Tag Archives: independent film

To Be EVIL, It Takes a Little Backbone. “The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra” reviewed! (IndiePix Unlimited / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own “The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra” on DVD. Purchase Here!

In the Gyeongbuk region of South Korea, a brand-new mattress is being delivered to a young couple’s new apartment but upon arrival, the fed-up delivery men take off when no one answers the door and leave it for the job endeavoring girlfriend who must lug up the mattress herself as she finds her boyfriend asleep on the floor. After more than year together, the threadbare relationship inevitably ends and the girlfriend vacates the apartment, but during all that time together, a mysterious mold formulates from within the mattress and surfaces on the pillow top. The mold turns sentient and uses an outgrowth protuberance to latch onto and extract the boyfriend’s vertebra for nourishment. From then on, the mattress is discarded into the world, being picked up and used by unsuspecting nourishments for the interior mold. Travelling across Korea land to difference providences, feasting on the vertebrae that becomes the building blocks of a new being, the growing mold digests to integrate itself into a human world. Absorbing the miscellanea range of emotions from its victims, what was once small fry fungi has become self-aware, compassionate, and even more hungry to live.

How do you write-up the depth of a film that’s undeniably indescribable? Syeyoung Park’s “The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra” trembles on the edge of being the epitome of that very sentiment with an abstract creature feature concept bred out of people’s raw emotions. The 2022 South Korean phantasmagoric horror, fattening itself off the dysphoric and euphoric morsels, is written-and-directed by Park as the filmmaker’s debut feature film credit that tackles life birthed out of death, such as the symbolic end of relationships and literal death, and becomes a metaphor stemmed by the natural growth phenomena of fungi, a new lifeform that grows out of rot. The Moonstone Productions indie picture is a festival favorite amongst the Fantasia Film Festival and others and is distributed onto physical media by the s streaming platform IndiePix Unlimited.

“The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra” doesn’t hone into and latch onto one core group of principals characters; instead, the travelling, moldy mattress has episodic events with interactions to various emotionally-turbulent or charged people that the being inside the dingy mattress not only cuts out and extracts a physical piece of who these characters are but also absorbs their emotional weight, in what could be considered as an incident in molding the mold into what it itself can come to be.  One-sided care and love, a tempestuous connection, contempt, amorous spontaneity, loneliness, and death feed the fungus and shape its mildewy putrescence on the mattress like the coating of an incubation chamber to ensure growth, maturity, and nutrition.  The episodic events hit and miss the gravitational pull needed land firmly on what’s being conveyed.  The woman on death’s bed was perhaps the most impactful written with regret left unsaid, unaccounted for, and is shouldered by the thing in the mattress to fulfill with a letter to the woman’s daughter to let her know about the mother’s definitive adoration.  Other instances are fleeting, perhaps lost in translation, of the evocative impression intended as the mattresses does a reach around for a clean vertebrae excision.  In either case, the now-vertebrae-less don’t even notice when a large part of their backbone is literally ripped from them in the moment; only in post-snatch do they double over in pain and unable to stand and straighten from their crippling past.  The film’s cast includes Mun Hye-in, Ham Sukyoung, On Jeong Yeon, Jung Soo-min, Kim Ye-na, and Park Jihyeon as the humanoid creature.

The fifth thoracic vertebrae, the T-5 spine part and not the film’s title, is located near the top-center of the spine in the thoracic grouping and it supports the abdominal muscles and feeds into the chest wall coinciding with the muscles around the rib cage, lungs, and diaphragm, to assist with breathing.  In Sye-young’s abstract, “The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra” does not brace audiences for metaphorical monsters surrounded by dreamlike imagery and esoteric purposes.  With no explanation, visual or verbally articulated, piecing together the strange circumstances is heavily relied upon our own personal experiences in life, our past mistakes, our relationship fails, our giddy fondness, and so forth to interpret Sye-young’s theoretical philosophy on the unfinished leftovers of a kaput relationship.  I believe Sye-young also felt the need to explain his film in a director’s statement on the back of a DVD that questions the whereabout “bits and scraps” of a failed relationship by anthropomorphism means and relating it all to the cycle of fungus.  While a difficult conceptual pill to swallow, “the Fifth Thoracic Vertebrae” can display beauty and disgust in a composite of odd juxtaposition in a peculiar world where a dirty, moldy mattress is an acceptable roadside pickup and debilitating excised bones of the body go without being questioned.   There’s an aloof presence that speaks symbolic volumes to the relationships depicted and with an open mind and broad, thoughtful strokes, one may see through the director’s expressionism.

Indiepix Unlimited, an online streaming service dedicated to independent films, also caters to the physical media market with a DVD release of “The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra.”  Encoded onto a single layered 5GB DVD-R, it’s been a while since I’ve seen an official release on the recordable DVD format and for the visual picture quality that’s already on a standard definition 720p resolution, we receive a middle-of-the-road 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio presentation. Posterization, in voids and on the skin, is the main artefact culprit in a stylish context of warm gel yellows and greens and the seldomly naturally lit hues which are not as richly saturated but can hold its own for a DVD-R.  There’s not a ton of detail in the mattress mold and any clear view frames are obscured by distance, the cover of darkness, and the cover of blankets as, much like all else, the contours are nicely delineated but the overall color scheme of the film blend together. The South Korean uncompressed LPC 2.0 mix has a pleasing enough unassuming range and depth field that hits all the notes and presents ambience with basically what is needed to envelope the immediate surroundings around the principal objects, all balanced through the dual channels.  The burned in English subtitles are not flawless but are synched well and seemingly translated okay.  The release comes feature only and the standard DVD Amary casing comes with an eye-catching, or rather eye-starring, front cover with no outer coverings or inserts.  The disc art deliberately yells DVD-R with a plain white, barely unique logoed, ring splay.   The release comes not rated with a runtime of 65 minutes and is confirmed to play on region 1 playback.  Untested for other regions. 

Last Rites: “The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra” impresses with forlorn residue in what is an offbeat creature feature where the creature is inside the mattress rather than under it.  Yet, the story stretches the imagination too far and near a snapping point that allows for no breathing room in what is a tale of lamentable remnants that creepingly germinates spores into a melancholic mycelium overtime. 

Own “The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra” on DVD. Purchase Here!

Be Careful Of Your Friends. They May Be EVIL! “Stabbed in the Face” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Stabbed in the Face” is now on DVD!

A high school Halloween party becomes the catalytic event for a motley of friends that plan a party in a remote haunted house where the urban legend of the three legged lady had brutally slain her husband and his mistress before her own insanity was gunned down by local authorities.  Simultaneously, a prison escaped murderer roams free around the same area, living a few friends on edge but reassured by the others that nothing will happen.  As the party begins, sex, drugs, and alcohol fuel the night away until one of the girls winds up missing and all that is left is a blood-stained bathroom where she was last seen heading.  Fingers begin pointing at each other as panic and anxiety sets in but as the thought of a deranged escape convict overtakes as best suspect, the others quickly split up to find more of their roll-in-the-hay and pothead friends only to discover the hard way that splitting up is a bad idea when hidden agendas come to light.

A character trope loaded slasher forms the foundational framework and sets up filmmaker Jason Matherne’s 2004 feature with a killer-thriller twist.  With an unambiguous forthcoming of brutality right smack-dab in the middle of the title of “Stabbed in the Face,” Matherne, the low-budget director of the franchised “Goreface Killer,” an if-you-can-believe-it less profane name to the film’s true title of “the Cockfaced Killer,” helms his sophomore gruesome gorescape off a script by fellow “Goreface Killer” writer and collaborator Jared Scallions.  The independent gore-and-shocker set in the late 1980s lands a setting in Louisiana and Mississippi, specifically around the off-beaten trails and areas of New Orleans, under Matherne’s New Orleans-based horror and exploitation yielding Terror Optics Films, under the copyright of CFK (Cockface Killer) Enteratinment, which innately chairs Matherne with the executive producer hat as well as with Jaren Scallions co-executive producing and having a principal role in the story.

Character clichés clutter the chain of events with your typical pot smokers (Jared Scallions and André Le Blanc), bad boy (Eric Fox), jock (Bill Heintz), nerd (Steve Waltz), slut (Kristen McCrory), bitch (Dana Kieferle) and goody two-shoe virgin (Amanda Kiley).  The gang is all here for the slaughter, initiating formulaic conventionalisms that would make any horror aficionado cringe with an internal “here we go again” snide rippling through their gore-bore heads at the lack of originality and creativeness from another indie production.  Yet, if you stick with the story and pay attention (instead of doom scrolling your phone), Scallion’s script evolves out of being a simplistic carbon-copy primate and into a singular, secerning Homo Sapien with idiosyncrasies because though most characters remain on the routine attribute course, more than one don’t in an an uncommon but rarely explored concept that puts audience theories and callouts to bed before the unsuspecting reveal.  If needing a comparison, think about the “Scream” franchise as those films are really good at playing out the whodunit in complicated pairings with a big surprise at the very end.  In “Stabbed in the Face,” the unmasking is not as potent but the possible advents serpentine the story, some more obvious than others, and each carry a different motivation crashing head-on with each other after a few Matherne measured red herrings to throw off the plot predictable scent as well as building up tropes to the max of their mechanics, such examples would be the overly unchaste Starr who bed hops men without shame or overstating Bruce’s money and smarts with talks of getting into Harvard and his girlfriend is only with him for his family’s wealth.  Scallion slathers principals thick with stenciled overflow and when that bottom drops and all hell breaks loose, the ostensible outcome dissolves like wet paper.  Katheryn Aronson, Samantha M. Capps, Matt Mitkevicious, Bonnie W. Picone, Jerry Paradis, Helen Whiskey, Betsy Fleming, and J.C. Pennington complete the cast.

“Stabbed in the Face” is about as savage as it sounds.  Perhaps not as graphic or intense as the Wild Eye DVD illustrated cover art (we secretly wished it was), kills that amount to the titular act has a mortality rate of only two and those pair of perforations don’t live up to the wonderfully ghastly illustrated cover but, overall, fulfills the promise.  It’s quite evident that Matherne has no qualms about using splatter and sex, two of the biggest keys to a successful slasher, in his punk-scored abjection of lewd-laced murder.  Yet, it would be very remiss of me if I didn’t point out that “Stabbed in the Face’s” blade strikes air at times with the story.  Disconnection between the first couple of scenes and the haunted house party planning and then on completely omits the transpiring moment of the jock’s sister’s murder as scenes progress, passing through the event without as much of a whisper.  She’s just there in a scene and then she’s not and that isn’t explained until after the planning of the haunted house trip when the virgin naively asks while settling into his car about the girl who apparently was hacked to pieces on school grounds two months prior.  The heavy weight of that loss isn’t there for the jock, not even a fleeting moment of sadness or shock, as everything continues as if nothing happened.  The other characters are not struck by the loss either and this sweeps the character’s death under the rug and insignificant to the plot, but does a film entitled “Stabbed in the Face” really care about emotional scarring?  Or is the intention to leave open wounds to fester with more knife strikes, decapitations, and eviscerations?  If I was a magic eight ball, all signs would be point to yes toward the latter as special effects team Jason Bradford, Robert Masters, and Richie Roachclip pull their weight (professionally, not emotionally) creating better than anticipated morbid scenes of murder albeit the one or two obvious CGI blood splatter.

An 80’s teen slasher incarnate, “Stabbed in the Face” glorifies gratuitous sex, drugs, and gore, appropriately curated and displayed by our friends at Wild Eye Releasing on their Raw & Extreme sublabel.  The 78th released title on the sublabel is presented in a blown-up aspect ratio of 1.85:1 widescreen, eliminating the horizontal bars, on a MPEG2 encoded DVD5.  Resolution retains the image tautness with only a handful of scenes cropped and zoomed in even more that reduces pixels to a more granular façade.  Matherne owns the softer presentation with instances of posterization, especially when creating a period piece using stark colored gels and less light for positioning thicker shadow that hazily defines objects, as if lurking in the dark.  The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track has great dialogue strength that does sound boxy.  I suspect a ADR dub but highly unlikely with the really good synch and might just be more carefully attained specified audio with key boom placement.  Eric Fox’s electron and punk soundtrack parallel “Stabbed in the Face’s” indie-grunge horror with synthesizing tells of inspiration from the 80’s era.  Punk and hillbilly rock bands on the soundtrack include multiple tracks from The Poots, The Projections and The Pallbearers – the three Ps.  The static menu features full-length tracks from the soundtrack overlaying its static menu with the only bonus feature being a “Stabbed in the Face” Featurette, a behind-the-scenes look in raw and polished form at the film’s genesis and production with discussions from cast and crew.  Along with the feature’s own trailer, also included but separate from the bonus features are other Raw & Extreme trailers of “Crimewave,” “Goregasm,” “Whore,” “Video Killer,” “Blood Slaughter Massacre,” “Hotel Inferno,” and “Acid Bath.”  This portion of the menu options does not include a music track.  To turn consumers onto the film, more so the gore fans than popcorn film goers, the ultraviolent cover keeps in accordance with the Raw & Extreme profile.  The cover art is also semi-reversible with magnified bloody image on the inside of the frosted Amaray DVD case.  The disc is printed with the same cover art image, just downsized.  The unrated DVD has a runtime of 81 minutes and is region free.  Just hearing the title can induce the sensation of a sharp edge going through soft flesh and with that phantom impression of pain, “Stabbed in the Face” is horny, bloody, and punk!

“Stabbed in the Face” is now on DVD!

This 600 Horsepower Outboard Propeller Runs on EVIL! “Motorboat” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

As Chief Brody Always Said, This Isn’t a Boat Accident!  “Motorboat” on DVD today!

Messiah Ward and his cult of followers once plagued the surrounding Lake Jude for years, conjuring black magic and death in order to appease their netherworld lord.  Ward’s evil is only matched by the goodness of a man of the cloth, but the pious risktaker is no ordinary priest but Messiah Ward’s very own brother, Father Thomas.  Taking matters into his own had to save the souls of his community, Father Thomas mercilessly guns down Messiah Ward and his acolytes, ending his reign of terror…or so he thought.  Two years later, a black and powerful phantom speedboat appears on the lake, killing those who dare enter its waters.  With the help of the local lake patrol officer Barney Rayl investigating the homicides, Father Thomas must serve as the wrath of God once again to stop his brotherly possessed motorboat from hacking up any more innocent swimmers and fishers with its deadly outboard propeller. 

I’ve seen my share of possessed combustible engine films with cars, trucks, and even a killer bulldozer.  Hell, I’ve even seen a rubber tire on a rampage.  Yet, I’ve never seen a killer boat movie until today and the Polonias are responsible for the slaughter on the seas with their latest indie schlocker, “Motorboat.”  The “Splatter Farm” and “Hellspawn” director Mark Polonia and his son Anthony team up for their fifth rudimentary, lowbrow lunge at hyper-micro budget horror, crowdfunded on Indiegogo for around $5,000, and shot in the fall of October ‘22 in and around Tioga county, such as one location being Hills Creek State Park Lake to be one of three locations in creating a larger lake setting.  “Motorboat” is created by Polonia Brothers Entertainment, executively produced by SRS Cinema’s Ron Bonk, through Indiegogo, and John Dagostino with Mark Polonia producing, and Elliott Monroe (“Evil Bong 666”) and Previn Wong (“Yule Log”) set as associate producers. 

Like many of the Polonia Brothers Entertainment, a cast of regulars return to indulge in the tightknit production family and to give their all in providing their best performances to make micro budgets like “Motorboat” come to filmic fruition.  In the roles of Priest and Harbor Patrolman are Tim Hatch (“Shark Encounters of the Third Kind”) and Jeff Kirkendall (“Sharkula”) who have once again found themselves working side-by-side on a Mark Polonia production.  Cemented more into exposition than action, Hatch and Kirkendall essentially get the job done with their extensive rapport and long history working together but as developing their characters, a Priest and a Harbor Patrolman could have well been a Lake Fisherman and  Pizza Delivery Man as the professions are laid waste to the script’s lesser defining ideals that are more clearly evident, such as a demon possessed motor boat offing people on and off shore.  Also, Hatch and Kirkendall, as well as much of “Motorboat’s” cast, aren’t very expressive, use little gesturing, and corner themselves with monotone deliveries, taking what should be shocking scenes or jump into actions with little reactionary energy and intensity.  That fairly sums up “Motoboat’s” cast as Messiah Ward is more like the 1958 Plymouth Fury in “Christine,” a motorized machine on a killing spree, with Michael Korotitsch briefly playing the character under a black or rubber mask during his corporeal scenes.  The remaining cast are essentially the racked up body count boat fodder with Polonia regulars Jamie Morgan (“House Shark”), Ken Van Sant (“Sharkenstein”), Dave Fife (“Doll Shark”), and Noyes J. Lawton (“Virus Shark”).

As you can obviously see by the cast’s previous film credits, which all involved Mark Polonia, the director has a healthy fascination with the predators of the ocean, augmenting and exploiting sharksploitation from a limitless thought-bubble of narrative concepts.  Surprisingly, “Motorboat” does not contain one single dorsal fin or rows of razor-sharp visual effects teeth.  Polonia may have deviated from sharksploitation but never got out of the water by keeping the tide still infused with blood.  Post-production blood effects, rain, and layered energy spirals are not the most skillfully composited integration but what Polonia always strives for is to make an entertaining film, to keep the viewers engaged, and could only hope that the his microbudget efforted effects, such as using a 1/16 scale RC boat as the Messiah Ward’s ship of slaughter, afforded him enough production value to eke by but how Mark Polonia, and I’m sure son Anthony also, very masterfully retains engagement for his microbudget movies is to not linger on a shot that can make the scene stale or monotonous.  Granted, you may roll your eyes on lower shelf quality, but you’ll still find yourself connected to the screen as cuts are made for different camera angles, such as over-the-shoulder, behind-the-back, master shots, closeups, mediums, there’s never a single take for a long period of time to avoid idle eyes and unstimulated neuron firings.  The story itself cruises along as combination of films like “The Devil’s Rain” and “The Car” leaving a fair amount of demonic or possessed destruction in its wake but can be trying at times piecing together the whole story behind Messiah Ward’s purpose and transition into either a speedboat or a demon driving a speedboat, an unclear specific of the antagonistic character, and this undercuts Father Thomas and Harbor Patrol Rayl endgame goal because we’re not exactly sure who or what they’re up against.  An innuendo term like “Motorboat” suggests lighter, more in a foreplay of intentions, but SRS Cinema and Mark Polonia are abreast in another way to turn the tide toward something far more terrifying on the waters!

The one thing you can always count on Ron Bonk and SRS Cinema to pull off are immaculately enticing cover arts to catch one’s eye and that is what we have here with “Motorboat” on DVD home video.  The 16×9 widescreen presented film is a MPEG-2 encoded DVD5 shot digitally with an overall clean finish. However, compressions issues do appear with minor jittery picture noise and minor banding with skin tones ungraded and appearing sometimes orange in the shot. Thrifty visual effects are you get what you pay for but doesn’t necessarily affect the watch if going in, understanding, and if a fan of the Mark Polonia fast and dirty chugalug of filmmaking. An English stereo 2.0 is wangled by the built-in camera mic that more than most the time doesn’t have too many issues with playback aside the varying and inconsistent dialogue levels despite being in the same scene as well as unable to filter an overwhelming lakeside ambiance. Post ADR was used to overlay a couple of scene dialogue tracks due to the crashing, wind-driven waves of lakeside conversing. As a whole, dialogue sums up pretty clear without serious hurdles. The two-channel speaker relays a punchy boat-toot audio byte that sounds like a Mac truck blaring its horn whenever Messiah Ward the “Motorboat” is cruising the waters and killing the people. There were no English subtitles available. Extras include an audio commentary track with director Mark Polonia who half the time soapboxes his trials and tribulations as well as champions micro-indie filmmaking while also diving shallowly into “Motorboat’s” background waters. The official trailer and other SRS trailers are also present. I’m always impressed with SRS Cinema front cover artwork as it’s very appealing, alluring, and is sometimes not truly accurate and for “Motorboat,” we have a half-submerged woman in distressed and reaching out for help in the foreground as a minacious boat barrel toward her from behind. Not insert inside and the DVD art is the same front cover image but cropped to just show the woman’s frightened, eyeshadow-streaked face. Region free with a rum-runner runtime of 75 minutes, SRS Cinema’s DVD comes unrated. “Motorboat” is pure Mark Polonia and if you’re expecting high-caliber horror, you’re going to need more than a life preserver to survive these chopping waters.

As Chief Brody Always Said, This Isn’t a Boat Accident!  “Motorboat” on DVD today!

When Men Want More, They Receive More… EVIL! “Red Sun” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Red Sun” on Limited Edition Blu-ray from Radiance Films!

Peggy, Sylvie, Christine, and Isolde have made a mortiferous pact to lure wanton men into their spider’s web before snuffing them out. Armed with guns and homemade explosives, the four women find themselves strapped for cash but managing to get by with their all-in scheme to take out as many licentious men as possible. When the nomadic loafer Thomas re-enters Peggy’s life, she initially sees him as just another mark to relieve from the mortal coil, but Thomas’ uninterest in sexual desires appeal to Peggy’s compassion and care for the man she once loved who just happened to show up in her life one night. As the two become closer, Peggy’s accomplices continue their deadly ideology, working their individual johns, but Christine and Sylvie find Peggy slipping under Thomas’ beguiling draw, an affect she can’t seem to comprehend, and pressures Peggy to be thorough with Thomas to the bitter end.

“Rote Sonne,” or “Red Sun” translated into English, is the 1970 feministic crime drama from German filmmaker Rudolf Thome and penned by the late Switzerland born screenwriter, Max Zihlmann.  Thought-provoking as it is enticingly cold, “Red Sun” tears open a void between lust and violence that separates the sexes of scorned scars.   The pre-European Union film looks at feminism during a highly patriarchal Germany time, West Germany to be specific, when women rights were essentially molded and determined by men.  Wives relied heavily on their husbands to make decisions for them on a permissible granted condition and even some marriage-related abuse crimes we’re not punishable under German law.  Thome helmed a politically anti-conservative and socially anti-inequality picture during the second wave of German feminism of the 1960s with ironfisted and revenge-seeking protagonists as an active cell blending into cultural norm.  “Red Sun” is produced by the director as well as Heinz Angermeyer of Independent Film productions and is part one of our double bill look at radical feminism with Marleen Gorris’ “A Question of Silence” to follow.

At the tip of the cast spear is a Rudolf Thome regular, Marquard Bohm, having had roles in another of Thome’s empowering women feature “Supergirl – The Girl from the Stars” as well as the skin-laden “Detektive,” and the narrative’s focal character stirs confounding interest in that it revolves around a male principal of a women liberation-by-force feature.  As Thomas, Bohm is not a traditionally depicted German man but has all the some of the minuscular familiar qualities of masculine behavior.  Thomas loafs into to life of Peggy, played by fellow “Detektive” star Uschi Obermaier, and her cohort of conniving men eaters – Christine (Diana Körner, “Barry Lyndon”), Sylviie (Sylvia Kekulé) and Isolde (Gaby Go) – simply by being at the right place at the right time or visa-versa, depending on how you look at it.  For Thomas, his nonchalant leeching onto Peggy morphs into something more than just freeloading off of already strapped for cash Peggy and friends, becoming a distraction and an attraction from his previously failed relationship in Munich.  The role is in a mirror reversal of the then current German society with Thomas being a stay-at-home man, running errands at the behest of the woman Peggy as she goes to work and earns to keep their clandestine killing chugging along, but Thomas does what he wants, whether be spending Peggy’s extra cash on cigars or eating all the food in ladies’ fridge.  Opportunistically asserting his needs onto their, often inimical, hospitality, Thomas is the Peggy beloved free-range chicken strutting his stuff around other hungry, more axe-wielding, farmers that put the pressure on Peggy to nix him before he insidiously collapses their pact.  Under the “Red Sun,” the cast fills out with Don Wahl, Peter Moland, and Henry von Lyck.

Unfortunately, Thomas has inadvertently sowed the seeds of destruction within the four women, dividing the group’s cause and on what to do with Thomas.  The women are arranged in a spectrum range of how to handle their contested guest; Thomas has caught the eye of Peggy and Isolde, though active in certain measures of man-slaughter, refuses to partake in the act of killing altogether where Sylvie pushes back against her indifference amiability for Thomas to continue the good fight and Christine just flat out owns her oppositional stance to eliminate the man many would find lackadaisical and nocuous to their friendship and plans, like an usurping boyfriend coming in between two best friends.  What Thomas represents is the potential squash, or delay of, the feminist movement against an arrogant and authoritatively unfair patriarchal society and each woman is a different perspective and reaction to the measures of feministic movement.  “Red Sun” is also a tragic love story that pits rightful duty against the heart’s urges and Thome is able to fashion a path through the commentary to depict both views in a sad, yet heartful conclusion.  What Thome doesn’t do well is the appropriate stitching of time passed.  Perhaps through editing or the within the confined text of the script, what feels like weeks passed is actually only a handful of days, but Thomas’s comfort level is so ingrained, coupled with the brief mentioning of how long he’s been around, the comings-and-goings of time blend into one jerky story that can’t properly materialize a granular tone and “Red Sun” becomes a bit sun blind at times when trying to keep with the characters’ narrative.

“Red Sun” blazes onto a world debut, limited edition Blu-ray release from independent cult film distributor, Radiance Films. The AVC encoded, high-definition release has been scanned in 2K from the original 35mm camera negatives, supervised by director Rulfe Thome, at the Cinegreti Postfactory in Berlin as well as additional touchup restoration work to spruce up the dust, dirt, and scratches. Radiance Films’ presentation features a brilliant quality that has restored to void out any celluloid cankers. Grading appears natural and vivid under the breadth of the welcomed 35mm grain. Aside from a handful of faint vertical scratches here and there, this Blu-ray has none the worse for wear with compression issues as the transfer is stored on an ample BD50 to reduce any compression artefact effects. The original German language LPCM 2.0 mono track vivaciously keeps up with a clean, clear, and robust post-production dialogue recording. No major issues with hissing or popping though minor specimens rear their ugly audibles sporadically to a negligible outcome. Since ADR is used, depth is lost amongst the dialogue track, but the environmental ambience nicely courses through the output with a small explosion and episodic skirmishes to keep the range from being too concentrated. English subtitles are available and are well-synced, well-paced, and are grammatically sound from start to finish. Bonus features include an audio commentary track with director Rudolf Thome and Rainer Langhans and also two visual essays with film academics Johannes von Moltke, in German with English subtitles, on the subject of cultural and social influences on “Red Sun” titled Rote Sonne: Between Pop Sensibility and Social Critique, and Margaret Deriaz exploring the developments on the New German cinema, titled From Oberhausen to the Fall of the Wall. The physical attributes are just as enticing with non-traditional and clear Blu-ray snapper case with a thicket, 51-page color booklet insert featuring the 2022 Guerrilla girls: Radical Politics in Rudolf Thome’s “Red Sun” essay by Samm Deighan, an interview with the director, Letters to the German Film Evaluation Office by Wim Wenders and Enno Patalas from 1969, film review extracts between 1970 and 1991, and transfer notes and full package release credits. Sheathed inside the case is a reversible cover art with a Bond-esque prime cover of Uschi Obermaier in a white, short-skirted outfit holding a revolver in front of a shoreline red sun. Alternate, inside cover notes the original German language title “Rote Sonne” with the 3 of the 4 femme fatales posed around Peggy’s VW bug. The disc press art is perhaps the less exciting aspect with just a plain, off-white disc with red letter of the title. Radiance Films’ release comes region free, has a runtime of 87 minutes, and is not rated. Limited to 1500 copies should not stop a film aficionado from looking directly into the “Red Sun,” a highly provocative and pulpy thriller full of contempt and full of ambivalence curated to pack a punch on a new Radiance Films Blu-ray.

“Red Sun” on Limited Edition Blu-ray from Radiance Films!

Become Lost with the EVIL in Your Head. “Faye” reviewed! (Reel 2 Reel Films / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on



Author Faye L. Ryan has found success as a career writer penning personal growth and self-assurance books, but the renowned author has hit a mental wall in growing out of the process of mourning for her deceased husband, killed in a car accident in which Faye was at the wheel.  Scarred physically and mentally with painful reminders of that fateful night, Faye struggles to focus on her next new book, threatened to be dropped by her publisher if she doesn’t meet their deadline, and interacts with her husband as if he was still with her in person.  In a last ditch effort to get Faye back to writing before cutting her loose, the publisher offers up a lakeside vacation house to help focus on her work, but as Faye settles into her new, quiet writing space, she finds herself unable to escape a haunting presence tormenting her. 

Working solo is tough.  Having no one to bounce off dialogue or react to their disposition can be daunting and unnatural for most actors and actresses.  Yet, the titular character in “Faye” must do very that to ensure Kd Amond’s 83-minute feature directorial about loss, grief, and the supernatural representation that braids into a broken reality will exist without suffering stagnation.  “Faye” is a 2021 female-driven horror-drama written by Amond and the film’s lone wolf star Sarah Zanotti as the two filmmakers reteam from the previous year’s dysfunctional family thriller, “Rattled.”  Shot between Nashville, Tennessee and the cabin resort of Lacombe, Louisiana, “Faye” is cut from an all-female producing team of by Amond, Zanotti, Sara DelHaya, and Nicole Marie Lim under Amond and Zanotti’s independent film production company AZ if Productions.

So, how did Sarah Zanotti perform going at the role alone with not another single body in sight?  Aside from the performance scale, initial first thoughts about an emotionally processing Faye rings clear that she is definitely alone with her thoughts without ever confronting her past head-on.  Faye, more or less, brushes the incident to the side, drowning herself in wine and loathing, until vague, intermittent memories pull her back down to reality every so often.  The role gratifies a sense of a struggling individual’s unintended and deeply personal isolation stemmed by unable to grasp with the hard to deal with issues to where’s she’s invented an imaginary friend in the form of her late husband in this pretend world of being normal, routine, and safe.  Looking from the outside in, Faye invokes pity on the saddest level as she converses with thin air as well as drinking large quantities of wine alone. There’s even the suggestion in either flashback scenes or maybe representational moments of despair that she, at one point in time, committed to, or thought of, suicide. As for the “Archaon: The Halloween Summoning” actress Zanotti? The actress, singer-songwriter, and proud cat mother (as stated on her personal website) breathlessly engrosses herself in Faye’s darkest moments with a ramble of insecurities that skate around the main issue until that issue manifests as a specter of duality, haunting “Faye” with her own scarred image that won’t allow her to leave until she combats the guilt eating her away. However, Zanotti’s a bit one tone through the entire storyline, never zig-zagging in a full range on emotive spectrum when face-to-face with the emulated specter. There are guest voices in the film whenever Faye takes or makes a phone call, including vocals from Corri English as Emory the publisher, Dean Shortland as Bobby, Brian Vance as Jacob, Kd Amond as Faye’s mom, and Zanotti as Elle.

To carry an entire feature film on your shoulders is empathetically tough for the one and only principle lead Sarah Zanotti and also the director Kd Amond as well and I wouldn’t declare “Faye” to be an overstimulating visual film albeit snazzy editing and makeup effects when sucked into supernatural self-reproach and suffering. “Faye” leans heavy into self-centered conversation in an acerbic chaptered and non-linear context that can be difficult to follow it’s pathway structure at times when the titular character is not framed in the cabin but rather sitting, speaking on a well-lit platform that fits her personal growth expatiate, like a Tony Robbins-type, connecting back to Faye’s mindset or actions in the cabin. Though much of the conversion is directed toward herself or the mental image and two-way communication of dead husband, a good chunk of the dialogue is the unwavering tough love business-speak between agent and client. Faye publisher rakes in money based off book sales and if Faye isn’t writing up drafts than a publisher does not care about your personal tragedy. That dynamic during the calls feels utterly cold with no pity or sympathy for Faye in the voice of the agent who cares solely about client image for publicity and is determined to nag a draft out of a woman who has lost her best friend in life – grief and guilt be damned. As a spook show, “Faye” whips up a few moments of fearful highlights but does little to the film’s self-proclaimed horror label when more of the acidity of internalizing the death and destruction of her life becomes more manic without the monster that’s introduced too late or comes too little often to be integrated into the story properly and stands out as negative concentrated symbolism.

Oozing with heartbreak and melancholy, the fracturing viability in “Faye” calls forth the detrimental impact and for reinstation back in the society, one needs to fall before getting back up. Reel 2 Reel Films brings the American-made, woman-driven, atmospheric and apparitional “Faye” to the United Kingdom on digital home video come May 9th. Since a digital screener was previewed, there will be no critique of the audio or video qualities. Kd Amond was really a one woman show behind the camera by taking on not only the directing duties but also many others, including cinematography and visual/practical effects and for “Faye,” the film was mostly captured with natural lighting outside the cabin, practical lighting for cabin interiors, and key lighting of Faye on stage. There’s use of a filters during the more supernatural plights and to tell night scenes that don’t look natural, leaning toward a more style-choice purple. For any extras, there were no bonus scenes during or after the credits. “Faye” has strong bones for a good grief and guilt ghost film in the indie realm and while it doesn’t have the star-laden power of other similar themes of its kind in “The Babadook” or “Hereditary,” “Faye” still invokes the power of hurt and the summoning of self-condemnation.