Experimental, Recreational Drug Use in College has Killer, EVIL Effects! “Blue Suneshine” reviewed! (Synapse Films / 3-Disc 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and CD Limited Edition Set)

Trip Out on Synapse’s Limited Edition “Blue Sunshine”

A party between friends turns deadly when one of them goes into a violent frenzy after being reveled his loss of all his hair.  Blamed for the murders, floating through life Jerry Zipkin is evading police investigators while also trying to connect the pieces on why a good friend of his would suddenly turn into a madman with no body hair and with five times the strength of any ordinary man.  His own investigation leads him to Blue Sunshine, an LSD variant connected to every transgressive event similar to the party, and at the center of it all is congressional frontrunner Edward Flemming who peddled Blue Sunshine 10 years ago at Stanford.  The latent consequence is now slowly surfacing to a head and more people are starting to experience the aggressive, alopecia effects, all Zipkin has to do to prove his innocent and a major ticking timebomb is to take a sample from a living specimen to show aberrant chromosome damage caused by the designer drug. 

Before becoming outed and investigated that the U.S. government experimented LSD on human subjects and it’s unknown but possible dormant side effects of years later, writer-director Jeff Lieberman put theory into sensationalized practicality with his post-psychedelic horror “Blue Sunshine” that turned ordinary, friendly people into headache-induced phonophobia sufferers and hairless, homicidal maniacs with super strength.  Lieberman’s 1977 released film snugs in between his killer Earthworm creature feature “Squirm” and one of the better backwoods slashers titled “Just Before Dawn,” tackling with themes of adverse effects from manmade drugs, political corruption, and to never judge a book by its cover.  The film is produced by “Squirm’s” George Manasse with “He Knows Your Alone” and “The Clairvoyant” producers Edgar Lansbury and Joseph Beruh serving as executive producers on the Ellanby Films production.

While the plot point that pushes Jerry Zipkin in the direction of investigation of the sudden fury and death surrounding his friend treads a threadbare rope with little background to suggest Zipkin is characteristically dedicated, loyal, curious, or all of the above to find out what happened, Zalman King’s overall performance as the path unaffixed Zipkin overshadows those missing background pieces and motivations.  In more key precise terms, Lieberman’s misdirection toward King’s erratic and strange behavior puts a lot of the focus on Zipkin rather than obvious derangement of the latent LSD maniacs with corrupted chromosomes in what was meant to puzzle the audiences in believing Zipkin himself might be the loose cannon cause behind the murders or, even perhaps, another ignorant victim of blue sunshine, which the latter would have been more intriguing and powerfully motivating for the Zipkin character as what drives him to solve the mystery and save himself.  None of the relationship resolve any type of secure or genuine interactions, specifically with Alicia Sweeney (Deborah Winters, “Tarantulas:  The Deadly Cargo”) with an unrealistic strong undying love for Zipkin despite only knowing him for a couple of months and the entire Stanford contingent from a decade earlier who Zipkin was able to easily link together within a matter of seconds of either examining a bloody crime scene or meeting a pair of the blue sunshine fiends.  One of the better, solid bonds is between the will-do-what-it-takes congress candidate Ed Flemming (Mark Goddard, Lost in Space) and his towering former college football buddy Wayne Mulligan (Ray Young, “Blood of Dracula’s Castle”) who becomes Flemming’s 6’6” advisor and bodyguard.  While might not seem like a well-rounded bond, Flemming and Mulligan have something tangible one can grab and understand when compared to other dynamic relationships that float in arbitrary.   Robert Walden (“Rage”), Charles Siebert (“Tarantulas:  The Deadly Cargo”), Ann Cooper, and Stefan Gierasch (“Carrie”) costar. 

“Blue Sunshine’s” premise has long stood the test of time because its more relatable now than ever as scientists and medical experts are in a fluid state of studying the effects of drugs digested, snorted, injected, or smoked weeks, months, years, and decades ago.  This premise also translates over to contaminants that cause sicknesses, such as the link between asbestos and cancer were tumors form years after exposure.  Lieberman catches wind early of the dangerous latent effects and manipulates it for the basis his film that is more fact than fiction.  Lieberman’s ability to minimize assurances on who is transfiguring into a killer is all in his characterizing nuances, shading in gray areas with excellently crafted character profile vignettes in between the opening credits that instill suspicion, fear, and some unknown stemmed danger ahead.  The unique setup is the filmmaker’s only real unconventional course in the narrative that plays out mostly a routine hand in a natural style albeit the surrealism of extreme closeups and angles on bald headed balefulness when the rage takes over or the slow, insidious madness that seeps into Zipkin’s mind causing hallucinations to exact an audience experiencing disturbance in the envisaged air.  Engaging and self-security eviscerating, “Blue Sunshine” is carbonated madness in a bottle, shook up and ready to pop. 

Synapse continues to upgrade their catalogue with Blue Sunshine next on the augmentation block with a new and mighty 3-disc Blu-ray and 4K UHD restoration release.  Presented in Dolby Vision HDR10, the restoration of the original 35mm camera negative sees it’s 4K transfer compressed with a HEVC codec that produces 2160p and is stored onto a BD100 while the Blu-ray is a compressed AVC, 1080p resolution, on a BD50.  The restoration will blow you away with diffused color palette and organic details that by far are the best they’ve ever looked with a balanced, natural grain level that keeps the speckling down in darker portions of the film to retain inkiness while securing the authenticity of the film stock without any smoothing over and artificial enhancements.  Vivid coloring, immersive details, and natural skin tones, when not softly grayed by the drug’s effects, throughout are appreciatively stable with no qualitative loss between cuts, creating a pleasurable and seamless visual experience on both formats.  Each format comes with two English audio options, a lossless DTS-HD master audio 5.1 surround sound, supervised and approved by director Jeff Lieberman, and a lossless DTS-HD master audio original theatrical mono 2.0.  While the amplification of the same sound output through the dual channels is inviting for purist, I highly recommend the immersive 5.1 surround sound that retains the genuine article of audio fidelity.   Charlie Gross’s orchestral strings instruments, percussive gongs, and synthesizing score fully engrosses the characters and audiences alike into a fold of unnerving, lingering tingles that evoke the monstrous maniac effect possibilities beyond the Jerry Zipkin tale.  Dialogue renders over with fine precision that hangs on every word and sentence with no hissing and crackling to obstruct it’s sweeping clarity.  A bountiful amount of Mind-Altering special features that fill this limited to 4000 copies set that include a new feature prologue introduction with director Jeff Lieberman.  There are two audio commentaries, an archived 2003 interview with Lieberman, a Channel Z Fantasy Film Festival ”Lieberman on Lieberman” interview with the director hosted by “Sleepwalkers” Mick Garris, a Q&A video from the Fantasia Film Festival 4K premiere moderated by Michael Gingold and Lieberman, an anti-drug scare-film “LSD-25” from 1967 and “LSD:  Insight or Insanity?” From 1968 from the American Genre Film Archive, Jeff Leiberman’s first film “The Ringer” with two cuts of the film, the original uncut version from the projection print source and the final release from the remastered Synapse Films 4K transfer with audio commentary included on the uncut version by Jeff Leiberman and moderator Howard S. Berger, still gallery and theatrical trailers. Synapse’s limited-edition boxset is nothing you’ve ever seen before from the company with not only a rigid slipbox case but there’s also a cardboard O-slipcover, both housing the clear, inch-thick Blu-ray Amaray case and both showcasing new illustrative, compositional, air brushed artwork of some of the key character scenes and expressions by Wes Benscoter, which is a real thing of beauty. The Amaray cover art is the regular 70’s grade cover art seen on previous releases from DVD to Blu-ray with a reverse side an image of the tripped-out Ed Flemming icon photo of his drug peddling days at Stanford. Overlapping 4K and Blu-ray discs display graphic presses in story moment compositions, though I don’t recall a half-naked woman in the film yet is on the cover. Not quite yet done with the bonus material, the 3rd disc is a 13-track Soundtrack CD of the score and laid overtop is the 11-page liner note booklet from Jeff Lieberman’s 2020 memoir “Day of the Living Me: Adventures of a Subversive Cult Filmmaker From the Golden Age,” plus the CD track listing, production credits, and special thanks on the backside. A reproduction of the original one sheet poster is stored in the insert as a mini-folded poster along with Synapse’s 2024 catalogue for your perusing pleasure. The rated-R film has a runtime of 95 minutes, and the limited edition doesn’t limit itself to a confined playback with region free decoding.

Last Rites: In order to snag a copy of this stellar Synapse set, muscles are required as this heavy boxset feels like 5lbs of software and hardware special features regarding Jeff Leiberman’s drugs-are-bad thriller “Blue Sunshine” with chrome dome, blank-stare killers doing the dormant bidding of 10-years-old recessed LSD.

Trip Out on Synapse’s Limited Edition “Blue Sunshine”

EVIL Infiltrates to Seduce All Your Women! “The Vampire Lovers” reviewed! (Scream Factory / Blu-ray)

“The Vampire Lovers” Now Available at Amazon.com!

The Karnstein family’s notorious legends of evil spread vast throughout 18th century Germany. Once thought their wicked leeching of nearby villages exterminated after the Baron Joachim von Hartog dispatched all the villainous vampires after his sister fell victim to their seductive fangs. However, years later, the aristocratical General von Spielsdorf and his niece Laura find themselves in the unexpected company of a houseguest with Marcilla, the beautiful daughter of a new neighboring countess. Days later, Laura unexplainably dies from continuous nights that drain her of energy and flourish her mind full of nightmares of being strangled by a large wild animal. In the wake of her death, Marcilla also disappears. Sadden by the news of her friend’s death, Emma and her father take in the daughter of a travelling countess named Carmilla to provide Emma with cheery, distracting company in a time of distress, but the mysterious cycle of enervation and nightmares start back up all over again and it’s up to the survivals of Laura’s death to stop death before it’s too late.

Unlike any other Hammer horror film you’ve ever seen before prior to 1970, “The Vampire Lovers” blazed the trail for permissiveness of the era’s newly reformed certification system that moved the bar from 16 years order to 18 and kept in line with society’s leniencies toward the favoring sex and free love.  “The Vampire Lovers” opened up to not only a new line of exploitation and violence at the turn of the decade but also introduced the longtime fans to new faces, especially actresses, who would accumulate labels and prominence inside the genre that last until this day.  Based from the story of “Carmilla” from Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu, relatively new at the time Hammer director Roy Ward Baker (“Scars of Dracula,” “Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde”) took the Harry fine and Michael Style adapted original story and ran the distance with the screenplay from Tudor Gates whose writing forte was not specifically well-known within horror genre nor was horror Gates’ personal interest, yet Gates tweaked the Le Fanu female vampire tale to accentuate more of lesbian themes in a very turmoiled time when lesbianism, or just being gay, was seen as a disease or an unstoppable influencing evil force amongst the young people.  Fine and Style serve as producers in this co-production between Hammer Films and American International Pictures.

“The Vampire Lovers” comes under an atypical rule of the protagonist role or roles.  Previous Hammer films oriented themselves with a male lead from Christopher Lee’s domineering monster Dracula to the fearlessly courageous vampire hunter played by Peter Cushing, but “The Vampire Lovers” has Hammer trade in the masculinity presence for femme fatale with the introduction of Ingrid Pitt (“Wicker Man”) in the role of the hungry Karnstein vampire, Carmilla as well as Marcilla and Mircalla as the sneaky creature of the night infiltrates estates. Pitt’s exotic look and uninhibited attitude discerns obvious sex appeal for the Polish actress who can also act with gripping emotion that develops compassion for her malevolent facade. Add another pretty face and innocently sensuous woman arm-to-arm to Pitt with then 20-year-old Madeline Smith (“Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell”) and you have a two-front protagonist made up of women. Tack on the dark features and piercing blue eyes of Kate O’Mara (“The Horror of Frankenstein”) and “The Vampire Lovers” evolves into the something unlike anything we’ve ever seen from Hammer horror trifecta as once the scene settles into the narrative’s girth, the dynamic turns into a love triangle of unspoken women intimacies and jealousy, under the guise of supernatural persuasion, rears its ugly head. The menfolk really do feel absent from the excitement despite being pivotal pieces to the story and despite being the iconic representation in face and name of Hammer films. Peter Cushing’s longstanding work with the company has branded him forever legendary in the eyes of horror fans young and new. As the benevolent General von Spielsdorf, “The Horror of Dracula” Cushing looks wonderfully regal, gentlemanly dashing, and epitomizes the very essence of a strong male figure who also takes a very noticeable backseat for much of the second and into the third act. Same can be said for that other vampire portrayer who’s not Christopher Lee, Ferdy Mayne (“The Fearless Vampire Killers”) as the village doctor with a scene plopped here and there to inch the story along as a motivational vessel and another player caught in the Karnstein fang-game. “The Vampire Lovers” sees through to move plot significant characters, played by notable actors, to and from the storyline with performances from George Cole (“Fright”), Jon Finch (“Frenzy”), Dawn Addams (“The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll”), Pippa Steel (“Lust for a Vampire”), Harvey Hall (“Twins of Evil”), and Douglas Wilmer as the Baron Joachim von Hartog who give a great opening expositional prologue that sets the background and tone of the film.

Laced in the traditional gothic style we all know and love from Hammer Films, “The Vampire Lovers” has grandiose late 19th century interiors and costumes with the latter gracing the starlets with strikingly bright tropical colored dresses that are elegant beyond the more stiff, and sometimes more imperialistic, outfits representing the period.  In a way, the outfits contrast against the brooding gothic prominence that speak of subversive liberation much paralleling the very thematic elements of lesbianism, sexual motifs, and a nearly an all-encompassing female lead.  If sex was ever a subtle insinuation in previous Hammer film it was not so subtle in “The Vampire Lovers” that consistently and constantly thickened the sexual tension and produced blunt scenes of eroticism between two or more women.  Even with the powerful commingle of womanhood desires, as much as it was depicted to be devasting to their lifeblood, Tudor Gates’ narrative still pit them up against nearly impossible odds when the male characters, no longer duped by the formalities of chivalrous intentions, figure out what’s really happening under their noses, in their households none the less, and band together to put a to a heart-staking stop to the macabre madness aka metaphorical lesbian evil.  The story has the women’s lusts and desires, whether their choosing or not, be an outlier from normalcy, yet on the other hand, nudity flourishes within the new laxed certification guidelines that see in some way, shape, and form four actresses baring skin in what what would have been considered risqué X-certificated scenes prior to 1970.  “The Vampire Lovers” is by far a perfect film with a lack of character context, such as with the male vampire on horseback indulging his penchant for observing Camilla’s attacks from afar and doesn’t proceed to explain further or with more insight to who he is and what his position may be within the Karnstein family ranks, as well as the narrative format with early on into the story being bit choppy and disorienting when Carmilla assaults nightly the General’s fair niece as a furry beast in the confines of a lurid nightmare.

Deserving of a collector’s edition, Shout Factory subsidiary horror label, Scream Factory, presents a new Blu-ray release of “The Vampire Lovers” scanned in 4K of the original camera negative.  Scream Factory should be extolled for their color grading toward Hammer transfers as the release looks stunning with quality stability and richness that brings the era alive.  Transfer also appears free from any kind of major blemishes and barely of any smaller ones. The English language DTS-HD Master Audio mono has resolute fidelity in the best possible audio offering “The Vampire Lovers” will likely see now and in future releases with a clear dialogue track and a Harry Robertson score that relives the classic studio orchestra in compelling fashion. The release comes with a slew of special features including an exclusive new interview with film historian Kim Newman, who also shows up again in archived interviews in the “Feminine Fantastique: Resurrecting ‘The Vampire Lovers'” (Scream Factory lists it as Femme Fantastique on the back cover) featurette commentary snippets from John-Paul Checkett and David Skal and other historians and collectors of Hammer Films. Audio commentaries with director Roy Ward Baker, star Ingrid Pitt, and Screenwriter Tudor Gates, audio commentary with film historians Marcus Hearn and Jonathan Rigby, two interviews, one of them new, with co-star Madeline Smith that span about 10-15 years apart, Trailers from Hell: Mick Garris on “The Vampire Lovers,” a reading of Carmilla by Ingrid Pitt, a single deleted scene of Baron von Hartog radio spot, still gallery, and the theatrical trailer round out the bonus material. The 89-minute, Region A encoded, R-rated version runs solo as the only main feature and the transfer Scream Factory uses, or licenses, is the edited version of Ingrid Pitt’s bath scene that cuts away to a medium closeup of Madeline Smith holding a towel for Pitt who’s standing up in the tub and then cuts back to Pitt’s bare backside. However, in the “Feminine Fantastique” featurette, you can experience the unedited brief full-frontal of Ingrid Pitt standing up in the tub if that tickles your fancy. The collector’s edition sports reversible cover art with original poster art on the inside and a newly illustrated, and superbly beautiful in its simplicity, front art by Mart Maddox sheathed inside a cardboard slipcover of the same Maddox art. Turning a corner into vast opportunities for more violence, explicit nudity, and unrestrained vampire gore became a new dawn for Hammer Films without entirely prostituting themselves with wayward tactics to the point of unrecognition as “The Vampire Lovers” still emitted gothic characteristics and a partial token cast and now made even more alluring with a feature packed collector’s edition from Scream Factory!

“The Vampire Lovers” Now Available at Amazon.com!

EVIL is Undead…And Rides a Shark! “Sky Sharks” reviewed (Umbrella Entertainment / DVD)

Former Nazi scientist Dr. Klaus Richter’s past has finally caught up with him after 70 years when a clandestine German laboratory, disguised as an aircraft-battleship hybrid, thaws from behind a globally warmed sheet of frozen ice and rock, releasing Dr. Richter’s regenerated legion of undead Nazi super-soldiers piloting genetically engineered flying battle sharks complete with guided missiles alongside their razor sharp jaws.  Loyal to the Third Reich, the sky sharks continue their master race patronage with a blitzkrieg in the skies, attacking commercial aircraft, boarding the cabins, and slaughtering every last person on board before crashing.   Now contractually working for the U.S. Government as the biggest name in technological advancement, Dr. Klaus, with the help of his two daughters, has a plan to nullify the sky sharks’ defenses to make them vulnerable to his latest newest experiment in warfare, Dead Flesh, under the guidance of his fellow covert government agency heads.

Apex predators of the waters are now apex predators of the skies in Marc Fehse’s ridiculous, frenzied, and utterly mad ultra-violent Nazi-exploitation, “Sky Sharks.” Soaring through the heavens soaking fluffy white clouds with blood, the Carsten Fehse and A.D. Morel co-written film took off virally in 2020 with the promise to the internet, especially horror fans, of zombified SS soldiers mounted standing on humungous Great White, Hammerhead, and Megalodon jet-propelled sharks. Fehse’s team delivered. “Sky Sharks” has not one single serious bone in all it’s cartilaginous gory-glory body in what’s Fehse’s second film behind the 1999, straight to video, “Mutation” involving the what-if factor of a surrealistically free reigning and sadistically unbridled Nazi force hellbent on winning World War II no matter how many lives needing to be sacrificed for the sake of the Führer’s dominion. The Germany-made production is a Fuse Box Films and Fantom Films.

“Sky Sharks” is studded with cult stars, but those studs pop out mostly after the carnage-laden opening scene of passengers on a commercial flight being ripped to shreds by undead super-soldiers hog-wild about killing. Robert LaSardo (“Strangeland”), Lynn Lowery (“Model Hunger”), Tony Todd (“Candyman”), Diana Prince (“The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs”), Mick Garris (director of “Critters 2”), Dave Sheridan (“Scary Movie”), Amanda Bearse (“Fright Night” ’85), Asami (“Gun Woman), Naomi Grossman (“American Horror Story” franchise), Lar Park-Lincoln (“Friday the 13th Part VII:  The New Blood”) and “Mortal Kombat’s Shang Tsung himself, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, make an appearance in some minor way, shape, or form, but since “Sky Sharks” is a German production, much of the cast is geared toward German and Austrian actors with Thomas Morris spearheading the lead role of the inverted mad scientist, Dr. Klaus Richter, a centenarian mastermind behind the birth and, hopeful, destruction of his monstrous airborne jaws of death experiment.  The role itself isn’t very exciting that refrains Morris to be nothing more but a talking head who recounts his failed World War II and Vietnam resurrection serum to turn the tides of war.  While Dr. Richter has immense blood on his hands from a long and rich background, the present day Richter has lackluster appeal and Morris doesn’t provide much zest either.  More complexities reside in Richter’s two tech-savvy and kickass daughters, Diabla and Angelique.  Their signifying names alone provide some foreshadowing of events, but the close sisters are boots on the ground with their father being the eye in the sky; yet, Diabla and Angelique have been kept in the dark from their father’s horrid past that factors little into parting ways from being daughter’s little girls.  Blonde beauties Eva Haberman and Barbara Nedeljakova successful roles in Germany and the U.S. include “Hostel” and the sci-fi tele-series “Lexx,” but their blind obedience to the patriarch roles downscales any moments to shine individually as free thinking agents of good.  Any other character factored into “Sky Sharks’” whiplash narrative come and go without a single ounce meaningful impact becoming background noise for the fray. There’s not even a singular villain to speak of as a focal point to direct a challenger against forces of good.

As much as the concept excites me on an obscurely dysfunctional level, a real telling tale of who I am as a person, who also praises “Snakes on a Plane” as cult candy, “Sky Sharks” has atrocious issues with pacing and story quality.  The opening scene sets up what to expect of gore drenched Nazis yoking back on genetically mutated sharks, zipping through high altitude to acrobatically infiltrate commercial planes for complete and total annihilation of every passenger onboard.  Tickles me in all the right places.  Yet, the sky sharks’ unveiling background whizzes past right into death from above world apocalypse, skipping keynote details resolving the giant warship beached on the Antarctic ice.  Fehse decides to redirect our focus with a bunch of explicit violence and sex and while that’s all nice and good…really good…the misdirection can’t coverup the necessities needed for a good story even if the story is absolutely bonkers. The visual effects are not distinct from the ream of shark-sploitation films that have become popular over the last decade in a cheaper slaved effort to capitalize on the majestic beasts of the sea…who sometimes mistake a surfer for a sea lion. The flying sharks swim in a stiffly pattern and move inorganically through their uncharacteristic ecosystem as they rocket in a school of steampunk nightmares. Not all visuals fall short of satisfaction when they’re appropriately blended with practical effects. Under that hood of tangible horrors is “Iron Sky: The Coming Race’s” Martin Schäper and, the legendary, Tom Savini, who we haven’t seen special effects work from since 2012’s “Death from Above” (an also fitting title for killer sharks in the sky). Schäper and Savini bring it with blood. Each plane sequence, there’s two of them, exhibit different deaths with each one more outrageous than the next. My favorite is the inverted periscope through a guy’s cranium and having a looksie at the screaming, bloodied passengers. “Sky Sharks” is, literally, an over-the-top scream of slice’em and dice’em fun.

Cresting through the blue yonder and painting the sky blood red is the deadliest gang of shark riding Nazi’s to ever grace a cinema platform in “Sky Sharks,” coming to DVD in Australia, no stranger to large, deadly sharks, courtesy of Umbrella Entertainment in association with Raven Banner. The NTSC encoded, region 4, rated R release will present the film in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. “Sky Sharks” is a turbulent wonderland of rustic computer generated visual effects with a Marco J. Riedl and Olaf Markmann cinematography, typifying a clashing style, of keeping actors tightly in focus to sell a futuristic fluorescent environment. A few scenes give a sense of layered paper mâché sitting in front a green screen as the forefront images seemingly pop out of their backdrops. The English and German Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix falls victim to an overpowering score of a weak dialogue track that washes key pieces of exposition that might explain more as the scenes fleet away in the rushed paced 103 minute runtime. Aside from a brilliantly detailed DVD cover robust with a glowing eyed, half-decaying Nazi soldier as centerpiece amongst flying, weaponized sharks and Robert LaSardo and Lynn Lowry cameoing off to the left side with a half-naked female warrior on the right, the DVD has no bonus features included. After the credits, a fake commercial for “Sky Frogs,” starring that half-naked female warrior I just mentioned, is a satirical happy ending full of even worse, 80’s caliber, visual effects worlds and frogs. Though not at the top of the food chain being one of the grossly ostentatious and shoddily visual effects films ever, the mindless, search and destroy, crudeness of “Sky Sharks” chums our oceans of entertainment with some of the bloodiest fun we’ve seen in a long time from a Nazisploitation.

Own Umbrella Entertainment release of “Sky Sharks” on DVD! Click the poster!