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Milan Has All the Best Short Film EVIL! “Drag Me To Fest” reviewed! (Rustblade / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Hurry! Grab the Limited Edition Copy of “Drag Me to Fest” Before Its Gone!

An outpatient nurse is requested by an old woman leaving by her lonesome.  Always forgetting and troubling eccentric, the humble nurse finds he’s in way over his head with a clearly unstable, possibly delusion woman, until the truth of her hidden secret unveils a web of horror.  A young couple looking to help a lonely farmer find themselves erecting a sheep fence as well as maintaining the upkeep of a strange rock formation known as a Tursemorkel that emits ooze out of black orifices and soon find the psychological and physiological energy from the Tursemorkel is more than they can withstand.  An elderly couple, tucked away inside their roadside camper trailer, whips up a finger-licking meaty stew made from all natural, locally sourced ingredients as they watch the nightly news’ top story of a missing person.  A man answers the doorbell and finds a package on his step, scratching and crawling out is a festering corpse eager to play with him.  A priest with an obsessive bug collection has him turnaround when a recently caught rare beetle toys with his mind.  Dafne, a young woman lost in another state of mind, is in the presence and in the arms of her own, personal demon. 

These bloodcurdling tales are the latest batch of horror shorts from the annual Milan, Italy hosted Drag Me to Fest.  The festival brings together Italy and international filmmakers to submit their unique brand of terror.  The 2024 lineup were submitted to the Milan collection in 2023, hit the festival the following year, and has now been compiled onto a home video release for North American audiences to enjoy and cower in teeth chattering fear under its namesake title, “Drag Me to Fest,” from Italian distributor Rustblade Records in association with MVD Visual, a subsidiary of MVD Entertainment Group.  Norway’s “Vevkjerring,” or “The Weaving” by Øyvind Willumsen and “Tistlebu” by Matthew Valentine kick off the anthology followed by Italian filmmaker’s Riccardo Suriano’s “Long Pig”, Julie Gun’s “Dafne is Gone,” and Jacopo Vismara’s “Il Coleottero” and finally rounding out with Japanese director Nori Uchida’s “For What the Doorbell Tolls,” all of which are self-produced.

Three countries, six distinct films, and all packed into the unusual side of ambiguously horrifying elements contained inside six short films.  Each character is curated to fit inside the narrative design, no matter how outrageous or avant grade the message is.  Willumsen’s “The Weaver” is a more straight forward, common structured horror of building up tension in an already uncomfortable situation of a friendly, living assisted male nurse Henrik (Fredrik Hovdegård) knocking on the doorstep of a haggard and kooky old croon named Gudrun, played devilishly and disgustingly by Isa Belle.  The next four episodes become a bit vaguer in their intentions of madness, purgatory, survival, and obsession that intends to either harm or transfigure into something beyond the dimensional standard.  “Tistlebu” aims to transfigure as a young city couple (Sascha Slengesol Balgobin and Sjur Vatne Brean) look to connect with nature and their curiosity, coupled by intrusive misuse and sexuality, toward an earthy pillar of energy inside a widow’s (Oda Schjoll) barn enraptures them into something more primordial, literally connecting them to an omnipresent natural world that’s much bigger than their insignificant need.  Uchida provides his own one-of-a-kind performance based immensely off Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” by playing not only the hero but also the decaying plaything that arrives at the hero’s doorstep in one’s mirrored rotting of loneliness.  “Il Coleottero’s” Don Antonio (Mimmo Chianese) has a crisis of faith that become sidetracked by his diligent hobby of entomology when his prized find, a rare beetle, suddenly disappears from his collection.  Chianese finds the balance between being a disenchanted priest and an anxious man hunting for the beetle that got away and that will eventually destroy him.  Julie Gun’s “Dafne is Gone” is more operatically finessed with interpretive dance between Dafne (Giulia Gonella) and a demon (Jason Marek Isleib) that’s completely absent of dialogue, stagecraft visualized, and characteristically naked to showcase Dafne’s descent into the Demon’s spellbinding movements.

The collected and presented works are not the highest dollar productions but do encase a prosthetic practicality as seen in Willumsen’s “The Weaver” with a shedding of an exterior layer into a more grotesque freak of nature while Uchida takes the tribute route using filleted flesh and milky contacts, along with LFE tones and grading, modulated vocals, to accomplish his own version of “Evil Dead” without the presence of Ashley Williams.  The others are not as cut and dry with their infinite interpretational insights that likely will speak more on a personal level than a glossy buttered popcorn one that requires little effort to absorb.  “Tistlebu” and “Dafne is Gone” entrench themselves in their respective unknown and modern art by providing very little in the one thing they both have in common, a shared sense of unsettlement.  There’s also an undertone of sexualism as if it equates to the very beast that entrances, which in these shorts is the Tursemorkel, which is a large surface growth that emits an allurement of safety and gratification, and, in comparison, to the demon, perhaps her own visceral demon, that frolics to breach Dafne’s temptation, drawing her closer to his own colorfully neon netherworld in a production of warmly dark euphemism.  “Il Coleottero” is perhaps the best understated undercurrent between the skepticism that plagues man and his faith.  Shot mostly naturally, tension is built on Father Antonio continuous deviations from his religious duties, distracted in his homilies and divine surroundings, by the mere fact of a lost beetle, a beetle, similar to the appearance of a Stag Beetle, that toys with him.  One could assume the beetle represents a test from God to challenge the priest’s diversification balancing his faith between realism against spirituality, to quote biologist J.B.S. Haldane, and I paraphrase, if the creator had made life, it must have been inordinate fondness for beetles because of their profound species diversity.

“Drag Me to Fest” has now hit DVD home video for the first time in its 3rd annual run with a limited edition to 500 copies courtesy of Rustblade Records, routed through the North American distribution channels of MVD Entertainment Group under their MVDVisual label.  The region free release, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, is encoded onto a MPEG2, upscaled 1080p, DVD5 with palatable average of image quality in its varying degrees of filming equipment, lighting, and technical know-how to get the intended look without suffering cinematography faux pas.  Compression wise can be a different story but, generally, “Drag Me to Fest” has an adequate presentation albeit a less-than-desirable color saturation, especially Gun’s “Dafne is Gone” that implements warm neon primary coloring in a high contrast, hard light emulsion.  Skin and pattern textures vary from short-to-short, but the delineation is there to not blend depth nor create solid, smoothed out surfaces.  Valentine’s “Tislebu” relies heavily on the rolling hills and greenery farmscape to enact its character qualities for an Earthy or terrestrial mystery important to the sentient and engrossing formation.  The Italian, Japanese, and Norwegian language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo offers a passable mix that doesn’t elevate the atmospherics or construct tension to the max but neither does it flounder or lay waste to the support of the shorts.  There’s not a profound amount of leveled depth or creative sound design to fabricate space as much of the dialogue and environment resides in the foreground, and the dialogue does render over clean and clearly with forced errorfree English subtitles, but the focus is primarily on moving the story in a matter of minutes for some of the shorts, leaving narrative devices, such as characters and the effects, to drive the story and its tension.  The DVD is a barebones released that does not come with any encoded extra content, but the slim, trifold jewel case does depict a grouping of cherry-picked ideas from the shorts in a green bath illustration from graphic artist Gonz and has individual taglines and color stills for each short.  The 92-minute anthology is unrated. 

Last Rites: Abroad anthology with a goal to highlight and amplify short filmmaker voices, “Drag Me to Fest” finishes up from the main screen and extends to home video for the first time! Rustblade and MVDVisual illuminate the cinema obscure for the general public and we’re all the richer for it!

Hurry! Grab the Limited Edition Copy of “Drag Me to Fest” Before Its Gone!

Black Mamba Wriggles Only for EVIL! “Venom” reviewed! (4K UHD and Blu-ray / Blue Underground)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Slither into “Venom” on 4K UHD and Blu-ray Combo Set!

American family, the Hopkins, live in London and while Mr. Hopkins travels the globe to attend to his international hotel business, Mrs. Hopkins and son Philip, live wealthy in their three-story row home along with visiting, Safari-expert grandfather Howard Anderson.  When Mrs. Hopkins plans a trip to see her husband after a month a part, she’s worries for Philip’s severe asthma attacks but with the assurances of the grandfather, the housekeeper, and Philip’s rudimentary zoo in his room, full of furry creatures in vivarium cages, Mrs. Hopkins half-heartedly boards her international flight.   Not everything is going to fine, however, when the housekeeper schemes with the family chauffeur and an Interpol criminal Jacmel to kidnap Philip for ransom.  The foolproof plot commences to plan with departure of Mrs. Hopkins and the arrival of Jacmel but one little mishap causes the plan to quicky unravel when a Black Mamba, one of the most aggressive and poisonous snakes in the world, is mistakenly crated and provided to exotic animal enthusiast Philip instead of his harmless ordered common variety garden snake and when the Black Mamba gets loose, it slithers in the house’s ventilation system, the house they’re all hold up in when the police swarm the outside perimeter. 

What was once going to be a Tobe Hooper (“Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) directed production before his eventual and sudden departure from the film after a few weeks, the 1981 crime-thriller with a creature feature twist, “Venom,” is then picked up by the late director of  “The Blood on Satan’s Claw,” Piers Haggard, to finish the Robert Carrington (“Wait Until Dark”) adapted screenplay off the Alan Scholefield novel of the same title.  The American screenwriter Carrington writes nearly a faithful iteration of the Scholefield novel but with more emphasis on the serpent’s over-lurking presence as an important reptilian character to the story, serving as a catalyst for the upended kidnapping plot and determining the fate of certain characters.  The UK film is American produced by Martin Bregman, the spear runner for “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Serpico” as well as “Scarface” and “The Bone Collector” later in his career.  Morison Film Group served as production company on the mostly LLC entrusted venture.  

If the American Tobe Hooper did helm this picture, directing Leatherface as an actor would been child’s play in comparison to what would had been if he had to corral a pair of strong-willed, A-type personality Europeans in Germany’s Klaus Kinski and Britain’s Oliver Reed, both with well-known and formidable career of not only in genre films but also to be problematic and difficult to work with.  The “Nosferatu the Vampire” and “Aguiree, the Wrath of God” Kinski was perhaps mostly misunderstood for his not understanding of inflections, innuendos, and gestures of the English language that made him often sounds gruff and antagonistically questioning the director’s every choice whereas the “Paranoiac” and “The Brood” Reed was plagued with alcoholism and was equally gruff in his own right as a dedicated actor saturation with austere method stratagem.  Yet, on screen, Piers Haggard manages to get the two hurricane forces to be on-the-edge cooperating, backed-into-a-corner kidnappers without cutting any tension when interacting with each other.  Distinct in demeanor, Kinski as a calm, trench coat KGB-type and Reed as an anxiously and trigger-happy, hotheaded brute put on a good show in their respective performances and beat the odds of two notorious personas colliding.  Haggard doesn’t coddle them either and lets them loose to exact the carrier in their own right even if off-book and they’re even more vilified by taking hostage a young boy Phillip, the introduction of Lance Holcomb (“Christmas Evil,” “Ghost Story”), his Safari-seasoned grandfather Howard Anderson, played by beard-laden and serial gesticulating Sterling Hayden (“Dr. Strangelove,” “The Long Goodbye”), and a zoo toxicologist named Dr. Marion Stowe who is caught in the middle when checking up on the mishap switcheroo of the snake, played by Sarah Miles (“Blow-up”), neither in shape or in vigor to be a proactive hero.  The no-nonsense Police Commander William Bulloch, shoed with “The Exorcist III” actor Nicol Williamson, a brazen candor and stoic expression with Williamson offering frank wit and a sarcastic dryness that barely gets him one step into the house; instead, it’s the Black Mamba that’s the real and unintentional hero that seemingly only has a fork tongue and fangs for villains, leaving the other hostages alone.  “Venom’s” also has Susan George (“Straw Dogs”) as the traitorous housekeeper, Mike Gwilyn, Paul Williamson, Hugh Lloyd, and the first Butler of the 1980s-1990s Batman quadrilogy Michael Gough playing real life snake wrangler David Ball in tribute. 

From the pages of Alan Scholefield’s novel to the big screen, “Venom” has a slithery way about slipping into between the crosshairs of a crime-thriller and a venomous creature feature.  Leading “Venom’s” charge is an undoubtedly great, if not iconic, cast giving their all to a farfetched plot of bad luck Ophidiophobia.  While the snake seems to have heat vision eyes only for the Klaus Kinski, Oliver Reed, and Susan George trio of kidnap-for-ransom criminals, who amongst themselves are in a deceitful love triangle that’s doesn’t quite come to a head as one would expect, there’s no animal kingdom peril to the other victimized threesome who, on a physical, first glance surface, are less equipped to handle a dangerous snake with a young, asthmatic-plagued boy, an elderly grandfather, and a nerve-bitten woman but, in reality, Phillip Hopkins, Howard Anderson, and Dr. Marion Stowe are respectively the best equipped to handle the black mamba as an small animal atrium hobbyist, a former African safari survivalist and animal expert, and a venomous snake toxicologist.  Perhaps, this is why the Black Mamba avoids these three at all costs and never interacts with them on a perilous level.  The fantastical mist that’s sprays us lightly with a crimefighting snake has comical properties that standout against what is a palpable thriller involving an international criminal, cop killing, child abduction, and the mutilation of a corpse. 

Blue Underground continues to update their catalogue with a 2-disc, 4K UHD and Blu-ray combo set of ‘Venom.” The UHD is HVEC encoded, 2160p ultra-high-definition, BD66 and the Blu-ray is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50. In regard to picture quality, both formats are nearly identical transfer that’s stems from an all new 4K 16-bit restoration from the original 35mm internegative, with the UHD receiving Dolby Vision HDR. UHD is slightly sharper around delineation when gliding between dark and light, which is often inside a merge of a half-lit house to draw more tension toward the potential presence of a deadly snake. The 1080p presentation also provides a pleasing clarity that offers little to negatively note. Color grading and saturation between the two formats show signs of varying quality by a thread with the 4K saturating that much more intently across the board with a better control over the grain levels with the Blu-ray appearing a touch thicker for the pixels to flare optically. The native 4K and 1080p come with an English Dolby Atmos as well as options for either an English DTS-HD 5.1 or a DTS-HD 2.0 stereo. Speaking only to the Atmos, the all-encompassing mix shepherds in a clean, discernible quality without any audible seams. Skirmishes, dialogues, and all the commotions in between find isolated channels of distinction that can put you immerse you into the action. And there’s plenty of action to be had coupled with a Michael Kamen’s brass horn and string score that’s both memorably building with excitement and thrilling that preludes Kamen’s orchestrated composition work of “Die Hard,” starring Bruce Willis. Despite the circumference of sound spaced mostly in interiors with a hodgepodge medley of a street full of police, reporters, and gawkers, the dialogue is equally distinct, discernible, clean, and clear without signs of hissing and crackling strains. Subtitles included are in English, French, and Spanish. The 4K special features include a new audio commentary with Film Historians and Blue Underground commenting regulars Troy Howarth, Nathniel Thompson, and Eugenio Ercolani, an archived commentary with director Piers Haggard, and film trailers. The Blu-ray disc contains the same commentaries and trailers but extends further with new exclusives in an interview with editor-second unit director Michael Bradsell Fangs For the Memories, an interview with makeup artist Nick Dudman A Slithery Story, a film historian point of view interview with British critic and author Kim Newman, and an interview with The Dark Side’s Allan Bryce providing his in-depth two cents and historical surveying. TV Spots are finish out the encoded extras. “Venom” 4K and Blu-ray combo set is physical appeasing to hold and behold with a muted black slipcover with tactile elements on both sides of embossed letters and stark coloring that’s striking in its simple snake fang design arraignment. The black, thick Amaray case has the original “Venom” artwork with the optional reverse cover art. I’m not a fan of the inside design that houses a disc on both sides as there is no room place for 18-page collectible, color picture booklet which just floats inside. The booklet features an essay by Michael Gingold, cast and crew acknowledgements, and chapter selection on the back. The discs are pressed with one or the other cover arts. This gorgeous-looking release, on the outside and inside, comes region free, has a runtime of 92 minutes, and is Rated R.

Last Rites: “Venom” might have been snakebitten back when selling book adaptations of crime capers stopped by a single snake might have seemed farfetched but, today, the 1981 film remains a cult classic of the ophidian nature being one of the earliest serpentine creature features with an imposing, impressive cast. Blue Underground proudly presents the film with a new, and improved, ultra high-definition release.

Slither into “Venom” on 4K UHD and Blu-ray Combo Set!

An EVIL Auction Decides One Girl’s Self-Inflicted Fate or the Entire School Massacre of Goth Students. “Eating Miss Campbell” reviewed! (Troma Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Eating Miss Campbell” on Blu-ray from Troma Films and Refuse Films!

Vegan-goth Beth Connor contemplates suicide daily while attending a high school with a student body that’s cliché to a 90’s horror film and living with her grossly affectionate father and stepmother who are nonchalant and oblivious to her own self-destruction.  When a new, radical, American headmaster is hired at her British school, he creates the “All You Can Eat Massacre” contest that grants one winner a chance at a fully loaded handgun to either kill those of the winner’s choosing or blow their own brains out.  Apart of the accompanying American contingent on school staff, a new English teacher, Miss Campbell, catches Beth’s eye, and she falls heads-over-heels for her.  The contest is Beth’s way out of this clichéd life but her feelings for a morally complicated Miss Campbell and Beth’s sudden urge to consume human flesh puts a small damper on her chances to win the “All You Can Eat Massacre” that’s also highly sought after by a trio of stuck-up, TV themed-named girls aimed to eradicate every freak, geek, and goth on campus grounds.

“Eating Miss Campbell” is the meta-horror-comedy that amplifies stains of the American way, history, and culture in a concurrent saturation of satire.  The Liam Regan film is everything Lloyd Kaufman and Troma Films dreams of in a Troma presented production with a goal to subvert the routine machine of mostly rightwing establishments and conventional, cherry-coated filmmaking.  The United Kingdom film, shot in Yorkshire, is a sequel to Regan’s “My Bloody Banjo” of 2015 but only with a few returning characters in a new situation rather than direct follow-up.  Regan’s sophomore film is the second chapter to what’s being labeled as the Bloody Banjo saga and is a production of Troma, Refused Films, and the “Bad Taste” inspired-company name Dereks Don’t Run Films with Regan and Kaufman producing and Dereks Don’t Run Films’ Danny Naylor serving as executive producer.

A cast made up UK and US actors, “Eating Miss Campbell” marks the return of some familiar faces and character names from Regan’s “My Bloody Banjo” with Vito Trigo (“Return to Nuke ‘Em High Vol. 1,” “Assassinaut”) as Mr. Sawyer now the progun, proviolence American headmaster of Beth Cooper’s school, Laurence R. Harvey (“Human Centipede 2,” “Frankenstein Created Bikers”) as Mr. Sawyer’s indelicately charming number one Clyde Toulon, Dani Thompson (“No Strings 2:  Playtime in Hell,” “Rock Band vs. Vampires’) as Mr. Sawyer’s well-endowed lover with an affection for younger high school boys, and, of course, no Troma production would be complete without a Lloyd Kaufman appearance or cameo as he re-enters the role of Dr.  Samuel Weil for a brief spell on a how-to dispatch oneself.  These returning personalities are integrated into a new grotesque story that surrounds high school goth and aware of the third wall girl Beth Cooper, played by “Book of Monsters” actress, and who has killer bangs, Lyndsey Craine.  Coopers looking to break out of the horror movie cliché by nixing herself before being consumed by the prosaism of it all, and she expositions this all to the camera, talking right to the viewers, to express her discontent and reasoning.  The tongue and cheek affair doesn’t end there with Emily Haigh (“The Lockdown Hauntings”), Sierra Summers, and Michaela Longden (“Book of Monsters”) playing into that 90’s theme by being Clarissa, Sabrina, and Melissa, all different television role iterations of one of the 90’s most iconic actresses Melissa Joan Hart.  The film rounds out with real life couple James Hamer-Morton (“Dead Love”) and Charlie Bond (“The Huntress of Auschwitz”) playing Beth’s parents, Justin A. Martell (“Return to Nuke ‘Em High Volume 1”) as school board member Tusk Everbone, Annabella Rich (“Powertool Cheerleaders vs the Boyband of the Screeching Dead”) as Nancy Applegate the bloodthirsty racist, Alexander J. Skinner as the girl chaser jock Ethan Rembrandt (Hotel Paranoia), and Lala Barlow in the titular role of English teacher, flesh eater Miss Campbell.

“Eating Miss Campbell” is completely satirical, completely outrageous, complete overtop, and a Troma contemporary classic.  Director Liam Regan understands the Lloyd Kaufman’s market audience to provide an unfiltered, unfettered independent production careening with uncontrollable momentum of bloody cannibalism, screwball antics, and topless gratuitousness and, in turn, solidifies himself as a Troma archetype director.  “Eating Miss Campbell” is a practical effects believer that implements squibs, prosthetics, and buckets of stainable blood to use in borrowed locations and while gruesome aspects work for the film, the pacing and storytelling is quite patchwork.  Covid-19, like the virus did for most films in production prior to 2020 lockdown, halted Regan’s progressive flow and caused a year-and-half, 18-month gap, that required additional weeks’ worth of shots, disrupting the flow in story and in character. There’s not a ton of filler to build history, storylines, or even give a moment to connect the pieces and absorb Regan’s revolving madcap that include references to cherry-picked scenes from “My Bloody Banjo” and the whole meta concept that beleaguers audiences with rants and rancorous tudes about reliving a certain period in time, such as a cliched 90’s horror movie for example, or a culture bastardized by violence and grotesque, maligned shapeshifters, and this becomes more than providing protagonist insight and protest propaganda no matter which way you slice and rearrange the story, and that goes without saying that’s most of Troma’s cuckoo-tastic catalogue.

Troma Films and Refuse Films proudly presents “Eating Miss Campbell” onto a Lloyd Kaufman introductory stated unrated director’s cut, Hi-Def Blu-ray. The AVC encoded, 1080p, BD25 presents the film in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. A feature and a trunk load of extras on the lower shelf of capacity format, keeping in tune with most Troma home releases, shouldn’t surprise or phase the physical media aficionados to know there are compression issues along the darker tones with banding and some posterization, smoothing out textures in poor lighting. When details do emerge, they’re noticeable and visually enriching a right-to-rebel indie production without going overboard into the clarified butter that is major studio glossiness and precision. Often heavy shadow contrasting doesn’t dispel the vivid and appeasing coloring scheme that pops intermittently and skin tones, though skin texture in general bleeds into the adjacent shade, appear about as natural as initially captured without filter, gels, or post work enhancements. The British/American English track in a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound mix lessens what should be a quite robust hitting of every audible mark. The scale of “Eating Miss Campbell” is quite expansive from start to finish, carrying over into a number of interior and exterior sets, as well as a lucrative range of diverging, differentiating noisemakers but what’s at hand does the job adequately with plenty of emphasis on the more foolish sense of humor. Depth is rarely utilized in what’s mostly medium-to-closeup scenes and replaced with just a level playing field loading of dialogue, which is clean and clear. An English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is also available. Troma releases are good for special features and “Eating Miss Campbell” is another testament to a haul of extra content, including an audio commentary by director Liam Regan, editor Jack Hayes, and foley artist Finn Brackett, a 7 Days of Hell behind the scenes documentary that looks at the making-of the film with the post-COVID pickup shots, deleted scenes and outtakes, a gag highlight reel, raw b-roll footage, even more behind-the-scenes footage that’s nearly an hour long, the FrightFest premiere, cast interviews, VFX reel, the Troma radiation march against pollution, Troma in Time Square takes a look at Troma’s streaming service, Abbie Harper’s music video Tromatized, and the trailer. There are also a couple of prologue introductions with a Ukraine support intro and a Lloyd Kaufman as character Dr. Samuel Weil with intercut video of director Liam Regan. The traditional Amaray has a dim cover with colorful lettering in a compilation of characters overtop the high school. The disc is equally black with the same colorful lettering and a black and white penciled razor blade encircled by stark red blood. The region free release has a runtime of 94 minutes.

Last Rites: “Eating Miss Campbell” has edge that favors, or even flavors, Troma’s taste with a high school shooting, cannibalistic, no holds barred, teacher-student affair alternate societal universe that’s tough to digest but easy to chew.

“Eating Miss Campbell” on Blu-ray from Troma Films and Refuse Films!

Who is This EVIL Named “Dariuss” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD – Extreme and Unrated)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Find Out Who “Dariuss” Is With this SRS Release!

An experimental vision quest of loss, grief, and death takes refuge in a small English town, inside an old and quaint English house.  A mother grieves for the loss of her child, sobbing uncontrollably and mindlessly wanders with distant stares as the heart pains for her child.  The grandmother, doing what she can, comforts her daughter’s newfangled distraught nature while the husband, grieving in his own isolated way, stays out late at night to drink himself into a stupor.  When madness lurks about their home and intrudes upon their privacy, a vile and heinous loss of life bathes a depraved lunatic in their fluids.  Neither mother, father, nor grandmother is safe from terrific travesty in corporeal form.  A sickness has arrived to cure the inconsolable, eradicating them slowly of the pain in the most painful of ways imaginable, and doing it all with a bloodstained maniacal grin stretching from ear-to-ear.

A hellish loop of defeating pessimism, “Dariuss” fringes the black void areas around reality and escapism that evoke the uncomfortable nature of people and the unpredictable tides that turn for the worst when already at rock bottom.  “Dariuss’s” brackish, brainsick narrative is the brainchild of Guerrilla Metropolitana, an Italian artist crafting his underground and dark cinemaverse of misanthropic mayhem and esoteric eroticism.  The writer-director Metropolitana lives and creates out of London, UK and “Dariuss” is his 2023, debut feature-length film behind an oeuvre of distressing shorts of human imperfection and immortality encroached by a constant line of madness.  Metropolitana not only self-funds and produces his film, where he achieves total control to push back against not only major studio norms but also conventional independent stratagem, but provides the avant-garde cinematography, unorthodox editing, an experimental score and sound design, and even costars the trench coat covered naked body of the antagonistic killer. 

One element to not forget to mention before going through the cast is that “Dariuss” is completely without dialogue.  Metropolitana’s sound design manipulates and repeats many sound clips, such as the plops of water droplets or the high-pitch lip trilling, to fashion an uncomfortable audio sensation sporadically strung throughout that parallel’s the coupled low tumbling score and baby laughter, the later more so when referring to child loss or the abhorrent reincarnation of the child.  Ila Argento holds the majority screen time, especially since the pregnant woman credited as Sarah Isabèl is also Argento as well in some sort of meta crafting or illusion, and she plays the grieving, depressed wife wailing, screaming, and just distantly starring in vast quantities and in a daze of mirrored or painted inversions about the English home.  “Dariuss” is more than just extreme performance art as it embodies interval wretchedness associated with trauma, or in this case more specifically, loss through a reverse world looking glass.  As the wife is tended to by the grandmother, played with apneic conditions and posturing concern is Marie Antoinette de Robespierre, Archibald Kane’s the husband role is scantily around for a father who just lost a child and when the father is in frame, he’s idling in his car drinking, or rather gulping, from a bottle.  Both the grandmother and father roles are a part of Metropolitana’s message of a shattered family structure of insincerity and disconnect. Feeding on that dysfunction is the childlike maniac, played by Metropolitana himself, with rapacious amusement off the back of the household’s suffering.  Almost as if the maniac is a reincarnation of the lost child, perceived by play like antics in a nearly naked and hairless state and audible by the babylike, post-introduced laughter, returning home to exact horrific horseplay on his family involving rape and murder and cannibalism alongside the frolicking and breast milk chugging.  

Let’s preface with an important fact that “Dariuss” will not be everybody’s cup of tea; in fact, Metropolitana’s film is more like bitter black coffee with a pungent, sour smell as a narrative series of images, like a splayed, taped together string of polaroids, giving godawful glimpses of grief and gore.  Sounds and images repeat that beg for madness to emerge out of the nouvelle vague filming style, experimenting with various inverted images, mirrored and angled shots, different types of aged filters and strange lighting, various camera speeds, and oddly framed shots will subject audiences to pricklier sensory sensations than the depicted violence and gore, which is graphically ghastly and extreme with necrophilia and cannibalism.  Story structure also veers into non-linear territory but the gist of the acts is present, if not loose and equivocal for open interpretation and choice cinema characteristics that stray from normal convention, to mold a beginning, middle, and end in only a way Metropolitana can construct by contrasting melancholic grief with stagnating indifference, with a maniacal pleasure of a sandbox of sinew, and, in way, comical by way of the insanity with disturbing imagery mixed with playful mischievousness. 

Just who is Dariuss?  That’s the obstruse person perhaps at the centermost of this ghastly, grisly story that’s now on DVD from SRS Cinema as a part of their Extreme and Uncut label.  The DVD comes MPEG2 encoded, 480p standard definition, 5-gigabyte DVDR that showcases a wide-range of filters, inversions, lighting designs, grading, and you name it, “Dariuss” likely did it of cinematography techniques that stay in the rough patches of eccentricity rather than being comfortable in the fairways.  Picture quality fluctuates and varies depending on the aesthetic chaos methods being deployed, leaving behind not the sharpest looking picture with noticeable pixelation on anything above a 32″ television but not enough of an eyesore to be an imperceptibly deterrent.  Depth has fair spatial qualities but range and saturation is pretty limited to an anemic neutral palette to only when the monochrome or higher contrasts are not in play. The LPCM 2.0 stereo contains no organic matter, meaning that none of the sound is captured within the scenes, as Metropolitana modulates, manipulates, and modifies singular notes and tones for creepy and ear-splicing effect. This also pertains to the soundtrack being completely devoid of dialogue to give the auteur complete authority of how his film she be heard and every bit of that sound design is front loaded and high-powered but to an intended unrefined audio art. English captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing is available. Special features encoded are a behind-the-scenes still gallery and SRS trailers while the standard Amaray comes with an SRS illustration of the film’s original one-sheet, transposed to the disc pressing. There are no inserts included nor slipcover. SRS Cinema’s release is region free and has a runtime of 62, ideal, or even a tad bit too long, for this type of experimentation.

Last Rites: Not to be confused as a nail-biting, popcorn thriller, “Dariuss” will only speak to a select few able to bend the mind to impressionistic, dark eroticism and savagery, both qualities of which Guerrilla Metropolitana has and depicts in droves.

Find Out Who “Dariuss” Is With this SRS Release!

EVIL Tossing Back an EVIL Hail Mary! “The Last Match” reviewed! (Cauldron Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Last Match” is Now on Blu-ray From Cauldron Films!

A sovereign, Latin American banana republic is a beautiful paradise for those seeking tropical getaways, such as with 18-year-old Susan Gaylor and her boyfriend George indulging in paradisial romance, but paradise turns into hell when Susan is accused of smuggling drugs out while going through the departure gate at airport security.  George flees the scene to evade capture and phones Susan’s father, famous football quarterback Cliff Gaylor, to help administer talks to release Susan.  When negotiations fall on deaf ears, the American consul is handcuffed by little-to-no relations with the incarcerating nation, and the local counsel are nothing more than greedy exploiters, Cliff and George have no one and nowhere else to turn to except for Cliff’s team of broad shoulder teammates and a gameplan-calling coach dedicating their lives to suit up and extract Cliff’s daughter from the cruel grip of Warden Yashin and his miscarriage of the law and order with an all-out offensive assault.

Italian filmmakers directed a football movie.  No, I don’t mean fútbol, aka soccer.  I’m talking about American football with face-masked helmets, shoulder pads, and a prolate spheroid shaped ball with laces you kick through the uprights.  The contradictory idea isn’t so much of a theorotical concept as it is a reality with Fabrizio De Angelis’s directorial attempt at pigskin gridiron in the early 1990s.  The “Killer Crocodile” director helms the jailhouse break picture entitled “The Last Match, or “L’ultima meta,” released in 1991, from a script by fellow Italians Gianfranco Clercic (“Cannibal Holocaust,” “The New York Ripper”) and Vincenzo Mannion (“Murder-Rock,” “The Last Shark”) that blitzes hardnosed foreign opponents with not only high caliber assault rifles and ammo but also done in full team gear, right down to the numbered jerseys and cleats.  Angelis produces the shot in the Dominican Republic film with Mark Young serving as executive producer with Fulvi Films as the production company.

Not only does “The Last Match” have a theme around an American sport, but it also employs a nearly all-American cast, a popular course of casting once the Italian industry started to gain traction and making films in The Boot proved to be more costly at the time, plus American actors were also far more marketable than Italian actors.   Ernest Borgnine (“Escape from New York,” “The Poseidon Adventure”) plays the fair-weather looking coach who knows common football terms, about as generic as coaching on screen comes without dipping into play strategies and being inundated by the game.  Borgnine’s cruise control motivation is equaled by Charles Napier (“Supervixens,” “Rambo:  First Blood Part II”) in the performance of a hands-tied American Consul stationed in the unnamed tropical country.  While Borgnine and Naiper act in natural nationality aspects, there are also another pair of Americans who transition their talents to be native islanders who are subsequently more deviously portrayed in what becomes a pro-American, anti-foreigner perception.  The actors, whom are also both New York City born, are Martin Balsam (“Death Wish 3,” “The Delta Force”), as a greedy local defense attorney who tries to exploit Cliff Gaylor’s desperation, and Henry Silva (“Almost Human,” “Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold”) with his wide face stretching a maniacal grin as the sadist warden Yashin and though Balsam and Silva tout the root of evil archetype, molded to their individualized immorality, they barely fit in the framework of Latin American men with a less than convincing swarthy spray tan.  In the middle of it all is German-born “’Tis Pity She’s A Whore” actor Oliver Tobias as football star father, Cliff Gaylor, determined to try every line of legal offense to acquit his daughter for the firm hand of the country’s tight authoritarian, punitive system.  Gaylor’s arc possess a line of natural progression through anger, confidence, and desperation, and perhaps even a little bit of all hope is lost but does become stymied, or neutralized, but Coach’s unconventional jailbreak playbook that sends Gaylor into the backseat though he still quarterbacks the mission, at least on paperwork.  Melissa Palmisano as the Gaylor’s wrongfully incarcerated daughter Susan and Rob Floyd playing her determined to help but pretty much young and useless boyfriend George fill out the remaining principal cast alongside bit part support from Jim Klick, Jim Jensen, Jim Kelly, Mike Kozlowsky, Mark Rush, Bart Schuchts and Elmer Bailey as Gaylor’s football brethren in arms. 

As for escape from foreign prison/work camp films go, “The Last Match” ranks at mid-range with a plausible conflict involving being a foreign tourist patsy to mule drugs through airport customs only to be caught, charged, and sentenced to be condemned without fair due process and entitled to incorruptible legal representation.  The scenario enacts frightening destabilizations of a pre-CCTV and security vigilance airport situation, evokes hopelessness of relief or assistance within a near lawless republic, and you can feel Gaylor being drained of all avenues where even his fame and fortune can’t even muster any type of traction in releasing his daughter.  Being a father myself, there’s a compelling aspect to see an expat father helpless in strange surroundings, suppled by indifferent and aggressive native blockades in a corrupt system, with his only choice then being to extract his only child with violent force.  This is the point where the compelling subjugation stops and the gaminess of the story begins to unravel when Coach brings the boys to the yard, yard being the tropical island, to acquire an arsenal, helicopter, and suit up in their conspicuous gridiron gear for an all-out prison assault.  Garbed in bumblebee yellow football pants, black helmets, and white jerseys, the elite wildcat formation commando unit isn’t dressed to blend into the background, foliage, or even the night with their reflective color gametime getup.  Coaching from the sky, Borgnine is perched high in the helicopter calling off plays while his offensive team makes quick and dirty work of the island prison defense without nearly a fumblerooskie.  Conceptual neat for the movies, but practically asinine for reality, “The Last Match” favors the fortunate heroes with a near obliteration of the entire prison camp without a single loss to their own, especially when they’re not in any kind of bullet resistance helmets or vests.  Fabrizio De Angelis runs the ball with confidence in his mildly amusing sports themed actioner as he’s able to blend footage of a national police bowl game into his narrative by fashioning matching football uniforms.  About as surprising as a fleaflicking trick play to win the game, “The Last Match” is worth going for the endzone on 4th and long.

A pulled-pin pigskin grenade explosion thrill ride in the tropics is “The Last Match’s” hard-hitting American football done the Italian way. Cauldron Films’ new Blu-ray release is the U.S. home video and worldwide debut from a new 4K restoration from the camera negative.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 presents the film in the original aspect ratio, the European widescreen 1.66:1.  There’s hardly anything to fault in this clean, sharp, diffused color saturated picture from a well-stored camera negative that has seemingly suffered no time or external wear and tear.  Grain appears naturally disseminating into a favorable detailed reproduction print with skin tones that are organic and don a nice sheen and rivulets of sweat when things get heated in football and in armed assault.  Tropical landscape remains focused in back and foregrounds, especially in instances of Giuseppe Ruzzolin’s (“Hitch-Hike,” “Firestarter”) mirror reflection shots, but not a ton of wide or long shots to take in the scope of the Caribbean battleground, limiting scenes to medium-to-closeups that crop the milieu quite a bit when you’re trying to sell a large-scale football bowl game or an ambiguous kakistocracy tropic nation.  The English language DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 provides lossless fidelity with full range diffusing evenly through the dual-channel output, separating decisively the dialogue and the action.  With a majority of the cast native English speakers and having been filmed party in the U.S. and in the western hemisphere, ADR is not the main source of recorded dialogue with boom work providing and capturing the distinct voices and personalities of some of the more recognizable voice talent, such as Ernest Borgnine and, especially, Charles Napier’s Kentuckian twang.  However, there’s quite a bit of hissing feedback sporadically throughout.  Action depth is a bit front loaded, naturally with any dual channel, with the explosions and gunfire that never quite hit the same distance markers but do excel in being robust where needed.  English SDH subtitles are available.  Cauldron conjures new and exclusive special features with an interview with special effects artist Roberto Ricci Blown Away, a minidoc about American actors in Italian cinema narrated and directed by Mike Malloy, Italian film aficionado Eugenio Ercolani provides a video essay Understanding the Cobra, a commentary by Italian exploitation critic Michael A. Martinez, an image gallery, and the film’s trailer.  Cauldron Films has continued to provide eye-catching artwork with reversible cover sheets and “The Last Match” is no exception with dual compositional illustrations of football players wielding AR15 rifles and bazookas, though I’m not so confident the illegal purchase of Island armory would be police issued AR15s and bazookas.  Just sayin’.  There are no other tangible supplements with this release.  The region free Blu-ray is not rated and has a 94-minute runtime.

Last Rites: An Italian film using big named American actors pitting an armed, American football-cladded, rescue team against a hostile and sinister island prison, creating “The Last Match’s” action extraction of hairbreadth escape and pulling it off!

“The Last Match” is Now on Blu-ray From Cauldron Films!