Tag Archives: Jurassic Park

Mesozoic Era EVIL and the Cavegirl Beauties! “Dinosaur Valley Girls” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Dinosaur Valley Girls” Visual Vengeance Collector’s Set Available Here!

Action movie superstar Tony Markham’s relationships exploit him of his actor status as women will only surround him for even just a bit part in one of his films.  Tony continues to have reoccurring dreams of a prehistoric place where a beautiful cavewoman allures him with mysterious passion.  Unable to get the images out of his head, he visit’s a natural history museum that conjures familiarities within the dinosaur bones and cave drawings that look awfully similar to the cavewoman of his dreams.  When he wishes upon a supposed magically talisman, Tony is transported to prehistoric past where he encounters dangerous dinosaurs, brutish cavemen, and bosomy cavewomen looking for love, even Hea-Thor, the one from his nightly visions.  As Tony tries to figure out a way to return home, he finds Hea-Thor has become infatuated with the man from the future for not his movie stardom and seeks to reestablish relationships between the men and women tribes after years of loveless contention.

A time-travelling, dino-tastic romp with also a whole lot of rumps, “Dinosaur Valley Girls” is the voluptuous, velociraptor sex-comedy of the mid-1990s during the post-Jurassic Park Dinosaur craze.  Filmmaker and paleontology enthusiast Donald F. Glut combined his love for making practical movies and the inscrutable dinosaur biota together into one hairbrained comedy “Dinosaur Valley Girls.”   Glut, who established himself as a short film and television writer, especially in animation, had worked on “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends,” “The Transformers, and even “Scooby-Doo” and “Captain America,” and then, after his feature length debut on “Dinosaur Valley Girls,” continued on to write and direct more sexploitation features, such as “The Erotic Rites of Countess Dracula” and “The Mummy’s Kiss.”  Film in mostly in the Bronson Canyon and Dinosaur Valley State Park of California and Texas, “Dinosaur Valley Girls” is produced by Kevin M. Glover (“Sisterhood of the Shewolf”) and is a production of the Donald F. Glut, Kevin M. Glover, and Executive Producer Daniel J. Mullen cohort company Glut Mullen Productions in association with Frontline Entertainment for distribution rights.

Jeff Rector, who has a classic look circa 50s or 60s in style and mannerisms, principally leads as Tony Markham, the hot flavor of the month actor within a franchise of martial arts films and is in the weeds of women yearning to be with him only in hope for a small role in one of his hit movies.  The “Hellmaster” and “Legion of the Night” actor hams up the humble, good-lookin’ good guy act with smooth as butter suaveness and silky speech that drives his dream cavegirl Hea-Thor up a Brachiosaurus neck.  Actress turned television and column journalist Denise Ames rocked out with her chest out for nearly all her filmic career before going into the celebrity news reporting profession with securing her only principal lead in Hea-Thor to head Glut’s “Dinosaur Valley Girls,” a gaggle of fed-up cavewomen who have separated from their male counterparts because of their abusive, brutish behavior.  Denise Ames (“Danger Zone III:  Steel Horse War,” “Slash Dance”) was typically typecasted as the sexy girl and as Hea-Thor, the role is no different with a big hair-don’t care, easy-on-the-eyes early woman whose half nude or topless for much of her scnees.  Glut’s comical pen plays as much into the satirist spirit as it does into the gratuitousness of a rather harmless sexploitation.  For instance, all the cavegirls have that play on stereotypical valley names like Hea-Thor with Bran-Dee (Staci B. Flood), Tor-Ree (S.G Ellison), Bar-Bee (Caree), Tam-Mee (Tammy Lee Jackson), Mee-Shell (Donna Spangler), Bam-Bee (Lauryn Vea), and Buf-Fee (Michelle Stanger).  There’s also Ro-Kell, played by the late cult actress Karen Black  (“Trilogy of Terror,” “House of a 1000 Corpses”), trying to keep her girls safe from a longing Ur-So, played by Ed Fury in a name homage role to his days playing the titular hero Ursus.  Black and Fury are fine apart but together they’re like two playful puppies enjoying each other company and making their characters be the catalyst for change Tony strives for amongst the long feuding cave people.  In the casting mix, Harrison Ray plays Beeg-Mak, leader of the semi-food monikered cavemen, the late “Blacula” actor William Marshall as a museum scientist, and softcore actress Griffin Drew (“Sex Files,” “The Blair Wench Project 2:  Scared Topless”) showing off her breast assets as Tony’s hand-and-foot, yet superficial, girlfriend.

“Dinosaur Valley Girls’ is not rocket science but it is science-fiction at its genre core with an ancient magical talisman transporting Tony to a bosomy, featherheaded, primordial time where stop motion and forced perspective dinosaurs roamed and the people population live simply in what is considered a primal culture that’s more creature than comfort.  You can see the fun Glut instills into the writing and the filming with little-to-no serious peril thrusted upon the characters in either facing off in a gender war or going toe-to-toe with an allosaurus.  Instead, Glut focuses more effort into the sexy and lighthearted campiness by theme of running gags and a love story plotline between a man and a woman from different time periods.  Does Glut explain why Tony is haunted by dreams of Hea-Thor and the prehistory.  No.  Do we need to care about that?  Nah.  Suggestive and silly sexploitation is genetically trimmed to be less tensioned and more stimulating with comedic relief and attractive nudity and “Dinosaur Valley Girls” delivers both commodities inside a lost world, fantasy-driven framework bred out of the mid-90s out from the wake of the mega blockbuster and special effects Tyrannosaur that was Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park.” 

Visual Vengeance, masters of the ostentatious obscurity and understated SOV films, transport us to the past with “Dinosaur Valley Girls” on a New American debut Blu-ray collector’s release! The BD50 is AVC encoded, 1080i upconverted from 720p, transferred from the original standard definition tape elements, with the pre-film caveat of potential A/V issues to set the bar. Presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, the image is a mix of 35mm and tape that produces a mixed bag of quality standard with some scenes harnessing the film grain while other scenes get a sense of the interlacing aspects of tape. The grading if often muted yellow or a warm greenish tint inside and outside caves that often indicates the yellowing effect caused by either an aging tape or poor record quality but “Dinosaur Valley Girls” is actually one of Visual Vengeance’s better looking products when considering the image. The English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix offers front channel effects without seemingly too fixed. Instead, there’s plenty of distinct isolation between ambience, Foley (including non-diegetic sound effects), dialogue, and soundtrack. Ripping farts and boob-dropping boings take precedence in the layering scheme for the running gags unless there is dialogue than that’s untouched and unmolested with a clear and clean track that can take an anemic turn at times through the dual channels. Optional English subtitles are available for selection. Visual Vengeance supplies substantial supplementals with a new 2023 commentary with director Don F. Glut and director of “Lurking Fear” C. Courtney Joyner along with an archive commentary with same two. Extras continue with a 2023 interview with Dinosaur Valley Guy Don F. Glut, Don Glut: The Collection a look inside Don’s home that doubles as a dinosaur museum, deleted and alternate scenes, the Making of Dinosaur Valley Girls, a music video reel Dinosaur Tracks, Jurassic Punk film soundtrack with music and lyrics, Dinosaur Valley Girls soundtrack music and lyrics, the original storyboards, production stills, go-go dancer and model Mu Wang in Don F. Glut music videos Mu-Seum and Dance Prehistoric, original promotional trailer along with other Visual Vengeance trailers, and a PG-13 (boo) cut of the film. Visual Vengeance’s encoded animated loop menus are always a joy to just watch as well. If you want to talk about marketable physical media content, the limited o-slipcover on this collector’s set alone will turn head and catch eyes with illustrated, half-naked cavegirls running and following over as a monstrous, man-eating Dinosaur roars in the backdrop, credited to graphic artist Rick Melton. If you missed out on the slipcover, the same artwork is pressed on the Blu-ray disc and is on a mini-folded poster tucked in the insert. The clear Blu-ray Amaray case has additional, uncredited artwork that’s more sensationally adventurous than the actual film and the reverse side has the original cover art of a smiling Denise Ames as Hea-Thor pulled from previous releases. Inside is packed with the aforenoted poster plus a “Dinosaur Valley Girls” sticker, retro VHS sticker sheet, and a plotline, release acknowledgement, and Denise Ames image insert sheet. The unrated release is region free and has a runtime of 94-minutes.

Last Rites: Campy, schlocky, and plenty of T&A, “Dinosaur Valley Girls” beats out the Flintstones any day of the week with another Visual Vengeance awesomesaurus release.

“Dinosaur Valley Girls” Visual Vengeance Collector’s Set Available Here!

An Invisible, EVILociraptor is No Walk in Jurassic Park! “The Invisible Raptor” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Insivible Raptor” Tearing Onto Bluray! Buy it Here!

 once promising paleontologist is reduced to being a dinosaur theme park sideshow act after being swindled and sued for a discovery of a lifetime aboard.  When a deadly and intelligent lab created raptor escapes from its maximum-security confines, the paleontologist, an attractive ex-girlfriend returning into his life, and an eager townie security guard with no friends must put a stop to the first living, breathing carnivorous dinosaur in 65 million years, but tracking down an invisible creature with razor sharp talons and teeth is no easy task, and they must follow the carnage and bloodshed of its wake in order to stop it.  With little resources, relying mostly on the paleontologist’s expertise and the chummy security guard’s willingness to take life-or-death risks for his new friends, the trio rope in a local, rough-around-the-edges chicken farmer to persuade the foul ancestor into a madcap trap before the whole town becomes raptor food. 

Audiences shouldn’t care about another “Jurassic Park” sequel.  Instead, any cretaceous period anticipation should all be channeled and focused toward Mikey Hermosa’s “The Invisible Raptor.”  The 2023 comedy-horror is not land of the lost as it lands right in our homes on a new physical media release.  Written between first feature film writers Mike Capes and Johnny Wickham, the “Dutch Hollow” director Hermosa is not one bit phased by the prospect that his main villain is every bit nasty and furious as antagonists come but is entirely out of sight!   With the challenge accepted, Hermosa aims to pull of the next big comedy-horror dinosaur film since “Tammy and the T-Rex” while ribbing in fun it’s bigger, more successful, campy-somber, franchised brethren mercilessly.  Hermosa coproduces the Showbiz Baby and Valecroft production with writers Capes and Wickham as well as William Ramsey and Nic Neary with Well Go USA owning the theatrical and at-home presentation rights. 

Capes writes for himself as the hard-up paleontologist Dr. Grant Walker, a play on Sam Neill’s Dr. Allen Grant, who has succumb to being of caricature of his profession and while the Dr. Walker is downcast despite his credentials, educations, and reputation, opposite him is the town goof Deniel “Denny” Denielson (David Shackelford, “Beneath”), a friendless, family-less, theme park security guard who’s repute amongst his peer is lower than fossilized dinosaur crap, but his attitude remains cheerful and positive.  The two characters complement each other with budding growth in their arcs of Dr. Walker not pushing people away like he did with ex-girlfriend Amber (Caitlin McHugh) and Denny, with every ounce of his hillbilly being, trying to a fault to make a friend.  There’s a slew of eccentric side characters but one not more as colorful as chicken farmer Henrietta McClusky.  Played by the early 70-year-old Sandy Martin, the “Scalpel” role debuting actress who had a profound supporting character career having had a role in “Napolean Dynamite” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” in recent years continues her dry humor, dark comedy run with the Henrietta role a crude, rude, and with ton of attitude poultry farmer with a no nonsense way about her and while Henrietta is a deeply sexual creature in her own right, the amorous tension lies in between Walker and Amber that have instantly become two magnets in rekindling their lost flame.  The ease of which the two characters are written to be instantly smitten is greatly construction to be an almost an unattainable relationship by introducing a child with no relationship to either one of them, a decade long gap without a ton of hurt feelings for the other’s sudden decision of career over love, and, the obvious, a large, man-eating, invisible predator repelling the two magnets apart.  Sprinkled with familiar faces, “The Invisible Raptor” rounds out with notable cult film actors, such as Richard Riehle (“Office Space,” “Hatchet”), Larry Hankin (“Armed and Dangerous,” “Home Alone”), and Sean Astin (“Encino Man,” “Lord of the Rings”) as well as a cameo appearance from Vanessa Chester who played Dr. Ian Malcolm’s daughter in “The Lost World” in another potshot at the “Jurassic Park” series.

Between the hilariously staged “Jurassic Park” callback moments and an unnerving number of gags around the butt region (raptor feces, fossilized raptor buttholes, butt jokes in general), “The Invisible Raptor” has a lot of humor that’s either smart or misses the mark, but not by much in the cogently confined venture packed full of heart, heroism, and havoc on a prehistoric, science-fiction level.  “The Invisible Raptor” may be a modern-day gory comedy-horror but that gory-horror element combined with a bit of underground covert weaponization of dinosaur has a real throwback sense to the early 90’s to early 2000’s dino-horror, such as the “Carnosaur” films, “Tammy and the T-Rex,” and, of course, “Jurassic Park.”  Dino-horror is a niche subgenre that’s rare explored unless it’s totally satirical (“The Velocipastor,” “The Jurassic Dead”) or rooted more in a lost world aspect, sporadically released throughout the decades with “Raptor Island” or the more perilous journey of “Land of the Lost,” original series and it’s more comedic feature remake.  Hermosa quickly moves out from the testing bunker lab that has been the Raptor’s home and where the scientist treat it like an adored, harmless child, a theme of attachment to harmful things we shouldn’t be attached to and gets right into the mayhem by letting it loose in only a way one could perceive a raptor would – in indiscriminating bloodshed.   Hermosa also doesn’t flinch with an invisible titular foe, one the actors have to mentally conjure up to play against in a combative or cat-and-mouse scene, with neatly composited special and visual effects of floating objects, quickly consumed severed heads, and silhouette work through blood spray, heat vision, and a shower curtain by the talented Steve Johnson (“Lord of Illusions,” “Species II”) and Dorian Cleavenger, both of who bring years of experience and both of whom have worked together for the effects of Robert Englund’s “Fear Clinic.” 

Audiences won’t see this one coming!  “The Invisible Raptor” debuts onto an AVC encoded, high-def 1080p, Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment.  The single-layer BD initiates some cause for concern on the image presentation prior to viewing but the picture produced is solid and stable with no banding in the darker voids, especially in those areas since there is no Raptor to be seen mostly during the night exteriors, poorly lit underground laboratory, or in the lowly key-lit interiors, there’s more shaded and hallow space exposed in the 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio.  Textured details are generally adequate with a softer, smoother touch from capacity compression, coupled with a hazy warm yellow-green lighting scheme.  The more standard, non-stylistic shots have better definition to where the details on Dr. Walker’s paleontologist outfit stand out amongst the eye glazing brown-and-tan colors and in the gooey grooves of the Velociraptor fecal matter complete with yellow kernels of corn.  Visual effects are handled with not too revealed explicitly to limit noticeable computer imagery and keep all that is practical the focus.  Audio options come in two English formats – a DTS-HD 5.1 and Stereo 2.0.  The range on this mix is explosive as it is subtle right down the clicks and grunts of the assumed noises one would be led to believe a prehistorical, carnivorous raptor would make.  Dialogue renders clearly and definitively prominent amongst ensuring bedlam cacophony whenever there’s a dino-crises in a more than one people grouping; the audio compilation has been carefully layered to denote exactly what’s intended to be discerned at that moment. English and French subtitles are available. There are no encoded special features on fluid menu of this feature only release but there is a quick bonus scene at the end credits. The physical copy has only a little bit more in the way of extra content with a cardboard, tactile-titled O-slipcover sporting the current state of arranged character pyramid composite. The snap lock Blu-ray Amaray is standard with the same cover art and no tangible extras inside. Rated R for bloody violence and gore, crude sexual material, drug use, and brief graphic nudity, Well Go USA’s release is region A encoded for playback and has a runtime of nearly 2 hours at 114 minutes.

Last Rites: Though the raptor may be invisible, this release should be seen by all! “The Invisible Raptor” is a hilarious “Jurassic Park” parody with plenty of bite, plenty of fun, and plenty of non-visible computer-generated dinosaurs, especially for those who are feeling the dinosaur fatigue.

“Insivible Raptor” Tearing Onto Bluray! Buy it Here!

Even Bad CGI Crocodiles Have an EVIL Smile. “Crocodile Island” reviewed! (Well Go USA Entertianment / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Journey to the “Crocodile Island” on DVD from Well Go USA!

The Dragon Triangle is known for being the Bermuda Triangle off the coast of the Asia continent.  Ship and plane mysteriously disappear due to the area’s supposedly distorted navigational and mechanical instruments, wreaking havoc on commercial transportation and the directionless travelers who have wandered into its esoteric province.  When an Australian outbound commercial flight GZ261 is forced to violently crash land due to this very phenomenon, survivors find themselves not in the middle of the sea but on an uncharted island full of man-eating crocodiles, large and ferocious spiders, and a giant, prehistoric crocodile that can swallow a person whole.  With no food or water and danger lurking around every corner, the remaining, uneaten passengers must survive with the tools around them and locate the wreckage of a World War II plane that crashed long ago, salvage it’s radio, and call for rescue but the journey is perilous with a very hungry, colossal crocodile on their tail.

The Dragon Triangle, alternatively known as the Devil’s Sea or the Pacific Bermuda Triangle, is actually a real stretch of urban legend approximately located from the Northern Tokyo to the narrow vertex down below the island of Guam and enveloping most of the Japanese offshore islands.  The suspected berth of paranormal yarn has a long history of marine mysteries and aviation ambiguities and it’s also the basis for the 2020 Xu Shixing and Simon Zhao creature-feature actioner “Crocodile Island.”  Shixing, who went on to helm “Sharktopus” released this year, and Zhao, who oversaw the directorial duties for “The Antarctic Octopus” also released this year, seem to have knack for exaggerated megafauna movies beginning with “Crocodile Island” from a script by Minming Ni of “Exorcist Judge Bao.”  The undivided Chinese production showcases under the banner of Perfect World Pictures, an entertainment content company that often co-finances films with American studios, such as with “Jurassic Park Dominion, and New Studios Media, the company behind Ni’s “Exorcist Judge Bao.” 

At the very core of “Crocodile Island’s” larger-than-life CGI creature extravaganza is a life ordeal larger than any crocodile could ever be with a strained father-daughter relationship that takes surviving a plane crash, man-eating reptilians, and supersized spiders to resolve.  In steps Gallen Lo as rigid father Lin Hao to agitated and rebellious daughter Lin Yi, or as called continuously in the film as Yiyi, played by Liao Yinyu.  The “Vampire Controller” Lo takes parental responsibilities like a high-end security guard at an exclusive night club exhibiting almost zero emotion toward an equally stoic daughter who just lost their mother, the reason for the plane ride from Australia where Yiyi’s mother, Lin Hao’s ex-wife and Yiyi resided after a suspected divorce. I say suspected because Lin Hao hasn’t seen his daughter in years, solidifying his estrangement to the extreme, but deep down he reticent care for her despite the lack of expressive emotions and awkward alienation.  He shows this be becoming a gatekeeper against Yiyi’s romantic interest Cheng Jie (Wang Bingxiang) who boards the same flight but keeps his distance by concealing his presence from what would ultimately be a father’s sundering wrath in effort to protect and reconnect with her having been absent during her adolescence and still thinking she’s a child.  That becomes the underlining theme to “Crocodile Island,” to fight to protect what’s most dear to you, as Lin Hao fights against man and beast to protect his child and going through the learning curve of her growing up.  One significant flaw in Lin Hao’s development is his background is never divulged.  We’re hinted by other survivors that he might be former military, but nothing is clear except that he’s had some survivalist and leadership training, two apex personality attributes that collide in reconnecting with his daughter as well as sewing a connection with her boyfriend who’s eager to protect Yiyi too.  Out of all the survivors, this triad dynamic is harder pressed than the others – a first child expecting couple, a social media junkie and her creep of a friend with a bad heart, a pair of single men – who seem like they’re just a long for the ride, to be crocodile chow, or to give the principals more time to work out their internal issues.  Wei Dang, Xue’er Hu, Qiwei He, Zhao Zuo, Zhiyan Zhao, Jack Wayne, Bruce Alleyn, Patrick Alleyn, and Jinyi Zhao costar.

“Crocodile Island” stands alone as a 100% Chinese backed product for the often American partnered Perfect World Pictures as the carnivores look nothing remote similar to the likes of “Jurassic Park” and, instead, has all the hallmarks of a midnight feature on the Syfy Channel but even through the shoddy computer imagery, the feature remains one-up from those made-for-television premiers by turning on and building up some tense atmospherics, a fog-laden forecast with Kaiju-lite spiders dangling-dormant overhead the survivors or the close-quarters cave battle against the giant crocodile, that does keep concentration from veering off into a ditch of mundane dullness.  Still, every creature, every aircraft, and every explosion from the muzzle fire of the U.S. military issued Thompson submachine gun to the fragmentation detonation of the MK II grenades are CGI rendered and poorly at that.  The laws of physics do not apply to “Crocodile Island” as the regular sized reptilians can leap forward, airborne, for feet on end and the action is almost a near, undefinable blur on screen of the pallid, fringing translucency composite mockup.  While visual effects can be 90’s intro-level rubbish (what year are we in?), I found the story to be palpable enough and to a point of plane crash survivors find themselves basically on a heavily reduced variation of “Land of the Lost” or “Journey to the Center of the Earth” where instead of a T-Rexes and other giant, prehistoric creatures nipping at their heels, massive ocean crocodiles and arachnids lay claim to their flesh and bones but that part of the story wavers on wishy-washy rationalization.  The World War II plane that crashes, because of a flock of pterodactyls nonetheless, was carrying radioactive material which is alluded to being the cause of the giant spiders and crocodile, yet the crocodile was present at the WW II plane crash when snatching one of the pilots right out of the sky with a vertical leap, so the mysterious Dragon Triangle Isle remains still a mystery.

If I had to choose between the Bermuda Triangle and the Dragon Triangle, my chances of survival definitely reside better west side of the prime meridian and now you can make that determination yourself with a DVD copy of “Crocodile Island” courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment.  As part of their Hi-Yah! collection, despite depicting no martial arts, “Crocodile Island” is presented in a widescreen 16×9 aspect ratio and stored on a MPEG2 encoded DVD9 with a average bitrate between 7 to 8 Mbps.  Aside from the absurd VFX, “Crocodile Island” looks pretty good compression-wise and detail-wise with a blight free digital image that pops with lush greenery and stark contrast, the brilliant sandy beach and bright blue water comes to mind as examples, with a grading range that runs the natural color spectrum.  The Mandarin language audio comes with two options:  a Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and a Stereo 2.0.  Both render a clean, damage free mix with prominent dialogue and a pinpoint ambient sound design only to be besmirched by the laughable CGI and creature noises.  While the track is listed as strictly Mandarin, an English dub on the same track combs over the natural voices of the English-speaking actors, the pilots in the movie who are obviously speaking English when reading their lips, but the English dub sounds like Asian actors attempting English vocal impersonations that synch up egregiously.  Subtitles include English, traditional Chinese, and a simplified Chinese, which I’m not entirely sure if that means for a child’s benefit or another reason.  The English synch appears to be oversimplified as well with a slew of straight forward statements and exclamations, adding little depth to what the meaning characters attempt to convey in more significant conversion.  There’s not much in the way of special features in the rainy motion DVD menu aside from the film’s trailer and other Well Go USA Entertainment preview trailers for “A Creature Was Stirring,” “Creepy Crawly,” and “Gangnam Zombie.” The Amaray front cover has run-of-the-mill, campy Giant crocodile pomposity of a cover art with the doubled-sided, one-sheet inside insert of other Hi-Yah! Well Go USA Entertainment titles. What I found aesthetic is the simple designed, yet eye-catching disc pressed with a shimmering glint. Not rated and locked on a region one playback, the release has a runtime of 87 minutes. While this crocodile’s skin remains without a tangible leathery hide in the semi-aquatic beast’s digital creation, “Crocodile Island” has sporadic action and atmospheric value vastly needed to combat the cringeworthy croc.

Journey to the “Crocodile Island” on DVD from Well Go USA!

EVIL Just Casually Swims Along in “The Lake” reviewed! (Dread – Epic Pictures / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Take a Dip in “The Lake” on Blu-ray Home Video!

The small Thailand village of Bueng Kan becomes under siege by a monstrous being from out of the depths of near by lake.  Vicious and stealthy, the unknown creature terrorizes the wetland villagers town by town, killing all those in its rampaging path up an inlet river.  The local police commander and his two topnotch detectives are baffled and have no idea what they’re up against or how to exactly handle the situation but with the help of one of the bitten victims, psychically linked to the creature by its bite, the police and vigilant locals manage to capture the creature before it can wreak more havoc.  Concurrently, Police discover a large egg by the originating lake of first creature sightings and as they inspect it, the much larger mother beast emerges.  The mother searches out her children by using vocal sonar to track down her troubled little one, sending her galloping toward the panicky and crowded town in an unstoppable hunt that could lead to chaos and catastrophe. 

When the first news broke about “The Lake,” there was considerable positive buzz surrounding the big-budgeted, Thailand produced picture for it’s substantial, animatronic creature feature effects.  Yet, I purposefully held back doing any further research into learning more about the film that was released in the latter half of 2022 for reasons that may bias my professional opinion and to not spoil a virginal viewing experience of too much trailer audiovisual that can sometime reveal all the good bits and pieces of a movie.  Retrospectively, I’m starting to think that not absorbing much about the Lee Thongkham’s written-and-directed picture, whether by intentional research or by happenstance, was in due part to its unfavourability amongst global audiences despite the tangibly terrifying and impressive effects.  “The Lake” is produced by Nimit Sattayakul and Nathaporn Siriphakacharath with Dread Central’s production label, Epic Pictures, serving as coproduction company in conglomerate association with Hollywood Thailand, Airspeed Pictures, Five Stars Network, Right Beyond, Creative Motion, and the director’s own Thongkham Films.

“The Lake” is an ensemble cast of well-known Thai and Chinese based actors and actresses brought together to play a variety of characters caught up by a sudden and surprising monster attack.  The cast works well enough to supplement “The Lake’s” overall reactionary state of frantic and heavy browed emotions.  In fact, the performances are terribly melodramatic and only reactionary.  For a Kaiju film, there’s not a lot of chase sequences, monster versus man battling, or even mass destruction; instead, the direction is geared toward the emotional aftermath of experiences, such as watching the monster in terrifying awe, twisted faces of concern over the turmoil, or breaking down in a moment of loss, which graphic death scenes seem very sparse with only a few instances of the humanoid sized beast taking chest bites out of a few village denizens and the only principal character death.  The despairing cast is mostly comprised of Thai actors with a handful of Chinese actors sprinkled in, beginning with Thai leading man Thiraphat Sajakul (“The Maid”) as head inspector James (last names are nonexistent in the cast of characters).  Inspector James not only has to figure out how to outmaneuver the magnitude of the creature pool but also outthink the angsty games of his antagonistic teenage daughter Pam (Supansa Wedkama) who has squared off against him after the death of their mother.  That teeming with bitterness and frustration dynamic barely holds water as the problematic situation is over before it can even began to fester with audiences.  The emotional weight is definitely felt but the emotional worth retains little impact when lake monsters begin to emerge like Russian Matryoshka dolls, or nesting dolls, beginning with the smallest of the set first and working it’s to the larger mother.  “Motel Acacia” and “The Maestro:  A Symphony of Terror” actor Vithaya Pansringarm has a comparatively commanding presence as the Police Commander, but, to be honest, Pansringarm is consistently typecast as law authority throughout his career and has a firm foot on the role’s neck, but one of his subordinator officer is his daughter Fon (Palita Chueasawathee), a fact that we don’t really know until much, much later into the narrative, making the bond essentially not worth knowing, especially since nothing really happens with Fon other than the occasional exposition of events that can be easily interpreted with our own eyes.  Another pairing is wetland farmer Lin (Sushar Manaying) and her drunkard brother Keng (Thanachat Tunyachat, “Yuan ling 2”) who experience the initial attacks of the smaller creature and form a link to it once Keng survives a bite from its tentacle-dangling and squared-shaped jaws.  Like the other two couples, not much of arc is established, even for completion, as the pieces to their character composition feels fragmented and frail to the point of futility.  I was expecting Keng to play up his the drunk indolent and someone who takes for granted his hardworking sister and her daughter that the attack becomes this bonding moment of relationship redemption or salvation, but what unfolds on screen, between the two, harps Keng’s connection with the creature and nothing more.  Wanmai Chatborirak, Su Jack, Zang Jinsheng, and Amorntep Wisetsung round out the supporting cast.

Impressive as “The Lake” may be with the creature effects, using a near seamless blend of phenomenal computer generated imagery and the same animatronic technology as in “Jurassic Park” that brought life back from 65 million years of extinction with the T-Rex, a greater amount of depression mounds over the head of director Lee Thongkham like a black rain cloud.  “The Lake’s” creature derivativity, based off the “Jurassic Park,” “Godzilla,” and maybe even borrowing a trifle sum from “Cloverfield” in what is supposed to be a genetic combination of a crocodile, snake, and catfish(?), never weakens the narrative as audiences will always be curious to experience the larger-than-life animatronic head that miniaturizes the cast effectively.  Gen-pop will continue to gobble up a good-lookin’ monster on any day.  Where “The Lake” fatigues is with a poorly progressing script, flat characters, and misaligned directional continuity.  That latter is big – bigger than the monster itself – when one character with the camera perspective facing the framed character and the framed character begins looking slowly up to his right to eye-point the monster out and the next spliced in scene is facing the then camera perspective character from the right side and he also turns his head right to look at the monster.  They both turn their heads to the right, so which side is the monster on?  The same could be said about the omnipresent, big momma monster whose head is seemingly everything, everywhere all at once – by the sound of it, the creature should have starred in that famous multi-verse movie that won all those Academy Awards.  ‘The Lake” is drenched – excuse the pun – in overused scenes where a foreground man squares off against the blurred background monster as well as scenes of the ginormous, scaly head creeping in from either stage left or stage right to interact with the cast.  The moments lose their usually high and sizeable satisfaction rate with Thongkham’s repetitive saturation to create the first Thai, larger-than-life, monster movie because of his inability to showcase other scenes of Kaiju creature carnage.

“The Lake” arrives onto hi-def Blu-ray home video courtesy of Dread’s exclusive distribution label Epic Pictures.  The AVC encoded, 1080p, single layer Blu-ray is presented in the 1.77:1 widescreen aspect ratio, looking stunning and marvelous with the absent of natural lighting.  Most scenes are dark or overcast with rain, graded with a subtle increase of the cyan hue to reign with a ominous lurking in the dark fist.  The middle depth focus with streaking blur, like being concussed, runs as a shell-shocked induced motif throughout.  Thongkham plays with the blur feature a lot, switching back and forth between foreground and background as well as the centric focused blur with streaking.  Surprising, there are no issues with compression, despite the dark shoots against high and vibrant key lighting and the blur features which is well-sustained on the format disc.  The release comes with four dialogue tracks:  A Thai Dolby Digital 5.1, an English Dub Dolby Digital 5.1, a Thai Dolby Digital 2.0, and an English Dub Dolby Digital 2.0.  For about half the film, many of the scenes are done in the rain which don’t translate with vigor over the Thai 5.1, especially during the downpours.  Instead, “The Lake” is more focused on its epically scored soundtrack by composer Bruno Brugnano who has composed a string of horror of the last decade and half, including “The Coffin,” “She Devil”, and Thongkham’s “The Maid.”  Dialogue renders clean and clear with a fine simultaneous English subtitle, but the translation feels coarsely oversimplified to the point of covering just the basic generalities of plans, actions, and explanations, such as the environmental and global warming changes hinted earlier between the two Chinese scientists, that make the intellect of “The Lake” severely less than substantial.  The translated captions render the characters seemingly inexperienced on the simplest of tasks when I suspect that’s not entirely the case.  Spanish subtitles are also an available option.  Bonus features include a promotional behind-the-scenes advert, the official trailer, the Dread trailer, and a handful of raw deleted scenes that provide a better and extended insight into the ending rather than the wrap-it-up ending we’re left with in the final product. The physical attributes sport the monster in full roar bursting the surface of the lake on the front cover of the traditional Blu-ray snapper while the disc art plants a sandy monstrous footprint with the push lock right in the palm. There is no insert included. The region free release comes not rated and has a runtime of 93 minutes. Sold just on special effects alone, director Lee Thongkham rises the leviathan for Thailand’s movie industry, but “The Lake” is drained of box-office depth in every other element.

Take a Dip in “The Lake” on Blu-ray Home Video!

Time Travelling Tourists Just Want to See the Spectacle of EVIL! “The Grand Tour” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Unearthed Films Stopped a Disaster by Going Back in Time and Re-releasing “The Grand Tour” now on Blu-ray!

Widowed contractor Ben Wilson and his daughter, Hillary, are a many 2×4 and paint bucket deep into a renovation of a dilapidated inn on the outskirts of town. Haunted by his wife’s death violent death and reminded of it by an angry father-in-law, Ben tries his best to be the best father to Hillary that a single dad can be despite his urge to drink and forget about the horrors of that fateful day. Unexpected and eccentric guests arrive at his doorstep demanding to pay handsomely to stay at his unfinished inn, regardless of the condition, and eager to be present for the secret spectacle to come that makes his inn more desirable than all the amenities of the hotel in town. The guests’ odd behavior, strange belongings, and secret talk lead Ben to believe these so-called tourists are not from his time and that the spectacle their awaiting for is tragedy in the making.

For an extreme film label such as Unearthed Films, Jeff Daniels is not necessarily a headlined name I would see on the cover art. Nor, and more surprisingly so in this instance, would I ever have thought that a PG-13 rated film would be in the same assemblage of titles as “Slaughter Vomit Dolls,” “Philosophy of a Knife,” and “Christmas Cruelty.” Yet, here we are today, the year 2023, over two decades of extreme horror distribution, and David Twohy’s “The Grand Tour” has been released. The 1992 time-traveling clock-racer, that also went by other titles such as “The Grand Tour: A Disaster in Time” or “Timescape,” is written for filmic treatment by the “Riddick” franchise director, adapted from the novella “Vintage Season” by the husband and wife writing team, Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. “The Grand Tour” is a production of Channel Communications and Drury Lane Productions, the companies behind Brian Thompson starring “Nightwish” which became also another Unearthed Films’ vault release and is produced John A. O’Connor (“Steel Justice”) and Robert Warner (“The Return of Swamp Thing”).

“The Grand Tour” stars the aforementioned Jeff Daniels who at this point was coming off the phobic-inducing success of the itsy-bitsy film called “Arachnophobia.” Daniels brings the same family man charisma, sarcastic wit, and unnerved intensity to the widowed construction contractor Ben Wilson. The character of Ben Wilson is unbuttoned from the beginning with only nightmares of an accident involving a horse drawn sleigh and verbal tit-for-tats with his bristly former father-in-law concluding the death of his wife only a short time ago. Wilson’s marked as a drunk and a shirker though barely do we see only a slither of the former; instead, Wilson’s rather astute, loving, and fearless in his time of time designed duress. Perhaps, Wilson’s arc has already been puzzled together and Twohy only mirrors into his once shameful soul to showcase how much he’s learned and how far he’s come to be more than just an abashed single dad and though Wilson is unbuttoned from the beginning of the story, Daniels buttons up the role with nothing less of perfection. Wilson’s daughter Hillary is played by pre-“Jurassic Park” screamer Ariana Richards who solidified her round-eyed concerned, over-the-shoulder look first in “The Grand Tour.” Hillary becomes the crux torn between the loving father that Wilson’s portrayed to be and an overreaching grandfather, who’s also the town judge (George Murdock, “The Death Squad”), holding a longstanding and personal grudge with his daughter’s ambivalent death. The youngster is also the reason Wilson is willing to risk the perfect future to save an ill-fated past. “The Grand Tour” enlists a versed lot of talent to round out the cast with Marilyn Lightstone (“Heavy Metal”) as the voluble tour guide, David Wells (“Society”) as a tourist with a conscious, and Jim Hayne (“Sleepwalkers”) as a down-to-Earth bus driver caught in the middle just like Wilson. There’s also Nicholas Guest (“Dollman”), Time Winters (“Skinner”), and Anna Neill.

Temporal manipulating or time-travelling films will undoubtedly always have faults as time is a finicky thing, some films accomplish time loops better than others, but I personally feel that as long as the narrative is entertaining enough and the time theory isn’t ludicrously idiotic, all can be forgiven or overlooked on the stretched fabric of time and place concept that can have easily spotted loopholes.  “The Grand Tour” is one of those divertingly pleasurable narratives with calamity hanging in the balance, a central do-or-die performance, and theme that hits at the core of a numb human perspective when seemingly life is nothing less than perfect.  The script bypasses the whole negating physics of the narratives time-travelling and butterfly effect piece with Daniel’s character verbally damning the hypothetical’s inaccuracies in a fit of life- and time-saving panic to not hang up on the details and keep the story churning.  Twohy never offers too much too early when the intrusively eccentric inn guests appear without concern for their surroundings but are increasingly curious about minor, trivial things that when compared to the small town residents, people would take such things for granted, yet their curiosity isn’t exactly appreciation for the humbler things as it’s more of a naively morbid reflection on how who these well-dressed and fit-as-a-fiddle travelers call “bygoners” lived and died.  Historical catastrophes have become looking glass sideshows for the bored or how the event is termed as a spectacle is if the disaster is an extravagance performance for others to reap the benefit from its grim amusement.  Twohy pulls off the massive feat of catastrophe without the use of computer-generated imagery that we see heavily in his later films to create galactic worlds and creatures.  There’s composite motion paint work and diorama miniatures to create the illusion of a small town in turmoil that works just as well, if not better.  The whole “Grand Tour” package sells the sleight of hand devastation but also the intrinsic emotion and passion that follows it, or in this rewind the clock case, before it as well. 

Though I’m wigged out by the tame release from Unearthed Films, I’m still glad the out of print and sci-fi jarring “The Grand Tour” has booked an excursion back to the physical media outer rim!  A brand-new AVC encoded Blu-ray, released as the 11th cult classic under the Unearthed Classics sublabel, shepherds a new in-print North American option.  Sold as a Hi-Def release with 1080p, there’s honestly nothing that can be really done or to improve upon a Betamax 350 resolution by 480 pixels in a stretched 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Certainly better video and audio quality compared to VHS, and likely the best quality “The Grand Tour” will ever be in to-date, the release remains a deficient for detail with blurry, soft-glowing traits.  The Blu-ray’s bitrate is also erratic, dipping as low as upper DVD, 8-11 Mbps, to shooting up as high as lower 20s which tells me the storage capacity of the BD25 likely isn’t enough to properly decode the film and, in certain frames, compression artifacts show with smooth surface, color blurring that eliminates sharper edges amongst other issues, such as faint banding and blocking nothing to really warrant discouragement. The English PCM 2.0 stereo mix is commensurable with the original Betamax audio recording and though soft around the audible gills, the dialogue, ambient, and soundtrack mixes satisfy the need but in case you need an English SDH option, the Unearthed Films’ Blu-ray has you covered with a well-synched and timed error-free translation. The special edition bonus features include the “Timescape” title sequence, production stills, various posters and one-sheet artworks, a new Lost in Time: Cannes promo discussion with Ed McNichol who worked on the pre-production Cannes promotional trailer with Jeff Daniels but isn’t available in the special features here, and Unearthed Classics trailers. The physical aspects of the release include a cardboard o-slip with a front image reminiscent of outside region 1 DVD covers of Jeff Daniels running between two periods in time. The slipcover sheaths a clear Blu-ray case with latch, the inserted cover art is the same slipcover but is reversible with a mockup of the Canadian released DVD cover. The disc print image echos the reversible cover art image. “The Grand Tour” is Blu-ray has a region A playback, clocks in at 99 minutes, and the film is rated PG-13. An obscure Jeff Daniels film lost in time, unable to reach back into the past for a new, refreshed release, is paradoxically meta in its own right but luckily for us, Unearthed Films has our best interests in mind while keeping the blood and guts at bay for only for a single, solitary stitch in time.

Unearthed Films Stopped a Disaster by Going Back in Time and Re-releasing “The Grand Tour” now on Blu-ray!