the other couple, Jamal (Gemaine Edwards) who is a military prospect and Jasmine (Nakosha Briggs), with Jamal’s decision to quit his path toward service because of military operations and causes he can’t support because of their support for wealthy interests.  This too gets murky inside the couple’s progression with the quick snap introduction of the killer, never influencing their characters and acts in a solely spout-off with the movie being a platform to convey the message, a common theme throughout “Afraid?’s” hollow horror shell.  There’s one character Dexter (but credited as Nerd Kid?) trips into the discussion of getting away this weekend during their high school hallway hangout, as if part of the crew, but never makes the trip and isn’t seen again in an odd character introduction of wasted space and missed opportunity to become kill-or-hero fodder.  The rest of cast rounds out s and to support to Sarah’s backstory and suspicious rednecks, any of which could be our killer, with Michael A. McGrath, David Ian Wood, P.T Ashlock, and Ashley Heath. 

SkyDirect’s entry into the slasher genre is exploited for platform messaging gain on social and political issues and conspiracies against race and culture as well as the American dream, subverted by wayward government intentions and systematic bigotry of authoritative figures.  “Afraid?” is a film that’s compared to the likes of Jordan Peele, using horror as a metaphor for the undertone, and also often blatant, glitches in American society, typically against African-Americans and other minority groups.  However, “Afraid?” very much feels like a bald-faced weaponization, like a caricature of concept, that doesn’t try to hide the fact under a blanket of horror as characters play into conventions and stereotypes with a hefty amount of exposition to back it up.  The idea of “Afraid?” is that fear inside every black person’s they’re made to be the target of prejudice, whether by the Podunk population of rural, nowheresville America or by unprovoked police offers who question their late-night purposes.  Scenarios of being shot run through their mind, depicted in an unjust nature, and even the interaction with an uber-creepy, stuttering roadside assistant instills a fear despite him being nothing but helpful with their flat tire.  SkyDirect’s introduction of multiple characters with callback actions and lines don’t ever flesh out, such as with Sarah’s abusive stepfather opening that doesn’t add anything to the rest of the storyline or Terence and Gemaine’s partially contentious friendship with a corner drug dealer who was a high school friend where Gemaine’s beef with him is never fully opened and explored.  The acting from the cast renders over fine enough but the scripted dialogue is hackneyed and exclamatory hyperbole in its stating of the obvious that it makes scenes almost painful to hear.  All these negative elements take away from the film’s core slasher theme that does have some decent kills and a definite eerie atmosphere and appearance. 

Cleopatra Entertainment distributes their co-produced venture on DVD home video, a MPEG2 encoded DVD5 with an upscale 720p standard definition, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio.  Despite its narrative and character shortcomings, “Afraid?” has a polished picture with a dark, cold grading with a higher contrast to formulate shadow work around the tenebrous trees to the ominous inky corners of a pitch-black cabin without power.  Cobalt toned in its processed coloring, and perhaps some gel work here and there, brings traditional horror color schemes back to the horror table.  Details are not too terrible either but can be eroded by the grading’s creeping shadows and some scenes fair better than others, such as medium-to-close up shots are better equip to handle capacity pixels rather than drone medium-long-to long shots with a drone or a crane, you see the image start to block when Sarah becomes lost in the woods and the camera pulls and away from overhead.  Though not listed, the DVD comes with an English PCM 5.1 surround sound mix.  The audio assortment finds fair footing amongst it’s clear and verbose dialogue that’s the dominating layer, it’s ambience that places last amongst the layers but still pulls off a variety of diegetic and non-diegetic environment noises in a spooky-laden, rain-drenched woods with potent thunder and a deluge of pelting rain pitter-patter, and a vigorous selective soundtrack produced and hyped by its Cleopatra Records’ artists DMX, Pleasure P, and Mase, to name a few.  Bonus features include promotional trailer clips of the film and a image slideshow with the physical DVD, inside a standard tall Amaray, has a photoshop rendered image of a masked killer looking through inky eye openings and over his shoulder with title just below and the tagline Don’t Look Back underneath that.  Disc is pressed with the same image and there are no other extra materials inside.  The 89-minute production is not rated and is region free for global playback,

What Are You “Afraid” of? Check out the DVD now Avialble!

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!

To Bring Life into Existence, One Must Go Through the unscrupulous EVIL Trials and Tribulations. “The Last Frankenstein” reviewed! (DiabolikDVD / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Last Frankenstein” on Blu-ray from DiabolikDVD

Jason Frankenstein is the great grandson from a long ancestorial line of corpse reanimators.  Feeling unfulfilled in life and his destined legacy, Jason goes through the motions of being a hospital’s physician assistant and putting up with his less ambitious girlfriend, Penny.  When a disfigured serial killer is brought into his hospital, Jason immediately recognizes the shell of a man as his grandfather’s reanimated corpse brought back to life with the family’s secret elixir, Adrenarol.   Hiring two crooked, drug-dealing EMTs to do his kidnapping bidding in exchange for medical grade drugs and with the assistance of a confidential nurse with a disreputable past, Jason sets to complete what his grandfather started by creating his own living, breathing, thinking monster with the family reanimating formula.  Selective hacked up body parts, double-crossing henchmen, and a troublesome manmade man goes against his birthright grain with the only path forward soaked in the blood created by his own hands. 

Resurrected from the depths of just a concept and electrified by crowdfunded, “The Last Frankenstein” is alive, ALIVE!, from writer-director David Weaver in his debut feature length film.  The U.S. film from 2021 was set and shot in Weaver’s hometown of Amsterdam, New York, just northwest of the state capital of Albany.  Labeled as an existential slasher, extracted from Mary Shelley’s classic gothic novel, Weaver sought to recreate exploitation films of the 1970s-1980s with a raw façade, gruesome practical effects and gore, and an assortment of cynical characters in a story that tells of generational expectations, the pressures of living up to greatness, being the last of one’s family surname.  The Kickstarter production raised $13,500 for mostly the shooting costs with much of the post work being completed by Weaver to maintain low costs and is a production of Gila Films with Jay Leonard producing.

“The Last Frankenstein’s” acting tone is a curious one.  Complex with the desire to conquer death with footnotes of drug peddling and murderous EMTs, longing relationships and carnal stress releases, and death, much death, there’s a severe lack of emotion amongst the character pool, delivering a consistent and constant cadence of flat intonations.  The same expression is pretty much splayed onto each face with attitudes and personalities to match in a widespread of white bread acting.  In a way it works toward the story’s apathetic and cynical nature but while Frankenstein’s monster lives with a new life, “The Last Frankenstein” cast utterly is lifeless, beginning with the lead actor William Barnet in the titular role and though a doctors are conventionally attributes plainspoken, carry an unbiased inflection, and eve have some sense of being on the spectrum, perhaps, Barnet’s lukewarm woodenness extends beyond his reach and to the rest of the lot.  There’s no concern or fear in Nurse Paula’s (Keelie Sheridan) eyes when her acquaintance is killed by Jason Frankenstein or that the doctor is trying to resurrect the dead, no anger, resentment, or guilt from the two stoic ambulance drivers (Jeff Raiano and Ulisses Gonsalves) covertly dealing drugs and doing Frankenstein’s dirty work, and there’s definitely no life behind Frankenstein’s monster’s eyes, neither his grandfather’s nor his, that’s very opposite to the legacy portrayals by Boris Karloff’s sadness, Robert De Niro’s revenge, or Peter Boyle’s joy and fear.  This different take on the canopied story has the creature boiled down to a Jason Voorhees type, especially with eldest creature (Roderick Klimek) that looks very much like hockey mask slasher from the backside and even kills like him too.  Jason Frankenstein’s version, played by Michael Wetherbee, at least shows some reserve, some kind of calculation happening behind the flesh-stitched face, and does abide by his apathetic opportunity to kill but also resists the juggernaut chase to slaughter even if detrimental to his existence.  What that resistance is that holds him back goes without exposition or a vague sense of implicit explanation but it’s a performance that renders the most feeling in a rather frozen stiff guild of actors.  Jana Szabela plays Jason’s girlfriend Penny, Brett Owen plays Jason’s father in flashbacks, and cult actors Jim Boelsen (“Strange Behavior,” “The Curious Case of the Campus Corpse”) and the late Robert Dix (“Forbidden Planet,” “Horror of the Blood Monster”) also costar.

The creature’s Gothically enriched surroundings, darkly and bleakly trimmed with elaborate castles inside sinister castles and grotesque in unordinary shapes, styles, and hauntings, are more than replaced by David Weaver’s backwoods entry into the electrified monster.  Trading castles for cabins and grandiose laboratories for makeshift surgical rooms, “The Last Frankenstein” utilizes what’s immediately around, and in this case it’s Weaver’s hometown of Amsterdam, New York, a quaint, post-industrial smalltown surrounded by brick homes, rundown factories, and woodland that gives the story an unconventional look and approach while keeping true to the basic principles of Frankenstein and his monster.   With the idea that small towns hold secrets, “The Last Frankenstein” leans into the problematic drug problem less populated areas encounter with most turning a blind eye or ignorantly keeping their blinders down to the transgressions that are happening right underneath their noses.  In this instance, the drug dealing EMTs are utilized via blackmail but deal to come out better than before with more peddling product than before without risking exposure through a doctor approved sign out sheet for narcotics, which is how Frankenstein caught onto their scheme.  To dig deeper into that latter statement, Frankenstein is the smartest amongst his living peers but can’t seem to understand and figure out his and his ancestor’s creations that go against his family tree in a visceral and violent protest of what it means to live, promoting once again that anti-God actions spoil the fruits of man.  There’s a show of arrogance and false omnipotence to cheat the natural course of death found in all the Frankenstein subject films and those who create variations of the filmography, such as with “Re-Animator” and “The Lazarus Effect.”  

The film may be called “The Last Frankenstein” but it’s the first title with the DiabolikDVD label as a company release.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 Blu-ray is presented in the original widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1.  “The Last Frankenstein” favors a neutrally saturated raw image, capturing a lot of the natural greenery and aesthetic of nearby woods, creeks, and other characteristics of rural America, including trailer parks, post-industrial buildings, and wood paneling interiors.  The surrounding intricacies of a clearly puttied and latex mask used for the Frankenstein grafted facial skin looks like a true mask instead of skin but that’s the very intention of a created being, pieced together in slapdash stitchwork to add a layer of differentiation much like the original monster’s scars or bolt.  General particulars around exteriors and interiors are clearly defined with the consistent laid out image quality that produces ordinary smalltown charm contained to limited landscapes and mostly the direct environs that are not exactly cinematically picturesque but does depict the visual boredom of the vicinity.  The sole audition option is an English LPCM 2.0 stereo that reproduces faithful fidelity of the dialogue and diegetic action within the front channels.  The foley and Steve Noir’s poignant trance of a synth score are a little more girthier bodied to fill the entire medium that get to being comical in action (in foley) yet powerfully bleak and hypnotic (in score).  Dialogue is clean, clear, and in the forefront mostly, often vying for position with Noir’s repetitive and pulsing soundtrack portions. English SDH are optionally available.  Special features include feature-length commentary with writer-director David Weaver and producer Jay Leonard, a second commentary track with Weaver, a making-of featurette Reanimating the Last Frankenstein that goes through cast and crew interviews, the Kickstarter campaign, and a creation thought process for the concept and its materialized conception, deleted scenes, outtakes, still gallery, and a mentioned bonus easter egg listed on the back cover but unable to locate it on the disc. The reviewed copy isn’t the DiabolikDVD exclusive with limited slipcover, but the standard Blu-ray comes one-side cover art that actually requires the slipcover in its muted and dark composition of characters with no title, only the subtitle Nothing Lasts Forever, which makes me believe the slipcover is the one and only primary cover art. The 102-minute featured release comes not rated and region free.

Last Rites: Not to be a wash, rinse, and repeat of the canonical Frankenstein films, “The Last Frankenstein” is creature feature-lite in toneless, small-town adversities of creating an existence that requires life and limb…many, many limbs.

“The Last Frankenstein” on Blu-ray from DiabolikDVD

To be a Rich and Famous Rockstar, You Must Sign with EVIL! “Hell’s Bells” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Sign Your Soul To Satan for the “Hells Bells” on Blu-ray!

A pair of middle-aged best friends and rockers named Arthur and Herb have minimum waged jobs, no ambitions, and two level-headed wives on the brink of divorcing them if nothing changes.  All the friends have is their band, Devil Music, and their glam rock music. Out of the blue, a music talent agent signs them in a heartbeat and before they know, Devil Music is rocking out to a packed-full arena full of adoring fans and obsessed groupies, raking in money beyond their capabilities of higher counting.  What they’re oblivious to is the band’s collective souls now belong to the Devil under the contract terms with the servile music agent doing the Devil’s fear-based bidding and whose life and soul hangs in the balance.  When the Devil comes to collect, sending his demonic minions to slay each member of the band, Arthur and Herb must find a way to save themselves from the Devil cancelling their life show forever. 

For over a decade now, filmmakers Jim O’Rear, who’s minor zombie role in George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” has launched a career in indie horror in front and behind the camera with “Hayride Slaughter,” “Three Tears of Bloodstained Flesh,” and the “Cruel Summer” trilogy,” and Scott Tepperman, who’s more recent filmography into the indie market also saw highlights of horror, have been in business together ever since co-starring in the 2013 haunted hospital flick, “Hospital.”   From then on, the two had formed their own production company, Los Bastardz Production, specializing in low-budget horror with a select entourage of talent.  The devil and his contract film, underscored with a rock-n-roll fame theme, released in 2020 is duo’s “Hell’s Bells,” a horror-comedy built around if it seems too good to be true, it probably is narrative.  “Hell’s Bells” is also produced by the two filmmakers.

Like most of their produced product, it comes to no surprise that the Los Bastardz themselves, Jim O’Rear and Scott Tepperman step in the principal leads of a Beavis & Butthead or Bill & Ted type of heavy metal music centric duo who are daft beyond repair.  Any innovation aimed for the setup is instantly dissolved by the derivative tepidness as we’ve seen these characters before over the decades now, but O’Rear and Tepperman make for a good dimwitted and guileless pair with a gullibility and an innocence that makes them appear sympathetically simpatico, even when their levelheaded wives (Rebekah Erb, “Death Care,” and pornstar Layla Dawn. “Slumber Party Slaughter Party”) use threatening divorce language to motivate their one-track mind toward another desire in life.  The jokes are a bit long in the tooth and there are a handful of needless fart jokes, but the overall gags do land even if the terrain they contextually touch down on is rocky at best as they play to their individual character strengths of being a grocery bagger enthusiastic about making it big and a loafer who actualy has some intelligence underneath his Jesus hairstyle.  Their band mates, the cocky loudmouth drummer Vic (Paul Van Scott), the butch backup singer Shirley (Lisa Kirk), and the catatonic bassist Gary (Cameron Scott), all have their own quirks, and all are played by actors familiar with El Basterdz having donned roles in previously produced films from the company, such as the “Cruel Summer” series.  As the band Devil Music, they are targeted for soul reaping as a part of a contract byproduct against their music agent Caleb (Tom Komsar), drawn up by the devil himself in Marc Price (“Trick or Treat”) by duplicitous means with deceitful promises.  Without the horns, pitchfork, and red skin, Marc Price makes for a good Devil in human skin with only the economized visual effects fashioned glowing eyes.  Harold McLeod II preludes the story as a victim of contract, Cayt Feinics draws attention with a show of toplessness as Shirley’s lover, Jerry Reeves plays the demon x many going after Devil Music, and a sorely underutilized Jimmy Maguire, as the exasperated grocer manager tired of Arthur and Herb’s lack of common sense, fill out “Hell’s Bells” cast.

To preface with my previous experience with El Basterdz films, “Cruel Summer” didn’t do it for me with a dowdy slasher that’s didn’t leave impression.  Yet, “Cruel Summer” has two sequels plus a 4th soon to be on home video, making this series their most popular commodity.  What can I say?  Cinema is subjective.  That bad taste didn’t deter “Hell’s Bells” from the ever-growing review pile and a second chance to get this long-time horror fan aboard with Jim O’Rear and Scott Tepperman’s blithe outlook toward the horror genre, one that doesn’t take itself too seriously.  With that understanding, going into “Hell’s Bells” was rather easy with no expectations for commentative material and top-notch gags and laughs, but what El Basterdz provides has been long appreciated and continuously favored in genre films:  decent VFX, decent practical effects, and, of course, the provocation of nudity.  There may be times when films can get away with having only one of those key elemental pieces present with great immensity and intense projection that the film can’t be denied it’s due right to seen and heard as a well-made film but have all three and the formula works like a charm amongst genre fans no matter how bad the storyline gets and no matter how bad the acting is portrayed, leveling up a mediocre production to potentially the penthouse of the independent skyscraper.  To be fair, neither the story nor the acting in “Hell’s Bells” is atrocious but the technical aspects during principal photography and post-production throw the film off-balance into slapdash hogwash and that can be rather off-putting right out the gate for most audiences.

“Hell’s Bells” finds itself being a story having been told before, many times over in its airheaded budding duo faced with great task none think possible to complete, but O’Rear and Tepperman manage to befit themselves satisfactorily in archetype with a rock-n-roll nightmare by sticking to their character quirks and incorporating the backbone preferences of shoestring genre filmmaking.  SRS Cinema is a distributing house built on shoestring films and “Hell’s Bells” is another brick in its schlock-sturdy foundation with a Blu-ray release.  Encoded with AVC compression, presented with 1080p high-resolution, on a 25GB BD-R with the purple underbelly, “Hell’s Bells” looks pretty good for commercial grade encoding and minimal capacity.  Details are sharp enough to cause no concern to capture skin variations, the contrasting wardrobe textures, and the shifting compositions between reality and fantasy stemmed from visual effects and fade-in/fade-out montage sequences.   Scenes are mixed bag of grading, some more intense than others that are set with a brighter natural veneer, but all retain their intended quality without any substantial issues from compression.  The English language LPCM 2.0 stereo renders a mix of feeble commercial equipment and green technical knowledge that permits a large noticeable swing in all areas of principal sound recording with most of the pain points affecting dialogue with retreated vocal presence in certain scenes while robust in others, and even an in-moment change of the same scene at times.  Post sound design isn’t marred by the same scenarios that’s a clear as crystal with the added rock soundtrack, crowd cheers, and demonic gutturals.  No English subtitles are offered.  Special features include a commentary track with writer-directors Jim O’Rear and Scott Tepperman, a behind-the-scenes featurette, Arthur and Herb’s Devil Music music video, blooper reel, the feature trailer, and SRS Cinema catalogue trailers.  SRS Cinema’s Blu-ray mirrors their limited 100 count release without the director’s signatures, retailed with a regular Blu-ray Amaray case with illustration composition artwork of mostly the chief principal characters, and as always, the graphic artistry SRS uses is always 100x better the film.  There are no other physical accompaniments.  The not rated release has a runtime of 80 minutes and has region free playback. 

Last Rites: Throw up the sign of the devil horns for “Hell’s Bells’s” comedic contract with a hair metal Satan, but don’t let this narrative fool you by hawking new something old and done before.

Sign Your Soul To Satan for the “Hells Bells” on Blu-ray!

EVIL’s Casting Couch Could Be the Last Audition! “Young Blondes, Stalked and Murdered!” reviewed! (Anchor Bay / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Not Red Heads, Not Brunettes, Blondes! “Young Blondes, Stalked and Murdered!” on Blu-ray!

Stacy and Josie are two aspiring young actresses living in Los Angeles.  Both women are blonde and both ambitious to make it big in acting while being friends vying for the same work in the difficult industry that involves casting couches and who-knowing-who to get even just a foot into the door.  As Stacey’s journey to fulfil her acting career stumbles role-after-role, especially after a unique pre-casting session with a film director named Sasha, she finds that Josie receives role interest from the same director.  The pressure gets under Stacey’s skin to where nightmares evoke jealousy and a thin layer of fear, raised by the widespread terror of blonde women, also aspiring actresses, being discovered horrible murdered by a killer who records every kill.  Stacy pushes forward but her friendship with Josey wanes with her casting success and the news of more blonde actresses found gruesomely murdered unlock her nightmares to their full potential. 

“Young Blondes, Stalked and Murdered” catches the eye with a lustrous, vice-drenched title, but the narrative layout is anything but candidly conventional.  The film can be described as a reverse slasher that keeps the serial killer of young, blonde actresses in the peripherals integrated ever so delicately inside a character study of the principal lead, in this case with Stacey, a Minnesotan with stars in her eyes.  Those stars eventually lose their sheen, but the desire doesn’t dull amongst a deficiently of roles for an overabundance of the same type of actress going for them.  For writer-director, “Young Blondes, Stalked and Murdered” is Nick Funess’s first feature-length production based loosely on the trials and tribulations of young women cat scratching their way into the business with a hairline hook of a maniac with a murdered type.  Silence Films serves as the production company with Corentin Leroux and Matt Morello co-executive producing alongside Funess for the L.A. shot film.

Inhabiting as the primary character learning the curve of your desired trade is Samantha Carroll in her second full-length feature role but first at the helm as the star.  However, as Stacy, Carroll plays a character who doesn’t feel like her longed dream of being a star.  Instead, Stacy plays by the rules as if there’s a guide or a playbook to becoming a successful on-screen thespian.  Carroll’s range of emotions can peak from mile excitement to absolutely feeling crushed by the weight of failure.  Disdain and jealousy also rear their ugly heads in between inside a structure that isn’t exclusive in following Stacy as Josie runs a parallel course with less touch-upons in the grind that is to follow one’s dreams.  Elle Chapman’s more dolled up for the role by accentuating her natural beautiful for perkier and more cosmetically inclined haughtiness to contrast her conceit against Stacy’s honest efforts.  Though Funess essentially wraps the story around two actresses, the extent of supporting actors is limited to the exact same number with Gemma Remington as another blonde, actress acquittance and/or rival to Stacy and Zachary Grant as a casting filmmaking who has unspoken quirks about his character Sascha that are told through his rather distinct distilled friendliness and the way Funess and Corentin Leroux frame him by cropping out portions of his body by the frame itself or by objects, as if hiding bits and pieces of his truth in obscurity.  Both Remington and Grant’s scenes are brief and spliced in to add to the stress of an actress’s day-in-a-life, to terraform the the gossipy, cutthroat world, and, in earnest, to be more a grounding third-dimensional force that doesn’t allow Josey to be the only other character for Stacy to bounce off of, yet the characters do add impact with the peripheral killer with Remington’s gruesome news update of another blonde-headed body found as well as hinting at the killer’s possible modus operandi of how he selects, hunts, and dispatches his victims and Grant going further with that idea with a seemingly irrelevant and odd casting couch method depicted with Stacey on screen and with Josey off-screen told anecdotally through her perception, and from both experiences may leave breadcrumb clues toward a suspect without ever divulging concrete evidence toward an unnamed and masked killer rarity making an appearance in the film.

Like most moviegoers might experience, my eyes bored with interest into the unique title.  So much so, my mind started an imagination factory of possibilities there could be inside the encoded disc.  A true-blue slasher initially became settled on with a conventional killer stalking, hunting, and the eventual demise of the titular, ill-fated blondes and while that sort of terminus concept is hackneyed beyond repair, excitement still bubbles to the surface because the method itself sells from it’s tried and true history with genre fans and general audiences alike.  “Young Blondes, Stalked and Murdered” is not that kind of film.  You can label it a deconstructive or backwards slasher, but the subgenre thriller has deeper drama roots in the grounded character conflict garden, blossoming more toward a psychological thriller with a rear mirror, background view of a niche specific serial killer.  Funess’s film is akin to some apocalyptic thrillers of an impending, world-ending devastator on the horizon that you know is coming but it’s the interpersonal dynamics, or maybe even political and authoritarian moments, leading up to that catastrophe that are the heart-and-soul of the story.  Funess’s film is very much a slice of life rather than a slice of flesh with an eye for framed shot, the draw of contention through personal hindrance and envy, the melting mindset stemmed by failure, and it’s an overall celebration of performance by the cast in a story with minimal violence because the violence itself is at the very back of the mind, forgotten almost as these young blonde women continue to strive for just an ounce of limelight no matter the cost that stares directly at their faces. 

Anchor Bay continues to release rebellious films on their revamped label with “Young Blondes, Stalked and Murdered” now available on Blu-ray.  Stored on a single-layered BD25, the AVC encoded high-definition film, 1080p resolution, is presented in widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Image wise, the picture captures natural appearances with a soft grading that lightly brightens the image.  There is some excellent use of blacks that are solid and deep with crush but works to the advantage of the scene to create a void tension of what’s inside’s it’s inkiness.  Skin textures are fair with some smoothing over of texture, but the tones appear organic and consistent throughout; the same can be said about fabric and surface textures in a range of settings and outfits that add unconscious concentrated coatings to the mise-en-scene.  The English 5.1 DTS-HD MA audio is overkill for a dialogue and score-driven soundtrack narrative but does provide clean conversation with plenty of clarity and no interference.  The back and side channels are less utilized with most of the action held within camera lens view, reducing any kind of non-diegetic milieu activity to the flutter of soft intrusions.  Sergei Kofman’s delicate perceptible score hangs in the rafters for the most part but does come down form time-to-time when needed to either build tension and show discourse in Stacey’s life/wellbeing as she struggles to get ahead with acting gigs. The special features include a scene-by-scene breakdown audio commentary from writer-director Nick Funess and executive producer-cinematographer Coretin Leroux. Anchor Bay’s Blu-ray is encased in a standard Blu-ray Amaray with a white, yellow, and poker hot red artwork of a splattered star with Stacey’s face inside staring back out at you. A leafy insert depicts the same primary artwork plus additional, similar artwork. Clocking in just above an hour at 65 minutes, “Young Blondes, Stalked and Murdered” has region free playback and is unrated.

Last Rites: “Young Blondes, Stalked and Murdered” is a hard sell as a backwards slasher but the unsettling disseminating of ruthless Hollywood is a methodology projecting hopelessness, defeating, and hostility, metaphorically represented by a killer on the hunt for blonde actresses and could pop into frame at any moment.

Not Red Heads, Not Brunettes, Blondes! “Young Blondes, Stalked and Murdered!” on Blu-ray!