Blind, EVIL, Undead Templar Knights Hunt for a Bite to Eat! “Tombs of the Blind Dead” reviewed! (Synapse / Special Edition 2-DiscBlu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on May 1, 2024

“Tombs of the Blind Dead” 2-Disc Blu-ray Available for Purchase Here!

Maria, Betty and Roger take a train across the Spanish countryside to see the landscape sights. When Maria feels like a third wheel stuck in between Betty and Roger’s flirtations, she jumps off the moving train, leaving her friends aboard, and camping out under the ruins of an old countryside Church. There’s only one problem, the Church was home to the ancient order of the Knights of Templar who took a blood oath for Satan by sacrificing young virgins by drinking their blood and lynched by the Church for their crimes against man and God. The Cursed Knights, reduced to rags, bones, and without eyes, rise from underneath their graves every night and roam the countryside on the hunt for anybody in proximity they can feast upon. Betty and Roger learn of Maria’s strange demise without knowing the details and form a four-person search party only to step into the same dangerous den of the Knights of Templar.

“Tombs of the Blind Dead,” or as known as the U.S. as just “The Blind Dead,” is the first in a series of four undead Templar Knights films that would come to be known as The Blind Dead collection by Spanish filmmaker Amando de Ossorio. Natively titled “La noche del terror ciego” was released in 1971 and penned by Ossorio who laid a new path of Spanish horror that didn’t involve Paul Naschy or Jess Franco with undoubtedly slow dread of the undead that resembled more of the Italian-bred beyond the grave films where ghouls and ghosts return to life and wreak bloody havoc on the living, a guise for social context and for political dictatorship. Themes of rebellions, rape, and bisexuality course through the feature’s necrotic veins as the film receives Spanish and Portugal co-production support from Plata Films and Interfilme with executive producer Salvadore Romero (“The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman”) spearheading pre-production and behind the scenes.

Following of a newly formed trio of friends traveling the countryside to take in the sights, an underlying green-eyed trouble brews right from the moment when an enchanted Roger, the debut film and character of 1973’s “Green Inferno’s” César Burner, meets gorgeous red head Betty, “It Happened at Nightmare Inn’s” Lone Fleming,” and Roger’s travel companion and Betty’s Catholic boarding school roommate/best friend, Virginia, “The House that Screamed’s Maria Elena Arpón, feels the twinges of jealousy as her amorous covets for Roger never materializes and she sees her future with relationship with roger forever in the friend zone. Virginia becomes so intolerant of Roger and Betty’s innocent flirtations that she’s willing to hop off a not-so-speeding train and camp inside the creepy, ruined structures at centerstage of a burial ground. Arpón’s passive aggressive behavior is quite convincing, even the part where she tucks and rolls off a moving train in what stupid things do when people are frustrated, especially in the gray territory of love. The love triangle is so simplistically arranged, each behavioral component goes without being farfetched. From Virginia’s first sexual experience at the caressive, soft hands of her roommate/best friend Betty while at boarding school to Roger and Betty’s blameless attraction to one another that spurs Virginia’s irrational, self-serving behavior, Ossorio’s characters are written very well when homogeneously compared to other outside of cinema love triangles. José Thelman (“Night of the Sorcerers”) indulges as the smuggler swine Pedro who’s roped into the reconning of the Templar tomb to clear his name with authorities by proving someone else had murdered Roger and Betty’s friend. Joined by his floosy sidepiece María, played by another María in the iconic Spanish B-horror actress. María Silva (“The Awful Dr. Orlof”), Pedro brutishly flaunts arrogance and confidence, taking what he wants, especially with the women uncharmed by the male sex, and that’s curious, fluid attribute when he attacks Betty but in the wake of the moment, the two of them are silently surfeited as they share the scene and that’s severely different from what anyone other filmmaker was doing at that time. Andrés Isbert (“The Kovak Box”), Antonio Orengo (“Love Letters of a Nun”), Francisco Sanz (“Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot!”), Rufino Inglés, and Verónica Llimerá (“Hatchet for the Honeymoon”) round out the cast.

Performances give “Tombs of the Blind Dead” credibility in anxiety-riddled survival and turbulent human interactions but where those performances start to give way coincides with Ossorio’s building of dread. No doubt the use of slow-motion sets the ghoulish, harrowing tone of the depraved, unabating, skeletally-cursed Templar Knights giving chase on horseback as they track down their flailing fresh meat, but in the process of that spinetingling, in between the Knights self-unearthing and the eventual snare and snack of their human victims, Ossorio doesn’t quite know how to flesh out formidable trepidation. Pursued, screaming characters stand in the face of danger as if their feet are hardened in cement, stopping at every brief moment when out of sight of the hooded decaying bones and rags with dusty swords, and absentmindedly run right into the exposed radius and ulnas of the slow-moving and blind medieval damned maniacs in sequences that run out too long to be wholly gratifying. Ossorio better pedestals the ingrained Spanish themes of never escaping your gruesome, haunting past, as seen with the circular narrative of always return back to the Knight’s ruins, and the sexual taboos of bisexuality and rape that lead to destruction. These course through a more classically presented gothic horror. Perhaps explaining the fervent melodramatics of flamboyant fear, under the dictatorship regime of Francisco Franco and his cult-like ritualization in fascism oversight of Spain.

The sightless, flesh-feasting Templar Knights have found a new home in the Synapse Films’ tomb of terror with a new restoration transfer on a 2-Disc Blu-ray. Refurbished from the uncut original camera negative, the AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 capacity suppresses any compression issues to display polychromatic decadence in front of a backdrop of steely graded blues. Plenty of a darker scenes to be affected by artefact corruption but the blacks are greatly dyed-in-the-wood saturated and not delineated or in spectrum of lesser decoding. Scenes never approach being flat, in color tone and in field depth, as beads of glistening sweat can be visually elaborated on and the distinction between color, shadow, and scale discern wonderfully. Two audio option tracks are available: a lossless Spanish PCM 2.0 mono track and a lossless hybrid of Spanish-English (Spanglish?) PCM 2.0 mono track. Both tracks are of a post-production dub with the Spanish option having greater synchrony with the articulating native Spanish actors of this Spanish coproduction. Audibly clean with little-to-no hissing, popping, or crackling, Synapse’s singular restoration is in good company with a high impact, high clarity, and low distortion dialogue track that meets eye-to-eye with the visual components as well as the film’s ambience cluster and Antón García Abril’s breathy and discordant, Gothically canticle score. Option subtitles are available in English on both tracks. Special features on the first disc contains individual audio commentaries by horror film historian Troy Howarth, Betty actress Lone Fleming, and the NaschyCast podcasters Troy Guinn and Rod Barnett. A feature-length documentary Marauders from the Mediterranean go from head-to-toe on not just detail Ossorio’s “Tombs of the Blind Dead” as the Spanish stamp in the juggernauting zombie genre of the times but also going in depth with the Spanish laid in horror from the 1960s to 1980s, featuring interviews with Lone Fleming, John Russo (“Night of the Living Dead”), director Jorge Grau (“The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue”), Sitges Film Festival director Mike Hostench, critics Kim Newman and John Martin, film academics Steve Jones and Calum Waddell, actors Helge Line, Manuel de Blas, Antonio Mayans, and Jack Taylor, and even Paul Naschy’s son, Sergio Molina. An alternate U.S. opening sequence Revenge of Planet Ape gives expositional insight on how the success of “The Plant of the Apes” films influenced the American distribution market to rebrand “Tombs of the Blind Dead” as an ape rebellion piece to ride the coattails of the series’ success on a lower, foreign budget. Rounding out the special features is a featurette Awakening of Spanish Horror Cinema, Salem Pop’s “Templar Tears” music video, the original theatrical trailer, and a still gallery. While Synapse has 3-Disc limited-edition set of only 4000 copies made with all the bells-and-whistles of the visual elements of new artwork, a slipcover, and a 3rd disc audio CD, the 2-Disc standard edition comes with all the same special features and all three versions of the film inside the black Amaray Blu-ray case and classic “Tombs of the Blind Dead” poster for cover art. Inside, you’ll get Synapse’s physical media catalogue and a disc on each side of the Amaray’s interior with disc 1 “Tombs of the Blind Dead” and disc 2 “The Blind Dead,” housing the shortened 83-minute U.S. re-edit on a BD25, that sport their own pressed artworks. The uncut disc 1 has a runtime of 101-minutes and has region free playback.

Last Rites: “Tombs of the Blind Dead” is Spain’s answer to “Night of the Living Dead” with discerning individualities ingrained by director Amando de Ossorio to include his country’s own social and political subtext and while Blue Underground’s The Blind Dead DVD collection is an impressive physical media crown jewel of upscaled 720p, the Blu-ray gods favor Synapse with an impressive hi-def A/V release with stellar bonus features.

“Tombs of the Blind Dead” 2-Disc Blu-ray Available for Purchase Here!

EVIL Ditches Satan, Picks Up a Camcorder. “Midnight 2: Sex, Death, and Videotape” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on December 24, 2021

“Midnight 2: Sex, Death, and Videotape” now available on DVD!

The sole survivor of the murderous, devil-worshipping cult family, Abraham Barnes, continues to kill under a new outward show as amateur videophile recording everything and everyone to gain their trust. Instead of harboring his mother’s dark intentions of eternal life, Abraham simply thirsts for killing, documenting his premeditated methods using a camcorder. When his latest victim goes missing, her friend initiates an investigation with a police detective, but Abraham is always recording, always one step ahead of them both, always on the hunt. With the trap set and the play button pressed, the blood-lusting survivor of the maniacal, serial killing Barnes family preserves a lineage legacy of death.

Ten years after releasing his moderately successful All-American shocker, “Midnight,” John Russo returns with the Barnes family. Well, at least one of them in the 1993 release of “Midnight 2: Sex, Death, and Videotape.” Also known as simply just “Midnight 2,” the secondary title references the widely popular 1989 Steven Soderbergh film of sexual testimonial video-tales in “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” starring James Spader and Andie MacDowell. The sequel gives way to a new motive and theme that’s very different from the satanic panic aspect of the original. “Midnight 2” enters the mind of a serial murderer with every calculated and cold thought and whim that crosses the killer’s mind laid out in detail to paint a compulsive picture. Behind the scenes, conjuring up resources to make the sequel exist as it stands today, is “Dead Next Door” and “Robot Ninja’s” J.R. Bookwalter, the head-honcho in production and distribution of his own created company banner, Tempe Entertainment. Bookwalter, who also wears the director of photography and editor hat on this film amongst others, produces the Russo sequel that was shot on location in Bookwalter’s home city of Akron, Ohio.

If you’re expecting or anticipating seeing John Amplas (“Martin,” “Day of the Dead”) return to the Abraham role 10 years later, be prepared to be severely let down as Amplas does not return for “Midnight 2.” Instead, profound schlock horror screenwriter and composer, Matthew Jason Walsh, brings a whole new peculiarity to Abraham Barnes and I’m not just talking about his face or mannerisms. Walsh, who penned such David DeCoteau C-list gems as “Witchouse,” “Young Blood, Fresh Meat,” and “The Killer Eye,” goes face-to-face with the camera in a hybrid performance as lead actor and lead narrator of his own exposition into his own executions. Being a sociopath is never fleeting from Walsh who can sink into the sardonicism of the Abraham character naturally as one of the two only traits to carryover from the original film with the other being a killer. Aside from a boat load of archival footage and a verbal recap of nearly the entire first film, the whole Devil-worshipping aspect of the Barness family is dropped in favor of a more undisclosed truth in the hidden agenda of a person who thrives off the hunt and the kill. Abraham goes through verbatim his daily, stalking routine in a publicized manner of videorecording everything and everyone to capture as much detail as possible as well as capture their last moments. Russo does throw in escape clause caveat for Abraham in that if he meets the right girl, the love for her will be strong enough to break him away from killing and possibly start a family and while Russo plays into that tangent a little with Jane (“Killer Nerd’s” Lori Scarlett), nothing much more materializes significantly as a romantic conflict that circles back to that subtheme. Russo ultimately gives in to a more cat-and-mouse game with Jane’s worried friend Rebecca (“Chickboxer’s” Jo Norcia) and the detective who rather slip into Rebecca’s pants than actually solve the case in a stiffer than roadkill performance by Chuck Pierce Jr. (“The Legend of Boggy Creek”).

I wonder how much ‘Midnight 2″ is actually from the mind of John Russo or if it’s more of the J.R. Bookwalter show in calling the shots from the producer’s director’s chair as the film feels very much like Bookwalter’s usual fare, a SOV, DIY, home brew production of local Ohioan talent. “Midnight 2” also goes from the backwoods suburbia of Pittsburgh to the concrete structures of Akron, leaving behind any remnants of Abraham’s satanic past in the ground along with his dead siblings, but the sequel very dutifully leans into us with a heavy archival footage recap with Walsh narrating the entire damn thing. I kid you not, the recap is approx. a third of the runtime and so essentially, “Midnight 2” is a two for one straight-to-video special. Granted, the archival footage remains in its untouched up state so don’t expect the Severin grade video quality. In one way “Midnight 2” is discerned to be more of a Russo film is the very hesitancy of graphic, blood-shedding violence. Bookwalter’s a bit of gorehound in making some gruesome grisliness out of the singles from a Podunk stripper’s Kmart thong. There’s none of that imaginative ingenuity here with a surprising severe lack of that adored shot-on-video nastiness common of its era, especially from the likes of John Russo in filing a rated 13 release according to the DVD back cover, enervating “Midnight 2” as a inferior sequel that tries on a new pair of shoes but ends up limping with a lame gait.

Russo might always be remembered for his contribution to the start of the “Living Dead” franchise. The cult legendary filmmaker surely found modest success with his first directorial run with “Midnight.” Yet, “Midnight 2” will have a tough time keeping out of the celebrated shadows of Russo’s credits, but the indie, underground horror label SRS Cinema pulls back the shrouding curtain with a newly released, MVD Visual distributed DVD featuring two cuts of the film. Fitted with a retro look and ghastly illustrated cover art, a superb upgrade from the VHS cover, the region free DVD is presented shot-on-video in a 4:3 aspect ratio on both cuts. Essentially, both cuts are the same with reworked scenes and narration with the except of the 90-minute rough cut having extended archival footage of the first film. The main version runs slimmer at 72-minutes. The lossy image quality abides within both versions with a flat color palette that, at times, had a singularity about its choice of unflattering hue, compression macroblocks consistently flare up, and dimly discernable innate tracking lines with video recording destabilize the image. The anemic English Language single channel mono mix is a bottom of the barrel budget sound design and that was to be expected. Dialogue does come over clear enough but lacks vigor and crispness as there is just too much electrical interference shushing in the background. Depth’s a bit awkward too with the actors conversing in the background but have foreground decibel levels. Aside from the two cuts of the feature, the only other bonus content is the theatrical trailer and other SRS home video trailers. “Midnight 2” works as a standalone in a different shot-on-video horror light but is crammed with unnecessary recapping on a story built around the destined, convoluted conjecture of a homicidal narcissist and his videotape addiction.

“Midnight 2: Sex, Death, and Videotape” now available on DVD!

EVIL Strikes at the Stroke of “Midnight” reviewed! (Blu-ray / Severin)

Posted by Steven Lewis on November 22, 2021

Teenager Nancy searches for forgiveness through reestablishing her faith in God after being dumped by her sexually active boyfriend. When her alcoholic, police officer stepfather learns of the relationship’s abrupt ending, he moves in quickly to take advantage of Nancy while under the heavy influence of the bottle. Escaping his grasp, she flles home and hitchhikes a ride with two men travelling South on a getaway from Pennsylvania to sunny Fort Lauderdale, but when facing trouble with small town local law enforcement after attempting to steal groceries, the three find themselves right in the middle of a Satanic cult’s sacrificial ritual that requires the killing of three women for eternal life, one a night at midnight for three days. Held in a dog cage, Nancy anxiously awaits her turn at the bloodletting alter surrounded by the cloaked-cladded cult and their decomposing mother’s corpse Praying to God to save her soul, little does Nancy know that her stepfather has tracked down her whereabouts, leading to a bloody showdown of one cop pitted against a family of satanic psychopaths.

Based of his 1980 novel of the same title, “Midnight” is known to be John Russo’s heart-and-soul project that ended up suffering one mishap after another in the two years of its production and post-production until it’s final release in 1982. Also known as “Backwoods Massacre,” the “Night of the Living Dead” co-writer Russo helms the low-budget occult slasher out from his usual stomping grounds in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “Midnight” showcases a story themed with a depraved sense of race intolerance for African Americans and all varieties of religious convictions to be innately false in an atheistic Russo viewpoint amongst a glorified surface level of enrapturing inhumane violence seasoned by brainwashing. This West Pennsylvanian born and bred grindhouse exploitation found producers in Sam Sherman and Daniel Q. Kennis of “Blazing Stewardesses” and “Blood of Ghastly Horror”) along with Donald Redinger under the now defunct Independent-International Picture Corp.

In a sea of smaller fish of Pittsburgh actors in “Midnight’s” casting tow is a larger and rougher around the gills grouper embodied by the singular Lawrence Tierney (“Reservoir Dogs,” “The Prowler”) in the Officer Bert Johnson role. Tierney’s no stranger to the horror genre, flaunting his thick New York tough guy accent that typically typecasts the veteran actor into authoritative roles. In being no exception, “Midnight” has Tierney playing a sleazy, alcoholic, police officer who winds up more-or-less unearthing sense in his old age and utilizing his skills for good to fully satisfy his character’s arc, but Tierney alone is wonderful to behold and easy to be disgusted by as he solicits his underage teenage stepdaughter with a perverted proposition. That stepdaughter, Nancy (Melanie Verlin), is the face of “Midnight’s” protagonist whose attempting to get back on track with God after a sinful bedroom relationship with an ex-boyfriend, but her plans are slighted by a brood of young Satanists keen on keeping their now long deceased mother’s irreligious convictions intact. David Marchick, George Romero regular Ted Amplas (“Day of the Dead” 1978, “Martin”), Robin Walsh, and the face of “Midnight” on many of the posters, Greg Besnack, size up as the Satanic terrible and merciless foursome. The cast fills out with Charles Johnson, John Hall, Bob Johnson, Lachele Carl, Jackie Nicoll, Doris Hackney, and Ellie Wyler.

After the success of a collaborated run with George Romero on a handful of projects, John Russo ultimately branches off to do his own creative output after their production company, Latent Image, brought on newcomers’ and the shared ideas on the direction of their company didn’t sit well with Russo – an irk that Russo still harps upon to this day, according to the special features’ new interview from the latest Severin Film’s release. Yet, I digress into the review of “Midnight” that has feral narrative with an irregular plotted blueprint of teenager exploitation, racial injustice, and backwoods barbarians. Somehow, Russo’s able to juggle his jotted down on a budget scrambler with a threadbare satanic family baseline that unsettlingly feels snagged in a randomizing generator spitting out scenes to see if they cohesively connect into the next. Nancy’s traversing into the thicket of terror story cuts into and undermines more of the sibling’s unholy ritual, which the title “Midnight” becomes an important piece to the ceremony, with a subplot of the teen running away from a handsy stepfather and into the Mystery Machine modeled van-driving hands of a pair of cavalier friends on a road trip and then find themselves in an endgame of rotten luck with bad company. The whole lead up to the two groups running into each other is suddenly dropped like a bad habit, forgoing much of the racial tensions, the youthful subverts, and even the attempt at pedophilia when the main, overarching theme of cult mayhem and religion inadequacies come to the forefront. “Midnight” inarguably a gargantuan piece of good ole American hicksville victimization with some underappreciated manic performances by John Amplas and Greg Besnak, but there’s difficulty in shaking “Midnight’s” stark story division that leaves much to be desired.

“Midnight” is the particular video nasty that’s surpassing all of it’s other formatted counterparts with a Severin Film’s 4K scanned Blu-ray of the full uncut negative. The 1080p Full High Definition, region free BD50 is presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio with a respectable color correction, but the correction sees unstable moments regressing near the cuts revealing the lifeless yellow tinge of unmastered quality. A right amount of grain, a great amount of detail, and hardly any damage to the thought-lost uncut negative proves Severin found buried treasure of the John Russo shocker. Two audio options grace the release with an English language DTS-HD 5.1 surround and an English 2.0 Stereo. While the 5.1 offers a more robust audio option of funneling individual tracks through their respective channels, I wouldn’t necessarily say “Midnight” has an overwhelming yield for audiophiles. Soundtrack comes across just enough to know it’s there, the dialogue is clean and unimpeded, but what unfolds out of clarity is the wonky foley ambience that just render solemn scenes silly. Severin offers up a new interviews under “Midnight’s” mediocre cult status with director John Russo – Making Midnight – as top bill in a lengthy discussion about his long career, his acquaintances including George Romero, and, of course, his recollections about “Midnight.” Other interviews include producer Samuel Sherman – Producing Midnight, actor John Amplas – The Midnight Killer, and special makeup effects artist Tom Savini – Small Favors – who barely remembers working very little on this film by providing pre-fabricated headshots and sliced throat prosthetics. An isolated score selection with audio interview with Mike Mazzei, an alternate title card for “Backwoods Massacre,” the trailer, and radio spot round out the bonus content inside the blackout snapcase. Prolific as John Russo may be in horror literature, filmmaking, and in legendary regards with his work alongside Romero, “Midnight” reflects poorly on his cinematic vocation and while many problems plagued production and post-production, Russo somehow managed to root out a passable working cut of crazed satanic panic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zmkYVWC3sM

“MIDNIGHT” available on Blu-ray from Severin!

Insecurity is a Path to the EVILside! “Killing Spree” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on June 24, 2019

Airplane mechanic Tom Russo is a newly married man; it’s his second marriage, in fact. Tom’s first go around in marital union didn’t go over so well as found himself on the other end of being a victim of adultery. Paranoid and skeptical, Tom requires his young and hot new wife, Leeza, to become a house wife as he works long, exhausting hours to support his family in a one income household. As the work hours pile, money becomes tight, and tensions build in the back of Tom’s mind, paranoia steamrolls Tom’s reality when he starts suspecting a lonely Leeza of screwing every delivery, repair, and lawn car man that knocks at their door. Without confronting Leeza with his delusions, Tom’s extreme jealously pushes him to kill and bury the men that he envisions involved in the affairs, but his victims don’t stay dead, they don’t stay buried, and seek the eternal suffering for their killer.

A few, long years have gone by since our last encounter with the practical effects-heavy, indie horror director Tim Ritter. From his disturbing tale of destructive descent in “Truth and Dare?: A Critical Madness to his “Switchblade Insane” segment from the SOV masters of horror in the ghastly-variant anthology “Hi-8 (Horror Independent 8)” that also helms short films from Donald Farmer (“Cannibal Hookers”), Todd Sheets (“Dreaming Purple Neon”), and Brad Sykes (“Camp Blood”), the filmmaker has a legacy of blood-shedding entertainment. Today, exploration into Ritter’s “Killing Spree” unearths his passion for horror that develops out of influences from other horror icons before leaving his bloody footprint in the indie scene. “Killing Spree,” written and directed by Ritter, displays the filmmaker’s deep affection for Fangoria magazine having it displayed, repeatedly used as coffee table literature prop. There’s also admiration for “Night of the Living Dead” in the bonkers film about one man’s mind snapping like a twig under the formidable stress. The main character’s name is Tom Russo and Russo is the last name of NOTLD co-writer John Russo and let’s not also forget about the undead rising from Tom’s backyard is fairly synonymous with zombie classic.

While Tim Ritter flicks may not be graced with star-studded actors and actress, even from the B-movie lot, and more than likely don’t spawn hidden talent, there’s still something to be wholeheartedly said about the cast of his films that can only be described as an eclectic bunch of marvelous misfits that bring underground brilliance to the screen. Asbestos Felt is one of those said characters. No, I don’t mean the toxic asbestos felt roofers use as a underlaying backing when nailing in shingles. “Killing Spree” is one of three films Felt and Tim Ritter have worked on together and the scrawny-build with a strung out Grizzly Adam’s head on his shoulders has a wide-eyed spectacle about him when playing Tom Russo spiraling down the crazy train drain. Tom’s obsession with keeping Leeza from the perverted grips on those naughty repairmen would drive any wife away, but not Leeza, played by Courtney Lercara. The “Slaughterhouse” actress is an aesthetic flower growing in the middle of all the mayhem and she protrudes an innocence well received by her character. Other cast members include Bruce Paquette with the white boy dance moves, indie horror vet John D. Wynkoop (“Brainjacked”), Kieran Turner, Alan Brown, Rachel Rutz, Cloe Pavel, and Raymond Carbone as a dirty old pilot with a wise guy brogue.

Remember when I said these types of horror films don’t typically expose acting artistry? Well, behind the camera, one or two crew members start their illustrious careers in the indie trenches. Such can be said for special effects master Joel Harlow who makes his introductory launch with “Killing Spree” and then find work on a couple sequels for “Toxic Avenger,” “Basket Case 2,” and all the way up to the Neil Marshall “Hellboy” and “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.” Yeah, I think Harlow made out OK. Harlow’s effects on “Killing Spree” will “blow your mind,” as stated on the back of the Blu-ray cover. Well, when Leeza’s head turns into giant lips then goes oral on Raymond Carbone’s head until his crown ejaculates, then, yes, these effects will blow your mind…literally! The medley macabre showcase Harlow’s craft from A to Z that includes a torched corpse, a disembowelment, severed undead head, and a nosy neighbor without a nose or without half a face for that matter.

Sub Rosa Studios re-releases “Killing Spree” onto the dual format, DVD/Blu-ray combo set with MVDVisuals providing distribution of the limited 666 copies. Essentially, this is the same release that was made available a couple years back presented in a standard television format of 1.33:1. The Betacamp SP 16mm video has held back the test of time since 1987, but with any video film on a budget, the rather cheap recording method does come with inadequacies, even if being remastered. For the entire runtime and not just in the tinted moments of carnage, the skin tones are akin to Donald Trump’s uncanny neon orange flesh and perhaps could have gone under an extensive color correction. Aside a few very minor tracking issues and faded coloring, the video transfer passes substantially well despite the continuous flare of orange. The English stereo 2.0 mix isn’t hearty or robust. Whenever Tom goes into maniacal mode, his crazy quips are quite soft even when he elevates his voice, and that goes the same with depth and range which are non-existent over the course of a flat audio tracks. Though soft at times, dialogue strongly comes through in the forefront with some fuzzy nuances. Bonus features are killer on this release with the Blu-ray sporting the majority with a never before seen extended director’s cut, a new commentary track from director Tim Ritter, a 90 minute documentary entitled “Blinded by the Blood,” a radio show commentary by H.G. Lewis and Tim Ritter, music tracks, photo slide show, three alternative scenes, blooper reel, and a Joel D. Wynkoop segment. The DVD also includes the director’s cut version of the film, the new commentary by Tim Ritter, and commentary for the original cut by Tim Ritter. “Killing Spree” is as grisly as the SRS cinema Blu-ray/DVD cover implies and then some with all the characteristics of a deranged and unhinged man exerting himself beyond the limits of sanity and mortality to unambiguously protect what is his; a dramatize example rendered as a metaphor for those who will do anything to protect what’s theirs.