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A CIA Plan is Being Sidelined by EVIL’s Rooftop Terrace Sniping! “Goodbye & Amen” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own a Copy of “Goodbye & Amen” from Radiance Films. Click here to Purchase.

Ambitiously confident CIA agent John Dannahay eagerly wants to begin his plan for an African nation coup.  Based in Italy, Dannahay runs through his team the stage of events when suddenly a current administrative African agent, known for sniffing and snuffing out power-overthrowing schemes, suddenly arrives in town, Dannahay’s friend Harry Lambert up-and-leaves his wife and child and takes a rifle with him, and a gunman, supposedly Lambert, is at the top of a hotel terrace sniping down pedestrians.  Whatever surgical strike Dannahay had plan is now in jeopardy as a hostage situation occurs in one of the hotel rooms and agent Dannahay and Italian inspector Moreno must piece together why a longtime compliant and clean nosed American embassy worker has suddenly gone murderously berserk.  A public stir amidst a shrewd madman with a high-powered rifle creates a confounding panic of national security and for fear of what will happen next in the moment of mayhem.

Italian filmmaker Damiano Damiani, known for his crime thrillers, such as “Mafia” and “Confessions of a Police Captain,” and his small footprint in horror with the sequel “Amityville II:  The Possession,” had cowrite and directed an intense espionage thriller outside the confines of actual cloak-and-dagger activities with a multi-national cast.  The 1977 film titled “Goodbye & Amen”  is first and foremost an Italian production, cowritten by Damiani alongside “Wanted:  Babysitter” screenwriter Nicola Badalucco and is based off the novel “The Grosvenor Square Goodbye” by British writer Francis Clifford.   The gripping story draws upon multi-layered themes and twists to keep the narratively recycling on fresh and to never become stale with its intriguing mystery and taut tension, shot right in the heart of Rome, Italy at the Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria hotel.  “Goodbye & Amen” is a product of Capital Film and Rizzoli Film and produced by the profound producer Mario Cecchi Gori of Michele Soavi’s “The Sect” and Dino Risi’s “The Tiger and the Pussycat.”

Italians.  Americans.  British.  “Goodbye & Amen” has an all-star international cast that lines up and knocks down the perfectly scripted and beguilingly complex roles that warrant nothing less than the utmost praise for their personal performances. What starts off as a CIA caper to overthrow an African nation regime pivots acutely into a hostage standoff with many unanswered questions pelting down almost simultaneously in mass confusion and uproar in what translates to a very relatable, real moment.  Introductions begin with the CIA’s operational leader John Dannahay (Tony Musante, “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage”) spearheading the preparation meeting when suddenly his operational plans become under jeopardy.  Musante’s strongheaded approach to not lose control of the situation is fierce against the challenge his character faces – a lone gunman, a man Dannahay calls a friend played by “Tenebrae’s” John Steiner, holding hostage an actor (Gianrico Tondinelli, “Enter the Devil”) and his illicit mistress (Claudia Cardinale, “8 ½”).  Steiner delivers a sophisticated, twangy-accented killer hellbent on making a statement with a M1 Carbine rifle and a thought-out plan being a step ahead of Dannahay and Italian Inspector Moreno (Fabrizio Jovine, “The Psycho”).  The dynamic between Dannahay and Moreno, in my opinion, is rather lite for a fast and loose Dannahay and a by-the-book Moreno being two stags vying over how to handle an American mess on Italian land.  Other supporting characters add their creative two cents to “Goodbye & Amen’s” already swelling storyline with great additional principals from Renzo Palmer (“The Eroticist”), Wolfango Soldati (“The House at the Edge of the Lake”), John Forsythe (“Scrooged”), and Anna Zinnemann (“My Sister of Ursula”) that fillet down the mystery to reveal its coldblooded nature.

Not lately have I’ve impressed with a crime thriller and said to myself, wow, that was really engaging and unexpectedly good.  With confidence, “Goodbye and Amen” hit that satisfying note, a note thought to have strayed into an obscure black void never to be seen again, but the story coupled by Damiani perceptive big-world direction and some great camera work and angles by cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller, that shimmers hints of Kuveiller’s work on previous films like “Deep Red” and “A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin,” and “Goodbye and Amen” is one of the better Italian crime thrillers to come out of the country that isn’t in the giallo subgenre.  Incorporating wide shots with depth and a seriously oversaturation of characters and extras, plus not to forget to mention helicopters and shoot outs, create the illusion of a bigger film without manufacturing too many atmospherics to hoist suspense.  Plenty of red herrings and blunt force action, peppered with bare flesh sensuality, and heedful acting provides the film with an incredibly firm bite that sinks its teeth in and never releases.  Compelling and always one step ahead, “Goodbye & Amen’s” layers of excitement keep viewers simultaneously abreast and in the dark and with the seesaw suspense, which never falters with an overly opaque complex ingenuity, there’s a pleasant rollercoaster effective of up and downs between penetrating thrills and just enough down to Earth exposition in order to catch one’s breath.   

In a new limited edition Blu-ray release from UK distributor Radiance Films on their North American lineup, “Goodbye & Amen” receives a 2023 2K restoration scan from the original camera 35mm negative and presented on an AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD50 in an anamorphic 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Certainly, a smooth image with no enhancement fluff or over-corrective, off-tilted coloring, the restoration brings out the best parts of Damniano Damiani’s natural approach with key lighting supporting exteriors and some intensely lit interiors without a smidgen of banding or posterization to complicate it. Details are razor sharp and the hue saturation is full-bodied and deep even along the line of a sunny Italian coastline where contours are a nice edge drop-off and shape. The English version has three exclusive shots pulled and scanned from the 16 reversal elements that create a slight grain difference that manages to nearly go unnoticed. Audio options come with the original Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono and, for the first time on home video, the English export in a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono. The English export’s audio track does come with a proclaimed statement right on the main menu about its unresolved damage. Like being pushed through a filter of interference, the English track is intelligible if not entirely clear and free from static and squelch. The Italian track offers a cleaner ordonnance albeit a few in-and-out moments of faint distortion of unrestorable audio ribbon snippets. New and approved English subtitles on both lossless, uncompressed tracks help alleviate some of the technical pain audio aficionados may suffer but, in my honest opinion, the Italian meets the bar whereas the English is under the bar by just a few clicks. Radiance’s special features include a new audio commentary track by Eurocrime experts Nathaniel Thompson and Howard S. Berger, a new interview with editor Antonio Siciliano, and an archival interview with actor Wolfango Soldati. Both interviews are in Italian with burned in English subtitles. Radiance’s physical approach to their releases is highly unique in format by using obscure poster elements, and sometimes often new illustrated art and compositions, to exact a striking front cover image. With “Goodbye & Amen,” the rendition of Italian’s finest in their version of S.W.A.T. body armor within the sites of a crosshair is clever and engaging to know more. The reverse cover offers more of the common language poster art. A 19-page color booklet, that contents the cast and crew information, transfer notes and credits, and a new essay from Lucio Rinaldi entitled “The American Connection: Damiano Damiani’s Goodbye & Amen,” accompanies a reserved blue background and yellow font disc art that befits Radiance’s retro-classy style. Being a UK distributor releasing in the North American market lends the title to have a region A and B playback for two varied runtimes, for the Italian and English version tracks, of 110 (Italian) and 102 (English) minutes. Radiance’s 38th release is also not rated.

Last Rites: “Goodbye & Amen” is a collaborative triumph, an arresting story anchored by monolithic performances, and imparted by director Daminano Damiani with attention, detail, and substance that makes the film a pillar amongst the Eurocrime narrative.

Own a Copy of “Goodbye & Amen” from Radiance Films. Click here to Purchase.

EVIL Wants to Cut Out Your Unborn Child. “Inside” reviewed! (Second Sight / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Order The Limited Edition Copy of “Inside” From Second Sight!

Four months after deadly car crash that claimed the life of her husband, a disheartened and depressed Sarah is 24 hours away from being induced into labor on Christmas day.  Just wanting to be left alone, Sarah is eager to lower her head into her work as a photojournalist of capturing horrifying images that bear a resemblance to her own accident and inviting her editor over later to discuss the work ahead.  As the even lingers into night, an unexpected woman knocks at the door and menacingly tries to break into her house.  As the police arrive to investigate the incident, the woman is nowhere to be found and brush off the incident with little concern, but the woman returns, finds herself inside Sarah’s home, and is determined to cut the baby directly from Sarah’s womb to be her own child.  The tormenting violence becomes a cat-and-mouse game between the two women with an unborn child hanging in the balance. 

Extremely violent and soul biting, “Inside” is one of the more corrosively dehumanizing and destructive films under the French New Extremism, French New Wave Horror, flag.  The 2007 French feature cowritten-and-directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury broke the duo into the industry as formidable and fearless filmmakers, reaching global heights having helmed later in their careers a segment of the popular anthology “ABCs of Death 2” and tackling one of America’s more renowned and bred-and-buttered horror franchises with the chainsaw-wielding cannibal in “Leatherface.”  “Inside” comes after the tremendous success of Alexandre Aja’s “Haute Tension,” opening the flood gates to other extreme French horror films in early 2000s with also “Martyrs” and “Frontier(s).”  La Fabrique de Films and BR Films in association with Canal+ server as production companies with later “Frontier(s)’s” Teddy Percherancier, Frederic Ovcaric, Rodolphe Guglielmi, and “Witching and Bitching’s” Franck Ribière and Vérane Frédiani producing the film known as “À l’intérieur” in France.

Not your typical home invasion ultraviolence, Sarah and who we know as labeled only as The Woman are two vipers circling each other, ready to strike when the guards are let down.  Of course, both have distinct personalities and strategies in the measured way of attack and survival that will impress on viewers preconceived notions about them.  As Sarah, Alysson Paradis, younger sister of Johnny Depp’s wife Vanessa Paradis, is bathed in exposed light, literally and figuratively, as the pinpointed principal woman from the start, battered and bloodied in the opening two car accident, to the end, in the final harrowing moments with the relentless Woman but though Paradis performance reeks greatly of depression and perhaps hopelessness with the death of her husband with a baby soon to be brought into this world without a companion by her side, the momentum shifts towards proposed surface villain of the story, The Woman, in a frightening portrayal of stony guile and grim severity by the established, character provocateur French actress Béatrice Dalle (“The Witches’ Sabbath”) in comparison to Paradis relatively filmic beginnings.  Dalle’s role expresses more physically than vocally with motivation coursing through her eyes, facial expressions, and body language that strikes a transfixing chord, turning Dalle’s the Woman into not only an unpredictable killer but an on-screen killer with a lighted purpose without confounding arbitrary slaughter as the yearning for The Woman’s reason never breaks silence until the shocking end.  François-Régis Marchasson, Nathalie Roussel, Ludovic Berthillot, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Aymen Saïdi, Emmanuel Lanzi, and Dominique Frot (“Among the Living”) fill out “Inside’s” cast.

Most will plainly see and interpret “Inside” as a regular home invasion thriller of a pregnant woman defending herself to survive a mad woman’s unborn baby obsession, and maybe that’s how Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury mostly intends the narrative to be as an overly graphic portrayal of hate and envy that makes us uncontrollable sinners at heart.  However, there’s something inside me to dig deeper below the face value of terrorizing prenatal torment of a young, expecting mother-to-be in what could be construed as a double-edged explanation.  The Woman doesn’t hold a name as she symbolizes all the worst qualities of a mother, such as anger, deceit, and she even smokes, in Sarah that could be considered a split persona or an archetype of duality.  Sarah is cladded in a bright white nightgown while The Woman is dressed all in black from head-to-toe, contrasting a good versus evil, and both want the same child.  The climax does rebuff the split duality theory to an extent but the way the script is written and how the film is shot very much suggest these two women are cleaved from the same whole with a patriarch-less presence and, to add as an interesting note to further examine and contemplate, all the male characters in the story are slain by the same women while the only other female character is brought down by the other in what is a powerful suggestion of split gender and how gender plays a role in their individual lives.

In what can be said to be the most definitive edition of one of the most brutal films ever produced, Second Sight Films’ Limited-Edition boxset of “Inside” is amply packed with goodies, in application and in a tangible sense. Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, double-layered BD50 from the UK label holds tremendous value with not only new special features and neat and attractive corporeal contents but also valued by retaining image fidelity with a gritty 35mm print. Natural grain and low-fi celluloid present the seedy grindhouse overlay that’ll take audiences from the comfy, cozy reality into a dark, anomalous atmosphere with warm muted coloring, lambency, and an overall light general haze suffused into the setting. The cinematography has been purposefully constructed with analog building blocks for a rough look for a rough story. Not technically applicable here but “Inside” is set around Christmas, Christmas eve into Christmas day to be exact, but the choice production dressing exhibits little holiday spirit with a far less ostentation presentation and in how the characters dress the season feels more fall like than winter. The lossless French 5.1 DTS-HD master audio offers plenty of spatial awareness during intense pocket skirmishes inside the quaint two-story home, which is the primary setting of the story. The range provides laceration slits and surgical squishes of blades and scissors while gunfire shocks with an innate immediacy. Even with a mostly prominent inconversable back-and-forth, the dialogue that does come up carries through with robust confidence without overbearing the action or feeling out of synch. Speaking of being in synch, English subtitles are available with the French audio track and are error-free and pace well. Special features include a new audio commentary by The Final Girls’ and film critic Anna Bogutskaya, new audio commentary by editor Elena Lazic of the online magazine outlet Animus, a newly produced interview with writer-directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury First Born as well as newly produced interviews with principal actress Alysson Paradis Labour Pains, producer Franck Ribière A New Extreme, cinematographer Laurent Barès Womb Raider, and stunt coordinator Emmanuel Lanzi Reel Action, with The Birth of a Mother, a Jenn Adams analytical essay focusing on a denied mother’s perspective and the opposite. The limited-edition physical elements of the release add additional magic to the whole package with a rigid, cardboard sleeve case with new artwork by Second Sight retainer artist James Neal. Inside the “Inside” sleeve is a 70-page book with color pictures and thematic essays from film historians and critics Chad Collins, Kat Ellinger, Annie Rose Mahamet, and Hannah Strong. There are also 6-5×7 collector art cards adjacent. The green Blu-ray Amary case houses the same Neal front cover from the rigid sleeve, likely will be the face of the standard release, with the interior disc art having a simple yet effective image of a blade open pair of scissors and psycho-split or -sliced title in red and while. UK certified 18 for strong bloody violence and very strong language, this Second Sight release is B region locked and has a runtime of 83-minutes.

Last Rites: Second Sight invests in “Inside” and its first-time French directors nearly two decades after initial release with a comprehensive package that not only elevates beyond what many labels sought to get out of the gore-laden entropy, quick cash, but this premier release also has depth and range into the film’s applied style and dives into demystifying the breadth of thought preluding random terror.

Order The Limited Edition Copy of “Inside” From Second Sight!

The Home Recordings of a Pure EVIL! “August Underground: Mordum” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / Blu-ray/DVD combo)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“August Underground:  Mordum” Limited Collector’s Edition!

Uncompassionately deranged serial torture and murderer Peter Mountain is back.  Along with his maniacal partner Maggot and his depraved sister Crusty, whose also Peter Mountain’s girlfriend, the terrorizing trio videotape their exploits with no shame and with no end from no matter how mundane to no matter how gruesomely vile.  Rage and lust mix together with sociopathy and psychopathy, resulting in a dangerous combination for whomever crosses their path.  Shocking glimpses of their killing spree reflect through the lens of their camcorder, capturing every kidnap, imprisonment, confinement, rape, mutilation, torture, and eventually murder of their sadomasochistic onslaught onto every random, unlucky soul but with every moment of madness captured, their no so friendly friendship verges ever closer toward a volatile collapse when Maggot and his sister Crusty hook up from time-to-time and the perpetually aggressive juggernaut Peter Mountain is on the brink of breaking more beyond his broken mental state.

The return of Peter Mountain marks the return of shock and gore director Peter Vogel with “August Underground:  Mordum,” the 2003 sequel to Vogel’s unnervingly raw depiction of depravity and exploitation in “August Underground” released two years prior.  Not a traditionally subsequent sequel, “Mordum” is a standalone entry with only the presence return of Peter Mountain to connect the two stories together, but “Mordum” initially didn’t start out as a sequel and only morphed into a feature when Vogel was requested to shoot gruing material for the aptly named death/gore metal band Necrophagia and the band’s lead singer, Frank “Killjoy” Pucci, suggested to turn the material in a follow up film of “August Underground” with Killjoy co-wring alongside Toe Tag Picture’s Vogel, Christie Whiles, Michael Todd Schneider and Jerami Cruise.  What emerged felt like an organic chapter in Peter Mountain’s found footage mausoleum of bloodlust mayhem.  Shot in and around the Pittsburg, Pennsylvania area, “Mordum” is a production of Toe Tag Pictures under executive producer Jerami Cruise.

2001’s “August Underground” brought a terribly raw image to the independent cinema fold that house realistic depictions of the utmost evil and perversion.  So much so, a few of the cast members decided to not use their real names.  For Peter Vogel, a follow up film was like another day walking in the park as a proud papa of his villainous protagonist Peter Mountain, an eclipsingly large and laughing feverishly fiend of a man who preys on the cries and screams of his victims.  “Mordum” introduces us to two new actors into the fold with Christie Whiles, who would reprise Mountain’s girlfriend Crusty in the third Entry “Penance,” and Michael Todd Schneider (“I Never Left the White Room”) as Crusty’s brother Maggot.  It’s not exactly made clear if Maggot is a returning character, the hyena chuckling man behind the character played by pseudonym Allen Peters, or not.  In either way, Whiles and Schneider are equally as vicious on screen as Vogel but invite a whole of a hell a lot more nudity, non-simulated genitalia fondling, and induced vomiting to give “Mordum” that extra mile of stomach-churning, eye-adverting discomfort.  As the fluids deluge in scene-after-scene of massacre depictions, the triple threat come across a like-minded individual, played by the person who very much encourage and inspired for the sequel.  The late Frank Pucci, aka Killjoy, the front man for Necrophagia plays an equal with a slaughter shed full of rotting, putrid corpses, beheaded babies with maggots, and prime meat tied and lying in wait for him to butcher as his leisure.  “Mordum” offers up a slew of victims in different abattoir and snuff scenarios, casted with a rising makeup artist in a pre-crew acting role Midian Crosby (with makeup credits including “Halloween Ends,” “Cop Car,” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”) and Elmo Painter in the vomit and viscera evacuation scene, Rick Kundrach and Tim Grubjesik as unfortunate junkies, as well as Chris Shaw, Shelby Lyn Vogel, Allana Sleeth, Dave Brown, Erika Schultz a few pseudonyms in Daisy, M. Kadath, and E. Jay, and with Ultra Violent Magazine editor Art Ettinger.

Similar to the first film, “Mordum” has no plot in it’s a series of found footage flashes in the day in the life of a serial killer.  This approach makes what you’re having to behold for 70-minutes that much more plausible and realistic and what you’re seeing is quintessential gore porn.  “Saw” wasn’t the basis of the coined term.  No, my sanguine licking friends.  Fred Vogel pioneered that course three years earlier with his sick and twisted show of seminal underground.  The only reason why Vogel wasn’t at the top of the gore porn list was because none of his films had mainstream theatrical runs.  However, literally, “Mordum” contains that borderline porn element of exposed and molested nudity, the below the waste naughty parts that don’t see a tone of skin-to-skin action, and there’s certainly enough gore to go around and around and around and around again.  Some of those smaller gore elements were real, such as skin cutting.  Another element that makes “Mordum” effectively morbid is the special effects work by Vogel, Jerami Cruise (who has gone on to do major studio films from his extreme horror indies), and the late Ryan Nicholson (director of “Gutterballs” and who also was a special effects supervisor on a wide scope of studio and indie films) who provided many of the dismembered and grimed up dummy props framed through a standard definition, commercial camcorder for the Necrophagia music video.  If no story arises, one hell of a damn good show must come out of the horrific footage and Peter Vogel and the Toe Tag team achieve diabolical decadence with stomach content-emptying pizzazz.

Unearthed Films and Toe Tag Pictures have teamed up to release limited edition releases of Peter Vogel’s “August Underground” trilogy.  “Mordum” receives the royal physical release treatment with a 2-disc, Blu-ray/DVD, Limited Collector’s Edition.  The Blu-ray is an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 can only be so detailed with a shaky, consumer cam but the image could not look any better, or gruesome.  Presented in a pillarbox framed 1.33:1 aspect ratio, RGB color model leans more toward warmer reds, yellows, and greens so you don’t get an authentic color scheme on objects or skin tones.  Darker scenes render nicely enough despite the MiniDV magnetic tape’s e-interference compression artefacts and some tracking lines onto digital recording that makes the image jittery/jumpy, but all the in-your-face closeups, low-quality picture quality adds to “Mordum’s” rancid-sensing realism.  The English PCM 2.0 audio track has copious clarity for its unrefined, raw built-in mic recording that comes with some crackling and echoing if the decibels rise during screaming or shouting and the built-in can’t handle the received input. Depth is lossy with the range of the recording and range doesn’t factor into play as dialogue pushes through whereas the low-budget constraints leave the action audibility left to the imagination. Subtitles are not available on either format. The limited-edition regurgitation of the sequel warrants a ton of special features in its inauguration to the mainstream masses. Both formats share most of the extras but the Blu-ray features many more. Brief Dave Fogel touchpoints on certain aspects of “Mordum’s” obscure longevity Mordum Lives!, the climax’s most disturbing visuals The Most Disturbing Scene, and an ode to Necrophagia’s front man Remembering Killjoy dive into those specific nuts and bolts of involvement, a new interview with Michael “Maggot” Schneider A Family Affair of Love and Hate which also includes The Ravenous music video from Necrophagia, offering some more cut scene insight, a sit-down interview with between Unearthed Film’s Stephen Biro and Tog Tag’s Jerami Cruise on the gruesome special effects work on a budget of literally what was lying around, Necrophagia’s promotional video of Rue Morgue Disciple, a new Rue Morge Disciple Behind-the-Scenes gallery, deleted and extended scenes that prolong the violence of the most graphic, extreme scenes and add another level of behind-doors sexual deviation to near pornographic heights, the U.S. premiere from 2003, a brand new extensive photo gallery, original animation work, and trailers while the Blu-ray includes these features, also on the hi-def disc is a new interview with Ultra-Violent’s editor Art Ettinger and Allana Bleeth who both have small roles in the film, a new interview with Zobo With A Shotgun’s Zoë Rose Smith interview director Fred Vogel, filmmaker Dave Parker interviews Vogel as well, Severed Cinema interviews Vogel too in Snuff Purgatory, a new mockumentary and its trailer for Sickcess: A Necrophagia, and a Zombie Demo from Flashback Weekend circa 2004. On top of the special feature filth, the physical aspects of the release come in a clear and traditional Blu-ray snapper case housed inside a cardboard slipcover showcasing the infamously disturbing scene. The same scene is also illustrated on the Blu-rays cover art with reverse cover art providing a rough-and-ready composition alternative of the same scene. Both disc arts are pressed with camcorder blurry images of depicted carnage. The region A/Region 1 locked Unearthed Films combo set has a runtime 91 minutes and comes, obviously, not rated. If looking for the original 3 from Hell, Peter Vogel’s “August Underground: Mordum” assembles three monsters to ever savage the screen with their horrible, unspeakable acts of sadism. The unabashed Unearthed Films rightfully doesn’t lubricate our hole of curiosity, sodomizing our prurience with the metallic taste of blood and madness.

“August Underground:  Mordum” Limited Collector’s Edition!

Hail Down EVIL for a Ride! “Taxi Hunter” reviewed! (88 Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Taxi Hunter” Now Available on Blu-ray!

A moderately successful and mild-mannered insurance salesman is soon to be a new father.  As he and his wife baby prep with shopping around town for supplies, a few run ins with crabbily rude and scamming cab drivers make it known that the cab drivers flood the market with lawlessness.  When his wife unexpectedly goes into labor and his personal car out of service, he has no choice but to hail a cab but when the cabbie refuses the fare due excess vaginal bleed, the cabbie quickly shuts the passenger door and speeds off during the torrential rain stop, not realizing snagging the woman night gown and dragging her down the street a few yards, killing her and the unborn child, and speeding off in attempt to save his own skin.  Spiraling down into a deep depression and pushed beyond his moral limit, he justifies killing the taxi drivers for their abhorrent behavior that makes him a hero of the common people while also making him be public enemy number one with the taxi union and the police. 

History has proven, at least since the pre-2000s, that taxi drivers have had a long notorious stigma of being rude, uncouth, and greedy, especially in big metropolitan areas where traffic jams on a daily basis and the amount of fares determine your livelihood wage can eventually and insidiously get under a driver’s skin and turn the once service-needed necessity into a crabby-cabbie, a side-effect symptom of the profession one could assume.  Hong Kong’s 1993, Cat III shocker “Taxi Hunter” releases that pent up anger most of us have experienced under the clicking of the fare meter when Joe cab takes the long way around town.  Written by Wing-Kin Lau (“The Untold Story III”) and Kai-Chung Mak (“Twist”), “Taxi Hunter” marks the second collaboration effect of the same year as “The Untold Story” and “The Untold Story’s” co-director Herman Yau.  “Black Blood’s” Hung-Wah “Tony” Leung and “Tiger Cage” franchise’s Stephen Shin produce under Galaxy Films Limited and distributed theatrically by Media Film Asia.

Not only do the writers and director Herman Yau reteam to develop another controversial Category III picture but “The Untold Story’s” star Anthony Wong steps foot into another unraveled monster of a man with Kin, an amicable insurance salesman good at his job and eager to be the best father as possible quickly spins into melancholy and murder after the death of his pregnant wife at the hands of an unprofessionally hasty taxi driver.  Unlike the quietly stewing and maniacally murderous pork bun shop owner, Wong’s villainous runs takes backseat to his anti-hero performance, a punisher of taxi scum.  As Kin, Wong can be the delicately wonderful husband and the brazen barbaric with an easy slippery slope transition in between as he works to perfect Kin’s killing craft.  Unbeknownst to him, tracking him down is Kin’s own police detective brother Yu and his fun-loving goofy partner Goh, but unbeknownst to the detectives is the taxi serial killer is Kin.  “Iron Monkey” star Rongguant Yu offers up tough cop like it’s his job, mixing a humble blend martial arts and entrenched investigator into his character while also being blind to his brother’s moonlighting massacres.  Goh, on the other hand, played Man-Tat Ng (“Shaolin Soccer,” “Tiger Cage”) is supposed to provide the levity, the comic relief, the humor, but the cartoony way Goh is portrayed, in garb and in gab, reduces him to be nothing more than a Western Poser of the East with NBA and other Western branded gear from head to toe.  Goh feels very much like an attempt to jab fun at what Hong Kong might have perceived as American culture:  tasteless, worthless, and clueless.  Goh seemingly only exists to be a link between Kin and his brother when Kin hops into Goh’s undercover operation of pretending to be a taxi driver to which Kin takes his numbskull manner as cantankerous cabbie.  “Taxi Hunter” chauffeurs in the rest of the core supporting cast with Athena Chu (“Super Lady Cop”) and Hoi-Shan Lai (“Dr. Lamb”).

However still managing to provoke potency in parental guidance, to me, “Taxi Hunter” is perhaps the least intense Category III film I’ve experienced to date, but don’t let that keep you from taking a ride in Herman Yau’s rancorous retribution vehicle that has scores of variable car action scenes and a sordid glaze of street-level grime amongst the taxi industry.  “Taxi Hunter” engages us to think about the minor point As to point Bs in our lives that can easily subvert the well-oiled machine that is our existence.  Kin has a promising career, money (a motif we’ll revisit later), and a baby on the way and aside from the money, bizarrely enough, it all comes crashing down in the moment of a car door slamming shut. Those micro-fissions separating our good moments with nastiness slog us into another mindset, a killer’s mindset, when we’re wading at the very bottom of the losing everything depression. Lau and Mak don’t immediately set Kin’s path shortly after the turning point event, which also had a good chunk of setup. Posthumous need to kill cabbies didn’t occur directly after the tragedy as the script allowed time for Kin to try and stomach digesting tremendous loss, even giving away much of his money, as aforementioned, for services gone unrendered such as with the prostitute he didn’t end up sleeping with or being overcharged a child’s trading card just to make a crying child, a future version of his own child now deceased, happy when his parents would not purchase it. “Taxi Hunter” has more than just a singular character-driven story with plenty of suspense from Kin’s evolving practice of killing taxi drivers to the plethora of practical car action. “Taxi Hunter” is metered madness that shies away disgusting you with overt violence or seducing you with graphic sex of other Cat III film in its purer requital black comedy only Herman Yau and Anthony Wong could chauffeur in.

Presented in full high-definition 1080p from the original 35mm stock, “Taxi Hunter” has been flagged down for a new Blu-ray release from 88 Films, shown in anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The transferred print keeps the natural grain of the 35mm film but swells the pixelations to ramp up details and textures tenfold without appearing touched up or improperly enhanced. 88 Films’ coloring grading leans slighting into the metallic blue steel, offering a gritty detective thriller with the overcast effect. The print also shows hardly any age or damage that results in a clean redress of a pristine print. Only one audio option is available for selection, a Cantonese LPCM 2.0 mono. Curious to why there isn’t a Mandarin option leads to speculation that Cantonese sole use was due to the dialect being more widespread in Hong Kong to keep a product of Hong Kong, typically with CAT III products where mainland China censorship would have picked “Taxi Hunter” to pieces. Though in original language, ADR is still used in post and while dialogue is cleaning in the forefront of the rest of the audio tracks, there’s not a ton of depth being too at the forefront, especially with Goh’s goofball gab. However, the action-laden and quarrelsome dynamics provide a plentiful range of sounds from screeching of tires, to the car crashes through windowfronts, to the multiple gunshots that make this sound design rich and energetic. English subtitles are offered and though glibly bland and concise, a lot of repetitive words and phrases, such as a wide use of bro, the subtitles are error-free and paced well. This special edition release includes a new audio commentary with Hong Kong film expert Frank Djeng, a new interview with producer Tony Leung Hunting for Words, a new interview with actor Anthony Wong Falling Down in Hong Kong, a new interview with action director James Ha How to Murder Your Taxi Driver?, still gallery, and trailer. Physical features available, if you’re quick enough, include a limited-edition cardboard slipcover with Sean Longmore’s compositional illustrated art and a folded poster insert of the same art. Also available inside the green Blu-ray case is reversible cover art with the initial same design as the slipcover or, my personal favorite, the original Hong Kong poster art that I proudly display on the shelf. Disc art is pressed with a slight variant of Longmore’s art and the not rated disc’s format comes region A and B playback with the film clocking in at evenly paced 90 minutes. Classic 1990’s fare without charging us an arm and a leg in wasted time, “Taxi Hunter” is solid CAT III with more vindictive and veridical visceral moments that change gears often and punches the gas into accelerating this terminal taxi tormentor.

“Taxi Hunter” Now Available on Blu-ray!

Limited Edition EVIL to the Extreme! “August Underground” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / DVD/Blu-ray Combo)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Limited Edition “August Underground” Ready to be Received! 

A young farm owner invites his quirky, video-taping friend into the soiled and confined basement of his home where he keeps a nude, young woman gagged and rope bound to a chair, previously been tortured, and covered in her own blood and filth.  Both feeling giddy with excitement over their new plaything, the two sociopaths revel inflicting more torment and pain on the woman while her boyfriend’s mutilated and dead corpse is being dismembered in the next room.  When their basement plaything expires after days of neglect, the two joy killers hit the New Jersey and Pennsylvania turnpikes and backroads to continue a merciless killing spree of whomever stands in their path.  Convenient store clerks, hitchhikers, prostitutes, even their tattoo artist and his twin comic book enthusiastic brother are not safe from their chockful of callous carnage and every moment is recorded via videotape for reliving the moment in posterity. 

As far as underground horror goes, Fred Vogel’s “August Underground” is about as extreme and underground as they come and still be recognizable amongst the most casual of horror fandom.  Vogel’s inaugural written-and-directed, pitilessly violent, exploitation begins a direct-to-video trilogy of torture-on-tape with SOV quality, imparting grisly shudders to the unfathomable amount of blank-labeled VHS cassettes through man’s stowage, collecting dust bunnies and remaining unseen over the years to the horrors the magnetic tape just might behold.  What “August Underground” essentially boils down to is a raw day-to-day look of two maniacal serial killers on a free-for-all of a butcher’s market, the shooting locations stretch from the recesses of Vogel’s hometown of Warren, New Jersey and all the way to the surrounding back roads and isolated areas of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Self-produced by Fred Vogel and co-producer John A. Wisniewski, “August Underground” set inaugural voyage on the blood red sea for Vogel’s Toe Tag Productions in 2001.

There is a severe lack of story for Vogel’s debut and that’s no oversight or a sign of omission of a subconscious creativity.  Most normal, everyday people video-record with the intent on not making a feature-length film but rather to capture memories and store them away for another day.  Vogel strives for that realism here where a plot is, for lack of a better word, pointless for the depicted atrocities where the sole purposes is to exhibit dementedness and insanity.  The same can be said about the cast of nameless characters.  The freeform recording does not spout off introductions or make references to monikers to, again, portray as much as organic conversation or realism as possible to further skewer an already gore and violence skewed imagination into thinking what we’re seeing is authentic and inconclusive of its entertainment purpose.  Fred Vogel, under his so-called porno stage name of Peter Mountain, plays the main principal dressed in arrogance and apathy as he’s recorded in a thumbed selection of runtime filmed by an equally bad-natured, sociopathic friend behind the camera, played by a post-release distancing actor under the pseudonym of Allen Peters.  The two complement each other in a Beavis and Butthead friendship kind of way with Vogel in synch with his character’s bloodlust as well as the burly bulk while camera buddy perversely watches, giggling to his friends’ blood shedding exploits.  Their relationship feels like a lonesome outlet to do harm and senseless killing makes the connection firmer, more enjoyable, in the easiest opportunities of a rural area where bored people do evil just to pass the time.  Vogel sets up a series of scenarios rather than plotting acts of a linear story in what becomes an anthology of anarchy that has us climbing down the manhole of maniacal mischief.  Mania is soaked into every inch of “August Underground” and that fits snug and makes warm the scattered story into a much more coagulated coherency.  “August Underground” rounds out the victims, I mean cast, with AnnMarie Reveruzzi, Erika Risovich, Randi Stubbs, Aaron LaBonte, Ben LaBtone, Victoria Jones, Alexis Iris, Stephen Vogel, Dan Friedman, Casey Eganey, Kyle Dealman, and Andy Lauer.

“August Underground” is ugly, nasty, grimy, sordid, perverse, tasteless, callous, and not shot with technical or detailed perfection.  “August Underground” is also unique, bold, unafraid, successful, gory, realistic, practical, and not shot with technical or detailed perfection that’s actually, in its own way, gorgeous.  “August Underground” is all those things and more with its rough-and-ready, extreme exploitation that will be polarizing amongst horror fans and not be a film for everyone’s taste or collection.  Frankly, there are worse underground and extreme horror films out there in the world, but “August Underground,” through the disgusting trices of dismemberment, force feeding of feces, and vomit inducing snuff, has somehow ,at least in this reviewer’s humble opinion, who like in a Dr. Seuss line, has been here, there, and everywhere within the horror spectrum, slipped through the veil of obscurity, having a foot well positioned in the land of the universal acknowledgement where many genre fans putter around with the same old formulas.  The depth of this story is so shallow that digging any deeper into the themes and the possibilities isn’t necessary with its home-made movie facade of people joyfully torturing and killing people being already horrific enough. 

For certain to go out of stock and out of print into physical release obscurity once again, Unearthed Films’ limited-edition collector’s edition of “August Underground” is the 2-disc DVD/Blu-ray combo set to act on right now. The AVC encoded, high definition 1080p, BD50 comes from a MiniDV print, often considered the transitional format from analog and to digital in a tape format with lossy compression. Presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.33:1 aspect ratio, don’t expect image quality to be pristinely detailed and sharp as the MiniDV maxes out at 720p resulting in both, standard and Hi-Def formats, having indistinguishable presentations. Resembling the amateur, at-home movie, scaled down tape quality renders ghosting which shapes and details are bleary and the coloring resembles ember or incandescent with a warm, red-and-yellow layer. What we don’t see much of is a ton of tracking, static, or a ton of noticeable interlace but blacks can be prominently spotty with the horizontal bars. The lossless on-board MiniDV English audio is a PCM 2.0 that doesn’t extend beyond the limits of the camera’s microphone, but the clarity fairs well with clean and commanding dialogue with a natural range between the proximitous cameraman and his killing machine star of a friend in front of the camera. Also, equally interchangeable between the physical formats with what’s made to be a rough recording, discernible differences are minute at best. The Blu-ray and DVD have many of the same special features with the Blu-ray containing a few more frills over its format counterpart with a new Dave Parker interviewing Fred Vogel as well as a separate interview with Vogel and Mike Watt of Rue Morgue Magazine, another new interview with Fred Vogel from Severed Cinema Revisiting Infamy. The formats shared bonus content includes never before seen and new material, such as the original screener version of the film that comes with watermark and a slightly different color grading, a new audio commentary by Fred Vogel and Ultra Violent Magazine’s creator Art Ettinger, a new 10 questions with Fred Vogel answering some of the longstanding queries surrounding the film’s realism achievements and behind-the-scenes permissions and achievements, and a new Toe Tag Masterclass that compares storyboards with the screen version. Archived bonus content include audio commentary with Vogel and actors-producers-brothers Aaron and Ben LaBonte, another commentary track with Fred Vogel alone, an audio commentary by the witty, giggly “Killer,” Hammer to the Head closer look at “August Underground,” on location behind-the scenes, a behind-the-brutality of the film, outsiders’ perspective take in a Too Real for Comfort discussion, an introduction by director Fred Vogel, photo gallery, and trailers. The limited-edition collector’s set comes with a cardboard slipcover with a blurry, interlaced still of Vogel’s character wrapping a forearm around a gagged-girl’s throat while peering into the camera, but it’s the clear snapper case’s front cover that’s more developed with a graphic pencil-graphite illustration of the same slipcover image with more visible mutilated skin and visual weapon of human body destruction. Front cover is also reversible with an interlacing black-and-white image of the main killer. Both discs also sport two different art presses with the Blu-ray mirroring the slipcover image while the DVD has nearly the identical position of killer and victim but with a whole new victim. The region A locked edition has a digestible 70-minute runtime and is, of course, not rated. I would never say Unearthed Films has been diluting their pool of extreme underground gore and guts horror, but their “August Underground” release puts the brazen company back on the mondo-macabre map with definitely a too real for comfort twisted depravity and an au naturel sense of debauchery.

Limited Edition “August Underground” Ready to be Received!