EVIL Ted Bundy is “The Black Mass” reviewed! (Cleopatra Entertainment / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on March 23, 2024

“The Black Mass” on Blu-ray Can Be Ordered Here!

Based off a slice of Ted Bundy’s murderous impulse-driven life, the notorious American serial killer’s escapes from the upper West Coast and lands him residence in Tallahassee, Florida in the moderately warm winter of 1978. As he picks the pockets of those around him, scrounging up what little cash he needs to survive on, Bundy urges grow to kill grow more intense. He begins to stalk a nearby university sorority house that’s buzzing with potential prey. As works out a plan to attack, his good looks and impeccable charm make him desirable around women and men alike, offering opportunities that tend to fizzle out before they can begin, and when his need to spill blood agitates him excessively, he starts to creep out those around him by glaring out them and making off-the-cuff shrewd comments. With his options declining rapidly, Bundy decides to take advantage of the sorority house’s broken backdoor lock and set in motion a night that will forever live in American infamy.

For her feature length film debut, scream queen actress Devanny Pinn takes on one of the most vile villains ever to walk the Earth in her biographical horror “The Black Mass.” The “Song of the Shattered” and “Frost” actress and producer brings a headspace perspective to Ted Bundy committed at least 20 confirmed murders between 1974 and 1978. The true crime thriller named after what one of the victims described Bundy’s attack on her as simply as a black mass before being bludgeoned. Brandon Slagle (“Song of the Shattered”) and Eric Pereira (“The Locals”) collaborate on penning the script. Slagle directed Pinn in the 2022 element horror and survival feature “Frost” and now it’s Pinn to take a stab at the director’s chair with a Slagle screenplay, pun intended. Pinn coproducers her film alongside Michelle Romano (“Night Aboard the Salem”) and Cleopatra Entertainment’s Tim Yasui (“Frost,” “The 27 Club”) under the production banners of Jaguar Motion Pictures (“Dead Sea”) and Roman Media (“Millwood”).

The main focus in the feature is of the titular character, “The Black Mass,” that is Ted Bundy, almost seeing what he sees through his eyes of skulking and morbid fantasy. Played by British actor Andrew Sykes, the centrically focused character is experienced not directly through his eyes but over his shoulder, peering from behind as if audiences are accomplices to his murderous wake. Sykes performs well in a nearly voiceless role that does more lurking than talking but Sykes’s worked up frustration clearly surfaces and erupts out of Bundy when strapped for cash and has a tremendous itch that needs to be scratched as his wishy-washy path to do good crumbles from under his footing. As the main focal point, no other character really comes close to a lead principal. The sorority girls are introduced in mass and jump from sister-to-sister individually conversating routine and tales of the day-to-day within the college student context with roles from but not limited to Lara Jean Mummert-Sullivan (“2 Jennifer”), Brittney Ayona Clemons (“Twisted Date”), and Alex Paige Fream (“Into the Arms of Danger”). Yet, Pinn’s storytelling purpose is paradoxical with the whole story flowing through the perspective of Ted Bundy with his prey hanging mostly in the peripheral and not emanating the warm and fuzzies of sympathetic, relatable characters, but at the end of the film, there’s an acknowledging tribute for the victims who we really know nothing about from the narrative, creating an acute pivot from the killer’s personal bubble. “The Black Mass” rounds out it’s relatively large passing-through cast with Chelsea Gilson, Susan Lanier, Eva Hamilton, Sarah Nicklin, Elisabeth Montanaro, Mikaylee Mina, Jennifer Wenger, Grace Newton, Devanny Pinn, and with cameos from Lew Temple (“The Devil’s Rejects”), Jeremy London (“Alien Opponent”), Lisa Wilcox (“A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Warriors”), Kathleen Kinmont (“Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers”), and schlock movie veteran Mike Ferguson.

“The Black Mass” is the perfect example of style over substance. While the story is formatted around Bundy’s outlook, there’s not a significant amount of edification for his warped mindset. Some backstory leaks through his beseeching phone conversations with ex- or current girlfriend Liv, a phone voiceover presumingly based off the real Bundy girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall, that teeters the appearance of his humanity side as he talks about his addictive struggles and trying to walk a straight line, but any kind of sympathy is quickly tabled without an ounce of provision, likely for his inclination to lie for advantage and exploitation’s sake. Pinn only teases the inexplicable morose and ghastly gears that rotate inside Bundy’s head, spurring a single blood-drenched daydream of a girl pulling off her skin in the shower, and erotically enjoying it immensely. The scene feels sorely out of place amongst the rest of reality-grounded narrative that resorts to a cut-rate version of Bundy’s devolving surrounding is fleeting patience and feign niceties. What’s appreciated mostly about “The Black Mass” is Pinn’s ability to work the camera in not revealing too much of a modern-day society by maintaining that closeup distance behind Bundy and only really showing what needs to be seen for a late 70’s biopic. Costuming, production design, and vernacular are appropriate for the era as well. Coming back to the proximity around Bundy, there’s a purposefulness in not showing his full face or looking at him from the front that keeps the particulars of his image in an effective, if not slightly scary, enigma albeit the other characters’ brief descriptions of him in conversation do provide a rough picture of him.

MVD Visual distributes the newest cinematic Bundy biopic from Cleopatra Entertainment. The AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD25, presented in a widescreen 2.39:1, has welcoming veneer, splashed with a 70’s color scheme saturation, and is graded with a middle-of-the-road or slightly darker color palette. Sufficient capacity and compression encoding offers a clean, sleek digital image without artifacts and with the ample attention to minor era details where possible and Noah Luke’s fill and back-lit cinematography when things get really dark, as in sinister, that snappy image presentation is key. The English language options are a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and a PCM 2.0 stereo renders a clean, balanced mix between dialogue, ambience, and dialogue with less suppression on the PCM audio if you’re looking for a lossless option. The setting sounds are nicely immersive compared to the limited and concise framing, opening up the world audibly rather than visually. No technical issues with the digital audio on neither front; however, depth and reality checks are missed marks as all the dialogue doesn’t abide by spatial awareness; when the sorority sisters are talking indoors or from afar while Bundy lurks outside the house, or from a distance, spying on them, all the dialogue is unobstructed and too prominently clear for natural conventions. Bonus features include an image slideshow and the feature trailer. Ancillary content includes other trailers for Cleopatra films with “Frost,” “The Ghosts of Monday,” “The Long Dark Trail,” “What the Waters Left Behind: Scars,” and “Lion-Girl.” Released in a traditional Amaray Blu-ray case, “The Black Mass” sports a Dimension-like front cover, dark and full of characters. No insert or tangible content inside and the disc art mirrors the front cover. Cleopatra’s region free Blu-ray comes unrated and has a runtime 82 minutes.

Last Rites: Devanny Pinn quarterbacking her first feature film with an à la mode Ted Bundy portion, an interpretative taste of his absolute madness, doesn’t faze the long-time scream queen actress and producer who takes on the subject head on, but the overall concept does need tweaking in the area of purpose that can be easily conquered with more practice.

“The Black Mass” on Blu-ray Can Be Ordered Here!

Sooie EVIL Sooie! “Pig Killer” reviewed! (Breaking Glass Pictures & Darkstar Pictures / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on January 24, 2024

On This Farm There Was a “PIg Killer” now on Blu-ray!

Pig ranching landowner Robert “Willy” Pickton’s compulsions to pick up unprincipled women involved in prostitution and drugs and horrifically rape and murder them in the name of salvation stems from a severely abusive childhood with the father’s physically and mentally tormenting as well as a scornful mother sexually assaulting him. Willy’s fanatical obsession threatens his drug-fueled, orgy-laden, rock-n-rolling Piggy’s Powwow party, a regular throwdown held at his ranch that has elicited a cease and desist letter from the city, but Willy pushes the party forward despite his brother David and their lawyer’s stern opposition. Paralleling Willy’s story is Wendy Eastman who almost dies of an accidental drug overdose. The incident stirs more the already contentious bad blood between her uncompromising stepmother and insecure father that leads to storm out and bump into Willy at a bar with the feeling of destiny bringing them together only to horrifically discover Willy’s unsavory secret the hard way.

Part one of my reviews on serial killer biopics, headfirst we go into the psychotic world of Robert “Willy” Pickton, a pig former turned one of Canada’s most notorious serial rapists and killers living in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. While the extent of his butchery is vague at best and even in some ways evolving over the course of the last two decades, Pickton was able to be the filmic inspiration for the Chad Ferrin brazen biopic “Pig Killer.” The “Easter Bunny, Kill! Kill!” and “Someone’s Knocking at the Door” director wrote-and-helmed the interpretation of the egregiously presumed methods Pickton executed upon his female victims, mostly drug-addicted sex workers from the Eastside of Vancouver. Once under the working ttile of “Pork Chop Rod,” Ferrin’s Crappy World Films, Girls and Corpses (of Robert Steven Rhine’s Girls and Corpses Magazine), and the post-production company Laurelwood Pictures served as co-productions with 50-year acting vet Robert Miano (“Malevolence,” “Giallo”) co-producing.

Even though this actor has portrayed serial killers in “Identity,” “The Hitcher II,” and “The Frighteners,” and even a deranged zealot in “Contact,” I would never have imagined in a million years “Starship Troopers” actor Jake Busey would have stepped into the sordid shoes of Willy Pickton in a Chad Ferrin production. There’s something to be said for Jake Busey’s nerve in moving forward with eccentric and controversial and Willy Pickton is every fiber of those infamy traits and all that is in between. Disheveled and dirty, maniacal and demented, prosthetic phalluses and dildo revolvers, pig masks and masturbation – Jake Busey doesn’t hold back on an exigent script important to Pickton’s state of mind. Creepy and apathetic blanked by his deceased mother’s devout spitefulness and her incestuous sexual abuse, Busey secretes these irascible qualities held dormant in Pickton until the sleaze is sated and his patients runs out then it’s time to go hog wild, literally. Lew Temple (“Halloween,” “Devil’s Rejects”) plays Willy’s brother David who also has mother issues, but that avenue is not as profoundly travelled as Willy’s, both men see delusional visions of their mother’s tirades but definitely lopsided in disfavor of Willy and that leaves David left in the dust some to not have his mental faculties inspected. Their flashback, foul-mouth, and Electral loving mother goes to an unabashed by former adult actress turned low-budget horror scream queen Ginger Lynn Allen (“Murdercise,” “31”) in what her scenes can only be described as uncut and uncomfortable lewdness as she bares it all at the ripe young age of 60 years old. Another standout performance goes to Kate Patel as the debut actress, who in her own right is an Amazonian goodness buff beyond rebuff in black lace underwear, finds her voice as a young woman named Wendy Eastman in a complicated and dysfunctional household after the death of her mother, at odds with a wicked stepmother, and an insecure father with passive fortitude. The only obstacle that can be rendered cleanly from her performance is how her character’s written to be drawn to Willy Pickton as because between age gaps and social differences, the two have nothing tangible to drawn them together mutually. “Pig Killer” rounds out the cast with producer Robert Miano as Wendy Eastman’s father, Michael Paré (“Streets of Fire”) and producer Robert Rhine as Detectives Oppal and Schneer, Silvia Spross (“Parasites”) as Wendy’s disparaging stepmother, Jon Budinoff (“Someone’s Knocking at the Door”) as Wendy’s friend and drug source, Elina Madison (“Caged Lesbos A-Go-Go”) as a druggie sex worker, Bai Ling (“Exorcism at 60,000 Feet”) as also a druggie sex worker, and Kurt Bonzell (“Parasites”) as Willy’s disfigured and throat-cancer suffering friend Pat.

Sensationalized for cinematic charm, the story behind the “Pig Killer” hits near the bullseye of all major bullet points from the escape of Wendy Eastman (actual person being Wendy Eistetter) and her coinciding her drug addiction to the wild gathers at the Pickton farm known as Piggy’s Powwow (actual title being Piggy Palace Good Times Society) where motorcycle gangs and prostitutes congregated for a drug-fueled good time. If having viewed a few of Ferrin’s credits before, some of the unrestrained gore and shock will not come at a surprise. The benumbing unconcern of misanthropy is poignant amongst Ferrin’s soft-pedaling of horror with a whimsical manner within a gritty film that doesn’t feel as gritty as it should be considering the subject and subject material. Another mitigating moment, one that’s more counterproductive to the Pickton storyline, is the parallel melodramatics of Wendy Eastman that eventually rendezvous with the titular “Pig Killer” and become the rendition of Wendy Eistetter supposed personal backstory and escape from death. Wendy’s overdose and family issues provide reason for her subsequent run away from home, but the extent of the backstory unnecessarily rivals Willy Pickton’s and the whole destiny meetup enlists some deeper rooted significance that isn’t neatly fleshed out, turning awkwardly impertinent that waters down their entanglement.

Arriving onto a Breaking Glass Pictures and a Darkstar Pictures collab, “Pig Killer” oinks itself onto an AVC encoded, 1080p, High-definition Blu-ray. Presented in an anamorphic widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio, “Pig Killer” under the warm glow and desert dry eye of cinematographer Jeff Billings (“The Deep Ones”) sundries the shot types in various techniques, such as closeup slow motion to be inside Willy’s moment of divination, to provide Ferrin’s feature with comely appeal even in the vilest of moments. Details are sharp and delineated nicely albeit the quick editing for intensity purposes and to float Willy in and out of psychosis. Coloring is more natural than anything else with a few gels scatter about to spruce up the vibrancy. The lossless English DTS-HD 5.1 master audio renders clear dialogue without any distortions or other audible disturbances; however, the strength of the dialogue favors an infirm conveyance to grasp a few exchanges, especially in the exterior. A maximal Gerard McMahon soundtrack scores the entire biopic from start to finish with a range of 80’s power ballads to 90’s pop rock; the 76-year-old not only scores the project but also has a concert performance role with his band G Tom Mac. Depth and range supplement greatly as sound design cater to the surrounding atmospheres, such as the echo vibrations under the Eastside bridge or the pig-pen oinks and frenzies when feeding bits and pieces of sex workers to his farmyard swine. English SDH is optionally available. Packed with extra content, supplements included are an interview intercut with scenes with Ginger Lynn as well as a few of her clothed adult industry spreads/modeling, a behind-the-scenes footage with Michael Paré, deleted and extended scenes, and Q&A from Cine Excess, the making-of the Pig Mask, a making-of the film entitled Canadian Bacon, an introduction to Spunky the Pig aka Willy’s pig, a screen test of Kate Patel in the role of Willy, which was considered before Jake Busey landed the role, “Pig Killer” auditions, and the trailer. The clear Blu-ray Amaray case sports a dark-and-dirty gilt image of a half-naked Kate Patel and a menacing pig-masked person holding a clever overhead. Reverse side contains a still image of the insides of Willy’s pigsty camper while the disc is pressed with the same menacing pig and clever but more prominent. The collab release has a region A playback, a runtime of 122 minutes, and is not rated. The back cover also lists a 2000 production date, conflicting with the 2023 release states elsewhere, but the 2000 date would be before Willy Pickton’s arrest and so that might be a misprint. Chad Ferrin and Jake Busey jointly tackling the monster that is brutal serial killer Willy Pickton with an inkling of lighter material coursing through its arteries, style secreting through the madness, and, of course, gore, the most important ingredient to the likes of a film entitled “Pig Killer.”

On This Farm There Was a “PIg Killer” now on Blu-ray!

Evil’s Eager to Loop You In! “The Endless” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on July 11, 2018

Brothers Justin and Aaron struggle to maintain a normal and fruitful life outside Camp Arcadia, the UFO death cult camp they fled as young men. When Aaron feels empty, poor, and hungry as a cleaning serviceman on the brink of poverty and social misfortune, he convinces his older brother to take him back to the camp for one day. Once they’ve arrived, the two felt as if nothing has changed, even the cultists haven’t aged in the decade they were gone. Aaron seeks to reintegrate during his time at the camp while Justin is eager to vacate the premises pronto, but an otherworldly phenomenon promises answers to Justin and Aaron’s perceptions of their former cult and leaves questions to the unexplainable events that surround the camp site. The brothers must solve the mystery before being ensnared by the phenomena that lurks all around them with an ever present eye.

“The Endless” is the 2017 science fiction horror film from a pair of directors, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who helmed a segment in the anthology, “V/H/S Viral.” The duo also star as the leads in the film as Justin and Aaron. Benson penned the film’ script that has grand originality and fosters an underlying Lovecraftian concept and despite the limited budget, “The Endless” has favorable special effects of mind-boggling proportions incorporated with a splash of mildly dark humor in this blithe fantasy horror. Reminiscent of such other off-the-wall commingling genre films such as Don Coscarelli’s “John Dies at the End” or Madellaine Paxson’s “Blood Punch,” where the supernatural and bizarre collide and the characters are equally demented for a pinch of extra pizazz.

Benson and Moorhead may be the stars of “The Endless” and essentially are the epicenter of the entire premise, but their characters wouldn’t be aptly as important if it wasn’t for the cast that supported them. One of the actors is Tate Ellington (“Sinister 2”) as the unofficial camp leader Hal with the gift of gab and just as mysterious as the camp itself. Ellington’s one of many of the camp so called UFO Death Cult characters that make the story really stick out as odd as there’s Lew Temple (“The Walking Dead”) too. A very unshaven and unkempt Temple weighs the look of an Civil War soldier in Tim and Tim’s distant expressionless is very much Temple’s bread and butter. Rivaling the unnerving silence of Lew Temple is “Alien: Covenant’s” Callie Hernandez. As Anna, Hernandez plays the girl next door, flirting with Aaron with trivial matter that toys Aaron’s inherent innocence. The rest of the cast includes Emily Montague (“Fright Night” remake), James Jordan, Kira Powell, Peter Ciella, and David Lawson Jr. as Smiling Dave.

“The Endless” could be said to have a slew of metaphors and symbolism, even the older brother Justin frustratingly points out how camp leader Hal always speaks in metaphors. So, what is causing all the weird and terrifying atmospherics at Camp Arcadia? Arcadia ends up being an oxymoron as the camp is not harmonious or a utopia as believed, but rather a coiled purgatory with an ominous presence thats ever present. Don’t know what’s watching, where it came from, or what it wants, but it’s driven fear of the unknown as noted during the title card epilogue of a quote. What we do know is this presence, this thing, is massive, looming over the hills and in the depths of a nearby lake; the thing is very Lovecraftian in proportion to what that means. Hell, even the quote I mentioned earlier about fear of the unknown is pulled from H.P. Lovecraft himself – “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” The brother symbolism fear for they have fear of the outside world and fear of their unforeseen and possibly poverish future, but once Justin and Aaron come to terms with ending being at odds with each other, the brothers know they can conquer whatever comes at them together.

Well Go USA Entertainment presents Snowfort, Love & Death, and Pffaf & Pfaff productions’ “The Endless” onto Blu-ray home video. The single disc BD-50 has a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio. Image presentation has fair natural tones with a set of a rather light yellowish tint during desert sequences. Color palette is enriched especially when the inexplicable does come ahead; moments of heavy tinting, such as a heavy red flare, inexplicably stand out. Blotching, DNR, or banding are an issue here, leaving the details considerably intact in a plenty of the duration. The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround sound has not gaffs about it. The plentiful dialogue is clearly present to get the full story told, ambient and phenomena effects proportionally ranged and appropriate, and the soundtrack supports to dialogue and story with the amount of depth. Overall, the tracks are consistent throughout. Bonus features include an audio commentary with directors and producers, a 30+ minute make of segment, a behind the scenes featurette, deleted scenes, Visual effects breakdown, a “Ridiculous Extras” featurette that includes casting, and trailers. Don’t let the peppered black comedy in “The Endless” fool you; Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have constructed an original sci-fi horror that shells out an unsettling ambiguity of a modern and universal fear too invasive to try and stop the perpetual replaying of attempting to know the unknown.

Purchase “The Endless” on Blu-ray!

Can You Survive Rob Zombie’s Evil Death War? “31” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on December 17, 2016

Traveling across a remote highway, five carnival workers journey to their next small top gig on Halloween day in 1976. Stopped by scarecrow-like figures in the middle of the road, the carnies find themselves led into a hostile trap and are kidnapped, held hostage to be poorly prepped for the dilapidated warehouse “Murderworld.” The violent death labyrinth is set for a hellish game entitled “31”, launched yearly by the sadist Father Death with Sister Serpent and Sister Dragon, that pits the captive against a series of killers, specialized in their own brand of merciless murder. To survive inside “Murderworld,” you have to stay alive for 12 hours in the dark, dank warehouse.

After a self produced campaign, a hefty amount of soul crushing crowdfunding, and a slew of production and distribution ups and downs, “House of a 1000 Corpses” director and shock rocker Rob Zombie was finally able to release this year his latest horror installment “31” since 2012’s “The Lords of Salem.” Lionsgate acquires the home entertainment rights to deliver “31” with a R-rated version of the Zombie’s claimed return to roots horror. The survival slasher, when compared to the director’s other work, capitalizes as the most seriously disturbed work to date, but the premise is not particularly original. We’ve all seen the placing of disoriented victims in a life or death game scenario before; Schwarzenegger’s “The Running Man,” based off the Stephen King novel, strikes many similarities, closely relating the two films by sheer plot alone. With Zombie’s “31,” the differences stagger between the main characters being simple carnies looking for a place in the world and “Murderworld” not being a total dystopian future of skewed justice. Instead, the shock rocker pens in his own ‘motherfucking’ motivations of satanic rituals to filthy the pot of sadism and mayhem.

Overall, I thought “31’s” characters were inviting and interesting even if they’re a cookie-cutter roster engineered by the likes of Rob Zombie. The idea is good to have five ordinary folks enduring a 12 hours bout of being hunted by a pint sized nazi enthusiast, a pair of chainsaw wielding hillbilly whack jobs, a tall German in a pink tutu and his Harley Quinn modeled femme fatale, and, then, there’s Doom-Head, portrayed by the impeccable Richard Brake. My first experience with Brake came from another facet of the word ‘doom,’ 2005’s “Doom,” to be exact, the adaptation of the popular id Software survival horror video game, and even then did Brake have the outer shell of a complete sleaze ball, dipped in an indescribable amount of pure malevolence. Rob Zombie is able to tap into Brake’s true potential with Doom-Head, an egocentric nihilist professionally suited for murder while oozing with unapologetic shamelessness. Along with Brake lies co-stars very familiar from prior Zombie films and these individuals are Jeff Daniel Phillips, deeply blue-eyed Meg Foster, and Judy Geeson from “The Lords of Salem,” the legendary Malcolm McDowell and Lew Temple from the “Halloween” remake, and, of course, Sheri Moon Zombie, the dedicated wife who stars in everything the man does from movies to music videos. Rounding out the film has Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Kevin Jackson, Jane Carr, Pachno Moler, David Ury, Torsten Voges, and “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure’s” Elizabeth Daily on the docket.

The problem with the characters are not that their ‘cookie-cutter’ characters, as I aforementioned, but rather their just well, well under written. Developmentally, almost every character becomes wasted space, floating stagnantly across the 103 minute runtime. For the hunters aside from Doom-Head, they’re backgrounds are mysterious which fits the rules of “31.” Doom-Head is a different story because he’s the golden child of “Murderworld,” spoken very highly by Father Murder and graced with so much monologuing that it’s absurdly comical and, unfortunately, predictable. As far as the carnies are concerned, most of the group never blooms into relevancy and I couldn’t help but to root for most of their savage deaths. Sheri Moon Zombie’s Charly character was the slice of life, the slither hope, that showed promise. Yeah, Charly looks and sounds much like Baby Firefly, but Charly is a fantasy heroine with a modest range of emotions and when even faced with defeat, she’s stands strong.

Though I wanted “31” to exceed all my expectations with the promise of untapped brutality, here we stand with a cut version Rob Zombie’s crowdfunded film. I’m interested in what exactly hit the cutting room floor because, just taking in “31” at first viewing, every single scene could be remedied by reimplementing, if any, omitted scenes. From my understanding, Rob Zombie submitted the survival horror numerous times to the MPAA in order to purposely retrieve a R-Rating and the ending result suggests a heavily cut film: off camera moments of attack, choppy warehouse segments, unintended shortened character developments, etc. Something more must be behind the scenes that holds back a fan well-deserved and fan well-funded unrated version and I’m not totally knocking this rated Lionsgate release, but a perception has been cemented on the fact that fans were promised an unadulterated Rob Zombie spook show and ended up not getting what they paid for ultimately.

Lionsgate Home Entertainment will be releasing the Saban Films’ “31” on Blu-ray on December 20th in 1080p High Definition with a 16×9 widescreen 2.46:1 presentation and an English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track. A DVD version is also available. The presentation is in the detail of the image quality with only some minor dialogue loss, slightly muddled amongst the levels, in the DTS track. Certainly not a disparaging opinion, but once in close quarters, such as the carnies’ van, the ambiance hum of the engine, the tires on the road, and the jingle-jangle of objects in the van drown out parts of dialogue from Meg Froster and Jeff Daniel Phillips. An impressive 2-hour comprehensive documentary on the making of the film entitled “In Hell Everybody Loves Popcorn” and an audio commentary with writer-director Rob Zombie completes the bonus material. “31” feels like a Rob Zombie film; the rocker’s trash talking grit and loads of rockabilly swag leaves his unique brand seared into the horror scene, but Zombie’s “Murderworld” story is a promise-filled return to roots sensation for the director. Honestly, Zombie never strayed from his grungy grindhouse of inhuman torture and death origins, but only for a fleeting moment, and so “31” stays the abrasive, distasteful course that’ll speak, like in cult comprehensible tongues, to only his fan base.