Tag Archives: John Williams

An Indie Anthology Worth an EVIL Look! “Creatures of the Night” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Wild Eye Releasing’s “Creatures of the Night” Now Available on DVD!

A hitman is summoned to arrive an old manor home and offered to be paid to babysit an elderly wheelchair bound man.  The disabled, eccentric loner only gives the hitman one task, to keep him alive until 3 A.M.  The task is easier said than done as the client has the gift for gab that pulls ever so roughly on the strings of the hitman’s already agitated patience, threatening the man with harm from his double barrel shotgun if his playfully doting name calling and persistent chit chat continues through into the night.  In order to pass the time, the old man pulls out of a scrapbook filled with news clippings of mysterious deaths around the surrounding area, regaling a presumptive truth around the circumstances of the victim’s demise:  a Halloween party guest finds himself in the clutches of an aristocratic, demonic cult, a man collects fresh dead bodies to host at his apartment as part of an exclusive club, a work retreat turned into a frightening alien abduction, and bingo night results in a monstrous transformation of screams and blood.

Wild Eye Releasing has a hallmark of putting forth at the same time a string of films helmed by the same director.  We also see this theme in their subsidiary boutique label Visual Vengeance that specializes in underground, SOV films deserving a second, or third, chance by giving them a Hi-Def release.  British director John Williams is one of those repeated filmmakers.  We’ve recently reviewed and approved positively the dead mother and occult tensioner “Watch Me Sleep” from 2023 and now we’re overtop the microscope again looking at another Williams’ production, a horror anthology from a year earlier, entitled “Creatures of the Night.”  Originally and more commonly known as “Tales of the Creeping Death,” the 2022 anthology too tackles the occult but also branches out to divergent purposes of the dead, extraterrestrial interests, and werewolves with mother issues.  Williams wrote the screenplay for the crowdfunded Kickstarter indie with Williams co-producing with Clair Ward (“There’s Something in the Shadows,” “Watch Me Sleep”).

The unnamed wraparound begins with Michael Socha (“As Dead As It Gets”) as a fast car-driving, black cloth-cladded hitman hired to oversee the inexplicable life-or-death of the invalid but chatty Harold, played by television actor Andrew Readman in an over-the-top showcase of uncomfortable friendliness.  With no board games or show of kinetic entertainment afoot, Harold goes into his stories stemmed from the newspaper clippings of unsolved deaths that bring us to four individual tales to pass the time between the two men.  Halloween night proves to be a dud when Billy and his friends can’t find a good, alcoholic party to attend.  Dressed in zombie attire, Billy Cook (“Eat Locals”) is the centric principal amongst on-screen friends Sophie (Solaya Rowley) and Jon (John Solomonides, “There’s Something in the Shadows”) who make him aware of a private invitation to an exclusive party where they meet the formally dressed elders, known as the Gentlemen and named only by their individual numbers, with sinister plans surrounding demons and an unborn twin brother.  The second segment is less serious with a seemingly unstable man collecting bodies of the recently deceased to stage his own exclusive friends club.  Kev, played by the distinct face of Dean Ackerman (“Crispy’s Curse”), caters a performance around being the entertainment host at an old folks home but doesn’t quite seem to fit the loser loner narrative with having friends that are living and dead but Ackerman’s ported derangement is cheeky fun it the playful yet ghastly tale.  Rebecca Parsons is one of a trio of actors whose characters are travelling to a work-related team building retreat but along the way they stop to check out a touristy cave exhibit when the outside world essentially changes as people have disappeared, nothing mechanical works, and the blue glow of alien visitors reveals the terrible truth of an otherworldly abduction.  There’s not much to note performance wise here as the workplace banter, within the confines of the car, quickly evolves into mysterious situations and visuals that leave the group into a dumbfounded and confused what-happened-here state.  The last segment is more visceral in its violence as Steve Wood (“Watch Me Sleep”) plays a disabled son grieving the death of his viciously attacked mother in the woods with her boyfriend but also practices as the new bingo hall host in lieu of his mother demise.  His debut is cut short when a monstrous lycanthrope continues the bloody rampage that began with his mother.  Like his performance in “Watch Me Sleep,” Wood’s range of emotions and precise, performative acting nails his character Peter to the narrative board, fastening a great finale segment to “Creatures of the Nights’” favorable anthology format.  The cast rounds out with Ricky Tomlinson, Darren McAree, James Whitehurst, Wesley Martin, and George Newton.

Just from looking at the cover and reading the synopsis, without doing any research prior to viewing, “Creatures of the Night” doesn’t appear to be an anthology until you get the meat and bone of story where the wheelchair bound Harold opens his book to amuse with darkly grim tales and that’s the moment you know you’re in for a multi-short story fright with a diverse lot of horror.  What’s impressive about this Kickstarter production is its practice effects that produces a disintegrating body and werewolf destruction with detailed suit and deep lacerations.  Visual effects are limited to areas where they’re needed for a smaller production, such as the third story of an alien abduction that composites scenes together to create an unsettling environment.  While the effects are neat and not overbearing, each story is mostly driven by the story structure and acting to establish and flesh out idiosyncrasies in character and in scenarios, adding that something extra to the segments rather than rely heavily on the glitzy yet shallow terror and chase of horrifying situations without an ounce of personality.  On more a negative note, the stories do have a disjointed way about them with the stories, especially more so in stories 2 through 4 that limit exposition to heighten that mystery factor that puts that small morsel of fear in our cerebral nodes.

Those who gravitate to anthologies should find their way to “Creatures of the Night,” a Wild Eye Releasing DVD now available.  The MPEG2 encoded, 720p standard definition, DVD5 is fashioned just as it’s spec’d in a fair reproduction of quality based on the storage capacity and compression codec.  Certainly not polished with a slick grading, there’s a bit of tired veneer on it but the cinematography and special effects more than makes up for the dull grading with a cozy lighting, natural lighting, a slick-and-sick werewolf design, and seamless practical effects.  Depth sates special range and plenty of contrast to set the mood and scene appropriately.  The English LPCM Stereo 2.0 shows no signs of qualms or problematic areas of concern with a clear and presently forth dialogue of the UK dialect.  Range and depth work fine and no issues in the balancing of layers.  Sound design is able to fill in the monstrous roars or the breaking down of biological matter within the context of the scene at the right distance from the camera, never seemingly distant or misplaced.  Bonus features include segment outtakes and the trailer along with other Wild Eye Releasing trailers.  The DVD cover presents an accurate representation of what’s inside which is surprising because usually Wild Eye embellishes the cover to make a more visceral or large-than-life draw toward the film but the “Creatures of the Night” receives an accurate account.  The reverse side of the cover art pulls a shocking scene into a still image.  The DVD houses in a clear Amaray, eco-lite case.  The film is not rated and the DVD is region free with a runtime of 100 minutes.

Last Rites: “Creatures of the Night” holds its own as an anthology, one that can get horror fans behind it, offering a variety of occult tales to surely be mortally hazardous!

Wild Eye Releasing’s “Creatures of the Night” Now Available on DVD!

Keep an Eye on EVIL Unloved Ones with a Camera in the Coffin! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Watch Me Sleep” Now Available on DVD!

After the death of his abusive mother, recovering alcoholic Sean returns to his hometown with ulterior motives other than attend her funeral.  He hires a webcam company service to install a camera inside her coffin to ensure that his mother, who would repeated micro-stab him in the back with knives, is, in fact, dead.  As he struggles with his addiction and plagued by nightmares of random occult images involving his mother, Sean can barely hold it together to watch the video fee but when he does, what he sees often horrifies him – a rotting skeletal corpse with maggots, brief movements caught in a glimpse, and even her staring right back at him.  He implores a town friend to check his sanity, but all seems normal as normal can be with a coffin-cam facing directly at a corpse.  As the nightmares intensify, a presence takes hold of Sean, a familiar presence that hasn’t terrified him since he was a child. 

“Watch Me Sleep” might sound like a ploy phrase your kids would say to get you to stay with them at night or during nap time but for John Williams – the director of the 2023 film and not the “Jaws” and “Star Wars” composer – the lingering effect of trauma can be a powerful, often adjacent to being supernaturally scary, and is nowhere near being child’s play.  The director of 2015’s “The Slayers” and “Creatures of the Night” writes and directs the British voyeuristic graveside thriller that concentrates on the lasting aftermath effects of trauma despite our past being buried six feet underground.  Filmed in Staffordshire England, “Watch Me Sleep” is an independent production with Williams and Claire Ward as their third production together since 2021, behind “Creatures of the Night” and “There Something in the Shadows,” and executive producer Volker Plassmann, producer behind “Next Door” and “The Beast of Riverside Hallow.” 

Small production equals small cast but that doesn’t equate to poor performance as “Watch Me Sleep’s” cast is brilliant within the oversimplification explanation of the plotline which is more or less a traumatized man obsessed with watching his dead mother on camera to ensure she stays dead.  That doesn’t sound too exciting but with the actors’ performances and with Williams evolving of the plot to keep Sean’s sanity teetering on edge, “Watch Me Sleep” is more fleshed out with richer than expected character backstory and development of Sean, played intently and without hesitation by William’s go-to actor Darren McAree, and his problems with alcohol, a tormented childhood, and his blinding spite for his mother.  Mum is played by Sarah Wynne Kordas in a dialogue-free peripheral of psychological spookiness as a lifeless head on a webcam for most of the picture but is able to shine in the shadows of Sean’s vivid imagination and be diabolically on point when that lifeless head moves unexpectedly in a not-so-subtle manner for the chill and thrill triggered moments.  While the mum is certainly a presence, Sean is basically a one-man show of bopping between his struggles with drinking, his affliction of nightmares, his hesitation of webcam voyeurism, and trying to blow off steam and showcase his questionable sanity to townie friend Tom (James Whitehurst, “Creature of the Night”) who humors his friend’s hysteria with rather tranquil patience that is unusual.  The rest of the characters support where needed with brief interactions surrounding Sean’s cam setup and AA meetings with  Zane Hopkins (“The Beast of Riverside Hollow”), Steve Wood (“Cannibals and Carpet Fitters’), Charles O’Neill (“The Jack in the Box Rises”), Katie Elliff, and David Tunstall (“Beyond the Witching Hour”) as a mysterious man once friend to Sean’s mother. 

Despite the budget and some unpolished areas, there’s surprisingly more bang for your buck in “Watch Me Sleep” with a thrilling storyline that houses competent performances, editing, and one hell of a movie magic accomplishment in its special effects.  The black and white dream sequences of randomized occult and supernatural imagery are reminiscent of “Ringu’s” the contents of VHS tape with more visceral sound design to give it a lasting, haunting discord and the editing done an all accounts of these dreams are spliced perfectly into Sean’s sleeping and waking nightmares.  Between this reoccurring onslaught of mixt pernicious phantasmagoria and the out of left field special effects that reap the success for “Watch Me Sleep,” John Williams’ little English film is a bit a sleeper itself we should watch in a statement that’s ironically punned.  Keeping it mysteriously ambiguous, Williams doesn’t define the context that is kept open to be obscure and confusing for Sean who’s trying to pieces his dreams, evidence, and his mother’s curious connections together, a puzzle that could be an explanation why she tortured him with a knife, but the gist of the story delves into the occult as his mother dabbled in ritual and paganistic indoctrinations in the layer much more satanists or demonology driven.  Yet, those details are never verbal explained and that keeps you guessing whether his mum had dark dealings with the Devil or is the trauma, stress, and alcohol withdraw doing a number on his fractured psyche.  

You never know what kind of film you’re going to unearth at Wild Eye Releasing with its mysterious grab bag of horror schlock and independent ambition.  There have been titles of questionable taste that not even the sleaziest or gorehound fans would touch with a ten foot pole, but titles like the now out-of-print first-person-shooter occult-actioner “Hotel Inferno” and the satirical crude-humor of “Race Wars:  The Remake” are absolute low-budget gold held in high esteem.  “Watch Me Sleep” ranks up in that small layered stratosphere for the company who releases it on DVD.  The MPEG2 encoded DVD5 leaves much on the table technically with fuzzy detail on its standard 720p definition.  There’s no intricate picture quality nor does it have textural achievement but what you see is what you get, a picture constant and watchable B-horror you may catch on USA’s Up All Night hosted by Rhonda Shear and guest starring Gilbert Godfrey on cable television, broadcasting in analog through a tube set.  I will say the special effects are damn good for money and with no signs of how they’re achieved, such as wires, CGI, nor other.  The UK English language PCM Stereo 2.0 has its problems as well with a boxy, depth-less dual channel output that has a subtle layer of interference static, likely due to inexperience or poor equipment, but the dialogue track remains front and center with prominence and the sound design, the jarring clicks and pops along with the discord sounds of Sean’s nightmares and the overall brooding score, shoulders a lot of the weight by carrying the film’s technical problems.  There are no available subtitles.  Bonus features include only an image gallery, the trailer, and other Wild Eye Releasing previews.  The clear DVD Amaray comes with Wild Eye Releasing’s on brand exaggerated artistic rendition of an intense and scary old woman emerging from her coffin.  It’s a bit hyperbolic but eye-catching.  The reversible sleep has a sheet spanning, bloody depicted still from the film and no other bonus inserts.  The region free DVD is not rated and has encoded a 91-minute runtime.

Last Rites: Definitely one Wild Eye Releasing titles to pick up and enjoy, “Watch Me Sleep” has mother issues, alcoholic issues, trust issues, relationship issues, paranoia issues, and supernatural issues in what is a sleeper hit from the writer-director John Williams.

“Watch Me Sleep” Now Available on DVD!

Three Men, a Boat, and One Giant, EVIL “Crocodile” reviewed! (Synapse Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Crocodile” on Blu-ray and Lurking Behind the Wates of Thailand’s Film Industry!

Along the serene Thailand shores, a doctor and his young colleague take their family and fiancé to a beach resort for some much-needed time away after a massive casualty natural catastrophe on a nearby island swallows the entire village with seismic volcano bedlam.  Little do they know that a component of the disaster has swam to their very watery spot on the beach resort and gnashed without remorse on the doctor’s family and fiancé.  Not knowing what kind of creature could do such carnage, they soon discover through first hand witness accounts and the evidence gathered that a large crocodile, mutated by man’s own disregard for mother nature, is the culprit.  The men, along with a fisherman who believes in a destiny of a beastly showdown, swear to track down the killer croc and kill it.  The crocodile’s bloodlust on mankind is seeming unstoppable as it wreaks havoc swimming down river, destroying entire villages in its destructive and hungry path.

Thailand’s reptilian “Jaws” equivalent, “Crocodile” wriggles with wayward ferocity in this giant creature feature horror that rivals Bruce the shark.  “Computer Superman” director Sompote Sands oversees the enormous amphibious aggressor versus frantic and frightened man film that merged or morphed from Won-se Lee’s “Crocodile Fangs” into a blending of the two productions of the same film of one seamless man versus animal hunt above and below the surface of the water.  Sompote Sands produces the venture along with a postdated credit toward exploitation producer Dick Randall (“Pieces,” “Escape from Women’s Prison”) from “Crocodile Fangs.”  Coproduced by Robert Chan and Pridi Oonchitti, “Crocodile,” or rather “Crocodile Fangs,” was a multi-national undertaking with Thailand and Korean actors and crew and a Japanese special effects company bringing the giant, carnivorous maneater to cinematic actualization.  The Chaiyo Productions spliced feature was distributed into the U.S. under Cobra Media. 

Doctors Tony Akom and John Stromm have it all; Akom (Nard Poowanai, “Ghost Hotel”) has a beautiful wife and child and leads a charmed life despite his vocation challenges of being a doctor always on call. and Stromm (Min Oo) is recently and happily engaged to Angela (Ni Tien, “Black Magic” 1 & 2).  Their vacation doses audiences with a picturesque double date plus one child but does a rough patch setup of Dr. Akom’s family neglecting workaholism that isn’t crafted to be a strain on the relationship he has with his family but rather bring upon him tremendous guilt and inset the good doctor into a studious montage of crocodile research after his family becomes crocodile chow.  Sympathy toward the doctors is incurred but the level of sympathy falls low as the ladies’ death scene falters in the editing room, or perhaps was only partially shot, as only one of them is visually attacked while the others are grieved over in postmortem.  Character will is strong enough to carry the anticipated revenge but the giant crocodile is truly the main star stud, a vicious, village-obliterating mammoth of armor and teeth goes full Godzilla on the riverside communities and dining buffet style on anyone, land or sea, who makes a splash in his kill radius.  Unlike in “Jaws,” “Crocodile” is back-and-forth without the mysteriousness of the shark’s lurking underneath the glassy surface, snatching swimmers and boaters to a watery, gory grave, and this really solidifies the crocodile as an intended principal figure as a well-known, full-visible, antagonistic killing machine spurred by man’s own atomic-making hand; an idea that’s only theorized in exposition and not practically fleshed out.  “Crocodile’s” cast fills out with Kirk Warren, Angela Wells, Hua-Na Fu, Bob Harrison, and Nancy Wong.

“Crocodile” very much embodies the “Godzilla” and “Jaws” with deference without being a total negligent rip of either more widely successful hit.  The crocodile, in the form of its oversized whipping tail and rather big and detailed puppet head, raze miniaturized villages, much the same way Godzilla tramples over Tokyo in the 50s through the 80s, and the storyline for “Crocodile” parallels portions of Steven Spielberg’s 25-foot man-eating Great White tale of three men boarding a boat to hunt down a formidable creature, complete with yellow barrels and a sinking ship to an exploding finale.  Antiquated by today’s standards, for late 70’s, the special effects are a marvel to behold.  Kazuo Sagawa, of the special effects company, Tsuburaya Productions, lead the department with size-mattering scale and detailed depictions of villages and boats being quickly and violent undone by either a crocodile puppeteer or a mini-croc circling the boat and even, at times, being wire-flown through the air, bombarding the model ship with WWF elbows (do crocodiles have elbows?).  Action sustains an intensity that’s wrathful and keeps the heart palpitating with excitement.  The same thing can’t be said about the story through the choppy editing style, often times revisiting cut scenes being spliced into progressive context, but the setting, exterior weather, and clothing haven’t changed.

Synapse Films obtains the original Cobra Media distributed U.S. release and meticulously restores “Crocodile” in a 2K scan from the original 35mm camera negative, premiere the film for the first time on Blu-ray worldwide.  With an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, the AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 is a deathroll of beauty and when Synapse says meticulously restored, the poof is in the details and coloring.  Not a ton of age wear or damage, a nearly pristine print for some intricate touchups to invigorate the content.  One brief series of scenes appeared as if the film cell was folded with a blended vertical line down the right side, much like a scratch would appear on the film but this looked different; however, the line did not substantially affect viewing.  Between the rapid severity of the crocodile thrashing and the reduced frames of select slow-motion sequences, there is nothing to fault about Synapse’s compression with objects keeping intact and away from ghosting or aliasing.  Blacks are generally faded but don’t show signs of posterization or banding.  The English print audio spec is a DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono dub.  Fidelity of the original audio is retained, uncompressed for lossless sound in all areas of the ADR, Foley ambience, and the cue soundtrack of the impending or attacking crocodile, with a hint of John Williams theme in the opening credit track.  English subtitles are available, but the dub is perfectly clear and prominent.  Special features include an audio commentary with writer and film historian Lee Gambin, a video interview with Won-se Lee, director of “Crocodile Fangs,” deleted and alternate scenes from different country versions of the film, and the original theatrical trailer.  The standard release comes in a green Blu-ray Amaray without the “nude” slipcover but has the same original, clothed illustrated artwork.  Inside, the disc is pressed with a toothy faceless creature versus and a scantily cladded bikini woman.  Opposite side is the usually accompanying Synapse catalogue for this year, 2024.  The R-rated feature has a runtime of 92 minutes and is region free! 

Last Rites:  A Thailand terrorizing monster movie with unrelenting savagery and terrific special effects for circa late 70s.  if you can withstand the story’s choppy waters, “Crocodile” is a fun and fierce swim through predatory, blood-suspended waters. 

“Crocodile” on Blu-ray and Lurking Behind the Wates of Thailand’s Film Industry!