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The EVILs that Lie Behind the Mask. “2551” Trology reviewed! (Deaf Crocodile / 4-Disc Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

This One You’ll Need to See to Believe! “2551” Trilogy on Blu-ray!

In an underground dystopia ruled with by an ironfisted police state, dwelling creature-noid mutants violently clash with white-suited, gas-masked tactical units of a cruel despot.  One of the rioters, an Apeman, rescues a child with a burlap mask from being trampled between the two groups, injuring his hand in the process.  The child desperately clings to him, unwilling to part far from the Apeman who tries to turn over the child’s care to others, but as soon as the child is taken by the despot’s men, the Apeman goes through the depths of grotesque seediness to rescue the child forced into the training ranks of the police state.  He befriends and falls in love with luchadora who joins forces with him to rescue the child, but her betrayal whisks the child away from his grasp yet again.  Years later, the Apeman has become a salvaging source for an art purveyor’s gallery, but arrogant high society dismisses his efforts, and he’s thrust into violence, resulting him to face the despot’s capital judgement.  He’s saved from death by the child, now ga grown adult employed as a despot inspector, and when the inspector is given a traitorous execution, the Apeman’s immense adoration for the child sends him on a path of retribution to which there’s no coming back from.  

Born into an immense pro-fascism Austrian society a few years after World War II, influenced by political and societal unrest and protest of his time, and a devout mask collector, Norbert Pfaffenbichler construct a dystopian world unlike any other seen before.  Inspired by silent movie slapstick and black-and-white films, Pfaffenbichler channels the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney into his trilogy of experimental grotesquerie of “2551.”  “2551” potentially references a futuristic, numerical year where a post-apocalyptic society, as we know it, has broken down into a sparring duality of survival, either as a penniless mutant driver to beg, sell, or give one’s body to live or a merciless enforcer to be wielded by an authoritarian ruler.  Set as a trilogy that began in 2021 and ended in 2025, Pfaffenbichler also wrote the screenplay for each installment, chaptered with decimal designations and subtitles: “2551.01:  The Kid,” “2551.02:  Orgy of the Damned”, and 255.03:  The End.”  Shot in Vienna, the trilogy is a production support of the BKA (Bundeskanzleramt), The City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs, and Land Oberosterreich with Pfaffenbichler producing “Orgy of the Damned” and “The End” while coproducing with Bianca Jasmina Rauch on “The Kid”

The ”2551” trilogy goes through the entire three features without a single piece of dialogue spoken from the main cast.  Though the characters may be roughly silent, albeit some added grunts, groans, and wails, added Foley action and movements along with an eclectic and often brooding industrial, punk-rock soundtrack ultimately tell the story coincided with impressive body expression and language.  At center stage, in his own petite personal plight in the aftermath of a devastated and derelict dystopia, is Apeman, a rebellious scavenger just trying to survive like all other half-creature, half-man mutants.  Played by Stefan Erber in all three films, Apeman is the only credit to Erber’s short breadth career but Erber’s very important to “2551’s” storytelling because even though he’s wearing a mask the entire time, his actions and reactions convey a broad range of emotions to where there’s no ambiguity in the scene.  Erber has a number of unique characters to interact with and each do not repeat across the films, such as David Ionescu in “2551.01:  The Kid” as the gunny masked child who clings in desperation to the initially reluctant to care Apeman, and after years passed into “2551.03:  The End,” the now grown child is an adult with Ben Schidla donning the mask as one of the despot’s inspector who helps Apeman escape the grasps of a tyrannical police state gunning for dissidence.  Both Ionescu and Schidla play into the different stage of their child and adult life; Inoescu’s awkward child movements and possessive need for Apeman is true child antics while Schidla provides the maturity and responsibility of being his own, self-reliant person now, one who doesn’t forget Apeman’s selfly act of rescuing him.  Veronika Susanna Harb wrestles as Apeman’s warring love interesting and street fighter in “Orgy of the Damned” and Manuela Deac is another strong female presence in the trilogy in a duel role in “The End” as the Apeman transitions into Apewoman in an anti-matter, alternate dimensional space that looks into the soul and she also is the hypnotic dancing deity near the beginning audience encircling with Apeman being chosen, or perhaps reminded, of his ward. 

When I say you’ve never seen a world like the one Pfaffenbichler pieces together, literally with pieces of severed limbs, stitched flesh, and an eclectic mix of masks, I mean it.  We’ve seen dystopian worlds before of desolate terrains, destructive and cruel authoritarian regimes, hunger, famine, and a dying race and there are obvious signs of influences pulled into “2551” from the likes of Phil Tippett animated and stop motion style to the comical ties of Charlie Chaplin, and the overall components of certain silent movie scenes and improvised, jaunty scores make the disgusting and derelict dark alleys and strange creatures more light-hearted and whimsical.  “2551.01:  The Kid” is a direct homage to Chaplin’’s 1921 “The Kid” by following along the lines of the same premise of a nomadic loner finds and cares for an abandoned child, their relationship jeopardized by their own problems with the law.  The sequels have a different direction but maintains the same bizarre world behind grotesque masks, a normalized consumption of dead animals and body parts, body horror fetishism beyond our comprehension, and a systematic oppression based off one person’s version of Tindr’s swipe right.  “Orgy of the Damned” mines the carnal shale with simulated sexual acts that go beyond missionary ways and into the sordid surgery and beastly BDSM while “The End” explores existentialism through past, present, and future that ultimately leads to a self-destructive revenge, hence the subtitle.  Bazaars of skulls, organic trinkets, and edible organs, flesh, and bone are a traversing theme of near desperation and survival within a concreted underground life where nothing grows, nothing thrives, and all succumb to its darkness.  Motifs of monkeys, including in the protagonists, are strung strongly through the trilogy in perhaps a reflection of the homo sapien within the de-evolved primate, aka the hidden humanity inside the beast.  Masks are the true and standard icon that obscurely hides the fact whether these people are real or whether their mask is their reverse personified reality.   Pfaffenbichler’s metaphorical social commentary is beautiful in its misproportioned and mutated state of mass oppression and the little good that glints through is all the hope in the world, and even in upside-down worlds, the need to recover its benignity is more important than ever.

In today’s society, especially in the U.S., autocratic governance is king or at least thinks it’s king.  For Norbert Pfaffenbichler, his “2551” trilogy parallels the present as well as the past.  Deaf Crocodile, under the playful label guise of Dead Crocodile because of the film’s subject matter, releases Pfaffenbichler’s trilogy on a 4-disc Blu-ray set that’s AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, on single layer BD25s.  The post-apocalypse is grim looking with a slightly tinged monochromatic experience, often with high levels of grain, and a fluttering of crisp detail through stroboscopic and rotoscope effects but that’s the entire intention of Pfaffenbichler and his cinematographer Martin Putz on all three films, creating a gritty, grungy, bunker-laden, desolate atmospheric that’s a hypogean house of horrors.  Most of the more grainer moments are when the image is blown up to focus on characters and some distress, alien scenes of a grotesque nature.  The black-and-white goes through periods of tint, muted coloring that run the hue gamut, with more traditional colorless scenes fining solace in their antecedent silent films.  Compared to a more austere impressed first film, the sequels do have a more polished appearance than “The Kid” when traversing through the sordid muck of a hazy underworld of flesh and fetishism in “Orgy of the Damned,” laced in tight leather, elegant lace, pastel pasties, and a myriad of masks and rags, while “The End” trades out tint for pure while in the interdimensional void Apeman navigates to find himself.  Each entry adds something a little different to mix up what could be a monotone milieu with bits of experimental panache that’s sustain the post-apocalypse colony.  Entirely shot without any production dialogue, Deaf Crocodile’s release comes with a DTS-HD 2.0 stereo mix to punctuate the action and to provide vitality through its punk and metal soundtracks and dark industrial whir and hum from composers Wolfgang Frisch and Simon Spitzer.   The added in effects applied after in the post sync very well and with the appropriate echo of being in tunnels and dark, hollow spaces.  So well in fact that you don’t realize it’s post-production sound.  The 4th disc is bonus features that include Pfaffenbichler’s seven short films, five new, individual interviews (Dir. Norbert Pfaffenbichler, Apeman actor Stefan Erber, cinematographer Martin Putz, stop motion and visual effects artist Paul Lechmann, and a Q&A hosted by Rolf Giesen with Pflaffenbichler answering), two visual essays (Angel of the Abject:  The 2551 Trilogy as a Necropolis of Cinema by film scholar Stephen Broomer and Don’t Let it Fester:  (Anti)Sentimentality in 2551.01 by Ryan Verrill), each film has its own commentary track that include input from film scholar Shelagh Rowan-Legg, film historian Eva Letourneau, artist and writer Anne Golden, and podcaster Mike White, a “2551.03:  The End” featurette Jam of the Damned is a behind the scenes look into the last film, the soundtrack score on all three films, three new trailers, new art by Beth Morris, and a prelude warning that states:  Trigger Warning:  all 3 films contain nightmarish images featuring simulated sexual and violent acts, as well las strobe lights and stroboscopic effects.  For adult viewers only.  The four-disc standard release is laid out two on each side and one overlapping one of the other in the thicker, clear Amaray with new cover art that’s a composition of stills arranged in a nonconformist arrangement that’s truly unnerving to behold.  The reverse cover art has an equally intense image but more simplistic red and black image with the film and Blu-ray spec info backside.  With a runtime total of 227 minutes, “2551” trilogy is not rated and is encoded for region A playback only.

Last Rites: “2551” is a myriad trilogy of influence and expression through Norbert Pfaffenbichler’s endless mask of hope in a world of oppression. The worldwide debut Blu-ray release from Deaf (Dead) Crocodile respects the subterranean story filled to the brim with sadomasochism, odd creatures, and authoritarian subjugation and the auteur’s unconventional and pallor style in its comprehensive 4-disc set of experimental, cinematic encomium.

This One You’ll Need to See to Believe! “2551” Trilogy on Blu-ray!

A Boy’s Imagination Can Conjure Up EVIL Death and Sex. “Viva La Muerte” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Viva la Muerte” Limited Edition Won’t Be Around Long. Grab Your Copy Here!

At the peak low of the Spanish Civil War, naïve adolescent boy Fando doesn’t understand what is happening between the Catholic-blessed fascist takeover of his country nor exactly why his father was arrested and what has since happened to him.  He stumbles upon letters written by his mother suggesting that she had something to do with his sudden arrest because of his parents’ rival principles paralleling their nation’s bloody conflict of dividing beliefs.  Fando asks his remaining family questions, especially pelting his mother with detailed inquiries, about his father, death, and the fascist opposition, and while he’s lives under the draconian rule of a fascism reality and his family who abides it closely, the inquisitive boy intersperses his new, complex reality with his own way of comprehending, filling in the blanks with his vivid imagination of childish macabre, oedipal maturing, and an uninhibited interpretation of the evolving revolution surrounding him.   

“Viva la Muerte,” aka “Long Live Death,” is the 1971 surrealistic war horror from then debut filmmaker Fernando Arrabal.  Arrabal, who went on to modest yet esteemed career with such arthouse films such as “I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse,” “Car Cemetery” and another Spanish Civil War set drama “L’arbre de Guernia,” also wrote the film that cemented his contributions to the surrealistic performance art movement known as the Panic Movement.  Though Arrabal was born in Spain and tells the story of the Spanish Civil War, the filmmaker had lived in France where the movement’s genesis began solely as street shock performances alongside fellow filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (“El Topo”) and writer/actor Roland Topor, the latter had penned the novel of inspiration for what would be Roman Polanski’s “The Tenant.”  Eventually, the Panic Movement slid into cinemas and the French production/language “Viva la Muerte” was designed to not only exhibit chaotic, childlike account of the Spanish Civil War but also shock audiences with bizarre imagery.  Isabelle Films and S.A.T.P.E.C. fund the film under the producing credits of Hassene Daldoul and Jean Velter.

What better way to express an arthouse film than with arthouse performances from a blend of European actors and actresses from the French and Spanish territories.  “Viva la Muerte” couriers a perception through the eyes of a preteen child, a young boy of approx. 10 years of age, in Fando played with infatuation innocence and a model of child-to-adult growth in Mahdi Chaouch.  Fando’s virtue through the Spanish Civil War becomes shaped by not only the sudden loss of his father but also the quick onset of maturity being left and lifted as the man of the house.  Fando slips into a mix of fantasy and disdain for his mother, played by Spanish actress Núria Espert, surrounded and shaped by a political conflict climate as he interprets every statement she makes regarding his father’s irresolute fate between imprisonment and execution and every desirably suggested aspect of her action that drives him to internally create visuals of sex and death.  In the effect of one’s different self is the subtle infusion of the aunt whom Fando lives with for a while, a role by French actress Anouk Ferjac (“Hallucinations sadiques”) and mirrors the mother in appearances and in the same taboo risking amorous ways that creates thick, nearly line-crossing, sexual tension between adult woman and male child, especially topped by its incestuous nature.  Unknowns Jazia Klibi, Jean-Louis Chassigneux, Suzanne Comte, and Ivan Henriques as Fando’s dissident father round out the cast with a sense of authenticity for real world conflict. 

Arrabal’s “Viva la Muerte” becomes a beaconing example of merging stern reality with liberal imagination.  Though starkly apposition in film styles and surreal contrasts against the backdrop of a new world and bleak order of a fascism regime, reality and fantasy do blend to a degree as Arrabal sought to have one and the other bleed into one another to evoke questions of motives and symbolize with child caricaturizing the authoritarian oppression.  The overtly sexual fantasies of a naked mother and aunt in the presence of the boy can be egregiously sensed outside the dreamlike context with paused moments of starring and awkward touching.  Same can be said about Fando’s father’s demise as the boy goes through an array of grotesquely creative possibilities regarding father’s fate with most often being death and while Fando is spoon-fed lesser punitive measures by his mother, the chances of the father being alive after being arrested are likely zero based off earlier graveside executions of military firing squads for those with strong ideology opposition.  Fando’s mother plays a hefty role in his deadly, warped thoughts and just not sexually either as her role in his colorfully constructed explanations pin her as the chief executioner after reading her letters to the church about his dissident behavior.  Catholicism, or rather the Church, plays a huge role in shaping young Fando’s personal arc.  Religious imagery of his mother as the virgin Mary, a priest blessing fascist swords before battle, and also the same priest having his manhood violently removed and fed to him represents a way to explain how Catholicism has essentially failed stand against the violence to which, later exhibited in the story, molds Fando as a trouble instigator or rebel in his Catholic nun run school for the Church’s complicity in his father’s death.  Fando’s rejection of the Church confirms his character’s growth from the story’s beginning of his extreme self-penancing and opposition to such aberrant thoughts; thoughts that are not just sexual in nature but also incline themselves to be dirty, literally, with skin-covering mud and scat in playful mirth to signify enjoyment equates to being sinful and filthy.  Arrabal really does give you lots to unravel and the panic really starts to set in, hence his Panic Movement.

Limited to 3000 copies, “Viva la Muerte” arrives to the U.S. on its first Blu-ray release here in the States from Radiance Films.  The beautiful, new 4K restoration scan, with the collaboration of director Fernando Arrabal, pulled from the best elements of the original 35mm negative, 35mm French sound negative, and 35mm interpositive negative fathoms a rich spectrum of a diffused color palette on the AVC encoded, dual layer, BD50, presented in a high-definition 1080p and in the original European aspect ratio of 1.66:1.  Reality scenes are grounded by natural lighting, brighter contrast of the mountainous desert landscape, and a thorough macro-examination of the details and textures that pop the imagery between the grandfather’s bloodletting scene on the shaved portion of his fibrous head to the wet-slick and soapy naked Fando as he stands to get scrubbed down in the bath.  Blacks are solid without signs of a weaker compression encoding.  The surreal imagery switches gears, harshly, from 35mm film to an interlaced videotape, changing and reducing the quality down significantly but with the tape image is heavily colored in mostly primary colors to denote an artful way of imaginary explanations in Fando’s head.  No other issues arise from the video portion, retaining Radiance Films’ attention to detail and respect intact for their culturally valuable and extensive catalogue.  The French language uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mono track fairs well from a virtually damage free preservation.  A slight background hiss or hum can be found as the only audio blemish to note.  ADR dialogue is clean and clear throughout and with usually any post dialogue recordings there’s a bit of enclosed reverberations that don’t synch well with the scene that should sound airier.  Optional English subtitles synch fine and are error free with seemingly proper translational grammar.  Special features include an audio discussion between Projection Booth podcast’s Mike White, esoteric and horror film writer and former Video Watchdog contributor Heather Drain, and filmmaker-writer Jess Byard whom provide commentary overtop of the feature but not in synch with watching feature, a feature-length documentary on Arrabal by French novelist Xavier Pasturel Barron that contains interviews with friends, family, and fans of the director, an exclusive interview with cinema historian David Archibald, a new cut trailer from Radiance, and an image gallery.  Radiance continues to impress with the encoded special features and, not to be outshined, the physical features are also a bright light that reflects the essence of the Panic Movement with a clear, a millimeter thicker Amaray presenting the yellow and red background with provocative character imagery at the center that speaks the sex and death motif.  The reverse side has the same color scheme mixed up with an illustration of one of the characters displayed infamously in the film.  The insert contains a 35-page color booklet, bounded end-to-end with the strange and uneasy drawings of Fernando Arrabal, with a 1976 Arrabal interview by film critic and historians Peter Brunette and Gerald Peary and an exclusive essay from Sabina Stent.  Transfer notes as well as a complete cast and crew acknowledgement bookends the booklet’s main courses.  The disc is pressed in a solid, canary yellow with black lettering for the title.  Radiance’s 66th title comes region free release has a runtime of 88 minutes and is not rated. 

Last Rites: War is hell. For Fernando Arrabal, war is ambiguous and surreal. Radiance spotlights every ambivalent corner of Arrabal’s “Viva la Muerte” to light up its anti-nondescript digestion of one boy’s survival of his own maturity during a post-war fascist scrub, a task none too simple to undertake much like Arrabal’s storytelling.

“Viva la Muerte” Limited Edition Won’t Be Around Long. Grab Your Copy Here!

The Reining Bullies Get the EVIL They Deserve! “Massacre at Central High” reviewed! (Synapse / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Massacre at Central High” is Grade A Exploitation!

David just transferred to Central High School, reuniting with his good friend Mark, but Mark is no longer a part of the outcasted crowd at his new high school as he has joined Bruce and his pals to be the apex elite in the school’s lopsided social hierarchy.   Refusing to abide by the relentless and ruthless bullying, attempted rape, and intended bodily harm, David stands up for the oppressed with firm and actionable rebuke.  Bruce and his gang don’t take kindly to David’s opposing behavior and purposefully cripple him to teach him a lesson in disobedience punishment under their sovereign thumb, but what doesn’t kill David makes him a retribution killer as he begins his one-by-one takedown of the disparaging upper-class.  When there are no more bullies left at Central High, the once oppressed turn into the oppressors and it’s up to David to continue the cleanse of megalomanias.   

Now here’s a unique take on the revenge thriller that doesn’t involve the conventional concepts of a slaughter escapade return from being nearly raped to death or to exact revenge for the untimely and heinous murder of a loved one at the hand of sociopathic other.  “Massacre at Central High,” written and directed by the late Netherlands filmmaker Rene Daalder, is the sociopolitical, slashereseque picture from 1976 that is just as parentless and bizarre as it is cold in its exaggerated truth of undiplomatic ways.  Also known as “Sexy Jeans,” the Italian X-rated interposed cut, “Massacre at Central High,“ is Daalder’s second feature behind his 1969 exploitation and organized crime thriller “The White Slave” that tells the story of one man’s righteous crusade turns into a bungled mess with him being intertwined in a scheme to sell unsuspecting young Dutch women into sexual slavery.  Daalder’s sophomore film might not be as controversial, but certainly maintains that provocative and erotica bravado under the otherworldly shadow of an ultra-angsty high school veneer.  Filmed in and mostly around Los Angeles’s Griffith Park that included an abandoned private high school in Burbank, “Massacre at Central High” is produced Harold Sobel (“Very Close Quarters”) with Jerome Bauman serving as executive producer.

Before he was the four-eyed face of the franchise where it was cool to be square in “Revenge of the Nerds,” Robert Carradine landed one of his first principal roles in Daalder’s “Massacre at Central High” as free-lovin’ hippie, Spoony. Though Spoony is an activist idealist and gets two chicks, the half-brother of David Carradine wasn’t in the star lead though he certainly had the presence and the state of mind to withstand it. Instead, Derrel Maury enveloped the role David that seeks vigilante justice to a bunch of entitled school bullies lead by Bruce (Ray Underwood, “Jennifer”) with Craig (Steve Bond, “The Prey”) and Paul (Damon Douglas) being a part of his gang. Maury’s deep eyes and good looks make him a shoe in to be one of the top-predators to join Bruce’s paleoconservative circle and, as David, his personal connection with good friend Mark (Andrew Stevens, “The Terror Within”) who eggs, basically begging and pleading, David continuously to join or face the consequences of Bruce’s wrath. The acting and dynamics between this already complicated group of late teens is basic in its formulaic high school turmoil but also very disturbing on many levels that puts the boys-will-by-boys mantra into a whole new comfortless light. We all know characters like Bruce and his lackeys from High School where guys like him think the student body pledges allegiance to their unofficial rule; Ray Underwood, Steve Bond, and Damon Douglas do a phenomenal job of letting you hate them for who they portray with characters who are not beneath attempting the rape of two female peers in broad daylight and in one of the classrooms. To provide another twist to this tale, Bruce and his gang are not the real antagonists in the story but rather just a part of a bigger, broader discernment that’s infectious as it is dangerous in the realm of political power and hierarchy. Kimberly Beck is the angling love interesting that teeters between good friends Mark and David and “Friday the 13 Part IV: The Final Chapter” actress ultimately doesn’t become the focal purpose to David’s revenge (remember, this isn’t a typical revenge narrative) as Beck more than spurs jealously with her feelings for David as well as become eye candy with gratuitous and beachy full frontal nudie scenes. “Massacre at Central High” rounds out the cast with Steve Sikes (“Horrid”), Tom Logan, Jeffrey Winner, Rainbeaux Smith, Dennis Kort, and Lani O’Grady.

The sociopolitical aspect of “Massacre at Central High” is by far the most compelling with the story’s uncompromising subcomponents of teenage high school perils. The fact that are zero parents introduced into the mix makes Daalder’s narrative that much crisper in its poignancy as these children are left to fend for themselves in like some bizarro version of William Golding “Lord of the Flies” that dives into similar themes such as groupthink mentality, social organizations that reshuffles into a lemming trajectory, and even outlier themes comparing Bruce’s gang to Nazism. Behaviors turn on a dime for the worst and bring out the worst when the opportunity to govern the school affairs leads to an asymmetrical power struggle. Even David, our hero of the story, isn’t immune to the adverse effects of change when pushed beyond reasonable reaction after having his leg crushed and he left maimed by Bruce. To David, this turning point reduces down below differentiating the difference between morality and immorality as he views them as equals to right-the-wrongs and to be a way to level out toward equity for all, a quality that’s been an attribute to David’s pre-murderous existence ever since transferring to the school, but the all-around good guy couldn’t rub off the impartial view of the world to others and so he finds himself in a continuous solo crusade of course correcting. “Massacre of Central High” isn’t as austere as “House of the Flies” as its facade is campy and contrived in an artificial manner. The parentless environment disintegrates principles right at the door in “Massacre of Central High’s” biodome of guttersnipes and that sections off this gem from other exploitation ventures in a must-see good way.

Enroll yourself for September 13th releasing of “Massacre at Central High” on Blu-ray home video from Synapse! The spectacular course offers a region free, AVC encoded BD50 Blu-ray that presents the feature in 1080p at a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio and the take on the director’s approved 35mm remastered presentation is tight, detailed, and utterly clean. Color palette is warm but diverse with a great bit of contrast where needed, such as the nighttime skinny dip and love-makin’ beach scenes. Virtually free of wear and imperfections, the impeccable transfer dodges four and half decades of negative ageing with great delineation to show for it. The original English DTS-HD Master Audio mono soundtrack is the only audio option on this release and is more than adequate with the same clarity as the picture. There’s quite a few, ACME-ish style explosions, a tumbling rocks scene, and spates of variable automobile revs, exhausts, and engines to quench an audiophile’s interest with a broad ambient range. With the original soundtrack comes Tommy Leonetti’s clashing lead melodic and easy listening track “Crossroads” that sticks out like a sore love song thumb in the background of murderous revenge. Newly translated optional English subtitles are available. The bonus material includes an audio commentary by “The Projection Booth” podcaster Mike White interviewing cast members Andrew Stevens, Robert Carradine, Derrel Maury, and Rex Steven Sikes. Also included is an archived audio interview with director Renee Daalder with horror historian Michael Gingold, Hell in the Hallways making of featurette with new recollection interviews from the cast and cinematographer, fellow Netherlands native Bertram van Munster, theatrical trailer, TV, and radio spots, and a still gallery. The film is rated R and has a runtime of 88-minutes. “Massacre at Central High” focuses more on detonation than detention as bodies pile high in this explosive dog-eat-dog hatchetjob of unsupervised minors gone wild.

“Massacre at Central High” is Grade A Exploitation!