Tag Archives: independent film

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.

EVIL Spam E-Mail Wants to Play a Game! “Planet Zee” reviewed! (Darkside Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Land onto “Planet Zee” now on Blu-ray! 

Struggling woman filmmaker Zee Bronson is trying to make what she loves a supportive career. Smoking pot, drinking beer, and living with her grandmother Sam mellows out Bronson’s anxiety of potentially landing a writer-director’s gig one day. When her sleazy producer, Serge, closes a deal with an investor interested in her script, Zee eyes widen with excitement, but her premature celebration quickly turns sour when Serge notes the financer wants someone else to direct her screenplay. A vexed Zee turns to a weird email spam virus that has seemingly appropriated her computer to propose a game of life with superpowers or death. Convincing Serge into joining her, the two unwittingly open a diabolical portal that traps them inside the apartment, subjecting them to battling a demon and persuading them to kill one another. As their relationship dissolves slowly throughout the night, lines a drawn between friend and foe in order to escape the grip of a computer-commanding Game of Power.

There is bottom-of-the-barrel independent schlock done with very half-hearted inspiration and then there’s bottom-of-the-barrel independent film done with A for effort around a difficult to sell single-locale story that includes witty dialogue and humble homemade effects. Some of these mighty, homegrown indies stem from one ultra-eccentric Berlin, Germany physics and prehistoric archeology studied-turned-artful filmmaker Zetkin Yikilmis in her second written and directed feature, “Planet Zee.” Her B-movie, or should I say Z-movie, is the epitome of independent filmmaking in knowing the production’s limits and how to make the most of a film with what little material is available to use, such as a deluging cash flow for big budget grandstanding that’ll get your name on marquees, posters, and regional commercials. Instead, “Planet Zee” is very much meta love and confidence concept toward Zetkin Yikilmis herself, as the title implies, being a woman in a typically projected masculine dominated industry. Yikilmis follows up her sophomore film from an array of micro shorts and her 2019 released debut feature, “Some Smoke and a Red Locker,” incorporating elements of the stoner horror-comedy into her 2021 film that’s self-produced by Yikilmis and her cinematographer husband, Dominic, as well as longtime collaborator S.B. Goldberg.

Zetkin Yikilmis, obviously, stars as Zee Bronson, a bohemian screenwriter attempting her hand at filmic success while having her grandmother live with her in a small apartment. Having surveyed Yikilmis’s micro shorts, her droll act as stoner-chic Zee Bronson imitates far from her other self-applied roles with a sluggish repartee and often tinkering with slapstick with fellow costar Alexander Tsypilev as squalid producer Serge. Yikilmis and Tsypilev’s reconnection after “Some Smoke and a Red Locker” gives way to a natural onscreen dynamic that has experience role reversal, gender role reversal, and to test their association connection. With a tight-fitting shirt that flirts with exposing his slightly protruding belly, Serge fits swimmingly into the cesspool of sexist producers with Tyspilev crafting Serge’s slimy mold with little pinches of details toward the producers first-rate me-first attitude. While Bronson and Serge are the two chief residents of “Planet Zee,” there is often a forgotten third wheel who bookends the narrative. Sam, Zee’s elderly only in looks grandmother played by Trish Osmond who had a small role in Zack Snyder’s “Army of Thieves.” The 1944 born English actress bloomed late in her career that begin in 2014, but that doesn’t stop Osmond from being a dominating player of goodwill toward bizarre films and roles, especially playing ones involving an usually vigorous old woman with underlying uncanniness probably important to the story. Minor characters fill in the rest with small brushes with minor scenes from Roland Bialke and Michael Tietz.

Through the veneer of bare budget and puerile comedy, “Planet Zee” puts together a couple of ugly statements well versed like a stain amongst the film industry but only brought up more recently during the #MeToo movement and seen as ingrained into industry as par for the course. Yikilmis mentions in the dialogue that as a woman filmmaker she fears oppressive struggles in forming a passionate career in creating art, her art being satirical comedy-horror motion-pictures, insinuating female-driven aspirations are often squashed by misogynistic viewpoints akin to the British journalist and author Christopher Hutchinson’s claim that women are not funny because they are pretty and do not need to appeal to men through humor. Yikilmin writes pitting herself, as Zee Bronson, against a sleazy and dismissive producer who exploits her with pretense friendship, mirroring the real-life exploitation of certain long-standing, fundamental moguls who instead of being held responsible for distasteful chauvinistic corruption, held women’s careers in the palms of their hands with a conniving, convincing promise of blacklisted ruinous slander or unfounded gossip if unethical compliance to their advances were denied. In lighter terms of the film’s satire, Yikilmis uses the situation as an allegorical parallel of who really has control over the story – the creator or the producer. As the creator, Zee Bronson yearns to maintain creative rights in telling her tale whereas the producer gives into the meddling whims of the highest bidder, reaching for the dollar signs that illuminate over their eyes. Serge’s me-first persona during the game offers no collaboration as he literally pushes down Zee for the faint prospect of survival and causes more harm than beneficial good. Look past the stock electricity effect visuals, polished lens flares, and the cheaply made demon getups and you’ll see inside “Planet Zee’s” fiery core, a passively seething call to overcome the darker side of a biased film industry.

Explore the terrain of Zetkin Yikilmis’s “Planet Zee” now on Blu-ray home video a part of the Darkside Releasing, as feature #24 on their Darkside Collection line, and distributed by MVD Visual. Shot and released in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 widescreen, “Planet Zee” isn’t breathtaking with nearly the full 97-minute runtime inside Zee’s tight apartment living room, aka Yikilmis apartment where many of her shorts were filmed, and so the 1.78:1 aspect ratio is overkill or wasted on nothing spectacular aside from the trippy wallpaper or the bone-curtain that linger the background. In truth, “Planet Zee” could have been shot in a 4:3 for better framing inside a vertical inclined ratio. The full high definition, 1080p output does look good in the details. The trippy-cladded apartment and warm toned outfits pop with robust color. Though not labeled on the Blu-ray back cover, the release offers a DTS-HD 5.1 surround mix and despite being produced in Germany with Germany actors, the original language track is in English thick with a dialect accent but overall adequate and clean in delivering dialogue. Ambient effects often feel just as distant or separated from the visual trunk as their digitally rotoscoped onto the frame. Special features include a behind-the-scenes that actually isn’t anything relevant to behind-the-scenes material with a couple of rehearsed statements on set from Alexander Tsypilev pretending to be scared of Zetkin Yikilmis’s feigned dictator-like direction. Other bonus content includes a string through of Zetkin Yikilmis’s micro-shorts with Yikilmis serving as a host in between and a woman in horror trailer reel. “Planet Zee” is an unpretentious good time. Small, yes. Limited in budget, yes. Unknown cast, yes. Yet, where the film lacks with high dollar density it makes up for in free reign creativity and breezy humor that becomes a middle finger to inequality and duplicity.

https://vimeo.com/489595264

Land onto “Planet Zee” now on Blu-ray! 

Let the Heavens Fall to Cleanse the EVIL Away! “Undead” reviewed! (Umbrella Entertainment / Bluray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The small finishing town of Berkley, Australia comes under siege by blazing meteoroids that turn the quaint residents into mindless flesh-hungry zombies. A small band of survivors led by the town’s dismayed local beauty queen and a fisherman turned doomsday prepper fight the undead hordes in order to escape the carnage by reaching the city limits, but when faced with an otherworldly monolithic barrier surrounding the town and blocking the exits, a hopeful way out becomes quickly fleeting. To make matters worse, unusual rainstorms drench them with fear of what’s really in the rainwater of the apparent alien attack. In a last-ditch effort, the remaining survivors board a personal prop plane to scale the great extraterrestrial wall that’s imprisoning them with the undead. An onslaught of end of days catastrophes drives their instinct to battle on, to push forth toward living, despite all the evidence of a contrary methodology to the misunderstood, overwhelming alien actions.

A 9-year marriage, three children, the death of my dog, two states, a new home, four jobs, four presidents, and a global pandemic in more than almost two decades’ passing has transpired since the first and last time I saw the Spierig brothers’ 2003 zombie-comedy “Undead” and, still, the 2003 Australian film impresses with a large-scale gore show on a small-scale budget. Before terraforming new vampire words with Ethan Hawke in “Daybreakers” and taking a stab at an entry in the “Saw” franchise with “Jigsaw,” the brothers Michael and Peter Spierig’s first full feature-length venture was an ambitious love letter to their’ most endeared cult films of their youth, more heavily influenced by Sam Raimi’s “The Evil Dead.” Blowing through the meager budget halfway into filming and shooting an insane 40 to 50 shots per day for the better part of two months, the completion of “Undead” was a must for the self-funding brothers under their production banner of Spierigfilm and the success of “Undead” also jumpstarted the careers of cinematographer Andrew Strahorn (“Hostel III,” “Lethal Weapon” television series), production designer Matthew Putland (“San Andreas”), and special effects artist Julian Summers (“Bait,” “Mortal Kombat” ’21).

“Undead” was the first film for Felicity Mason and Mungo McKay in a lead role as that dismayed local beauty queen, Rene, and that fisherman turned doomsday prepper, Marion, mentioned in the above synopsis. Rene seeks to leave the town of Berkley in the wake of the tragic death of her parents before becoming the burdened beholder of their debt; instead, she thrusted into a crisis that won’t allow her to escape so easily from a destiny laid out for her in hometown. Mason’s humble portrayal of Rene is nearly invisible compared to her more boisterous and gun-fu counterparts but grounds us to an agreeable realism of reactions whereas Marion’s limitless gun-toting out of his fishing overalls and Matrix-like gunplay moves adds that layer of voguish fun of the Chow Yun-fat variety. The other four survivors fall into the run-of-the-mill of yowlers and cutting personality types who throw around their weight and cowardly sarcasms in immediate show of unfounded animosity. Supposedly, a longer cut of “Undead” provides more backstory for father-to-be charter pilot Wayne (Rob Jenkins, “Australiens”) and the law enforcement neophyte Molly (Emma Randall, “Bullets for the Dead”) but the release copy which this review is based off was not of that longer cut. Dirk Hunter supplies a purge of negative comic relief as Harrison, the chief constable without a clue, and Lisa Cunningham’s Sallyanne is Wayne’s antagonizing pregnant lover of bitterness as she comes in second place next to Rene at the local beauty pageant and seizes moments, during all Hell breaking loose, to confront Rene’s rope-wrangling talent that won her the cast prize.

Over the past year, I watched and reviewed another Australian sci-fi horror “Dustwalker” from director Sandra Sciberras where crash landed space objects turned the local dustbowl residents into the resemblance of zombies and connected to the chaos is a not from this world creature. I likened “Dustwalker” to be a lesser, weaker, total rip-off of the Spierigs’ ozploitation rager and I still stand 100% behind my claim as I reaffirm “Undead” to be the reigning supreme champion, and “did it first” as far as story goes, between the two nearly identical narrative plots. There’s an uncrushable affinity for “Undead’s” bold risk of looking at the bigger picture head on and absolutely landing each scene whether in prosthetics or in post with better than your average computer rendered imagery. Are the effects the sleekest, most realistic, graphics you’ve ever seen? Absolutely not but what they are are ultra-rich in creative detail rather than quality detail and can give most substantial budgeted films a run for the money, especially in the closeup shots that can be an obvious slapdash, might as well be silicone, fake. The Spierig brothers also don’t overcomplicate the plot with survivors trying to simply quickly decamp the overran town madness with plot points sensible to character designs and not relying on gratuitous happenstance scenarios for the sake of gore alone. However, do believe me when I say that “Undead” will delight gore geeks with a gut-spilling, face-lifting, head-decapitating mixture of zany zombie knockoffs that are steady throughout. If you’re deciding between the more recent “Dustwalker” and the now almost considered antique 15+ year-old “Undead,” the choice is clear with “Undead’s” superior campy, shoot’em, blood-splattering zombie mayhem.

For U.S. horror viewers looking for something that borders obscurity and might be out of their comfort zone, “Undead” has yet to make an appearance on Blu-ray, surprisingly enough. Only the Lionsgate DVD version is the known, and authorized, copy to be released in America. For those searching high and low, the all-region Blu-ray from the Australian distributor, Umbrella Entertainment, offers a 2-disc alternative with a new 1080p, Full High-Definition, release as volume # 12 on the company’s World on Film: Beyond Genres banner. The Aussie cult modern classic is presented in a widescreen 1.77:1 aspect ratio and with a runtime of 97 minutes, mirroring the U.S. DVD length which is a bit disappointing as longer cuts of the film do exist on other European releases. Day scenes play into an agreeable enough flat, more natural, color scheme with some serious grain in the 16mm film stock use, moving the photography toward a retro de-aged semblance courtesy of Spierigs’ cult film homage, but the darker scenes, mostly through a moderately intense blue filter, sees the unstable pixelation flareups, especially in black blank spaces and I’m taken aback by the lack of touchup to clear up any stylized misgivings. Umbrella offers two audio options – an English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and an English 2.0 DTS-HD Stereo. Paired with an excellent soundtrack, the audio tracks do “Undead” complete justice without a smidgen of lossy fidelity. With plenty of action to go around – firearm discharges, explosions, zombie grunts/groans/sneers, and sundry of miscellaneous and oddball effects – each elemental output is distinct and clear. The dialogue renders nicely as well. Umbrella holds a few exclusive and rehashed special features that include an audio commentary from Peter and Michael Spierig and cinematographer Andy Strahorn, a raw video behind-the-scenes look on the set of “Undead,” the more production quality making of “Undead,” “Attack of the Undead” short films from the Spierig brothers that inspired the feature, home-made Dolly Video, the camera and makeup tests, still gallery, and theatrical trailer. Plus, an exclusive Simon Sherry illustrated art on the front covers of the snap case and the cardboard slipcover along with reversal DVD cover art and a second disc containing the complete 17-track soundtrack from Cliff Bradley. The rating is listed as an Australian certified MA 15+ for horror theme, medium level violence. which sounds severely tamer than it is for the more recent video nasty with all its zombies punching holes through hapless skulls, bloody brain munching, gooey face ripping, and severed torsos with spine exposures.