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Weak Meekness Leads to One’s Own EVIL Destruction. “Catacombs” reviewed! (Imprint / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own Your Copy of Imprint’s “Catacombs” on Blu-ray!

Ellen Garth, a strong willed and wealthy but physically afflicted businesswoman devotes her all her love to an enervated doormat of a husband, Raymond.  When Ellen’s beautiful young niece, Alice, returns to London from Paris after a year abroad, Raymond is smitten by her flirtations for older men and strikes up an affair behind his very perceptive and sly wife’s back who catches them in each other’s embrace.  Tired of being a slave to his wife’s controlling behavior and wanting to be free to court Alice, Raymond kills Ellen and buries her in the potting shed behind their honeymoon house in a plot conceived with Ellen’s right-hand secretary and former con, Dick Corbett.  Believing he’s free of her and having been willed her fortune to share with Alice, Raymond suddenly suspects, after a series of strange events, that he’s being haunted by Ellen’s ghost, or even worse, the undead Ellen herself. 

Black and while horror from half a century or more ago always leaves a lasting impression that terror and suspense can be created by virtually story and acting alone instead of a heavily reliance of special effects and visceral coloring, such as with gore or grotesqueness of the unfathomable creature.  The British film “Catacombs,” or otherwise known as “The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die” in America, is one of those fear manufacturing films generated by pure acting talent and the managing cleverness behind the camera.  The 1965 film is directed by “The Oblong Box” and “Scream and Scream Again” director Gordon Hessler with American screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring (“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”) penning the script based off an American novelist Jay Bennett’s novel of the same UK title.  Shepperton Studios served as house of operations for the Parsons-McCallum production under Neil McCallum and Jack Parsons and distributed by the BLF, British Lion Films.

There’s no such thing as wasted parts or throwaway performances in Hessler’s murderous-revenge haunt with precision-acute actors and actresses chin deep in their characters’ cruelty, callousness, conformity, and control.  Twists and tension-riddle rods help elevate this nearly 60-year-old film to refrain from aging poorly.  Gary Merrill, former husband of silverscreen actress Bette Davis and star of “All About Eve,” plays the meek husband Raymond wed into money but at the cost of his manhood.  Merrill plays convincingly into Raymond’s submissive, passive nature under the more dominant but fair and kind mogul lady Ellen Garth, a hip-afflicted women that doesn’t feel the ailment impede her wealth or attitude in life by way of British actress Georgina Cookson.  In the mix is Ellen and Raymond’s parentless niece Alice who has returned from her studies in Paris seemingly transfigured from a chubby child to a beautiful lady.  Jane Merrow, who co-headlines “Catacombs” with Merrill, finds her stride as the elder-entangling Alice secretly at-odds with her aunt by seducing Raymond behind her back.  Rounding out the principal foursome is Neil McCallum (“Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors’) as Ellen Garth’s sneaky secretary Dick Corbett who has a façade of a hard worker, but Corbett can’t keep up with boss’s demanding energy and is itching to subvert her.  When the story’s peak turning point hits, the expectation of character change recedes back to status quo as if Ellen’s death changed nothing other than open the door of opportunity for Raymond and Alice to connect without concern.  Yet, that inkling of shame, guilt, and fear, mixed under a plot of deception and murder, has the reverse effect of a now burdenless happiness, producing a very little capricious life-change, especially in Raymond who is still as amiable as ever.  “Catacombs’” fills out the intimate cast with Rachel Thomas and Frederick Piper.

The actual use of catacombs, or subterranean burial grounds, has little do in the film other than in its infinitesimal moment of being a key piece of evidence toward something amiss, a tell for foreboding or already doomed health, and serves as one playful, paralleling reason to Ellen’s resurrection, though not reflected in plain sight as playful or parallel by Hessler.  What’s intended the most is building the mysterious dread around Ellen Garth’s return in a semi-gloss gothic polish aimed to crack Raymond and Alice’s psyche in half.  Hessler breeds tension after tension to engulf the characters in an unrelaxing state of disgrace and distrust and what makes the matters worse for Raymond and unscrupulous company is while Ellen Garth may have held all the cards being an authoritative woman of status and wealth, she showed loyalty, humility, and adored her family, friends, and lover despite their flaws and circumstances.  That unjustifiable murder stings audiences the most, a straight shot to the sympathetic heart that creates a need to see those responsible punished by Ellen’s earth-soiled, grave-escaping, dead-cold hands with edge of your seat anticipation.  Is Ellen Supernaturally haunting her killers or is the guilt driving them mad? 

The only way to find out in glorious high-definition is to pick up a copy of Imprint Film’s definitive Blu-ray version of “Catacombs” on an AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50 presented in a 1.66:1 European aspect ratio. The black and white picture receives a 4K scan from the original nitrate negative for its worldwide Blu-ray debt and though not much to mention in regard to colorization and black levels, the monochrome remains sharp at all times in a pristine negative that sees no damage. Usually, black and white can issue fuzziness, heavy grain, and ghosting during spliced cell overlap but this print, or rather this scanned print, looks amazingly fresh, holding patterns and transitioning seamless to the highest of restorative care. The English language is a mix between American and British English encoded with an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mono, rendering a dialogue centric audio with composter Carlo Martelli brass band that’s minor keys taut tension to swell during the height of suspense. Dialogue is clean and clear with very minimal crackling; there’s no wispy or hissing detected. Although the mono feed vectors flatly, the range surrounding “Catacombs” is vast and timed to tackle distinction between the audio idiosyncrasies. Optional English subtitles are available. Special features include an exclusive feature-length audio commentary with authors Jonathan Rigby (“English Gothic: Classic Horror Cinema 1897-2015”) and Kevin Lyons, a new interview with co-star Jane Merrow on her experiences in “Catacombs” Merrow & Merrill, new interview with continuity supervisor Renee Glynne and sound designer Colin Miller The Glynne-Miller Story, a new interview with composer Carlo Martelli Martelli & Martell, and with a still gallery ending the bonus material. Housed in a Hammer blood red cardboard slipcase designed with a rendition of the original poster, the Imprint release is it’s 317th title. The clear Blu-ray Amaray case is even more colorful with a giallo-colored title and back cover, overtop a frightened scene with stars Merrow and Merrill. The reverse side of the cover has more of the psychotronic photo of Ellen Garth (Georgina Cookson) staring blankly into a pocket mirror to submit herself under a trance. The BD is pressed with the same red coloring and half-woman, half-death figure as the slipcase with no inserts included. One thing I will say on the negative side of the package is that the Amaray case is a bit difficult to extract from the slipcase; you kind of have to shimmy and shake it out enough to pull the case out. The 90-minute feature is unrated and did play on our region free player without having to setup flip to the desired region for playback.

Last Rites: Gorgeously macabre yet classic packaging, Imprint’s Blu-ray release of “Catacombs” is must-own Machiavellian umbra of greed and foul play, a timeless tale yarned to yield a megaton of shadow-lurking, supernatural suspense.

Own Your Copy of Imprint’s “Catacombs” on Blu-ray!

What EVILS Lie After Death? “We Go On” reviewed! (Lightyear Entertainment / Remastered Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get Haunted as “We Go On” is now on Blu-ray!

Miles Grissom lives in fear every minute of his life.  What scares the editor of shoddily performed, midnight television infomercials the most is the unknown after death.  The question is Is there a life after you die or is there just a black void of nothingness?  To answer that existential question, Miles places a quarter page newspaper ad seeking an ounce of proof of the afterlife with a $30,000 reward attached for one single person who can show him that there is an existence beyond death.  With the unconditional support of his mother, he scours through hundreds of fakes, solicitors, crazies, and the like until he narrows down the advert answerers to a few possibilities that have real promise.    As Miles investigate the claims of each one, he finds himself closer to the truth than he ever wanted to be and now he’s forever trapped between existential planes for the rest of his life.  

One of the longstanding and biggest questions in the universe is what happens to us when we die?  Where does our immortal soul, the individualistic essence of our being, wander to after the corporeal shell is empty?  Or does it just poof vanish, like an extinguished candle flame?  While all of these questions can be up for philosophical debate amongst the various, and often contentiously stubborn, religious groups and cultures, filmmakers Jesse Holland and Andy Mitten use the idea for their 2016 drama-horror “We Go On” that gives one possible, uncontested and cinematically electric, explanation as well as imparting a somethings are better left unknown dread.  The duo behind “YellowBrickRoad” returned to write-and-direct their sophomore U.S. production with a principal photography location shoot in Los Angeles.  “We Go On” is produced by Logan Brown, Irina Popov (“Chilling Visions:  5 Senses of Fear”), and Richard W. King (“The Witch in the Window”) under the production banner Filmed Imagination.

Miles Grissom is a mild-mannered and scared into solitude individual.  His loneliness, though not conspicuous to any extent, extends to his profession of a video editor of infomercials and other overnight television programming.  Agoraphobia and thanatophobia keeps Miles securely isolated in his modest apartment building where a recurring dream of a car accident sends his heart racing, a side effect of a core, back history moment yet to be explored when we meet Grissom, who is played by a stiff, but gets the psychologically wounded character across, Clark Freeman who has worked previously with Holland and Mitten on “YellowBrickRoad.”  “Cat People” and “Superman III” actress Annette O’Toole fills in as Miles’s ride-or-die, overprotective mother with a deep, dark secret of her own coated with a thin film of backseat family drama that’s doesn’t make her character shine like it should, especially being an important piece and highly influential to Grissom’s character.   Instead, the exposure of the secret and the impact it’s supposed to have is left on the backburner for Nelson to come into play, a greasy airplane janitor with deadly drug problem in what can be described as the best Sean Whalen role he never played with Jay Dunn filling those janitorial coveralls.  Dunn, who would go on to have a role in Andy Miton’s solo project, “The Harbinger,” dons slicked over balding hair, grimy teeth, and a deep, sunken eyes to be a bane toward Grissom’s existence and while Dunn doesn’t have dialogue for half of his onscreen time, he makes for a perfect hang around the background, meanspirited glarer.  The rest of the “We Go On” cast pop in and out as Grissom dwindles down his list of fakes and phonies with appearances from Laura Heisler (“YellowBrickRoad”), Giovana Zacarías, and the always wonderful on screen, “Gremlins 2’s” actor, John Glover, as a scientist trying to scare Grissom into giving him the reward money.

“We Go On” encases more drama elements than horror but the circling horror imagery enclosed has a beautifully grim layout with the minor touches, such as the slow turn of a hanging corpse or the statement of a ripe smell of a long dead overdose victim, that add a palpability, reinforcing the horrific moments and increases the ghastly tension.  The further we journey with Miles Grissom in his obsessive search, the grislier the imagery gets in what is essentially a two-part tale that firstly puts us and Miles on the hunt for life after death that quickly nosedives into a leeching supernatural torment.  Oddly, Grissom takes his newfound nuisance almost instantly in stride with not a ton of obstacle or self-realization work to warrant an acute enlightenment of how to handle an orbiting ghost that flashes disturbing images every other minute inside his mind and allows him to see between the planes of other gruesome ghosts stuck in limbo.  There are other examples of these sudden reversals or improvements that work against the pacing and don’t invite reward through struggle or pain in what is a walk in the park for Miles Grissom to see and handle ghosts being introduced to audiences as a man emotionally crippled by a traumatic, underlying fear.

Via Lightyear Entertainment, an American coast-to-coast independent film distributor, “We Go On” receives the Blu-ray treatment with an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition resolution, BD25.  There’s little information regarding the remastering of the film with the only kick up being a digital restoration and enhanced visual effects and touchups to provide a smoother, cleaner picture presented in the film’s original anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1.  Having never watched the DVD or first Blu-ray version, I have to take Lightyear’s restoration at face value which does have a crisp, clear picture full of natural color and graded with brilliance that sometimes makes the picture look too digitally sterile with not a ton of contouring shadows that can make the picture look depthless at times.  The infused visual digital f/x add about the same flavor, but the images never linger on screen, turning brevity to the film’s effects advantage.  No apparent issues with compression on the 25gig BD; textures modestly tactile despite the bright and airy grading and blacks are deeply saturated with spectrum banding.  The English language audio options include a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and a lossy Dolby 2.0 Stereo.  Dialogue is clear and projecting over the other layers but lacks that full-bodied, full-channeled trait of lossless.  Supernatural effects find distinctive ground and synch greatly with the sudden scares in transition between reality and the ghost realm.  Range and depth are favored by the remastering in the scenes that warrant both, such as the LAX’s airstrip takeoffs that considers the jet plane’s positioning in the background or above, increasing steadily the jet noise volume whenever a plan is in the extreme background to a more overhead location.  Also added for the remastered release are three new, feature-length commentaries:  two with the individual directors in Andy Mitton and Jesse Holland with the third houses the two stars, Annette O’Toole and Clark Freeman. The clear Blu-ray Amaray arranges a darker composition cover art than what the movie actually entails with an interior disc pressed with the same cover and a reversible cover that has one of the more memorable scenes from the feature. There are no insert materials included. The region free, unrated release has a runtime of 89 minutes.

Last Rites: You get what you ask for is the moral of the story maxim in Andy Mitton and Jesse Holland’s “We Go On,” a commercially technique, light-weight thriller with a thin lining of grim imagery between drug overdoses and suicide and adequate performances by Annette O’Toole and Clark Freeman that drops the everlasting question of desire and extreme, emotional fear for instant peace of mind, even if experiencing the terrifying truth firsthand.

Get Haunted as “We Go On” is now on Blu-ray!

Might Be Dressed as a Fool, but EVIL Can’t Outwit This Jester! “The Wrong Door” reviewed! (Visual Vengeance / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Wrong Door” Collector’s Set Available at Amazon!

Ted, a radio sound design student, has to perform a singing telegram dressed in a jester costume on the very evening of having to pull an all-nighter to finish his final college class project.  After his melodic duties are fulfilled and the guests are entertained, he discovers a girl’s unconscious, bleeding body in an adjacent, dark apartment, a girl that he recognizes from campus.  Frightened by the sight and the shadowy figure in the apartment with him, Ted goes for help only to discover the girl vanished with no one else inside the apartment.  His drive back home is full of contemplation on the shocking memory when he notices the girl lying lifeless in the backseat of his car.  From then on out, Ted becomes embroiled into a murder mystery and pursued by the killers who are hellbent on tracking down the Jester-cladded man to cover up incrimination evidence and tie up loose ends.

Even though our unlucky protagonist wears a court jester outfit, there’s nothing funny about the 1990 thriller, an intense bird-dogging murder-mystery, known as “The Wrong Door.”  Helmed by the creative ensemble of friends, the film is written and directed by James Groetsch, Shawn Korby, and Bill Weiss who eagerly sought to make a feature film on a strapped for cash budget after success of their Super 8 short films.  Contemplating using tape for their inaugural throes into feature film land, the auteurs revert their thinking back to film, settling on a faithful celluloid format to which they have experience with in, the ever gritty Super 8.  What results is a tenebrous yet effectively taut confrontation of frenetic hunting and a shocking homicide driven more with ambient sound than character dialogue.  The three creative minds behind “The Wrong Door” formed Sandman Films and coproduced alongside John Schonebaum for the Minneapolis Twin Cities’ production.

Cast locally around Minneapolis area, “The Wrong Door” is chock full of directors’ acquaintances who turned out to be really quite good at the parts they play.  Matt Felmlee stars in his debut performance as Ted, the class assignment under the gun student looking to knock out one last paying singing telegram gig before cutting and splicing audio for a final exam.  Felmlee isn’t given much dialogue to work with and his credibility relies burdensomely on nearly a vocally silent rundown from Jeff Tatum and Chris Hall respectively as deranged stalker and ransacking lunatic Jeff and his accomplice Vic.  Jeff Tatum makes for a good hardnosed psycho in a subtle yet menacing take of a trench coat robed coup de grâce kind of thug but the thug’s partner Vic is left as an nearly obscured sidekick and we don’t get to see Chris Hall ever come out and shine independently from Tatum’s enormous shadow.  Concluding on the three talking roles, unless you consider Loreal Steiner’s mostly dead body popping up performance where she speaks only in Ted’s nightmares, “The Wrong Door” instruments of interaction circulate around the three male principals peppered with Steiner’s maybe lifeless, maybe lively body stringing Ted along in order to slip him damning evidence on who and why she is being brutally murdered, in a nod of Hitchcockian hamboning.  A cast of supplementary, locally sourced pop-ins, including Jeanine Bourdaghs as Ted’s Radio classmate bestie, Stephanie.

Obscured to the depths of regional relevance, “The Wrong Door” is opened only to adventurous cinephiles who are willing to spend hours upon hours scouring through the vastly lower-to-no budget, independent films lost behind the borders of zonal solitude  A Hitchcockian thriller venerated on a humble scale in regard to the storytelling’s use of focused sound design to narrate a chased protagonist under the gun, literally and figuratively, that turns a studious radio sound design student with a final exam project to complete into a marked man hunted down in a foolish jester suit.  Bookend by dialogue setup and a tense, skirmishing climax, the near omission of dialogue in order for sound to reign supreme as atmospheric tensions force viewers, and force them appealingly I might add, into Ted’s chest-tightening, alone-in-fear experience with not only being incognizant of the particulars of the murder surrounding the young woman he was once smitten with but also to his being pursued by goons that hangs us on tenterhooks.  There’s also pulsing paranoia of where the dead set antagonists are hot on his trail and will suddenly appear unforeseen out of the blanketing darkness of an exterior cat-and-mouse game.  This leads into ambiguity near the end that asks the question, did Ted experience all of this strife or was it a clever cut and splice of imaginative audio files to create a whodunit thriller?  A brief sense of hesitation brings a sigh of relief from the nightmare and also onsets a different kind of anxiety of not knowing what truly went down until the very last shot that explains it all. 

Wrong place at the wrong time is the theme for “The Wrong Door” which is the right door to open if looking to walk-through to an understudied tensioner. Well versed in greatly misunderstood, profound stepped over, and overall underdog pictures is the smaller picture championing Visual Vengeance, the distributor behind the collector’s edition Blu-ray release of “The Wrong Door” with an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 product presented in a full screen 1.33:1 aspect ratio. For the first time on disc anywhere, the Super 8mm film receives a brand new, director approved 2K HD transfer from the original elements. The perception of Super 8mm does not hold water here with a relatively pristine image quality for the sized celluloid with a mighty clean image. Other than the white speckles of dust, other signs of minute debris, and the natural amount of grain of Super 8mm, no cigarette burns, light emitting on the frame edges due to perforation alignment, and hardly any scratches hinder quality. Poor lighting conditions in the exterior, and even some interiors, plays to the strengths of negative voids but, in my opinion, adds to the gloomy puzzler filled with action, suspense, and acrimony. While 8mm’s grasp on a grittier saturation, the tonal shading refuses to pop inside the faded film stock. The English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo doesn’t do the new transfer justice. The lossy format likely not the best choice on a sound gimmicky, indie film that uses more innate ambient sound and Foley to tell the story rather than through dialogue. Though manageably capable to pull through to the end, the already lo-fi standard now compressed audio file has anemic energy through the dual channels but while the distinctions are dainty, some distinct distancing between more than two effects does convey. Switching between ADR and boom, there’s never a sense of uniformity with the dialogue that can sounds lively and volumes with post-production recordings yet also be frail within natural earshot of a recording device. Optional English subtitles are available. What’s most impressive about this 14th release from Visual Vengeance amongst 13 titles before it is the seemingly incalculable number of special features within the submenu of the flat, rodded colorful cutouts on the fluid main screen. New grouped audio commentaries with directors Bill Weiss and Shawn Korby in one and the third director James Groestsch and John Schonebaum on the second kick off the content followed by a new documentary with interviews from all three directors in Men Make Movie, If Not Million$, individual interviews with James Groetsch, Shawn Korby, Bill Weise, and actor Bill Felmlee, an interview with Film Threat founder Chris Gore who was one of the few in the field to put the film in his magazine, an alternate, director’s cut of “The Wrong Door” coming in as a second feature, Super 8 shorts: Raiders of the Lost Bark and The Pizza Man, a 20-minute television episode from The Gale Whitman Show, the original unedited Muther Video VHS intro, image gallery, original storyboard gallery, the original ran print from Film Threat, a Visual Vengeance 2023 cut trailer of “The Wrong Door,” and other Visual Vengeance trailers. Tangibly, the release comes with a rigid O-slipcover hypnotically graded in Jester colors of subtle pink and purple. Inside is a clear Amary Blu-ray case with the illustrated cover art that also does double duty for the motion menu and the folded mini-poster insert. Also inserted is a double-sided Blu-ray acknowledgment one sheet, a Visual Vengeance exclusive “Do Not Disturb …The Disturbed!” doorknob hanger, and a retro sticker sheet that’s come standard with every release to date. Reversible cover art displays the original VHS cover, and the disc is pressed as a mock play of a cassette tape’s supply reel teeth – neat! The region free Blu-ray comes unrated and has a runtime of 73 minutes.

Last Rites: Do you hear what I hear? No longer lingering in the vacuous space of radio static, “The Wrong Door” was once another shamefully sidestepped film that has been resurrected by Visual Vengeance for the first time anywhere on disc and, all I can say is, it’s about damn time.

“The Wrong Door” Collector’s Set Available at Amazon!

Beer Can Stuff Boots Give EVIL a New Height! “The Lost” reviewed! (Ronin Flix / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Click Here to Purchase “The Lost” on Blu-ray!

Sociopathic teen-adult Ray Pye guns down two young women he suspects are romantically involved with each other and wants to feel the thrill of the kill for the first time with his two friends, Jennifer and Tim, as frightened, reluctant witnesses and abettors to his heinous crime.  Four years later, police investigation can’t pinpoint Pye as the culprit when the only surviving victim succumbs to her wounds after being in a coma all this time.  Pye, the slicked haired, pathological liar and assistant manager of his mother’s motel, continues his nice boy act as he peddles drugs and tries to woo any girl into bed while having a firm, feared grip on best friend Tim and girlfriend Jennifer to keep them in line.  As Pye chases after new women that enter in his world, the police continue their unofficial investigation, waiting for Pye to slip up and make a mistake but as his manipulation backfires and things don’t go his way, Pye’s already unstable nature morphs into an all-in, serial killer rampage and kidnapping of the three prominent women that have recently challenged his masculinity.

A real down spiral of machoism and growing up out of the adolescent fantasy world, “The Lost” is the 2006, loosely based biopic thriller inspired by real-life serial killer, the Pied Piper of Tucson, Charles Schmid interpreted from the book of the same title by late horror novelist Jack Ketchum.  This part II of our serial killer film review coverage, following the Robert “Willy” Pickton Canadian murders inspiring “Pig Killer,” “The Lost” bring us back to American murderers and is the first solo feature run for writer-and-director Chris Sivertson.   The father-son duo Mike and Lucky McKee, the filmmakers behind “May” and “Roman” co-produce “The Lost” alongside Sivertson and Shelli Merrill under the production company banners of Silver Web Productions.

To play Ray Pye, the actor must incarnate being on the edge of principles and be crazed to the point of no return.   For Marc Senter, Ray Pye was a means to break from minor television roles and star as a leading man defying principal conventions in being the best bad guy he could cook up.  Senter, who went on to be in credited roles of “Wicked Lake,” “Cabin Fever 2:  Spring Fever,” and “Old Man,” will forever be seen as the crushed soda can-filled boot wearing and greaser veneered Ray Pye as the boyish-looking Colorado native brings the ferocity, the energy, and the killer instinct of a high-strung teen teetering the line of losing it all.  Senter’s approach rides on insecure masculinity of being a short man showing teeth to appear larger than life and exacts a screen perforating fear that holds friends Jennifer (Shay Aster, “Ernest Scared Stupid”) and Tim (Alex Frost, “Elephant”) in a tail-between-the-leg stasis of his end all, be all despot presence.  Aside from the Ray Pye storyline, a trio of sub-stories add more development and substance to other principal characters, such as Tim and Jennifer hooking up dictated by them inching out from under Ray Pye’s reach, a washed out midlife Detective (Ed Lauter, “Cujo”), who was formerly on the Ray Pye investigation, and his romantic involvement with a Pye pursuant Sally (Megan Henning, “I Know Who Killed Me”), who is approx. 40-years the Detective’s junior that creates an intriguing, struggling dichotomy between love and appearance, and with the alluring Katherine Wallace (Full Moon regular actress Robin Sydney, “Evil Bong” franchise) in a love-hate, obstinate relationship with an absent psychotic mother and her fondness for Ray in who on some levels mirrors the same qualities as Katherine’s mother.  Michael Bowen (“Deadgirl”), Dee Wallace (“Cujo”), Tom Ayers (“Bloody Bridget”), Cynthia Cervini, Richard Riehle (“3 From Hell”), and to compound skin scenes, soft-core erotic starlets Erin Brown (aka Misty Mundae, “An Erotic Werewolf in London”), and Elise Larocca (“Blood for the Muse”) co-star.

What first struck me about Sivertson’s “The Lost” is it doesn’t define a period in time.  Charles Schmid’s reign of terror coursed the span of a year in the mid-to-late 60s, which follow’s Ketchum’s timeline in the novel.  Yet, the books’ characters follow the movie’s scheme without clearly stating the years, stringing the connection between the three like step-relationships.  Pye’s greaser finish, drive-in burger joints, boxy-rectangle cars and VW Beetles, and a motel as one of the principal shooting locations float in the very essence of the title itself, as a Lost in time story that stretches the decades.  What’s not lost is the aggressive sexual nature that drives the nihilistic Ray Pye’s bedding scorecard by feigned compassion and romance; yet there’s plenty depth behind his sleazy cockiness that warrants more discussion into his problematic psyche, such as how he’s able to charm the pants of these women and how he’s able to keep those who fear him, close to him.  Sivertson’s unafraid to make a statement in “The Lost’s” sexuality with plenty of skin from a number of the principal actresses to the simulated sexual acts in and out the vein of style and in and out of Pye’s sociopathic tantrums that’s more self-doubting bullying than actual power.  At a young age, Pye aims high for machohood by the misguided dealings of the cards he’s dealt, augmenting himself with shoe stuffers and makeup to make him taller and more attractive.  “The Lost” is very much a deconstruction of masculinity mania in the way we see Pye’s worlds comes crashing down and he loses everything when his guard is down by one swift moment of real, tangible love with Katherine and the only way to gain back control, like a hissy-fitting baby, is to go berserk in a if I can’t have it, nobody will tear. 

Evil never looked so dapper as “The Lost” receives a new 2K remaster produced from a 4K scan of the original camera negative by the boutique label Ronin Flix.  The AVC encoded, 1080p, high-definition BD50 contains the presented anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 film with pixel-by-pixel coherence exacting extensive details and chromatic fidelity.  What stuck out the most from the 4K scan was the night scenes blanked in near sheer darkness with minimal direction illumination from natural and unnatural lighting in a positive, well, light.  In night forest scenes, especially around the lake, objects are lost in the void of shadows, tenebrously covered in obscurity, and that’s accomplished and accentuated in the opening moments of Ray Pye’s debut double murder, creating a better illusion of reality rather than creating an illusion out of often folly fabrication of dark blue gels or immense random key lighting.  Textures are strong through, greatly defined by the delineating of edges on striking clothing, cars, and the amount of skin displayed.  Two lossless English audio options are available to select from:  a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and a 2.0 Stereo DTS-HD Master Audio.  “The Lost’s” audio/video design produces a high fidelity and contains a blend of unprocessed and stylistic expression that stretch the audio range depending on the current Ray Pye Richter scaled mood.  Pye’s occasional rapid-fire rants are unmistakable and clear as the decoding unfolds every syllable without sounding seamless or garbled.  English SDH are optionally available.  Ronin Flix delivers new and previously owned special features.  New content like an audio commentary with director Chris Sivertson and Lucky Mckee serve as a trip down memory lane with new, pondered upon insights and recalled tales and new individualized interviews with principal actors Marc Senter, Robin Sydney, and Shay Astar in regard to auditioning, prepping for the role, and recalling their experience on the shoot expand more into “The Lost’s” attention and what it took to illuminate focus on the Pied Piper of Tucson.  A second, archival commentary with writer Monica O’Rourke moderating conversation with late novelist Jack Ketchum, audition tapes, outtakes, storyboard sequence, and the original “Jack and Jill” short film directed by Chris Sivertson fill out the special features.  A new front cover design, replacing the bland bullet hole-riddled and blood-puddled eyes cover on the Anchor Bay DVD and Blu-ray, on the trio of cardboard O-slipcover, translucent Blu-ray Amaray case, and disc art spruces up the Ronin Flix’s lifted release with a sense of hep threads and fatal knuckle sandwiches.; however, that’s about the extent of its physical beauty and tangible adjuncts.  The region free Blu-ray comes not rated and has a runtime of 119 minutes.  Marc Senter’s tour de force burns rubber, a ferocity of friction and perpetual anger sculps one of the best true-to-life silver screen villains from the last two decades. 

Click Here to Purchase “The Lost” on Blu-ray!

Beckerland Fosters Deranged EVIL Upon POWs! “Opposing Force” reviewed! (Scorpion Releasing / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Opposing Foce” now in Control of Blu-ray Home Video!  

Air Force Lieutenant Casey has initiative, determination, and something to prove being the first woman to be approved for a special and notorious evasion and escape course on a remote U.S. base Philippine island.  The course simulates downed Air Force pilots behind enemy lines where they either have to evade capture or escape as POWs without divulging U.S. secrets.  The simulating is meant to break down the individual physically and mentally through psychological and physical torture that nearly blurs the regulation guidelines of the United States military, but has been proven to be an effective training to withstand the most brutal of POW conditions despite the course’s infamous reputation.  Casey joins the ranks of participants, a young group of eager male officers and one experienced Major Logan looking to requalifying for action, and are dropped into the simulated enemy combat zone controlled by General Becker, a calculating commanding officer who has succumb to his opposing force role.  Becker’s unconventional and illegal tactics exploit Casey’s gender in the name of training her, but his knowingly criminal activity puts the rest of the trainees in danger and it’s up to the Logan and Casey to stop him and his opposing force in an all hell breaks loose war.

POW exploitation has been missing in modern day cinema.  A subgenre that is a dark, degrading note of unscrupulous and vengeful action has been exclusive to the 1980s for far too long, barely being reprised throughout the proceeding decades.  Not to be restricted to the popularization films of Chuck Norris of the “Missing in Action” franchise or of Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo II and III, these camp from Hell films run the money and production gamut, pulling inspiration on conflict wars before the decade, such as Korea, Cambodia, and even as far as World War II.  For mainstream, the jungle entices with harrowing heroism that glorifies determined, strong-arming patriotism while showcasing America’s enemies as Geneva Convention ignoring villains who deserve every ounce of blow’em up, shoot’em up at the hands of escaped captees or an elite team, or a one-man, rescue mission.  Nazis saw more action in the low-budget Eurotrash market with sexploitative women-in-prison camps ran by the sleazy, inhumane, and experimenting Gestapo mostly.  American filmmaker Eric Karson, director of Jean-Claude Van Damme actioners “Black Eagle” and Lionheart,” moves away from the Muscles from Brussels and into Tom Skerritt’s mustache behind bamboo bars in the 1986, American-versus-America military-thriller “Opposing Force.”  Penned by Linda J. Cowgill, under the pen name of Gil Cowan in what’s likely a name change spurred by sexism in the industry, originally titled the script as “Hell Camp” but took the name “Opposing Force” based off the antagonistic enemy labeled as OPFOR right on their chest.  “Opposing Force” is coproduced by “Skinner” and “Final Mission” producer Tamar E. Glaser and “Sometimes They Come Back… for More” producer Daniel Zelik Bert under the theatrical distributors of Orion Pictures. 

We already know Tom Skerritt’s world-renowned mustache is in the movie and is the star of the show, but Tom Skerritt is in there as well as the man behind the stache as the seasoned boot Major Logan.  The “Alien” and “Contact” actor become the patriarchal figure to a bunch of figurative sons in younger course participants and overprotective of one figurative daughter in Lt. Casey in a wildly uncharacteristic situation brazenly exploited in unconventional mainstream means in the uncomfortable skin of Lisa Eichhorn (“Deus”).  What Lt. Casey goes through is more on familiar ground with the low-budget sleaze of women-in-prison grindhouse and while it’s certainly jarring and unexpected, It’s a welcoming chance for an upper tiered independent film with big names attached.  A couple of the other big names attached are Anthony Zerbe (“The Omega Man”) and Richard Roundtree (“Shaft”) as Commander Becker and his staff sergeant Stafford.  Becker and Logan mirror each other as veterans that have graded into either being corrupted by power or to be righteous in doing what’s right.  Yet, but Zerbe and Skerritt play into what the experienced actors know best, their trademark stoicism.  Tack on Eichhorn’s equally endurable fortitude and a three way standoff erects a monumental solemn stalemate of relatively the same attitudes until the last straw breaks the proverbial camel’s back and war erupts.  Roundtree at least develops Stafford’s internal conflict when the job bites at his conscious, becoming the connection needing convincing of Becker’s crossing over to the darker side of power like a Sithlord in public face disguise.  The narrative physicality aspects piece together a grueling atmosphere that each actor undertakes appropriately by their determined military rank, but as eloquently as Lt. Casey puts it to the aging Major Logan, “You got a limp and I got tits; these aren’t great things ot have in the military,” sets up themselves as misfits-to-heroes that were being crapped on all their careers for their antithetical military image.  “Opposing Force” rounds out the cast with a bunch of moaning male air force participants in the middle of it all with performances from Paul Joynt (“Echos”), Robert Wightman (“Impulse”), George Cheung (“Rambo:  First Blood Part II”), and John Considine (“Circle of Power”).

Influenced by the U.S. Military’s real life training program known as S.E.R.E. (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape.), Cowgill uses the program to formulate “Opposing Force’s” principle groundwork in setting up the jungle POW scenario on a remote island that goes through the motions of no chance of a rescue and aid of any kind.  Participants are throw into a survivalist gauntlet that turns surprisingly rough aggressive when physical and mental tortures are instilled upon those thinking the training would be a walk in the park.  This particular training simulation is unique to the OPFOR team with an aging officer looking to requalify for combat and the first woman to ever be accepted into the course due to a loophole, throwing new challenges to an embedded far too long commander who can easily break a man’s spirit but tiptoes around the possibilities of what to do with a woman until his insidious power and authority blurs right from wrong and takes the torturous tactics and enhanced interrogation techniques too far, beyond the limits of what’s necessary and beyond the limits of human decency all in the name of reinforce training.  The grueling torture and bush action is palpable enough to contrast the naked, sweaty, and battered bodies with the M1A1 bursts and munition explosions galore.  Only one aspect adds an out of place measure in the narrative and that is of the rest of the POW contingent and their seemingly wishy-washy decision on whether to escape, stay put, or join in the fight against Becker and his live-round shooting island battalion; the group disperses into the jungle only to fade from the climatic third act Major Logan, Lt. Casey, and Botts defending their lives against a treacherous throng and their wicked commanding warden.  Their disappearance doesn’t allow for closure for the acts against them during the entire ordeal and becomes a fizzling distraction.  Another distraction is the severely cut ending that freeze frames on Eichhorn’s final act with her voiceover exposition post-battle in what feels sorely rushed to complete.  The Blu-ray bonus features has an extended ending that’s more completist approach in wrapping up the story sutibly.  For a POW film, “Opposing Force” is an archetype of its originating decade that sates the subgenre’s need to pit an overreaching and ruthless camp head against the resiliency and determinate of the America fighting spirit. 

A re-release from the 2019 Scorpion Releasing Blu-ray comes “Opposing Force” reprising a presence on online retail shelves.  The AVC encoded, high-definition, BD25 is presented in 1080p resolution with a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  Identical to the earlier Blu-ray 4 years prior, the image quality is freshened up quite a bit from the likely 35 mm print source into a detail-laden HD transfer that offers a lush jungle-scape to be in juxtaposition against the camp from within its center, a large guerilla compound bathed in browns and greens make for good POW-themed pageantry.  Skin tones and individual features flesh out nicely, adding detailed levels of salubrious status over the course of the day-to-day detainment. The English language DTS-HD master audio 2.0 leans toward a softer dialogue mix that, for the majority, is discernible despite favoring “Opposing Force’s” selling points: large explosions, pepper potshots, and militant vehicles running rampant around and above the island terrain. Dialogue’s clear enough to emerge without much hinderance with enough depth to provide a sense of position and the audio layer is remarkably clean with no hissing, popping, or static. English subtitles are an available option. Special features include an audio commentary with director Eric Karson, the trailer, and that extended ending I mentioned, and noted preferred, earlier in the review. The traditional Blu-ray snapper casing includes a rendition of the alternate titled “Hell Camp” poster with a more titillating illustrative lookalike of Lt. Casey in shredded rags and ride-up shorts with hands tied above her head and looking over her shoulder. The warm yellow with a hint of white stirs in an element of jungle heat ramped up by also providing the cage accommodations in the background to let it be known you’re about to watch an exploitation POW film. Locked on a region A playback, “Opposing Force” has a runtime of 98 minutes and is rated R. Eric Karson manages to find a place amongst a serrating subgenre that takes an ostentatious, yet not entirely fictious look, at prisoners of war with his “Opposing Force” actioner that goes to convey that not every unethical and malintent camp leader is a foreigner; evil can also be domestically grown.

“Opposing Foce” now in Control of Blu-ray Home Video!