Tag Archives: Matt Desiderio

An Experiment Backfiring with EVIL Payback. “Moonchild” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Moonchild” now on Blu-ray from Visual Vengeance!

An Inhuman government body of a dystopian future experiments with genetic splicing to create the ultimate weapon, known as Project Moonchild, against the human rebellion. That weapon, Jacob Stryker, is unaware of his newly encoded abilities when he escapes one of their holding labs to rescue his captive son from the very same apathetic regime. Stryker teams up with a group of human rebels and uncover by mistake Stryker’s hidden super solider talent of turning into an unstoppable beast – a werewolf. Hellbent on taking down his son’s brainwashing captives by any means necessary and to do it before an intestinal bomb explodes within 72 hours, Stryker convinces the rebels to assist him and now they have an ace in the pocket as they traverse in search for Stryker’s boy, encountering android and mutant bounty hunters, cannibalistic human survivors, and a surfeit of governmental soldiers hot on his tail, but when the werewolf comes out, Project Moonchild is out to seek and destroy those son-stealing son-a-of-bitches by ripping them to shreds.

Director Todd Sheets has long been considered one of the kings of SOV. The “Zombie Rampage” and “Clownado” Kansas City filmmaker writes and directs “Moonchild,” the 1994 direct-to-video, post-societal, lycanthropy actioner is Sheets’ attempt in splintering himself away from the gore. The American Prince of Gore and the Master of Splatter accomplishes the lessened bloodletting and liquid innards coming outwards werewolf feature with a dystopian rescuer that pits what remains of a separatist human society on a verge of collapse to go on a quest to cure a dividing mutation affliction and to go up against the malign immortals of killers and assassins constructed with nuts and bolts and sawblades on a super independent budget. The ambitious project comes with car chases, a large cast, and a hairy beast that fights for family! Executive producer Greg Petrak returns to Todd Sheets’ side after “Bloodthirsty Cannibal Demons” and is a production of Sheets’ very own Extreme Entertainment, a now 34-year standing product company based out of Kansas City, Missouri. Feel old yet?

Playing the lab rat, the werewolf, and the integral hero, Jacob Stryker, to the story is Auggi Alvarez (“Zombie Bloodbath”) as a widowed father who will stop at nothing to save his son Caleb (Stefan Hilt) in the hands of iron-hearted inhuman leader, Lothos (Harry Rose). Alvarez, like much of the rest of the cast, fall into a monotonal expositional black hole that can make “Moonchild” a slog between the excitement. While fleeing captivity, Stryker runs into Rocky (Julie King, “Zombie Bloodbath 2”), Talon (Dave Miller, “Violent New Breed”), and Athena (Kathleen McSweeney, “Violent New Breed), a band of underground resistant fighters who are desperate enough to overthrow the authoritarian ruling class that’s comprised of henchmen with duct tape masks and are skippered by a mustache wearing an unadorned samurai kabuto helmet – catching a tad resemblance to Mel Brooks’ Lord Helmet of “Space Balls.” If you have noticed already, the cast is an entourage of Todd Sheets regulars, a small niche of actors and actress with close ties to the Master of Splatter and have reoccurring roles in most the director’s early 90s indie gems. That trend continues with Carol Barta (“Prehistoric Bimbos in Armeggedon City”) as the bounty hunter, Medusa. Looking more like your next-door neighbor grandmother, Medusa is viper-tongued assassin with an unforgettable cackle and a throaty super ability that’ll inject nightmares for nights to come. Barta’s performance is one of those cliched it’s so bad, its good acts that you have to see to believe. Cathy Metz, Kyrie King, Rebecca Rose, Jody Rovick, and Mike Hellman round out the cast.

Character names drenched with Greek mythology inspiration and a contemporary take on the werewolf canon, “Moonchild” is an interesting and unorthodox story to say at least. Todd Sheets had obviously perfected the limited capabilities of S-VHS shooting or was confident enough to build in a lengthy car chase into a project that didn’t rely on disgusting audiences with blood and guts, but rather actionable thrills and singular characters of the post-apocalypse with only a smidgen of horror. You see, the werewolf doesn’t make too many appearances on screen, only surfacing from beneath Jacob Stryker’s human skin twice in total. The wolfish transformation is shoddy but for the budget, there is an appreciation for the amazing looking effect as well as the other practical effects throughout the feature. “Moonchild’s” pacing can be concernedly plodding to make sure the exposition covers aspect of Stryker’s intentions, slowing down the film to the point sluggishness. It doesn’t help that the scripted word-for-word, automaton performances are not tonally textured with droning dialogue that can’t captivate and contributes to the fatigue at times. Though “Moonchild” is an evolving project for Sheets with conviction in his ability to produce, there are still some editing continuity blunders that downgrade the overall result. Upward closeup shots of Julie King as she looks down when supposedly holding a rifle on Auggi Alvarez show her hand mock holding a rifle as it comes into the frame and then the next cut is the actress actually holding a rifle. Another scene involving King has her smash in the head of a traitor on a concrete floor and the next shot is of her running down the hallway away from where the body should be but wasn’t. The corpse had vanished. Howlers, pun intended, like these conspicuous examples are what depreciate an already discounted movie, curbing any kind of recognition for Todd Sheets going outside his blood and guts comfort zone.

As one of Visual Vengeance’s SOV cult-horror titles, we come to expect temperamental image and sound quality from the Wild Eye Releasing banner due to the consumer grade S-VHS equipment and the novicey of the filmmakers as, and mostly related to the former, Visual Vengeance warns of prior to the start of every feature so thus far, but the 50GB, MPEG-4 encoded, 2-disc Blu-ray set, that presents the feature in 1080p of the 1.33:1 aspect ratio, is the best technical-looking SOV to date for the company. Hardly any tracking issues, artefact issues, and any tape distortion of any kind and while still lacking premium quality as we all expect today, nothing is taken away from “Moonchild’s” original SD master transfer that is a director supervised. The single soundtrack audio option is an English analogue 1.0 mono mix and the dialogue as well as the score come over nicely despite a less punchy channel output. There’s a steady, feature length electrical interference from start-to-finish that is no surprise and is not terribly audio intrusive. Depth suffers mostly with the type of equipment that doesn’t filter and level out ambient noise, but the range of sound is pleasant with the added clip tracks. English subtitles are option. The bonus features include two new audio commentaries – director Todd Sheets and star Auggi Alverz and Todd Shoots and Visual Vengeance. Other bonus features include the alternate VHS cut, Wolf Moon Rising documentary, archival behind-the-scenes cast and crew interviews featurette, the original VHS trailer, deleted ending, the Todd Sheets’ directed music video Burn the Church by the now defunct Kansas City-based, goth metal band Descension, short film “Sanguinary Desires,” trailer for Todd Sheets “Bonehill Road,” and other Visual Vengeance trailers.” The phyical release comes with a 2nd disc, a bonus audio CD of the movie soundtrack, reversible cover art featuring original VHS cover on the inside, new art on the clear cased Blu-ray snapper, and original art on the cardboard slipcover by The Dude Designs aka Thomas Hodge. Inside the snapper lining are four-page liner notes by Matt Desiderio, folded mini poster of the snapper front cover, and the standard VHS throwback sticker sheet. “Moonchild” on a Visual Vengeance Blu-ray comes unrated, region free, and with a runtime of 87-minutes. Todd Sheets is a maniacal moviemaking machine with “Moonchild” being released a decade after the gorehound began and there’s plenty of admirable spirit and effects in the Kansas City werewolf in dystopia tale, but one can’t shrug off the oversights and the exasperating exposition that goes way off trail the turbulent path of indie filmmaking.

“Moonchild” now on Blu-ray from Visual Vengeance!

No Film is Complete Without a Flying EVIL Baby! “The Necro Files” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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I Want To Believe…That You Will Check Out “The Necro Files” on Blu-ray!

An unhinged serial rapist terrorizes the young women of Seattle, ripping into shreds their internal innards and even dabbles in tasting their flesh.  Two detectives hellbent on stopping his reign of terror intercept the killer in the middle of an attack.  Though too late to save the girl, the detectives shoot six slugs into the rapist, stopping his continuous, heinous sexual assaults and grisly murders…at least for nine months later, when a satanic cult resurrects the zombie cannibal rapists from the grave after sacrificing the rapist’s bastard baby from his only surviving victim.  The killing spree begins again and this time being undead provides superhuman strength and a larger penis.  The two detectives, now embroiled in their own corruption, must embark on another manhunt while two of the satanic cult members, seeking to undue the horrors they’ve unleashed, willingly summon a demon into the dead baby to counteract the zombie cannibal unbeknownst to them the demon baby will kill anyone it’s in airborne trajectory.

Just from the above synopsis, this film sounds nuts, darkly funny, and depraved all wrapped into one undisclosed file of sex, gore, and floating baby dolls.  And, you know what?  It’s all true.  The creator behind all this madness is Matt Jaissle who helms the shot-on-video “The Necro Files” as an underground horror spoof of a popular science fiction you made have heard of – “The X-Files.”  The Truth is out there.  Well, the truth is actually not in the sky, it’s under the dirt, it’s inside some scantily cladded woman being molested by a rotting corpse, and it’s in a doped-up cop looking to wipe all the scumbags off the face of the Earth.  The 1997 released is co-written between long time Jaissle collaborators Todd Tjersland (“Faces of Gore” series) and Sammy Shapiro, based off of Tjersland sleazy horror comic series “Psycho Zombie Love Butcher,” and is the third film from Jaissle that solidifies the filmmaker as a certifiable depravity and gore-meister that has themes of rape, necrophilia, heartless exploitation, and disembowelment clothed as clearly a comedy.  Filmed around the surrounding Seattle, Washington area, “The Necro Files” is produced by Jaissel with Tjersland serving as executive producer Washington state-based Threat Theatre International production banner.

The acting pool that “The Necro Files” plucked their talent from must have been severely limited with a cast more concerned about their robotic performances rather than the unsavory story content.  Fine by me!  I don’t expect award-winning caliber thespianism on campy SOV D-movies where the main focus is guts, girls, and the grotesque.  The two detectives, Martin Manners and Orville Sloane, and the killer, Logan, are the principals caught in the middle of everything that is eloquently evil of “The Necro Files.”   Isaac Cooper plays Logan the Rapist aka Zombie Logan the Rapist and the wild-eyed, chimpanzee-running Cooper doesn’t have a lot of dialogue with his unpleasant roles with many of talking parts going toward a third character of a drug pusher before having his head blown off by a traumatized and unstable Det. Manners.  By the way, Steve Sheppard, who plays Det. Manners, has the best monologue about wiping out scumbags while sitting in the police car, looking maniacal, and just admiring his handgun next to a more rational, more off-cue Gary Browning as his partner, Det. Sloane.  “The Necro Files” cast isn’t doesn’t end there as Snell’s film has a surprisingly sizeable, small role contingent, mostly of playing Satanists, drug dealers and sexual miscreant males, and women in compromising positions.  The actresses playing the latter roles are mostly under pseudonyms, alternate aliases that provide more to the film’s campy nature.  Names like Anne R. Key (Anarchy) and Jenn O’Cide (Genocide) are a couple.  Present day, Jenn O’Cide is actually a sideshow performer, belly dancer, and an overall alternative, fearless woman of the strange and usual fine (dark) arts while keeping her stage name.  Another is Dru Berrymore and no, not the “Firestarter” and “Scream” Drew Berrymore we all know of horror fandom.  This Dru Berrymore comes from Germany and is a pornographic actress who’s had bit pars in Katheryn Bigelow’s “Strange Days,” David Lynch’s “Lost Highway,” and even in “Die Hard 2”.  Each of these ladies, including a fourth in Theresa Bestul, are supposedly claimed from the local strip club and don’t mind being the plaything for undead’s wicked whims in their simply objectifiable credited rolls as Shower Girl, Doll Lover, Camping Girl, and S&M Amazon.  The cast rounds out with Todd Tjersland, Jeff Nelson, and Christian Curmudgeon and Jason McGee has hapless Satanists. 

“The Necro Files” bares very little resemblance to the show it spoofs but bares it all with an opening shower scene containing full frontal nudity.  From the get-go, “The Necro Files” plays into schlocky, campy attire with an unpretentious, unapologetic swagger.  The story doesn’t really make much sense and is terribly choppy from a continuation standpoint.  We’re fed fleeting moments of connective information that hardly tether scene-to-scene let alone the nine-month gap where Logan’s baby must be sacrifice by a Satanist cult to randomly resurrect one of the vilest murderers for unknown reasons and then immediately regret it as part of an oopsie, what did I do moment.  Yet, at the same time, these random bits of tongue-and-cheek leave the door open for unknown possibilities and seeing a clear path on how “The Necro Files” case will close is about as predictable as selecting all the Mega Millions lottery numbers right. Matt Jaissle’s gonzo-gore-a-thon is nonetheless a winning jackpot of underground, sadistic-splaying horror with an extensive as it is impressive DIY blood-and-guts effects and makeup by Jaissle and Tjersland. You can’t name your film “The Necro Files” and not have a deluge of viscera be a collective hematoma of popped blood vessels in every other scene in what’s an all ghoul and girls brazen bloodbath of demonism and dark humor.

“The Necro Files” is the second catalogued title for Wild Eye Releasing’s new kid-sister sublabel of extreme, SOV cult and horror films called Visual Vengeance. The Blu-ray release comes with a precaution of video quality, stating that the original elements were pulled from consumer grade equipment and SD video tape masters. The final product is better-than-passable and better-than-expected based off the source material as the 1.33:1 presented feature has an abundance of interlacing, aliasing, and macroblocking throughout. The video format plays into much of the problems with soft color palette and details in which not one single scene looks particular sharp enough to call Blu-ray’s best. For underground SOV horror, the quality is what was expected, if not better, and will continue to expect with future Visual Vengeance releases. Audio options give viewers two formats to select from: An English language Dolby Digital 2.0 and an English DTS-HD MA 2.0. The DTS track is the winner between the two audio arrangements with a slightly hefty decibel soundtrack and a better job isolating the already isolated lo-fi ambient and Foley. Dialogue, to the naked ear, sounds relatively the same with the lossy strength and level inconsistencies (again with 1997 video equipment issues), but overall free from obstructions. English subtitles are option. Special features include two audio commentary tracks with director Matt Jaissle on one and with Matt Desiderio of Horror Boobs and Billy Burgess of the Druid Underground Film Festival on the other, a brand-new graveyard self-chat with Matt Jasissle providing background color on making movies in general and a little history of himself, Dong of the Dead: The Making of the Necro Files with a talking head interview of Matt Jaissle, with spliced in movie clips, speaking on the complete genesis and completion of his film, the original and Visual Vengeance trailer, the super 8 short “The Corpse,” and a bonus movie, the sequel “The Necro Files 3000!” Physical release bonus material includes a reversible Blu-ray cover, a 2-sided artful insert with Blu-ray produced acknowledgements, a mini poster, a Wild Eye VHS sticker set, a cardboard slipcover, and the official “The Necro Files” condom not intended for actual use. Probably just a little something to ward off unplanned evil floating babies! The film comes unrated, region free, and the feature clocks in at 72 minutes with another 65 minutes on the sequel. “The Necro Files” is 137 minutes of sleazy-zombie humpfest that you won’t (you can’t!) forget.

I Want To Believe…That You Will Check Out “The Necro Files” on Blu-ray!