Tag Archives: horror movies

Luther the Berserk has EVIL Plans in the Bayou! “The Naked Witch” reviewed! (VCI / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

A string of horrific murders of beautiful women becomes the study of a six-person team of paranormal researchers who head down to the Louisiana swamplands surrounded by notorious superstition and urban legend for once being the home of witchcraft.  One of the researches, Tasia, is a sensitive, a highly psychic receptive woman and student of team leader, Dr. Hayes, to sense the area’s extrasensory waves thought to be behind the murders, especially the ones of a satanic ritualized nature.  On the isolated island, encircled by swamp and gators, a powerful Satan acolyte known as Luther the Berserk seeks to spellbound Tasia to complete his coven of witches and evokes the help of Jessie, a haggard crone with the ability of mind control over those with sensitive abilities.  One-by-one, the researchers are being picked off for the blood ritual and it’s up to the survivors to stop Luther before it’s too late.

A bold psychotronic of the 1960s, “The Naked Witch” has a tingly macabre aura about it that’s not swinging, swanky, nor is it groovy.  Also known primarily as “The Witchmaker,” there’s a thick circumference of dread and darkness surrounding the William O. Brown written-and-directed picture.  Brown’s sophomore film behind the 1965 “One Way Whaine” comedy about Hawaiian babes and bank robbers is a stark 180 degrees four years later that showcased the filmmaker’s range from laughs to terror on the cusp of the early days of the Satanic scare.    “The Naked Witch” has also been reissued as “Witchkill,” The Witchmaster,” and “The Legend of Witch Hollow” and while Brown’s film goes by many monikers, one thing is for certain is the film was shot partially on location in the mucky swamps of Louisiana during exterior locations whie the remaining interiors were in a Los Angeles studio.  The U.S.A. made film was produced by Brown with L.Q. Jones serving as executive producer and released independently under LQ/JAF Productions.

Personally, horror films like “The Naked Witch” that were produced through the 1950s and into the 1960s always share mixed feeling that can only be described as from “the content is revolutionary for Americana horror post-World War II cinema” to “the stiff, exposition acting just doesn’t work with the grim nature of the ahead of its time story,” and as Marty McFly once said back in 1955, “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet.”  There’s nothing inherently bad about “The Night Witch’s” acting other than the lack of emotional weight from the troupe needed to lift up and be on the same level as the story that includes hanging half-naked women upside, slitting their throats, and drinking their blood out of chalices in a coven on satanic confluence.  “Revenge is my Destiny’s” John Lodge is the exception that goes against the stagey type of stilted acting grain as lead satanist apostle Luther the Berserk, flashing devil hand gestures and acting like a wild man in his ravaging role that’s ambitiously true to character and subtly perverse in blood and in lust. The same passion portrayal of character is not extended the principal leads of “Green Acres’” Alvy Moore and “Deep Space’s” Anthony Eisley playing a pair of opposing scientists – Moore as the more supernaturally open-minded Dr. Ralph Hayes and Eisley has the rigid in rationality Dr. Victor Gordon.  Their conflict of beliefs creates another subplot satellite that abides by superstition and lore as well as the division it produces, a decent representation of the overall contrarianism inside people as a group, then you have Tasia, a medium struggling with her powers being pulled in two different directions.  The European heritage and Canadian born blonde knockout Thordis Brandt steps out of the saucy side role and into one of her more prominent performances as the Sensitive who is manipulated by Luther’s unholy powers over the coven.   The coven and researcher cast rounds out with Shelby Grant, Tony Benson, Robyn Millan, Burt Mustin, Warrene Ott, Helene Winston, Carolyn Rhodimer, Larry Vincent, Patricia Wymer, Del Kaye, Diane Webber, Valya Garanda, Gwen Lipscomb, Nancy Crawford, and Sue Bernard. 

“The Naked Witch” is not as graphic as one would assume with such a scandalous, provocative title.  Again, you must remember, the film is originally titled “The Witchmaker.”  Yet, for a 1960’s horror, William O. Brown’s satanic sorcery picture is too advanced for the era’s mostly puritanical audience.  I’d even go as far as saying “The Naked Witch” borders the line between the foggy and gloomy atmospherics and set productions of Gothic Hammer and the ever-close-to-the-edge designed no nudity or graphic death coverups of an early Russ Meyer production sans the zany cartoon sounds and the rapid-fire editing.  An abundant of dread hangs in the air of starched collars and secretary skirts that conjures more than just the Devil’s presence in the bayou but a heavy dealt hand of a no-win situation full of desperation and death.  The story itself evolves from the brutal, ritualistic killings of strung up and stripped naked young, beautiful women to a more focused objective of converting Sensitive Tasia into a full-fledged witch that completes Luther’s coven and resurrects his master for a diabolical Hell on Earth.   The broader strokes of “The Naked Witch’s” narrative places the fate in the hands of a group of students and naïve ignoramuses playing catchup to what’s really happening under their noses.  Of course, alarm bells never go off and panic never really sets in for the group of survivors after each death in what is more like an aw-shucks and move on reaction.  Granted the team is stuck on the island for a few days with no way to call for help but that doesn’t mean being not proactive or being crippled by fear doesn’t have a place amongst them and in the story, especially missing opportunities within the researchers to turn on each other by way of Luther’s manipulating witch, Jesse, who herself has her own drastic motivation with a blood ritual that make her young again. 

“The Naked Witch” is fairly cladded with atmosphere and ghoulish intentions instead of the mentioned nudity but the new VCI 2-Disc Format Blu-ray and DVD release provides the bare essentials with a restored 35mm archival print into 4K-UHD scan.  Presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, the grading is rich and overall image and details look pleasing with depth in most scenes and grain is era appropriate appeasing.  Skin tones shade a little more toward orange but maintain within spec but on the higher end of a RGB.  The print has sustained some damaged with a slew of scratches, dust and dirt, and cell burns peppered throughout and can be a nuisance but nothing terribly critical to warrant narrative loss or a complete loss of viewing pleasure.  The English Dolby Digital Mono track offers little to try and immerse viewers into the swampy bayou and that’s a real shame since visual elements are detailed.  There’s minor background noise is palpable but not distinct to warrant attention.  Dialogue and the Bolivian born and “The Town that Dreaded Sundown’s” Jaime Mendoza-Nava’s gypsy-esque and minor key brass and percussion score are the heavy hitters in this presentation.  Dialogue has insignificant hissing and crackling but as a whole, the track comes over clean enough to firm pass well over grade.  Option subtitles are available.  The only encoded bonuses are a 2024 commentary track by film enthusiast and artist Robert Kelly and a poster gallery that include not just “The Naked Witch” but other 60’s horror pictures.  VCI’s standard Blu-ray incasement has one-sided still picture and illustrated compositional artwork that roughly produces the madness incarnated with the DVD on right and the Blu-ray on the left inside, individual pressed with images from the front cover.  The region free disc has a runtime of 99 minutes and the film is rated R.

Last Rites: “The Naked Witch” has no skin in the game in its necromancy ways but finds the fog of dread easy to become lost in with interesting characters and a ghoulish witch and ritual vise gripping it on both ends on a verge of being something more.

“The Naked Witch” on Dual Format DVD/Blu-ray from VCI!

An EVIL Taxi That Requires Your Baby for Payment! “Black Cab” reviewed! (Acorn Media International / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Anne has lingering reservations about getting back together with cheating boyfriend Patrick but half-heartedly agrees to take him back and even merry him.  The announcement comes as a surprise to dinner friends, including Anne’s best friend Jessica, but before talking out the situation that clearly has the two women upset, Anne is eager to leave and return to her home.  The embattled couple jump into a cab driven by Ian, a gabby cabby prying into the couple’s heated discussions.  When Ian drives down a dark alley and stops to retrieve a map from the trunk, Anne and Patrick realize they’re locked inside the cab.  A returning Ian reveals his true intentions with a purpose still ambiguous why the couple has been abducted but a desperate Ian will do anything, even kill, to get what he loves back from a wistful countryside spirit, and he needs disordered Anne for a trade. 

Should have taken an Uber.  “Black Cab” is the 2024 British abduction and supernatural horror-thriller from serial television and made for TV movie director Bruce Goodison, with a career credits that specializes mostly in tales of international military conflict and British murder mystery, and a screenplay by “Reawakening” writer-director Virginia Gilbert, incorporating into the relationship couple’s discordant flame a sliver of kidnapping, electrical prodding torture, and a desperate act inside the context of an old ghost tale as well as inside the English’s famous hackney carriage of black taxis, using the popular public mode of transportation as a device to market the film’s story for the sordid cab driver.  Filmed in the city of Manchester and the surrounding greater area, the Shudder exclusive presented film is produced by Jan Roldanus of Stolen Pictures and executively produced by Sony International Pictures’s former strategic producer Lucy Robison and current producer Michaela Fereday.

When a moviegoer familiar with actor Nick Frost runs through a mental checklist of the actor’s filmography, comedies like “Hot Fuzz,” “Shaun of the Dead,” “Monster Family,” and “Paul” come to mind with the often lighthearted, sometimes heart wrenching or darkly humorous, storylines in the presence of physicality and fun, done nearly most of the time alongside Frost’s usually entourage and friends, actor Simon Pegg (“Star Trek,” “Run Fatboy Run”) and director Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead,” “Last Night in Soho”), but Frost has been frequently rooted at the base in horror, science fiction, and, well frankly, genre films in general, with the perfect examples being the aforementioned with shoot’em up polizias, zombies, classic monsters, and an Earthbound alien features.  Frost’s comedic genius is all about timing and the way he carries himself jovially and nonchalantly through tough situations, but Frost can also use those same qualities and twist them to enact a man of deeply troubled anguish behind a masked funny face and viperous wit.  That’s his role in Ian, a cab driver with the gift of gab but turns on a dime with forced aggressive intent to take what he needs from Anne, emoting her character’s already internalized troubles with now a threatening abduction conflict from actress Synnove Karlsen (“Last Night in Soho”).  While Anne is poised as can be in the situation, her disagreeing fiancé Patrick has little-to-no merit as a character being a bit of a bully, cheat, and coward.  Luke Norris (Poldark) gives his best unpleasant rendition of a dirtbag white male with misogynistic issues, but the poorly written aspects of Patrick never fully amount to anything but a weighted towline and an extra body to do what what Ian thinks best with.  Tessa Parr and Tilly Woodward make up the rest of the cast. 

“Black Taxi” subsidizes good suspense over the supernatural calling cards that slowly, yet continuously, shows Anne through an emotional struggling, involving a rather vocally rambunctious boyfriend in Patrick, as well as building the tension inside the cab by hinting at its unusual state of tinted windows, child locked doors, and a more than nosy driver, mostly gone unnoticed by Anne and Patrick due to their bickering and heated love life, or lack thereof.  The first two acts slowly feel out where this story is aiming to drive the audience as Ian’s true intentions are well covered and contained and not fully delineated by the baby clues Ian hints at along the way.  There’s an elemental theme of family and protection, loss and heartache, and how that torment is divergently depicted by both the lead principals Ian and Anne, with the latter being more at a crossroads of choices whereas Ian has already made his choice and it’s one he won’t or can’t come back from.  The third act is mostly where the supernatural factors come into play with the infamous haunting of Mabel Hill, a fiction road supposedly paranormal charged with the ghost of a woman who lost her baby fleeing an abusive relationship and continues to search for the child through bypassing passenger vehicles.  The third act is also where things get murky under the black and white essence of Ian’s motivations as the Ian, Anne, and the ghost are nebulously intertwining on Mabel Hill in some sort of supernatural netherworld dimension that plays mind tricks and is foggy with phantom, falling apart at the seams to support a porous ending.

“Black Cab’s” fare is prenatally pricy in this new release from Acorn Media International and presented as a Shudder exclusive. The UK release is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25 that renders a softer image quality that, in all fairness, was already foggy and murky being set in the darkness of the English countryside, presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Lots of shadows and silhouetted surroundings drowns out the delineated city structures that blend to the spooky forest as the focus is significantly on the interiors, the cab and the abandoned hotel, and not even those highlighted inmost sets solidified specifics. There’s quite a bit of banding from compression and that’s not to be surprising given the format size and the profound amount of tenebrous tone. Textures along Frost’s dressed-in-black casuals or in contrast to Karlsen’s cocktail outfit that’s more nightgown than ritzy, they’re just not there to extensively define Ian and Anne other than being the epitome of differing the dark and light of loss. “Black Cab” has more of a cityscape than a landscape though the story heavily hits upon Mabel Hill as ghost central and yet lacks the elucidation as well as the finer points to flesh out the haunted area. The ghost too is more a cheap visual effects trick than the implementation of palpable practical patience with an overlaid layer of overexposed blues and whites over top the actress to be then augmented into the scene for ethereal effect. The English language DTS-HD 5.1 surround mix is a better outfit, more so in the clean and clear dialogue exchanges between the trio of Nick Frost, Synnove Karlsen, and Luck Norris but does whittle down to the Nick Frost exposition hour when his vague maligned venture is made with more understanding through his broken man diatribes and Anne just sitting and listening as any good abductee would do to avoid saying or doing the wrong thing. Light atmosphere hubbub caters to just that with the night, likely late, shoots inside the city and rural settings but the localized car actions, taser zaps, and character efforts are effective enough to entice a palpable action. English subtitles are optionally available. Acorn’s releases are not chockfull of special features, and “Black Cab” harbors the same slimmed down supplements with a behind-the-scenes gallery. The UK release has a slightly thicker than normal Blu-ray Amaray with an encompassing composition of a rearview mirror peering Frost and a shadowed Karlsen in the fear of the mirrored frame while a ghost hovers above the presumed Mabel Hill Road. UK certified 15 for strong threat, horror violence, domestic abuse, and very strong language, “Black Cab” is hard encoded for region B playback only and has a runtime of 87-minute runtime.

Last Rites: “Black Cab” starts off as an unpredictable ride of mystery and suspense that quickly loses gas to keep up with the swerving supernatural vehicle.

This EVIL Thanksgiving Bird Has Been Overcooked. “Amityville Turkey Day” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Amityville Turkey Day” – That’s No Cranberry Sauce! Check Out the DVD Here!

Rocco, a sleazy indie film director, is given one last project to director with the stipulation of not to squander the funds and to make a competent hit movie without completely making principal photography a nightmare for the cast and crew.  Having landed a large estate to shoot his film, the house comes with a manservant named Bram to take care of their needs and see to the estate grounds.  When a man-eating Turkey from Hell, embodied by the evil soul of once infamous doctor, comes home for Thanksgiving dinner, Bram aims to curate a fine feast for the abrasive, wicked bird from the indie film production.  As cast and crew begin to dwindle down and disappear, the show-running producer takes charge to motivate and take care of the slipping through the cracks mess of, yet again, another Rocco botched production.  Yet, the turkey still hungers and when all the excess meat is consumed, he will then find a human mate to reincarnate himself for human form. 

After promising myself, swearing up and down, that I would never, ever watch and review another Amityville titled infused film again, “Amityville Turkey Day” had sucked me right back in, like a moth to the flame into another mindless and pointless, could I even call it this, money-grabbing exploitation of the Amityville title letdown of a holiday-comedy horror film.  The 2024, microbudget Thanksgiving themed sequel to “Amityville Thanksgiving” brings back the writing-and-directing duo of Will Collazo Jr. (“Amityville Shark House,” “Amityville Apocalypse”) and Julie Anne Prescott (indie film scream-queen of “The Amityville Harvest” and “Amityville Thanksgiving”) to add a little more sanguine stuffing in their continuation of a terrorizing wild Turkey.  Alternatively known as “Amityville Thanksgiving 2,” the feature is an indiegogo crowdfunded campaign that raised the $10,000 goal and became a Will Collazo Jr.’s Cult Cinema production.

The sequel doesn’t return most of the cast from the film.  Most sequels don’t, right?  Instead, a whole new batch of rough puff principals are basted over the story to try and moisten the flavor of a rather rough-and-ready follow-up.  Amongst the medley filled in with B-movie talent, there doesn’t seem to be a one standout lead role to take charge in what is more of convergence of counterproductive parts that overlap and overstep each other’s storyline.  Characters also disappear and reappear without context to about where they were and where they go, for example the sleazy director Rocco (Michael Ruggiere) vanishes for most of the story’s midriff and then just reappears in the third act without a sense of where he’s been.  Erica Dyer (“The Town Without Halloween,” “Attack of the Corn Zombies”) plays one of the few characters with an actual intact arc as the pissed off producer Ivy who storms in and takes charge of Rocco’s quickly deteriorating production, proving to be a competent leader to quickly organize the film crew into action, but as cast and crew begin to drop like flies and vanishing from the estate set within the Thanksgiving week, Ivy’s honed in focus doesn’t register the killer Turkey, voiced by Steven Kiseleski (“Amityville Karen,” “Amityville Bigfoot”), and it’s righthand caretaker Bram (Dino Castelli, “Screamwalkers”) slowly filleting the filmmakers for feasting.  A large portion of the character pie is throwaway fodder for the Turkey with only a couple of others to stand out with pointed out substance, that also point back to “Amityville Thanksgiving, with Kevin (Tim Hatch, “Amityville in Space, and the other actor to return from “Amityville Thanksgiving) on a mission to find out what happened to his sister from “Amityville Thanksgiving,” and his planted actress friend Jessica (Jen Elyse Feldy, “The Elder Hunters,” “Camp Blood 666 Part 2”), but their roles do get lost in the fray of the frenzied packed, plot hole-riddled storyline that crams in too much too hastily inside a jerry-built and unnecessary tale.  David Perry, Clint Beaver, Amanda Flowers, Shannon Hall, Jeff Webb, Thomas J. O’Brien, Ralph Rey, James Janso, Stephen Bloodworth, and the late Mark C. Fullhardt, to which this film is dedicated to, fill out as the at will Turkey fodder. And I hope all my listings of “Amityville” named films has brought awareness to this exploitative issue!

“Amityville Turkey Day” is no “Thankskilling.”  Jordan Downey has mastered the smack-talking, rude-with-tude, killer Turkey in style, substance, and outrageous kills.  Will Collazo Jr.’s film feels more like a cheap knockoff to the likes of the Italian unauthorized remakes, sequels, and spinoffs of American films of the 1980s, attaching the Amityville name to draw attention and sponge off the legitimate franchise that has now become a disgusting and disheartening running joke and parody of unoriginality. “Amityville Turkey Day” mirrors every ounce of that last sentiment with a shoddy, low rent feature that not only drags the Amityville title deeper into the overkill mud but also hurts the exposure of Jordan Downey’s “Thankskilling” to those viewers who do get their unsuspecting hands onto Collazo’s film first and leaves a residual bad taste toward more competent Turkey trot terrorizers.  That bitterness is contributed by the lack of story structure and coherency, a lost sense of unique personality and entertainment, and a brutal monotone flow that stagnates upon just one setting over the course of a few days, which is a major gap considering the film crew disappearing here and there during that time and no one happens to care or even hardly notice.  Comedy elements fall flat, reduced to fart and sexual gags and missing-the-mark cheap insults surrounded by dull kills, especially for a Turkey that goes for the juggler.  Very few moments of levity and intrigue can be pulled from “Amityville Turkey Day” with the puppeteered evil Turkey lobbing an occasional humorous one liner – “Look at all that blood!  She’s a squirter!” – and the manifested closet gimp is too strange of a guilty-allure to ignore, and these few and far in between bright spots add a layer of color to what is dull overall. 

The crowdfunded clucker had arrived just in time for this year’s Thanksgiving courtesy of indie film friendly distributor SRS Cinema.  “Amityville Turkey Day” is housed on an MPEG2 encoded, 480p resolution, 5 gigabyte DVD-R.  According to the crowdfunding page, Collazo offered an all-around bigger and better experience from the bareboned, nearly no-budget, precursor, yet the sequel didn’t live up to expectations and appeared to be more of the same slapdash as the first and this translates to a writeable DVD disc with a fuzzy picture, smoothed edges, and plenty of posterization and banding that digs the grave deeper for this overdone bird.  The ungraded picture produces unnatural lighting from a series of gelled flood lights, more so with deep red, aimed upward to evoke thicker upper shadow positions.  What the result constitutes with the unhelpful lower resolution camera is an overly hot and overly diffused image in what would be Turkey and Bram basement scheming scenes that renders any leftover details washed away from the effect.  The English LPCM 2.0 mono track is a flat fixture via the onboard microphone on the digital camera that creates an anemic dialogue presence with subtle distortion.  Range consists of post-production sound effects and the close quartered rooms of the “estate” has depth pretty much nonexistent.  I will say dialogue is prominent and clear though higher decibels overtake and clip the microphone’s volume intake.  English subtitles are optionally available. The release’s special features include a director’s commentary, a making-of behind-the-scenes, the original trailer, and other SRS Cinema prevuews. Aside from an enticing illustrated cover art, the DVD has no other supplemental cover art, inserts, and etc. “Amityville Turkey Day” has a runtime of 93 minutes, is region free, and comes not rated.

Last Rites: “Amityville Turkey Day” is difficult to gobble up. In fact, “Amityville Turkey Day” is much like having to go to your great Aunt’s house for a third Thanksgiving dinner of the day, the one that is the family’s black sheep, wears a muumuu, and her house smells like cheap cigarettes and cat dandruff, it’s a hard no thank you.

“Amityville Turkey Day” – That’s No Cranberry Sauce! Check Out the DVD Here!

Dump Buckets and Buckets of Water Back into this Dry EVIL Well. “Ring Shark” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Ring Shark” Now Curses the DVD Market! Own It Here!

For the subscribers of her Youtube show, vlogging social media influence Kanamasa and her co-host search for a stone well rumored to be in a haunted forest surrounded by unfriendly villagers who aggressively ward off unwelcomed visitors.  Upon discovering the well, a shark-like creature emerges suddenly and bites Kanamasa, scaring them off.  A few days later, another pair of Youtube investigators of the Psychic Investigations Big Summer learn of Khana’s disappearance after her last video surfaces of what looks to be a shark fin and then a ghastly body surfaces from within her bathtub, attacking her bikini-garbed body.  Seeking the truth and eager to find Khana, the investigators conduct interviews with “shark” experts and attempt to visit the same well only to be shooed off by the villagers until, finally, they’re able to reach the same spot and experience the same sharp-teethed horror lurking within it.  Unknowingly, that same supernatural terror of the well had follow them home. 

Sharksploitation has admittedly gotten out of hand.  The beloved horror subgenre that began with Steven Spielberg and Bruce the mechanical monstrous shark who terrorized the beaches of Amity Island have since drowned in its own watery subcategory of the ocean’s maneater predators with microbudget ineptitude that takes the shark from its natural ecosystem and rehomes it in a miscellany of nonsense locations, such as on land, in the weather, and even circling in toilets.  Well, today is the day we’ve come across a movie been assimilated into that same fatuous collective with “Ring Shark,” aka “Well Shark,” aka “Ido Shark.”  The Japanese, found-footage comedy-horror is the first of a trio of incongruous shark films released between 2023 and 2024 by Taichiro Natsume with “Love Shark” and “Last Shark” to follow, connected by the Big Summer team of Psychic Investigators.  Natsume also wrote and produced the feature.

Unfamiliar with the Psychic Investigator Big Summer series, which there’s uncertainty if Big Summer is a Japanese comedic troupe, equivalent to the Broken Lizard of America, what “Ring Shark, or “Ido Shark” begins is a series of various haunted case probes by the Big Summer team, which in this film in particular include actors using modifications of or using their actual names as characters in the story, such as director Taichiro Natsume being the single male lead in the group under character name Daiichiro Natsume.  Daiichiro Natsume can be a bumbling, yet persistent fool when it comes to the mysterious case of Kana-san with his steady motif of exclaiming his love for big boobs and determination to resolve the mystery.  He’s joined by colleagues on-and-off screen in Momoka Asahi and Chihiro Nishikawa, the latter not to be confused with Chihiro Nishikawa of JVA.  While Nishikawa and Natsume continue the running gag conversating about big breasts, Momoka Asahi enters the picture much later as the third investigating team member when Natsume goes down with a well shark bite infection that haunts him from the inside out and puts him in the hospital.  From there, Nishikawa and Momoka take the reigns on investigation by not only tending to Natsume’s dwindling health but also interviewing internet paranormal sleuths Hiroshima Freddy, a Japanese horror influence in real life, as well as Black Story Kuro, who I imagine is another influencer but couldn’t confirm it.  Typically, the Japanese language has a ton of fluid inflections and tones that dictates situations and mood, but “Ring Shark” avoids much of the vocal ups-and-downs with a consistently level tone of flat and dry humor peppered with fear, arbitrary bickering, and a pinch of kawaii to sustain a semi-serious documentary style investigation.  Maya Mineo, Issei Kunisawa, Yacch Chara, Daiki Mizuno, Honey Trap, Umeki, and the wrestler known as The Shark fills out the cast.

“Ring Shark” is “Blair Witch Project” meets “The Ring.”  The latter having the most prominent appearance as the at home media, that was once titled, or probably is likely titled in Japan, as “Ido Shark,” is marketed for U.S. consumption because every moviegoer is either well versed or knows of Hideo Nakata’s “The Ring” series and its heebie-jeebies Samara spirit.  Instead of a cursed tape that summons Samara out of the depths of her murdered resting spot, a well, to kill anyone after a week of viewing said tape, “Ring Shark” only real connective tissue to “The Ring” is that there is a well in the story and a murdered girl’s body was dumped inside.  That’s it.  From there, the structure is more to the tune of “Blair Witch Project” with a pseudo-found footage of one social media’s disappearance igniting the Psychic Investigator Big Summer team to check it out after the tape is brought to their attention form Kanasama’s co-host.  The docu-style incorporates dry wit of interviewing shark experts, creature academics, urban legend connoisseurs, and thorough analysts and researchers, as well as themselves as angry villagers and a supernatural hand puppet shark head subverts their stratospheric sublayer with soul-chumming results.  Yet, none of everything just said really clicks in a flimsy and slapdashedly put together microbudget story derived for effect for true and absurd exploitation of sharks gone wild. 

“Ring Shark” swims right into SRS Cinema’s well-house with a brand-new DVD from the microbudget cult film distributor.  Upscaled to 1080p, the MPEG2 encoded, single layer DVD5 presents the Big Summer production ion a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Though upscaled to 1080p, the cell phone footage renders stretched limitations under the light of low-budget constraints.  Night vision and poor lighting coupled with closeups-to-extreme closeups, and shaky camera work dematerializes story-important images.  Natural lit and stationary camera work provide cleaner visuals in what is mostly a deluge of exposition and regular camera angles without atmospheric makeup.  The Japanese language Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo provides lean composition with ample inherent surrounding ambience, picking up the natural wildlife chirping in the background, the vocal amplification of someone talking through a microphone, the hustle and bustle of a restaurant, etc. Dialogue isn’t impeded by the commercial phone camera recording that creates a rather good reproduction and diffusion of sound amongst the space.  Added audio effects, such as the shark’s growling or snarling, does feel unnaturally alienated from the rest of the audio but works to the film’s advantage despite the obvious hand puppetry.  English subtitles are burned in but do synch well and appear error free. There’s also what looks to be double English subtitles along with Japanese title cards or subtitles that are a part of the Youtube investigation and often coincide with the main English subtitles in a distracting, screen space absorbing real estate. The Japanese electro-rap graced static menu, which samples Lil Jon’s Yeeeah, contains no bonus feature selection; instead, the bonus content is right on the main menu with short film “Shark of the Dead” (8.26 minutes) and the “Ring Shark” trailer.  I love bad movie cover art and SRS Cinema’s “Ring Shark” is no exception with smokey-eyed, electrically charged, and monstrously toothy shark breaching from a little stone well underneath “The Ring”-font film title.  The disc is pressed with the same image and there are no inserts included.  The barely hour-long film, clocking in at 63-minutes, comes not rated and has a region free playback.

Last Rites: “Ring Shark” is a monumental prosaic mockumentary aimed to swell Sharksploitation into further ill-repute and disrepair with an unfunny and uninteresting undertaking of underwhelming pastiche.

“Ring Shark” Now Curses the DVD Market! Own It Here!

At Odds With Each Other Can’t Stop the EVIL That’s Coming for Them! “House of Dolls” reviewed! (VMI Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“House of Dolls” Is Ready to Play! Blu-ray Available at Amazon.

Estranged sisters Jenn, Diana, and Adalene are summoned to reunite by their dying father.  Greeted by their grandmother and a lawyer informing them of an inheritance within their father’s will, the verbally combative sisters are more than eager for their fair share of the will and be happy to never see each other again as they go on with their lives, but the will’s stipulation states the sisters must work together and revitalize the long severed kinship within the walls of his hand-built estate, a life-size representation of a doll house constructed for the love of his life where clues to their inheritance lie hidden inside.  Before even the first ounce of hope to mend their broken bond, one of the sisters is found brutally murdered in one of garish rooms and a masked maniac hunts for not only the two remaining sisters but also those close to them outside the house of dolls.

Juan Sala’s “House of Dolls” is the return to horror for the Texas taught director since his urban-thriller “Alp” in 2016 and the first independent story helmed that didn’t involve Sala’s going pen-to-paper with a script.  That task was handled by another Texas film school graduate, Iv Amenti, in her first feather length screenwriter credit aimed to label itself as a mystery-slasher under the guise of grueling family rejuvenation.  The 2023 released film’s story was shot on location in Los Angeles with Juan Salas solo producing the feature.  Salas is no stranger producing his own work as he’s done with most of his own repertoire (“The Triple D,” “The Wolf Catcher,” and “The Devil’s Ring”) while also branching out occasionally to support and/or fund other creative minds, such as with Brian King’s “Hell of a Night.”  Polar Bear Films produced the film along with Vantage Media International, or VMI Worldwide, who produced and distributed the film.

Powering “House of Dolls” vessel into explicit view is headliner Dee Wallace.  The “Cujo” and “Critters” scream queen has been on a junket of mom-and-pop productions for the better part of the last decade for aspiring horror filmmakers to leech off that eye-catching and weight-bearing Dee Wallace name.  Wallace reminds me of Linnea Quigley once said in an interview, if producers meet her price, she’ll star in pretty much anything.  Wallace seemingly has the same philosophy with a continuous stream of projects that screen her for no more than a total of 15-minutes, tops.  While this works to an extent, based off the prominence or the memorability of the role, most of that bankable name and face do little elevating the film, resulting in just a paycheck performance.  Sure, Wallace’s fans will check it out for the sake of Dee Wallace but for “House of Dolls,” as with the story or just as with the entity of the film, the gimmick doesn’t leave a mark.  The plot crux favors the three bickering sisters, Adalene (Violeta Ortega), Jenn (Stephanie Troyak), and Diana (Alicia Underwood).  Sibling diverging personalities uphold their seething hate for each other, that is much as obvious, but for what specific reason is never unfolded, or is unfolded but made unclear in the wake of its untidy heap.  What’s definingly unclear is the mother of these unlikeable brats.  Mentions of individually owning the unfortunate event of a mother’s death makes the ambiguous ruling that there is at least one half-sister.  They could all be half-sisters, but the unbridled dialogue and no conveyed backstory strays away from important pieces of the puzzle that make it as frustrating as trying to match a 2D puzzle piece within a 3D puzzle scheme.  The story also incorporates flimsy relationships with the sisters, Jenn’s drug buddy Justin (Jack Rain) who unexpectantly arrives with the sisters at their father’s estate, Adalene’s semi-sweet boyfriend Caleb (Phil Blevins), Diana’s vague friendzone coworker or perhaps boyfriend Lenny (Matt Blackwell”), and Diana’s out-of-nowhere go-to detective who just happens to be at her father’s hospital, dressed in beat cop fatigues, in Det. Ramierz (Meeko).  All these seedling characters are detached in their gravitational encircling around the sisters, pulling in zero weight on a story that’s quickly deflating.  Rounding out the fleeting supporting cast is Trey Peyton. 

Following “House of Dolls” plotline might as well be riddles with attention deficit disorder.  Too much is happening without the ease of transition or even sense to hold down a floating story that’s constituting forced uniformity and civility amongst rival siblings by way of a mysterious house with mysterious clues. Yet, those clues don’t flesh out and intrigue over what could have been a backstory backbone turns into gelatinous indiscretion of kill-after-kill by a leather coat-wearing masked-maniac with knives that offers up in the end being nothing more than surface level, superficial slasher.  Salas pulls off some decent, gory kills, such as a slimy disembowelment and a bisected torso that spills guts, to add some value to the production that’s ultimately equalized by areas of cut-rate props, such as the obviously flat and dull large knives that look more like cardboard than metal.  Like in true slasher tropes, the killer is seemingly everywhere at once, hopping from one location to the next, even if the other locations are across town, but this punk-cladded, homicidal maniac appears in-and-out of the alternating scenes too lackadaisically without systematic care to at least in try and make it plausible.   

VMI Releasing and MVD Visual handle the physical media distribution with a 1080p, high-definition Blu-ray.  The AVC encoded BD50 has the capacity for the eclectically ranged front lit key lighting and neon lighting, delivering a clean picture without compression issues.  Details waver between certain aspects of lighting, which is expected, but the details that do emerge pinpoint textural qualities and the key lighting reveals appropriate, vivid coloring and skin tones when contrasted against heavier background shadows.  Jorge Villa’s sizzling neon gives a warm glow in purple, blues, reds, and orange that enhances to a near music video quality outside the normal lighting and production parameters.  The film is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  The uncompressed DTS-HD 5.1 English audio mix is an upbeat combination of verbal jabs, deregulated dialogue, and a medley of pop music and low-tone beat creator for the villain peppered with hip-hop rhythms, violin and piano down tone, and some suspense synthesized keyboard notes that do lean into what makes a decent horror soundtrack.  No complaints on the dialogue track that’s fairly level but doesn’t explore much in depth as characters are often up front and center on the camera.  There’s also not enough range to really utilize the multi-channel network and so the lack of miscellany fight for audible supremacy. Subtitles are available in English only.  Bonus features are aplenty on this larger capacity disc with Juan Salas commentary track that runs parallel to the feature, Juan Salas and Dee Wallace have a Halloween special video chat to converse about their time in production, a Natasha Martinez hosted cast Q&A for the U.S. premiere, a making-of featurette, and a MiB Legacy music video The Man Who Was Death.  On the outside, VMI’s standard Blu-ray comes with an appealing touchup of the killer in full dress from the chest-up, singled out by a black background and the title just overhead.  The disc is pressed with the same image with no other tangible features.  The film is not rated with region free capabilities and has a runtime of 84 minutes.    

Last Rites: “House of Dolls” crumbles as a clunky attempt at a slasher with a twist ending. The story shatters like someone pulling a pin on a grenade and pieces of act structure shrapnel propel in all different directions and never once hit target in the latest from director Juan Salas.

“House of Dolls” Is Ready to Play! Blu-ray Available at Amazon.