Tag Archives: horror

Mindy Robinson Takes on EVIL Strippers in “Brides of Satan” reviewed! (Dark Side Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on



“Brides of Satan” available at Amazon.com!  DVD and Blu-ray!

Engaged happy couple Mary and Charlie want to dip their toes into debauchery before tying the knot.  When they patron a dive strip club, looking to unwind a nervous Charlie down a notch with a sultry, on-stage lap dance, the club is suddenly seized by three well-armed Satanist strippers looking for quick cash and a virtuous sacrifice to conjure a demon.  Kidnapped for the dark ceremony, Mary and Charlie find themselves in their grip with Charlie being murdered to complete half the ritual, but Mary is able to escape when a rival gang claims rights over the territory that sidetracks the Satanists summons.  Mourning over her fiancé’s death, Mary is taken under the wing of a junkyard sensei who trains her to fight and to be fearless against all those in her path for vengeance. 

From horror enthusiast Joe Bizarro comes the filmmaker’s first written and directed feature film, the pastiche grindhouse revenge-thriller “Brides of Satan.”  Bizarro, who co-produced “Another Plan from Outer Space,” the Lance Pollard offshoot homage to the Ed Wood Jr.’s iconic science fiction-horror “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” co-writes his 2021 exploitation with “Take Shelter” cinematographer and first time screenwriter Noel Maitland penned to be a wild-and-strange ride through the various territories of genre landscapes.  Film in and around the greater Los Angeles area, “Brides of Satan” stitches the perceived strange and unusual charisma of L.A.’s alt-scene offerings around a familiar framework with a few arbitrary bits of bizarre.  Along with Bizarro and Maitland is fellow executive financier Lance Pollard, who we mentioned had previous dealings with Bizarro, and the jacks of all trades Victor Formosa (“Iron Sky:  The Coming Race”) along with William Wulff, Celeste Octavia, Lisa Mason Lee, and Mike Ansbach serving as producers on the Joe Bizarro Studios labeled production. 

Right off the bat, the montage introduction of the tri-gang strippers, played by Alice McMunn, Joanna Angel, and Rachel Rampage, with sizzling eroticism and skin, seductively gazing into the camera and pole dancing captured in slow motion immediately sets the tone for the rest of the story. Laden from their colorfully neon-dyed hairstyles to their fishnet-led leathery platform heels with body ink, their focal opening is a bit of Joe Bizarro in a nutshell as well as an eclectic look into a cast comprised of goth, burlesque, body-mod, and fetish aficionados.  I was also hoping for a cameo from adult actress Joanna Angel’s husband Aaron ‘The Small hands’ Thompson, but alas, no such luck.  Though McMunn, Angel, and Rampage get the juices flowing and motivate the narrative into a plot point of character deconstruction, reconstruction, and revenge, neither of them are the top bill for lead role.  That responsibility falls solely on the “Evil Bong” franchise – wait, there’s an “Evil Bong” franchise? – actress Mindy Robinson that, through a (Joe) bizarro world, adds an interesting element of casting for the outspoken Republican commentator who happens to also be the girlfriend of former mixed martial artist and “Expendables” actor Randy Couture.  Robinson amiably plays a loving fiancé Mary to an equally amiably, yet unresolved, Charlie (Michael Reed, “The Disco Exorcist”). Eventually, Mary’s woman scorned vengeance becomes a juggernaut of kickass, learning geriatric kung-fu from a junkyard hobo, but Robinson disingenuously leaves her fluffy and bubbly self into a character who’s supposed to be this badass that beats half-naked Satan acolytes in one blow and can vanquish netherworld demons in the bat off an eyelash. Much of the film is Robinson promenading provocative and oddball locales, meeting more provocative and oddball characters, to track down her fiancé’s murderer in a forfeiture of commanding the scenes with scene-stealing presence. Though she bests an array of stud-cladded, garage punk baddies armed with arm drills, nail bats, and switchblades, their brief moments on screen leave more of an impact than the principal protagonist and much like the gang of three strippers, in which two-thirds of them cease to exist after approx. 15 minutes into the film, they’re built up as more prominent players in this psychos-ville showdown yet fizzle to literally just a passing moment in the narrative, giving way to a film full of nothing but near essentially cameos from Anatasia Elfman (“Shevenge”), Ellie Church (“Frankenstein Created Bikers”), Sarah French (“Art of the Dead”), and Damien D. Smith (“The Purge”). There are also true cameos from “Blood of the Tribades” filmmakers Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein, professional burlesquer Olivia Bellafontaine, and Madelyne Cruelly from the pirate punk band Yours Cruelly.

“Brides of Satan’s” gimmick is to live up to representing the yield of grindhouse cinema and for the most part, Joe Bizarro cultivates a passable resemblance by borrowing from the constructs and the ideals that came from them of the golden age of independent cinema decades between the 60’s and early 90’s and reworked them into his own passion project. “Brides of Satan” is undoubtedly derivative in most of designer elements, but I did find Bizarro’s concept of uniting the alternative network and B-movie troupers into a singular movement to be refreshing in it’s something you don’t regularly see or experience too often out of the shadows and living in the daylight. As disparaging as it may sound, the sensation becomes that carnival sideshow effect where the societal outcasted abnormalities entrance and pluck at your curiosity strings much to the same effect that ostentatious or surreal horror and sci-fi movies are a way to escape the harshness of one’s own bleak day-to-day reality. However, Bizarro didn’t quite achieve the paragon of his idea not because of his cast, who are mostly stupendously talented in their own rites, but rather more with a watery script barely sustaining flavor to its revenging aspects and supernatural rifts, the imbalance amongst characters, and a dialogue so intrusively oversaturated with hackneyed one-liners that the next words out of their mouths are predictable ones. That tiredness, that sparkless originality, that familiar taste again and again is what ultimately quells “Brides of Satan’s” fetching title and it’s weighted of promise.

Rowdy and burning with streaks of fluorescent colors, “Brides of Satan” is a come Hell and high-water tribute for exploitation film lovers and the Joe Bizarro debut is now on high-definition Blu-ray home video from Dark Side Releasing.  Presented in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio on a BD25, Bizarro and Maitland, whose technical trade in director of photographer is implemented here, opt for a tenebrously smoky and shadowy obscured grindhouse-noir that innately secretes tactile details but do offer that sense of mystique danger and a carnivalesque veneer at times, using lighting techniques to accomplish the desired look.  The English language Dolby Digital stereo has lossless quality from a 384kps bitrate that, despite its dual channel limitations, outputs decent robust tracks.  Dialogue is crisp and clear, ambient background noise and ransacking has ample range and depth, and the original soundtrack from Ausie Jamie Coghill (Jimmy C) of The Jimmy C Band offers a lounge-grunge-like Rock and Roll score hitting all the right notes apt to the narrative.  The opening monologue from Rick Galiher doing his best Vincent Price vocals.  If you closed your eyes and just listened to the tracks, you can distinctly hear every tone and note in everything from a wonderfully broad audible spectrum. The special features include an audio commentary with the director Joe Bizarro, a handful of deleted scenes and bloopers, a photo gallery of stills and alternate posters (which there are a ton of), and a short skit entitled “Rad Roommates,” a pseudo-sitcom produced by Bizarro about a man and his monstrous hairball of a lowlife roommate.  If you’re lazy and don’t feel like navigating through the menu options to the special features, wait until after the feature’s credits roll through as the special features will follow, beginning with “Rad Roommates.” The Dark Lord takes a bemusing backseat that drives “Brides of Satan” more toward solely being a revenge thriller with few incomplete spidering out subplots that belly up by its own creator. 

“Brides of Satan” available at Amazon.com!  DVD and Blu-ray!

EVIL Infiltrates to Seduce All Your Women! “The Vampire Lovers” reviewed! (Scream Factory / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Vampire Lovers” Now Available at Amazon.com!

The Karnstein family’s notorious legends of evil spread vast throughout 18th century Germany. Once thought their wicked leeching of nearby villages exterminated after the Baron Joachim von Hartog dispatched all the villainous vampires after his sister fell victim to their seductive fangs. However, years later, the aristocratical General von Spielsdorf and his niece Laura find themselves in the unexpected company of a houseguest with Marcilla, the beautiful daughter of a new neighboring countess. Days later, Laura unexplainably dies from continuous nights that drain her of energy and flourish her mind full of nightmares of being strangled by a large wild animal. In the wake of her death, Marcilla also disappears. Sadden by the news of her friend’s death, Emma and her father take in the daughter of a travelling countess named Carmilla to provide Emma with cheery, distracting company in a time of distress, but the mysterious cycle of enervation and nightmares start back up all over again and it’s up to the survivals of Laura’s death to stop death before it’s too late.

Unlike any other Hammer horror film you’ve ever seen before prior to 1970, “The Vampire Lovers” blazed the trail for permissiveness of the era’s newly reformed certification system that moved the bar from 16 years order to 18 and kept in line with society’s leniencies toward the favoring sex and free love.  “The Vampire Lovers” opened up to not only a new line of exploitation and violence at the turn of the decade but also introduced the longtime fans to new faces, especially actresses, who would accumulate labels and prominence inside the genre that last until this day.  Based from the story of “Carmilla” from Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu, relatively new at the time Hammer director Roy Ward Baker (“Scars of Dracula,” “Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde”) took the Harry fine and Michael Style adapted original story and ran the distance with the screenplay from Tudor Gates whose writing forte was not specifically well-known within horror genre nor was horror Gates’ personal interest, yet Gates tweaked the Le Fanu female vampire tale to accentuate more of lesbian themes in a very turmoiled time when lesbianism, or just being gay, was seen as a disease or an unstoppable influencing evil force amongst the young people.  Fine and Style serve as producers in this co-production between Hammer Films and American International Pictures.

“The Vampire Lovers” comes under an atypical rule of the protagonist role or roles.  Previous Hammer films oriented themselves with a male lead from Christopher Lee’s domineering monster Dracula to the fearlessly courageous vampire hunter played by Peter Cushing, but “The Vampire Lovers” has Hammer trade in the masculinity presence for femme fatale with the introduction of Ingrid Pitt (“Wicker Man”) in the role of the hungry Karnstein vampire, Carmilla as well as Marcilla and Mircalla as the sneaky creature of the night infiltrates estates. Pitt’s exotic look and uninhibited attitude discerns obvious sex appeal for the Polish actress who can also act with gripping emotion that develops compassion for her malevolent facade. Add another pretty face and innocently sensuous woman arm-to-arm to Pitt with then 20-year-old Madeline Smith (“Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell”) and you have a two-front protagonist made up of women. Tack on the dark features and piercing blue eyes of Kate O’Mara (“The Horror of Frankenstein”) and “The Vampire Lovers” evolves into the something unlike anything we’ve ever seen from Hammer horror trifecta as once the scene settles into the narrative’s girth, the dynamic turns into a love triangle of unspoken women intimacies and jealousy, under the guise of supernatural persuasion, rears its ugly head. The menfolk really do feel absent from the excitement despite being pivotal pieces to the story and despite being the iconic representation in face and name of Hammer films. Peter Cushing’s longstanding work with the company has branded him forever legendary in the eyes of horror fans young and new. As the benevolent General von Spielsdorf, “The Horror of Dracula” Cushing looks wonderfully regal, gentlemanly dashing, and epitomizes the very essence of a strong male figure who also takes a very noticeable backseat for much of the second and into the third act. Same can be said for that other vampire portrayer who’s not Christopher Lee, Ferdy Mayne (“The Fearless Vampire Killers”) as the village doctor with a scene plopped here and there to inch the story along as a motivational vessel and another player caught in the Karnstein fang-game. “The Vampire Lovers” sees through to move plot significant characters, played by notable actors, to and from the storyline with performances from George Cole (“Fright”), Jon Finch (“Frenzy”), Dawn Addams (“The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll”), Pippa Steel (“Lust for a Vampire”), Harvey Hall (“Twins of Evil”), and Douglas Wilmer as the Baron Joachim von Hartog who give a great opening expositional prologue that sets the background and tone of the film.

Laced in the traditional gothic style we all know and love from Hammer Films, “The Vampire Lovers” has grandiose late 19th century interiors and costumes with the latter gracing the starlets with strikingly bright tropical colored dresses that are elegant beyond the more stiff, and sometimes more imperialistic, outfits representing the period.  In a way, the outfits contrast against the brooding gothic prominence that speak of subversive liberation much paralleling the very thematic elements of lesbianism, sexual motifs, and a nearly an all-encompassing female lead.  If sex was ever a subtle insinuation in previous Hammer film it was not so subtle in “The Vampire Lovers” that consistently and constantly thickened the sexual tension and produced blunt scenes of eroticism between two or more women.  Even with the powerful commingle of womanhood desires, as much as it was depicted to be devasting to their lifeblood, Tudor Gates’ narrative still pit them up against nearly impossible odds when the male characters, no longer duped by the formalities of chivalrous intentions, figure out what’s really happening under their noses, in their households none the less, and band together to put a to a heart-staking stop to the macabre madness aka metaphorical lesbian evil.  The story has the women’s lusts and desires, whether their choosing or not, be an outlier from normalcy, yet on the other hand, nudity flourishes within the new laxed certification guidelines that see in some way, shape, and form four actresses baring skin in what what would have been considered risqué X-certificated scenes prior to 1970.  “The Vampire Lovers” is by far a perfect film with a lack of character context, such as with the male vampire on horseback indulging his penchant for observing Camilla’s attacks from afar and doesn’t proceed to explain further or with more insight to who he is and what his position may be within the Karnstein family ranks, as well as the narrative format with early on into the story being bit choppy and disorienting when Carmilla assaults nightly the General’s fair niece as a furry beast in the confines of a lurid nightmare.

Deserving of a collector’s edition, Shout Factory subsidiary horror label, Scream Factory, presents a new Blu-ray release of “The Vampire Lovers” scanned in 4K of the original camera negative.  Scream Factory should be extolled for their color grading toward Hammer transfers as the release looks stunning with quality stability and richness that brings the era alive.  Transfer also appears free from any kind of major blemishes and barely of any smaller ones. The English language DTS-HD Master Audio mono has resolute fidelity in the best possible audio offering “The Vampire Lovers” will likely see now and in future releases with a clear dialogue track and a Harry Robertson score that relives the classic studio orchestra in compelling fashion. The release comes with a slew of special features including an exclusive new interview with film historian Kim Newman, who also shows up again in archived interviews in the “Feminine Fantastique: Resurrecting ‘The Vampire Lovers'” (Scream Factory lists it as Femme Fantastique on the back cover) featurette commentary snippets from John-Paul Checkett and David Skal and other historians and collectors of Hammer Films. Audio commentaries with director Roy Ward Baker, star Ingrid Pitt, and Screenwriter Tudor Gates, audio commentary with film historians Marcus Hearn and Jonathan Rigby, two interviews, one of them new, with co-star Madeline Smith that span about 10-15 years apart, Trailers from Hell: Mick Garris on “The Vampire Lovers,” a reading of Carmilla by Ingrid Pitt, a single deleted scene of Baron von Hartog radio spot, still gallery, and the theatrical trailer round out the bonus material. The 89-minute, Region A encoded, R-rated version runs solo as the only main feature and the transfer Scream Factory uses, or licenses, is the edited version of Ingrid Pitt’s bath scene that cuts away to a medium closeup of Madeline Smith holding a towel for Pitt who’s standing up in the tub and then cuts back to Pitt’s bare backside. However, in the “Feminine Fantastique” featurette, you can experience the unedited brief full-frontal of Ingrid Pitt standing up in the tub if that tickles your fancy. The collector’s edition sports reversible cover art with original poster art on the inside and a newly illustrated, and superbly beautiful in its simplicity, front art by Mart Maddox sheathed inside a cardboard slipcover of the same Maddox art. Turning a corner into vast opportunities for more violence, explicit nudity, and unrestrained vampire gore became a new dawn for Hammer Films without entirely prostituting themselves with wayward tactics to the point of unrecognition as “The Vampire Lovers” still emitted gothic characteristics and a partial token cast and now made even more alluring with a feature packed collector’s edition from Scream Factory!

“The Vampire Lovers” Now Available at Amazon.com!

Hide Your Children! EVIL Comes For Them! “Achoura” reviewed! (Dark Star Pictures / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on



“Achoura” now available on Prime Video!

Broken by witnessing the kidnapping of their friend Samir, Ali, Nadia, and Stephen’s lives are plagued by the past and turmoiled in the present as adults.  When Samir is miraculously discovered alive, a realization of truth begins to flood back into their memories as the kidnapper’s intentions were to stop a malicious, child-devouring entity by stowing the demon away in Samir’s body as an encapsulating prison.   The demon, known as the Bougatate, uses the joyous celebration of the Muslim holiday Ashura to snack on beguiled youth and is now free to feed upon ripe, happy children once again, especially Ali and Nadia’s young son.  The four friends must band together and seek to destroy Bougatate on his own turf, a decrepit rural French house engulfed in nightmarish lore. 

Nothing says originality and mind-broadening concepts more than when international filmmakers weave the fabric of their folklore, the sequin of traditions, and the raw materials of cultural customs into their fabrication of creativity.  Director and co-writer Talala Selhami takes us on that very journey through Morocco with a tale based off the concepts of a shifty Djinn-like urban legend terrorizing children of the Ashura celebration with a shadowy, jaw-opening and jowl-extending monster devouring children like a snake in this 2018 released supernatural, child-be-vigilant thriller, “Achoura.”  Selhami’s sophomore film comes 8 years after releasing the cutthroat hiring practices of Corporation authority over the applying individual in “Mirages.”  The French-born director helms a script penned by Jawad Loahlou and David Villemin showcasing the horrors of loss, sometimes forgotten, amongst the Arab-Berber population.  The half-crescent coast of Casablanca becomes the main shooting location for the Moroccan-French co-production under Moon & Deal Films, Overlook Films, Orange Studio, and Black Lab VFX produced by Selhami and Lamia Chraibi with executive producers in Caroline Piras (“Among the Living”) and Rachida Saadi.

“Achoura” has been described as the Moroccan “IT” where four childhood friends reunite to face a preadolescent predator known as Bougatate.  That analogical sentiment is extremely on-point to the detriment of “Achoura’s” North American release; I, myself, before reading any other external comments, had thought “Achoura’s” story walked the same line as the 2017 remake and strongly resembled Pennywise in intentions and, in some ways, specific ways he – or rather it – tricks and consumes children.  The four friends are also similar to certain characters in the Loser Club, but the Sofiia Manousha is the least affected by her past, reimagining what happened to her friend, Samir (Omar Lotfi), as nothing more than being an abducted whim of a pervert’s fantasy.  Samir is the younger brother to Nadia’s estranged husband Ali (Younes Bouab), a brooding, sleepless detective ceaselessly on his brother’s case as he dives deep into old investigative interview footage and cigarette packs he continuously bites the filter off of each cancel stick.  The pain Ali bottles up is complete poison wonderfully conveyed as well as the interpretation of trauma from the last friend of four in painter, Stephen or Stéphane as the character is credited.  Played by the Spanish born Iván González, whose worked on a pair of intense thrillers – “The Divide” and “The Crucifixion” with director Xavier Gens, Stephen singles himself the only person that remembers what actually happens as González glosses the artist with starry eyes and a verbally shaken recollection of monstrous images.  The one performance thought to be the weakest link was Omar Lotfi’s Samir, an imprisoned man-child imprisoning a demon with him, and Lotfi’s infantility as a grown man freed from confinement and a demon crossed too intractable goofiness, leading the Samir away from being a sympathetic character into more of a cartoon of one.  The cast is relatively comprised of the four friends with minor parts here and there in roles from Mohamed Wahib Abkari, Jade Beloued, Abdellah El Yousfi, Celine Hugo, Gabriel Fracola, Mohamed Choubi, Noé Lahlou, and Moussa Maaskri as The Guardian incarcerating Bougetate inside Samir, who we assume is the same boy from the film’s prologue setup but never actually verified.

While “Achoura” draws many comparisons to “IT,” Selhami sepulchers itself into an overwrought, yet hugely overworked subgenre of shrouded gangly presences lurking from the darkest corners of the room to bring antagonism toward children.  “The Babadook” comes to mind with the manifestation of grief descending upon a single mother and her child.  Same theme can be extracted from “Achoura’s” grief and trauma over the loss of their friend and how they represent the condition in different ways:  Nadia chooses to reimagine the event to a safer, saner memory, Stephen expresses his horror through painting, and Ali’s guilt drives him to unhealthy habits in looking for his brother.  The Bougatate is akin to a pedophile robbing children of their innocence, a motif that extends from the very beginning of the story with a preteen boy expressing his affection for a girl his own age before Bougatate seizes upon them.  Their innocent and charming clandestine affair is kept from her betrothed husband, who’s creepily decades older, in a mind-boggling and unpleasant idea of children arranged marriages that sets the misguided tone for a sordid underlayer that sparks Bougatate’s resurgence into the world.   Though I like the tone of the film albeit a vague carbon copy of others like it, what I find to be tone deaf is the often clunky special effects surrounding the entity’s polished look.  One attribute belonging to Bougatate is the legion of flies that constitute his form in what has diminutively become just a bunch of nano byte specks moving in menacing unison and swallowing (or being swallowed) anything in their path. The non-linear format that double culminates the unravelling in present and in flashback past retains a sustainable 90-mystery.

One of the last horror films to be released in 2021, “Achoura” came to digital platforms and DVD home video this past December from Dark Star Pictures, the same company who released the phenomenal Veracruz folklore and Bruha horror, “The Old Ways,” and the Mickey Reece’s perfectly subtle nod to vampires and depression in “Climate of the Hunter.” Since a digital screener was provided, commenting on the DVD audio and video quality is a no-go, but the Mathieu De Montgrand offers harsh hard lit scenes vast in depth, a breadth of landscape between the countryside of France and Casablanca shoreline, and excellent action and tracking shots to instill the appearance of a big-time movie. Montgrand is definitely not just a point and shoot cinematographer as he can build suspense purely on his angles along with Julien Foure’s editing of the flashback montage that tells a bigger side of the four friends’ history yet to be revealed. “Achoura’s” bleak analogy of children’s innocence being consumed by the complexities of adulthood problems understands the unstoppable crossbreeding crisis of blending youthful naivety with seasoned reality to the point of no return that one day all unspoiled exuberance will simply be eaten into oblivion.

“Achoura” now available on Prime Video!

Superpowers Can Be Just as EVIL as They are Good. “The Unhealer” reviewed! (Scream Factory / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Unhealer” on Blu-ray home video from Scream Factory!

An old graverobber unearths the supernatural powers of an ancient Native American burial ground that gives him the ability to heal as well as to be resilient against injury with self-restoring powers.  When exploiting the local residents of his newfound “Godly” gift, a botched healing of a bullied teenage Kelly with severe pica disorder transfers the powers to him, curing his disorders and restoring his health while also leaving the old graverobber to die.  With a new lease on life, Kelly pursues his dreams, standing up to his relentless tormenters, and even finding the courage to ask out a girl, but when the powers prove to be addiction beyond control and the bullies never let up on their aggression on him, Kelly uses his newfound gifts to exact a deadly course of revenge. 

“Pet Sematary” meets “Christine” – a Stephen King-esque bully-revenge, supernatural thriller “The Unhealer” from the Argentinean born director Martin Guigui.  The music video and feature film director returns to American horror nearly a decade later after helming the 2011 “Beneath the Darkness,” starring Dennis Quaid, with a thrilling teen angsty script penned by first time screenwriters Kevin E. Moore and J. Shawn Harris that recalls a narrative very familiar to the late 80’s to early 90’s with oppressive high school bullying by the jocks and the turning point revenge by the receiving end pipsqueak.  Originally scripted under the title “Pica Boy,” “The Unhealer” reveals the dangers of severe polarities between one disorder to the next with the humbling fragilities trapped inside one’s own psychological disorder to the over-confidence of feeling invincible due to physical anomalies that result in no pain being suffered, losing one’s empathetic reasoning.  “The Unhealer” is produced by writer J. Shawn Harris and his sibling actress, “Night of the Demons 2” and “Night of the Scarecrow’s” Cristi Harris along with star Natasha Henstridge and “Why?” filmmakers Corbin Timbrook and Galen Walker with Horror Business Films and 7 Ideas serving as production companies.

Headlined with three big and recognizable names inside the genre circles and out, the film stars Lance Henriksen (“Pumpkinhead,” “Aliens”), Natasha Henstridge (“Species,” “Ghost of Mars”) and Adam Beach (“Windtalkers,” “New Mutants”) playing variable degrees in their roles important to “The Unhealer’s” story progression and each performance never overlaps prominent personalities that can sometimes stall out and unbalance a production.   Henriksen plays a long in the tooth snakeoil salesman named Pflueger who exploits the locals with his newfound healing powers and when he’s hired by Kelly’s desperate mother, Natasha Henstridge, the scene becomes a passing of the torch as Pflueger unintentionally transfers his powers to Kelly (Elijah Nelson, “Chain of Death”) that magically heals him of his longtime psychological Pica disorder. Not so much a youthful soul anymore, Henriksen has tall tell signs of showing his age, but the 81-year-old New York City born actor can still sear memorable performances into our psyche with a wisecracking charlatan conman in Pflueger, dressed from head to toe in a shabby white suit and tossing up awkward hand gestures when deriding burial ground protecting Shaman Red Elk, played by long time serial supporting man Branscombe Richmond (“Commando,” “Hard to Kill”). More awkward in his reaction to receiving an unexplainable supernatural gift is Elijah Nelson who goes from deaths door to want to join the Navy Seals in a matter of minutes after the Pflueger plot point passes. The writing doesn’t exactly assist in Kelly’s transition with an acceptance of power without an inkling of trying to comprehend is as Kelly tries to hurt himself and tries to encourage being pounded by bullies as if he already fully understands the immense reality of his abilities. Even his mother, who under the understanding that she has tried everything possible scientific medicine man has to offer to cure her only child, is instantly okay with Kelly’s rushing into the unknown. A nearly unrecognizable Natasha Henstridge from her “Species” franchise days after a thyroid autoimmune disease diagnosis doesn’t stop the late 40’s blond beauty from being just that – a beauty – in an overly protective mother role desired by the local single men from the house visiting doctor to the Adam Beach’s Native American Sheriff Adler. Beach becomes the absent father figure for Kelly and a person who has a foot in both the Native American spiritual world and in the Anglo-Saxon realities and melodramatics. Beach proceeds as the main lead of the third act, following Henriksen and Henstridge to keep a constant, recognizable presence throughout and providing his own stamp as the voice of reason whereas the first two culminated extreme biases toward Kelly. Kayla Carlson, Angeline Appel, Gavin Casalegno, David Gridley, Mike Gray, Thomas Archer, Will Ropp, and one my new personal favorite actors in Chris Browning (“Agnes”) fills out the remaining cast.

Very early on initial reactions toward “The Unhealer” were poor mainly because of the luridly unflattering dialogue and perplexing transitions between scenes that don’t exactly hit the mark matching up character intentions, but the more I watched, the more an optimistic sensation started to arise in me. Starting small in the recesses of my cerebral film database then growing until metastasizing fully into my mind and, eventually, into my nostalgic-detecting ticker is “The Unhealer’s” robust recollection toward how fun bully-revenge-thrillers from two to three decades ago can be with a carbon copy simulation ingrained with a novel narrative surrounding Midwest Native American mysticisms carrying with it that age old “Spiderman” insinuation that with great power, comes great responsibility, but in “The Unhealer’s case, as the tagline suggests, comes great pain. Screenwriters Moore and Harris burden Kelly with a King Midas touch that no matter how hard the character tries to contain his nearly invincible power, outside forces influences and unforeseen happenstances steer Kelly toward self-destructing disaster. Between a group of buffed up and obnoxious high school jocks as unyielding tormenters, Kelly pushed into a self-protecting corner despite a generous passive attitude, especially being run over with car at one point, and the unpredictable and limitless avenues built as substory awry to make “The Unhealer” a joyful hidden gem, the Martin Guigui film on the outside appears to be a cheap, indistinguishable, B-movie, but if you dig deeper, dig until you unearth a medicine man’s ancient dusty bones, and you’ll discover deep seeded veneration, a gripping story, and dark magic carnage.

“The Unhealer” will undoubtedly fly under many viewers’ radars but is a must watch from (Shout!) Scream Factory’s distribution label in a cooperation release with VMI Worldwide (“Orphan Killer”). The full HD, 1080p Blu-ray of the 2020 production is an encoded region A release with unrated certification and a runtime of 93 minutes, presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Generally nothing to swing image quality from one spectrum to the next with a RED Weapon Dragon digital shot. Already decent at compression, the RED camera provides a crisp demarcating image in the forefront and capture the textures in a literal closeup with focus precision. “The Unhealer’s” lighting and set dresses cater less to the supernatural phantasmagoria with Massimo Zeri’s realistic Arizona landscapes and suburbia venues that don’t excite the camera with its cold truth realism rather than the mise-en-scene tropes of horror atmospherics. The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 also has zip to complain about with high resolution quality with a surprising ample range of effects. Dialogue is prominent and clear as well. English SDH subtitles are an available option. Special features include one-sided individual cast/character behind-the scenes interviews which is basically cut and edited footage of the actors describing their characters in footnote fashion. The gag reel is a better feature that takes the same interview format, intertwines it with music, and lines up the gags with an instrumental soundtrack in one seamless show of goofs and hijinks throughout production. Deleted scenes and extended/alternate scenes, surrounding mostly around Kelly and Dominique’s coy love interest, cap the features. At first glance of the final package, “The Unhealer” looks totally like a rip off inside and out of the cardboard slipcover with a “Star Wars'” lightsaber color scheme and a character illustrated design underneath the title dressed in “Stranger Things” font, but don’t let parroting cover fool you as “The Unhealer’s” dark journey from being the bullied to the bully is an unabated and inescapable catch-22.

“The Unhealer” on Blu-ray home video from Scream Factory!

When EVIL Literarature Jumps Right Off the Pages and Starts to Hunt You Down! “Monsters in the Closet” reviewed! (Gravitas Ventures / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on



Watch Monsters in the Closet” on Prime Video!

Eccentric horror novelist Raymond Castle mysteriously dies alone in his New York City apartment.  His daughter Jasmin, who never had a loving relationship with her father, returns to her childhood home, self-negative reminiscing about the strenuous verbal arguments between father and daughter with usual themes surrounding her playing with his valuable horror collectibles and her continuous use of the Spanish language despite his desires for an English only language household, but instead of finding the contents of his will or answers to who he really was a person, as a father, Jasmin discovers her father’s latest novel, an anthology collection based off the black magic spells of a 17th century that brings his short stories to life right there in the apartment with her. 

I said it once and I’ll say it again until the day I die:  horror anthologies are not my cup of tea.  Sure, there are excellent oldies, aka classics, out there, like “Creepshow” and “Body Bags,” from the masters of horror and a handful of more modern, done-right, anthologies from filmmakers on their way to such a grandiose title within the “V/H/S” series, but the majority of micro-narratives nowadays are collected from the scrapings of the low-budget trash barrel due in part to the cost-efficiency of short films, shot over a lengthy stretch of time, brought together into a single feature and the types of slim budget stories can sustain a better reception in a shorter format instead of full-length one.  Now, I’m not saying Zack and Spencer Snygg collaborated “Monsters in the Closet” falls into the latter category but as one of the first released films of 2022 to come across our ever-critical desk, the indie horror-comedy anthology needed to punch the living daylights out of use to begin the year and whether the Snyggs’ 4-episode, plus wraparound story, anthology slammed dunk or airballed will be covered below. “Monsters in the Closet” is a kickstarter project and a self-produced venture funded by a pair of sub-Hollywood filmmakers in Spencer Snygg, who has worked behind the scenes in the lighting department on some major films over the recent year, and a veteran indie softcore-horror director Zack whose has involvement with indie production companies like Troma and the New Jersey based E.I. Cinema, as you’ll see with a large, splayed display of E.I and Alternative Cinema posters strategically arranged as background fodder. It’s like a Misty Mundae poster celebration on exhibition.

The outer shell narrative that encompasses and unites each separate story entities begins with a frantic Tom C. Niksson as the diehard believer in his own success horror writer Raymond Castle, covered in blood, manically talking to himself, and in the throes of typing away before a cloaked stalker wielding a knife closes in on him. Niksson, who worked under Zack Snygg’s pseudonym, John Bacchus, in that Easter holiday E.I. Cinema favorite, “Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter Cottonhell,” steps into that looming, ever-present figurehead from the grave, delivering random dad joke dialogue while cozying up the audiences for an audiobook rendition of Castle’s latest bestseller, a black magic spell anthology of horror stories that come to fruition when read aloud. Other than his talking head role, Niksson’s involved in some contentious flashbacks with Jasmin as a child, but we never see Niksson and the adult Jasmin Flores (Jasmin) ever in the same scene together as the flashbacks are Jasmin voiceovers. Nikkson’s theatrical behavior perfectly suits the stagecraft atmospherics in erecting the gameshow-esque of a horror host whereas Flores is often stiff as a dry plank of wood. Limitations drawn from her lack of experience keep the actress’s timing and delivery often subdued in an obtuse and ungraceful character when escaping the ever-changing fiction-to-non-fiction villain of the minute. Jasmin, the character, is already inherently underwhelming in a role that has no purpose or buildup to understand her headspace surrounding the sudden death of her father. What do those flashbacks mean to her or are they just melancholic gibberish? And why isn’t she more interested in his death or even showing a lack of care for it? Throughout “Monsters in the Closet,” a fair amount of pleasantly surprising performances from the anthological works pull the overall project together better than those in the wraparound story. Along with a first person view zombie tale as the first short, Luke Couzens and Carmilla Crawford play newlywed new homeowners going through the frustrations of DIY Hell until they off each other with tools, the silver spoon Jordan Flippo becomes tarnished when a camping accident turns this rich daddy’s girl into an unstoppable killing machine to protect her immaculate image, and side-splitting John Fedele (“The Vampire’s Seduction”) as the humbly polite mad scientist Frankenstein who can’t get over the death of Mrs. Frankenstein (Valerie Bitner) and keeps resurrecting her despite her wishes to stay dead.

What I like and thought interesting about the “Monsters in the Closet” corpora is that they’re written in-house by at least one of the Snygg brothers, sometimes both.  This extends style and control over the entire body of work boundless to the ideas and the panache of other filmmakers and showrunners without having to associate themselves.  The Snyggs’ balanced anthology comes with equal levels of comedy and horror that unearths the humor in humorless scenarios sans the sometimes tired gags that can devalue a project into tedium and, ultimately, into worthlessness and since we’re already being beholden to more than one narrative that jumbles the mind, the mental capacity is too low to withstand different numerous tales in one sitting as well as to try and struggle with the bad unfunny bits.  “Monsters in the Closet” at least has a whimsical darkness about it, a sinister playful attitude, and isn’t afraid to get gory from time to time beginning with the Spency Snygg directed zombie existentialistic “Please Kill Me Again” that takes the viewpoint of a recently turned woman with normal inner thoughts and intentions, but the cravings begin to take over.  The Snygg brothers follow up with darkly satiric “Home Improvement” involving a new couple’s adversary journey to fix up their rundown new home to the point where they can’t take any more of the repairs or of each other and the overflowing sardonic banter starts to spill blood; this bit is fun, more than you know it relatable, and gets real nasty at the end. The weakest short is “The One Percenters” with a nob’s daughter eager to mingle amongst the common folk during a seemingly harmless camping trip that turns deadly after she accidently kills her boyfriend.  Conceptually, the message is sound with the wealthiest subverting the law theme and Jordan Flippo is stunning as a plutocrat’s high expectations daddy’s girl, but the story lacks enough obstacle and tension-filled stuffing for an interesting enough short. “Frankenstein’s Wife” spotlights John Fedele’s equable, light-hearted humor in affectionately reconstructing and resurrecting the wife he accidently kills and with each attempt at bring her back from the dead, her corporeal temple becomes less and less of herself through Frankenstein’s botched cosmetic surgeries. The lovesick cycle is both deranged and full of laughs from Fedele’s riotous desperation take of a classic character.

Gravitas Ventures unchains all the creatures loose in their digital distribution of The Snygg Brothers’ “Monsters in the Closet” anthology now available on-demand and digital platforms this January. None of the audio or visual aspects will be covered since the feature is not a digital release, but when I say The Snygg Brothers self-produced the film, I mean they literally wore nearly every single departmental hat, including director of photography and visual effects that impresses with a wide range of shots from drone, to hand-held, and to tracking done with depth and various levels of focus. There is no one trick pony behind the camera. Some of the digital effects, such as the bullet holes that riddle the basement floor and walls, cheapen the already cheap production and, for the most part, the practical effects reach the passing bar with the obvious lay figure body parts and crude masks/getups. There are no special features or bonus scenes with this release that runs unrated at 88 minutes. Anthology bias be damned, “Monsters in the Closet” is a rarity in a dying breed subgenre with a jocular sense of sinister, social commentary humor braided into a tenebrous fray between man versus man and man versus monster.

Watch “Monsters in the Closet” on Prime Video!