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A Corrupted Nation, Operated by EVIL Drug Lords, Are No Match for “McBain” reviewed! (Synapse Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“McBain” Explodes onto Blu-ray from Synapse!

Vietnam War has officially ended, and U.S. troops evacuate the worn torn country almost immediately until Robert Santos and his squadron happen upon a Vietcong-controlled POW camp still operating under the merciless thumb of North Vietnamese soldiers either unaware of the news that war is over or are blatantly disregarding defeat to deface the enemy. During the trouncing of opposition in a fury of firearms and explosions, Santos saves POW Robert McBain seconds before being stabbed in the back by the enemy. McBain pledges a debt to Santos for saving his life. Eighteen years later, the now Colombian revolutionary Santos, in fighting for his countrymen’s freedom and end of suffering, is killed by an iniquitous President controlled by a narcotic cartel. Santos’s wife travels to America to find McBain where the former soldier regroups Santos’s old platoon to avenge their brother in arms as well as to free the struggling people of Colombia from dictatorship and tyranny.

Director James Glickenhaus, known for his handful of thrifty, R-rated, action thrillers with some of the biggest names of the 1980s, including Jackie Chan, Sam Elliott, and Peter Weller, had previously not helmed a picture with a budget more than $5-10 million. That is until he met “McBain,” a fictional, titular character Glickenhaus created and wrote the screenplay for in his first feature at the turn of the decade. The 1991 film tripled in budget compared to the filmmaker’s previous films, aimed high for a larger scale that took the retribution guts of the story to multiple locations from around the New York metropolitan area to the surrounding waters of the Philippine islands that doubled for politically despotic Colombia in South America and multiple, sizeable explosions around every scene corner. “McBain” also hired an esteemed actor to bear the weight of the title that would contest the very robust budget against “The King of New York’s” star power, paid for by Glickenhaus’s own production banner, Shapiro-Glickenhaus Productions with executive producers Leonard Shaprio (“Black Roses”) and Alan M. Solomon (“Moontrap”) and producer J. Boyce Harman Jr.

“The King of New York,” if you haven’t clued in on the hint by now, is Christopher Walken playing a former Vietnam veteran turned NYC steel worker fulfilling his promise to repay a life debt to fellow former soldier Roberto Santos (Chick Vennera, “Last Rites”). Walken, in at least my eyes, has always been a one note kind of character and as McBain, that note remains true here as well.  Don’t get me wrong about Walken’s feature-after-feature character continuity as the acclaimed actor has his cool-cat idiosyncratic inflections and pompadour hairdo.  There’s also a relaxed swagger about the now 80-year-old actor that remains recognizable from his earlier work to all the way to today.  Usually, we do not see Walken paired up with a love interest and “McBain” is no different in a side-by-side with “Running Man” and “Predator 2” actress Maria Conchita Alonso as Christina, sister of Robert Santos.  The two are more servants of doing what’s right, connected by singular retribution, to provide justice for a mass of people drowning in injustice because of a small group of corrupt and dangerous empowerment.  McBain and Christina rarely share the screen together in a strategic mix of accomplishing their own parts of the mission:  McBain rallies sympathetic mercenaries to obtain money and gear while Christina rallies her people to rise up and raze the crooked administration.  Walken makes the ordeal look like a stroll in the park with lofty assurance to take down an entire country’s military power juxtaposed against Alonso soulful, teary-eyed pursuance in the eyes of Christina that’s more compassionate and real, especially with Alonso’s investment as a Cuban born actress who may know a thing or two about dictatorships.  McBain mercenaries are not a ragtag bunch but the former military unit that saved him from POW Hell along with Santos, but they are more of a ragtag, mixed lot cast of actors amassed to be characters ready to leave their professions and livelihoods for a South American throwdown.  Michael Ironside (“Scanners,” “Starship Troopers”), Steve James (“The Warriors”), Thomas Waites (“The Thing”), and Jay Patterson (“Hard Rain”) see to it that those mercenary warriors are committed beyond a shadow of a doubt and, no, Michael Ironside does not lose a limb in this film.  A rather bland McBain is backed by a rather highly skill set of commandos, such as post-Vietnam billionaires with long-reaching tech and a war pilot who is also now a surgeon, and this creates some depth complexity between a former POW turned steel worker McBain and those who saved him and came out better in life than the titular character.  “McBain’s” explosive action rounds out with roles from Forrest Compton, Hector Ubarry (“Crocodile Dundee II”), Nigel Redding, Victor Argo (“True Romance”), Michael Joseph Desare, and Luis Guzman (“Innocent Blood”). 

Explosive would be one of the words I would use to describe “McBain” to someone who hasn’t seen the film.  Another word I would use would be rudimental.  “McBain” struggles to provide opposition for our band of solicitous to the cause heroes who steamroll over the entire Colombia army and air force with little-to-no resistance or demise unless it was their own decision.  What basically unfolds is a much more expensive version of the A-Team with high powered gear and a will to flatten just about anything that lays in their path, making “McBain” shallow like an extended television episode rather than a saga of epic explosive proportions.  The one good aspect about Glickenhaus’s production is the pyrotechnics are ridiculously off the charts with a nonstop stop bombardment of military armament, combat vehicles, and personal convoys strapped with a weaponry assortment of M50’s, incendiaries, and stingers to light up every scene with miniature mushroom clouds glow with the heat of orange, yellow, and black.  “McBain” might as well have titled “McSplosion” with all the hellfire that lit up the budget.  Unfortunately, “McBain” doesn’t yield any other megaton fringe benefits from the acting to the story that seemed to have been caught in hoopla of the collateral damaging combustion, like an Andy Sidaris actioner but without the equalizing T&A to extinguish the bad by igniting another kind of pants fire.

Synapse Films delivers another high-quality product with the new 2K transfer of “McBain” on an AVC encoded, 1080p, Blu-ray.  Presented from its OAR of 1.85:1 to a high-definition 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, Synapse’s Blu-ray release clearly has a pristine transfer to work from, likely the reason why there’s no mention of restoration printed on the back cover.  No significant signs of damage, age wear, or unnecessary augments on the 35mm print.  No notifiable compression issues on the information decoding that averages around the high 30s on a sizeable BD50.  A varied color palette has a renewed, clean, and stable appeal, pleasing to absorb and delineate objects within the primaries as well as patterns and sundry hues that separate into a range of objects and locations.  Specified new is the English DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround soundtrack created this release.  Accompanying also is the original theatrical LPCM 2.0 stereo mix.  The DTS-HD mix has superior strength to maximize the explosions across the cross-media channels. There’s also an unobstructed dialogue track that prominent but maintains the varying degree of depth during bullet buzzing skirmishes and the flaming tailed rockets.  Transmissions and comms hold the range to the appropriate subdued amount and, even more so, when the enemies engage each other in aerial combat. Exclusive to the release are newly translated, optional English subtitles. Bonus content underperforms on this particular Synapse title with only an audio commentary with director James Glickenhaus and film historian Chris Poggioli as well as the original theatrical trailer. Physical content comes home in a green, standard-sized Blu-ray snapper case with one of the more illustratively warm “McBain” poster arts on the single-sided cover art. Inside, a multi-page advert catalogue is included for your browsing pleasure and the disc art is rendered with the front cover art. “McBain” is rated-R, has a 104-minute runtime, and the release has a region free playback. “McBain” promises a retreat back into action for those missing action after the war is long over, but though there is a lot of bang, there isn’t a lot of buck with a seldomly challenging fight that practically makes McBain an invincibly dull crusader.

“McBain” Explodes onto Blu-ray from Synapse!

Just Because Your EVIL Dad Says Its Okay, It’s Probably Not. “Netherworld” reviewed! (Blu-ray / Full Moon Features)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Enter the Netherworld on Blu-ray!

A wealthy owner of the Thorton plantation bequeaths to his willfully neglected son, Corey, his large Louisiana estate. He’s welcomed by the estate’s unusual lawyer, a house caretaker with an affinity for birds, and her beautiful daughter Diane who, despite her teenage muliebrity, immediately takes an interest and liking to the handsome young man. Corey is also met with his shirker father’s penned testament, to be resurrected from the dead by a sexually alluring brothel woman and necromancer named Delores who works at the local bordello and bar named Tonks. Fascinated by the idea, Corey hangs around the bar and becomes just as engrossed with Delores as his father as he seeks to abide by his father’s supernatural wishes but there’s a warbler cult connected to Delores and Corey’s father with an underhanded scheme that doesn’t favor the new, young estate owner trying to save and possibly get to know the father he never knew, the same one who abandoned him as a small child.

One of the more stranger Charles Band productions to every come out of Full Moon Entertainment, and that’s saying something for a media empire that made killing on hawking killer dolls amongst other oddity-saturated, carnivalesque sci-fi and horror for many decades, “Netherworld” is the early 90’s, Cajun-encrusted, occulter of the Full Moon legacy director of “Tourist Trap” and “Puppet Master,” David Schmoeller, who also cowrote the film alongside Charles Band. “Netherworld” harkens to a time before Band became visionally crazed by dolls, or miniaturized maniacs in general, with a plot that promises Cajun black magic beyond the traditional spells and curses of Louisiana Voodoo, a son desperate to reconnect with his long-lost father who abandoned him, and a flying stone hand with finger extremities that turn into vicious snake-like creatures when attacking the quarried head, but is “Netherworld” too extrusive of the regular and in vogue poured cement of solidified psycho-dolls? ‘Netherworld” is executively produced by Charles Band, produced by Ty Bradford (“Trancers II”) and is a part of the vast Full Moon Entertainment catalogue of productions.

Unsuspectingly walking into between the veil of the living and the dead is predominately television actor Michael Bendetti (“21 Jump Street”) embarking on his first ever horror feature as Corey Thorton, the city boy, or so we assume as he leisurely journeys down a windingly steamy Louisiana tributary in a button-down shirt and tie, who learns his deadbeat, rich father has left him a large amount of property. For having been left fatherless for all of his life, the pill that read as Corey’s deep-rooted longing to familiarize with a flake of a father is a hard one to swallow. The angle that Schmoeller should have attacked more resurrection motivation is the one that involves Corey searching for answers in his father’s disfavor, choosing to live without the flesh and blood legacy of a son, and why now, posthumously, does his father want to reconnect? Audiences will find the answer overly obvious, but Corey Thorton’s thickness proves more difficult to penetrate, especially when he’s beguiled by an enchantress who can summon a flying, snake-fingered hand that emerges an affixing binding wire out from its stony skin and can turn whorehouse johns into caged birdies, literally, if they misbehave or become indelicately frisky. The house keeper’s horseback riding daughter Diane is marred by Holly Floria (“Bikini Island”) with an excessive Southern Belle accent when her character’s status doesn’t stem from sophistication and affluency but rather from the blue collared starry eyes of Anjanette Comer’s (“The Baby”) motherly and hospitality position. When the climax arrives in grand temps and we’re face-to-face with Corey’s ghostly pops, living in the titular Netherworld, the story takes a sudden branch drop that executes any voyage into the void between worlds and there’s quite a bit of neglect for Robert Sampson (“Re-Animator”) as Corey’s father who barely has any scenes to live up to being the film’s primo antagonist pulling the strings of the marionette of his flesh and blood. “Netherworld” fills out the cast with Robert Burr (“Ghost Story”), Alex Datcher (“Passenger 57”), Holly Butler (“Vendetta”), George Kelly (“Jugular Wine: A Vampire Odyssey”) and Denise Gentile (“Ordinary Madness”) as the super-sexy, premium prostitute Delores with parapsychological powers that connect her to the land of the dead.

Off the tip of a gator’s nose, “Netherworld” offers a taste of Full Moon’s 90’s production, promising radically outlandish F/X with a monstrous airborne hand, saucy sexual content, and gore. Corey’s inner thoughts exposition and waterway introduction tends to be more private eye monologuing in the explanation setup of his unplanned inheritance and it also feels like the brittle beginnings of a trashy romance novel: young man travels down the river to his inherited late father’s estate, torn between a pubertal young daughter of the long-standing estate housekeeper and the haram brothel seductress with an eldritch, supernatural inveiglement. Corey’s past lacks backstory, leaving an even playing field across the board of all characters and participating audiences in what to expect from the wild card that is Corey. Immediately drawn to the wanton Tonks not for carnal desires but rather the one woman who her father says can restore his past expiration, Corey’s not a wild card of ambiguity as his role lacks the pull of tough decisions, often between character versus character conflict, with basically a mind already made up to visit the bar-and-bordello despite the ominous warning signs between George Kelly’s sloppy bayou cajuner wanting to dance with Corey at Tonks, Diane’s strong opposition for Tonks in general, and amongst others dubious gratifying points. “Netherworld” very much lives in a world of opposition, like Superman’s bizarro world that defies logic. Logic such as the transition of people into birds, or being inducted into a clan of avian cultists, or ciphering who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy, or, and this is the most important or, the suddenly cleaved ending that not only doesn’t allow a satisfying ending but also doesn’t explain much, in dialogue or in action, what came into existence once Corey was stuck in the Netherworld other than the obvious trade his father wanted to force.

Full Moon Features brings Hell to Blu-ray with an uncut and remastered from the original camera negative transfer of “Netherworld” in the continuous effort by the empire to upgrade all their classics for a new wave of format availability. Scanned into 2K from the 35mm negative, the AVC encoded, 1080p, high-definition Blu-ray looks pretty darn good. Well kempt over the years, the negative appears to have sustained little age or wear that progresses the hi-def upgrade with relative ease. Color grading is warm and stoked with detail that encrusts every object – the lushy bayou forest, the stony power of a flying hand, Michael Bendetti’s layered curly-perm mullet – all of it is greatly textured and delineated for depth, presented in the 1:78:1, widescreen aspect ratio. Compression doesn’t appear to be an issue despite a lower storage BD25 but that might be due to the utter lack of bonus accompaniments. The release offers two audio options: an English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and an English Dolby Digital 2.0 mix. Both options are equally suitable as the there’s not much more environmental oomph through the extra channels despite the full-bodied cacophonous cicada singing, which unfortunately doesn’t open up depth in the back channels despite the prevalence of the singing in the story’s background sonance. However, dialogue doesn’t feel cheated with a dominating layer and decent range to go with it. Along with essentially what is a bare bones disc, there are also no subtitles available with this release. What is available to view outside the feature is other Full Moon trailers and the original VideoZone segment that covers this particular 1992 gem. Physical features don’t stray too far from VHS, to DVD, to Blu-ray with the same flinty hand rocketing outward in a 3D-like position on the front cover. There are no inserts included with this release. “Netherworld” Blu-ray comes region free, with a runtime of 82 minutes, and, for the first time ever, uncut! An opposition to the usual spun of Louisiana voodoo-hoodoo, there’s another dark magic brewing in the bayou in “Netherworld,” but the promising story can’t coherently piece together down river in an uneven quagmire of quandaries.

Enter the Netherworld on Blu-ray!

EVIL Has the Right to Remain Dead! “Magic Cop” reviewed! (88 Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

No Two-Bit Magician In ‘Magic Cop” on Blu-ray!  

Hong Kong cops are confounded by a chaotic drug bust when learning that their female suspect, who had managed to overpower an entire unit of male officers and even take a bullet ambling deadpan into the streets, had died 7 days prior.  An outlying officer, and practicing Taoist, Uncle Feng is called to Hong Kong to not only quickly solve the narcotic crime but also investigate the unnatural properties of the case.  Feng is accompanied by his city eager niece Lin and two Hong Kong cops, a Taoist devotee and skeptic of Ancient Chinese spiritual mythologies.  Together, they track the drug trail to The Sorceress, a Japanese witch with powers that rival Feng and that can resurrect the dead into zombies and vampires to do her bidding, such as trafficking narcotics.  When the investigation closes in her business, The Sorceress and her right arm, skilled fighter plan to remove the only man worthy of stopping her.

Fans of Ricky Lau’s “Mr. Vampire” will once again be amazed and entertained by the fantastical and mystical action of Stephen Tung Wai’s “Magic Cop.”  Tung, a fellow martial artist and stunt man who had roles in “The Fatal Flying Guillotine” and John Woo’s “Hard Boiled,” helms his debut directorial penned by Chi-Leung Shum (“Vampire vs Vampire”) and the longtime Stephen Chow script writer Kan-Cheung Tsang (“Shaolin Soccer,” “Kung-Fu Hustle”).  The screenwriting duo brought lighting quick comedy to the mostly fictionally invented yet sprinkled with slivers of hard-pressed veracity and definitive entertaining occultism and what resulted resurrected “Mr. Vampire” semblance out of the being a period piece and into the modern day, backdropped in the year of 1990 when the film was released.  Long rumored to be the fifth sequel of the “Mr. Vampire” franchise, “Magic Cop” is a coproduction between Movie Impact Limited, Millifame Productions Limited, and Media Asia Film with star Ching-Ying Lam producing.

“Magic Cop,” and even “Mr. Vampire,” wouldn’t have such a cult following if it wasn’t for the Vulcan eyebrows and thin mustache of Ching-Ying Lam in costume.  The short-statured, Shanghai-born Lam delivers the same vigorous choreography and tranquil demeanor to this particularly stoic character of Uncle Feng, a Taoist practitioner to essentially wrangle unruly entities and please the spirits in the in-between our world.  Feng is old world and finds himself in surrounded by modernism when in Hong Kong, goaded by the young lead sergeant attached the case.  Practical as well as disrespectful, Sgt. Lam (Wilson Lam, “Ghost for Sale”) epitomizes today’s, or rather back then the 1990’s, modern man who has forgotten tradition and deference to those who came before.  Though padded with a fair amount of comedy coursing throughout, balanced against the impeccably edited tango fight sequences, Sgt’ Lam’s partner, known only as Sgt. 2237 played by “Centipede Horror’s” Kiu-Wai Miu, risibly wants to understudy Uncle Feng’s powers while Feng’s niece Lin, played by Mei-Wah Wong of “The Chinese Ghostbusters,” provides the subtle and quirky opposite sex that catches of the philandering eyes of Sgt. Lam.  The ragtag quartet of influx mindsets and personalities become challenged by their single common goal, to stop whoever is behind breathing life into the formidable dead and stop the unorthodox method of drug smuggling.  Former Japanese bodybuilder Michiko Nishwaki (“City Cops”) embodied that very dark magic antagonist.  Nishiwaki handles The Sorceress character with ease despite not having a surfeit army under her thumb; instead, this forces Nishiwaki to become the entire villain body with the slight, full-contact support for her right-hand bodyguard (Billy Chow, “Future Cops”) and a couple of undead lackeys, including Frankie Chi-Leung Chan of “Riki-Oh.”  “Magic Cop’s” cast rounds out completely with well-versed and seasoned, late actor Wu Ma (“Mr. Vampire,” “Return of the Demon”) as the chief inspector polarized in a complicated history with Uncle Feng.

What director Stephen Tung Wai boils down in essence is another variation of good executants of spirit humbled caretakers versus the wicked necromancers existing inside the fabric of the highly praised and cult-following “Mr. Vampire” universe.  Frankly, there’s nothing wrong with that derivativity since Ching-Ying Lam, Mr. Vampire himself, produces and stars as the titular hero.  Lam can conjure whatever-the-hell he wants in order to battle Hell itself.   “Magic Cop” is also a well-made, entertaining story, balanced between the contest wizardry, slapstick comedy, and the character dynamics, and stacked with improbable yet gratifying step-intensive fight orchestration that has gawked early martial arts films a wonder to behold and continues to do so to today but now trickles with pizzazz more-after-more due to put in place industry safety measures.  “Magic Cop” contains that lost art of potentially hazardous palatable physicality that beguiles more than the movie’s faux magic exhibited on screen.  To add to the authenticity, very little painted composited visual effects were used with makeup and the actors doing much of the heavy lifting with the editing team of Ting-Hung Kuo and Kee Charm Wu in full cut-and-paste fortifying mode to button up each sequence with comprehendible continuity of each punch, kick, and magical chopsocky.  One overtone made well known in “Magic Cop” is the unfillable chasms between old and new, respect and disrespect, and myth and science from whence solves no problems until some unified common ground can be reached in order to succeed, in this case, to stop a bitch of a witch.    

An age-resistance 35mm print scanned onto a buffed 2K Blu-ray that extracts the best print elements to-date. The AVC encoded, 1080p, Blu-ray presents Stephen Tung Wai’s picture in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. A fine-tooth comb through the celluloid couldn’t unveil any major issue with the 88 Films release. Colors are richly grafted within the sabulous surfaces that are exceedingly defined with delimited, shadow-creating depth. Decoding speeds average around 35Mbps on a BD50, securing categorical choiceness amongst other releases and formats (that is until the potential 4K release). The release comes packed with four audio options to explore: The original Cantonese DTS-HD master audio 2.0 mix, a Cantonese DTS-HD 2.0 home video mix, an English DTS-HD 5.1 master audio dub, and an English DTS-HD 2.0 dub. Between the variated audio mixes, we preferred the original Cantonese DTS-HD 2.0 due to its cadence with the image and welcoming exactness through the lossless compression process. You can make do with the other three options, but the fidelity is much better with the original mix and only anti-subtitle sectarians would be pleased with an English dub. English subtitles are optional and synch well the dialogue but be prepared to speed read as the pacing is quick much like the dialect. Software special features include an audio commentary with Hong Kong film experts Frank Djeng and Marc Walkow, an alternate, standard definition Taiwanese cut of the film with alternate score, an interview with director Stephen Tung Wai, image gallery, and trailer. Endowed with a limited-edition, cardboard slipcover, the dark green Blu-ray snapper has newly illustrated, front cover artwork by Manchester graphic designer and 88 Films resident artist Sean Longmore, which is also on the cardboard O-slip. The reversible cover art has a reproduction of the original Hong Kong poster art. Stuffed in the insert is a mini-folded poster of Longmore’s front cover and a disc art, a scene moment captured in spherical rotunda, of the opening sequence. Available with a regional playback limited to A and B, the 88 Films release is not rated and has a runtime of 88 minutes. ‘Magic Cop, perhaps, wasn’t the sole proprietor of influence but certainly had a black talisman plying hand in the substrata of more Western favorites like “Big Trouble in Little China” and is a crucial cornerstone in representing the best of the Hong Kong Golden Age of cinema.

No Two-Bit Magician In ‘Magic Cop” on Blu-ray!  

Recalled to Nam is a Return Tour of EVIL! “Kill Zone” reviewed! (MVDVisual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Enter the “Kill Zone” on a New Blu-ray Home Video!

Combat POWs are captured by enemy forces, imprisoned in an outdoor internment camp.  Tortured for information, the prisoners are held without water in the scorching heat, strung up for hours on posts, beaten to a pulp, and stowed away in a hotbox if they do not cooperate with interrogators.  When Lt. Jason McKenna snaps and loses grip on reality, he breaks free from his confinement and kills four guards during the process when the soldier believes he’s back in Vietnam.  The only problem for McKenna is that the enemy imprisonment was a his own military’s roleplay training exercise for POW-survivalist.  The commanding officer, Colonel Crawford, had pushed McKenna too hard, making the exercise realistic as possible despite the warnings of fellow trainee and McKenna’s friend, Mitchell.  Now, the incensed Colonel is out for blood, covering his tracks with military leadership as he and the gung-ho soldiers seek to put an end to McKenna and it’s up to Mitchell to find his troubled friend first. 

The high-body count film that became the launching point for what would form Action International Pictures, 1985’s “Kill Zone,” an American-made, military actioner written and directed by the late David A. Prior (“Sledgehammer,” “Killer Workout”), opened the production door for a string of both action and horror ventures that spawned cult followings over the decades to come, especially when obscure titles such as “Kill Zone” never made it passed the release of its VHS format – until now.  John Saxon’s “Death House,” “Teenage Exorcist” with scream queen Brinke Stevens, and even the pint-sized creature feature “Elves” are just a few titles that owe “Kill Zone” some ounce of ground working thanks.  Prior cowrote the script with Jack Marino, who also produced the film under the limited formation of Spartan Films, and was shot in and around what is now Prado Regional Park in Chino, California.

Trekking from internment camp to civilization, aka the kill zone, and fighting and fleeing for their very lives from their own crooked military unit are McKenna and Mitchell, played correspondingly by “Killer Workout’s” Fritz Matthews and Ted Prior, younger brother of director David Prior.  Though Matthews has the emotional range of a tree stump, the leading man more or less fits the bill as a tall and stocky soldier protagonist while Mitchell does all the emotive heavy lifting of the pair, reflected in his large and muscular Stallone-sized biceps.  The comrades’ necks fall under the boot of Colonel Crawford from an aging David Campbell (“Scarecrows”) whose ridicule onslaught is dousing and his ruthlessness remains constant but can’t top the baseline he cemented early on into the story, diluting his villainy with not much formidableness, and becomes a feeble opposition.  Colonel Crawford is backed by his equally inadaqute military unit, former fellow trainees that divide themselves into a clique against the diverging outliers McKenna and Mitchell who separate themselves from the apathetic herd thinking either by post-traumatic mental illness or for concrete concern for a life-saving friend.  Either way, the rest of the unit bully their way into Crawford’s good graces albeit the Colonel’s lack of interest in the lives or death of his men in a nationally organized armed force that breathes the creed to keep the peace, but the Colonel’s men are just as complicit to their commanding officer’s callousness when they begin to rough up and snuff civilians in what is the most cold-blooded aspect of “Kill Zone’s” torrent.  Dennis Phun (“Surf Nazis Must Die”), Rick Massery, Richard Brailford, William Zipp (“Mankillers”), Richard Bravo (“Killer Workout”), and Larry Udy fill out the Colonel’s men while Ron Pace, Tom Baldwin, Jack Marino, and Sharon Young round out the civilian contingent.

On the surface, “Kill Zone” has the presentation of a direct-to-video, low-budget rip of “First Blood” but like the Sylvester Stallone John Rambo thriller, commentary undertones rise to the top with an additional few bobbing and freestanding from 1982 film.  Producer Jack Marino admits watching “First Blood” prior to writing the script that obviously become appropriated from the Ted Kotcheff picture in what is an underlining post-traumatic syndrome plagued individual in a dormant stage of the affliction then becomes pried open by aggressive, misapprehending authority with no time for a condition they’re ignorant too.  What follows is a deadly resistance against a barbaric enemy and the starkly different situations both characters John Rambo and Jason McKenna find themselves caught up in parallel their hellacious Nam tour in many synapse-snapping and physically scarring aspects to a point where the line blurs between being back in that Hell in reality and being back in that Hell in the mind.  What “Kill Zone” adds to its own version of the tale is no pedestrian anti-war pushback like we see with Brian Dennehy’s Podunk sheriff and his deputies but rather a shift in commentary toward the military’s once push harder and neglectful treatment on PTSD in what becomes an anti-military production to the extreme.  John Rambo had military sympathizers in Richard Crenna’s Colonel Trautmann but Jason McKenna’s Colonel spat flak with nothing but contempt for what he considers a weak soldier.  While military criticism is large and in charge, what negatively impacts “Kill Zone” is the no flare for technical military behavior or jargon.  The opening combat scene exemplifies the inexactitudes with Mitchell and his team storming through brush and across a river toward an unseen enemy’s stronghold guns blazing like little boys with popguns and mouthy explosions sounds of amateurism splayed all over as he and his team run wildly, hop like a bunny into fire stances, and point rifles with no line of sight.  Prior is able to achieve some nice shots of ammunition exchange with slow profile pans and aerial assaults filmed up from the ground, but there’s too much downplay to take this low-rung action film seriously and to really get a viewer the headspace of “Kill Zone’s” deathtrap montage that warrants more respect than what the rest of the presentation layout provides.

Missing in action from contemporary formats for over three decades, “Kill Zone” finally becomes rescued from inferior definition captivity and arrives onto DVD and Blu-ray (reviewed) courtesy of MVDVisual’s Rewind Collection series.  The Blu-ray is an AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition transfer scanned and restored in 4K from the 35mm interpositive print.  Presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the new transfer breathes new life into the lost but not forgotten feature with an enriched color grading and a sharpening of details, especially textures of the foliage and rocky terrains and assorted skin features.  Not entirely impeccable, contrast often teeters in the same frame and there’s an abundance of saturating grain, like large raindrop grain, in nighttime image that wash out details to great extent, but we’re always reeled back in with warm and pleasant color palette that flushes the previous VHS release quality down the core memory exiting drainpipe.  There’s one or two moments of vertical scratches, indelicately faint, and rough editing patches that distort to a blip that may be more problematic and age-related from the interpositive print than the dynamic restoration that was done.  The English language LPCM 2.0 mono track suffers from the low-quality sound recording equipment or placement that renders dialogue soft and nearly unintelligible as volume levels severely spike depending on how much the actors are projecting their voices.  There is some minor, unobtrusive popping throughout the fidelity faithful ambient and dialogue track, the latter, though softly wavering at times, does ultimately prevail to the forefront.  Optional subtitles are available.  Special features include a new audio (and optional video) commentary with producer Jack Marino, moderated by Cereal at Midnight host Heath Holland, a new Making-Of Kill Zone” featurette with clips interview with Jack Marino moderated by “Kill Zone” restoration project producer Steve Latshaw, the Vestron Video VHS version of the feature in standard definition, a photo gallery, and the original theatrical trailer redone with restoration elements.  The action-packed original poster art obtains a renewed look for the Blu-ray’s retro cardboard O-slip that resembles a torn, scuffed, and stickered VHS box art. Underneath the slipcover, the same poster art is on the front of the clear Blu-ray snapper case with latch and on the reverse side a back-the-scenes still images of Ted Prior and costars in character form.  The insert holds a folded mini-poster of the original poster art and the disc is pressed with the ridged gridlines of a VHS shell cassette with insert this side directions at the top.  Pretty neat design that further leans into “Kill Zone” VHS cult following purgatory.  MVD’s 50th release of the Rewind Collection is rated R feature has a runtime of 91 minutes and the Blu-ray is region unlocked for everyone’s viewing pleasure.  No longer destined to live out its shelf life on VHS, the wonderful contributors to obscure movie restoration brings “Kill Zone” back into action with a rejuvenated hi-def release that’ll blow you away. 

Enter the “Kill Zone” on a New Blu-ray Home Video!

Under an Urban Club Scene, EVIL Horrors Connect Us All. “Flesh City” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Flesh City” Yearns for Connection on DVD!

An insomnious city pulsates with an industrial soundtrack and claws cantankerously at denizens without pity. Under one of the raging night club scenes, enamored raver Vyren follows the beautifully alluring Loquette, an inspiring electronic DJ, down into the club’s labyrinth of old stone corridors. Their coquettish play becomes the monitored study of Professor Yagov, a glowingly cadent and mad experimenter of anthropology. The two lovers are drugged and abducted by the Yogav with the intent of genetic mutating the couple’s anatomy that renders Vyren’s hand displaced with a bulbous nub and Loquette impregnated with an ingestible sludge. What becomes of their affliction insidiously infects the entire city population with a flesh tentacle curling through the city’s underground sewer and drainpipe infrastructure in what amasses to a single connection of brain-invading techno-horror.

“Flesh City” annexes our individuality for the sake of connective solidarity conveyed in an electronically infused and alternatively aesthetic experimental film from Germany’s own jack of all independent media and artistic trades, Thorsten Fleisch. The 2019 released feature is Fleisch’s first and only written-and-directed full-length film depicting his feverish analog avant-garde, reflecting the filmmaker’s menagerie of orthodox-shredding short films, video art, and written and produced music. Overseeing “Flesh City’s” cinematography and special effects, Fleisch has complete and utter autonomy of the visuals to obtain a harshly discordant image melody edited together, which Fleisch also manages, into an agglomerate of acetic aesthetics to shock and stress the audio and visual cortexes. Once under the working titles of “Berlin Blood” and “Zyntrax: Symphony of Flesh,” “Flesh City” is entirely shot in Berlin, Germany, produced by the director and United Kingdom producers Arthur Patching and Christian Serritiello, and is a feature of Fleischfilm and Tropical Grey Features.

One of the film’s coproducers and musical artists, Christian Serritiello (“Streets of East L.A.”), is at the front lines of “Flesh City’s” afterthought cast of characters with Vryen as essentially the naïve and lured-in Alice chasing the white rabbit Loquette, played by Eva Ferox (“Love Songs for Scumbags”), down the twisted rabbit hole of a cellar dwelling doctor.  I say afterthought because the characters take a backseat to Fleisch’s contortion of reality and the analogical subtext generated by Fleisch’s love for analog anomalies, using them as supporting pawns to carry out his visceral vision of vitality.  Music videos, psychedelic montages, and grotesques images of beetles absorb screen time like formless or arthropodal principals.  Even Professor Yagov (Arthur Patching”) is obscured by a rainbow shimmer, never visually seeing his face as an individual seemingly between two dimensions.  “Flesh City” is a very multiverse, multidimensional nightmare-scape of unconventional color that has culminated from Fleisch’s imaginative idiosyncrasies over the years and that’s what being intently showcased here with more evident display of a less-character driven, shapeless story within the technical aspects of the DVD release where the soundtrack drowns the dialogue into a muffled deaf tone, like any good loud music venue would subdue.  “Flesh City’s” urbanites fill out with Marilena Netzker (“Love Songs for Scumbags”), Shaun Lawton (“Possession”), Denis Lyons (“German Angst”), Anthony Straeger (“Call of the Hunter”), Maria Hengge (“Love Songs for Scumbags”), Helena Prince (“12 Theses”), and Thorsten Fleisch in a Max Headroom meets Total Request Live-like host role of Quantum 1337.

“Flesh City” will not be everyone’s approx. 90 minutes of how to spend their time choice.  The experimental film will only speak to a few select souls with a filmic affinity for Lynchian peculiarities, Terry Gilliam’s bold fantasy, David Cronenberg’s body horror, and a hellish capriccio along with an eclectic music palate for noise rock, henpecking alternative, and strident industrial bass.  I wouldn’t go as far as saying Fleisch’s film is akin to nails on a chalkboard but can be boisterously unpleasant to the ears at times while, in the same breadth, be stimulating visually, even if that stimulation may induce a photosensitive epileptic seizure.  Fleisch’s non-traditional narrative design splices in music videos from various underground and indie artists with him providing introduction as an illusionary host in a virtual world, breaking up the Vyren and Loquette’s post-punk-adelic core quandary with a teetering melodic cacophony of feedback rock electronic, a hostile rhythm, and bizarre lyrics and visuals.  Fleisch pushes the taboo envelope with not only liberal nudity, to which Germans are very at ease with their body image, but also within the unconfined stylistic creativity of multi-formats that razzle-dazzles like the innards of radiant plasma globe; the Tesla coil electrons that’s drawn to your conductive flesh won’t hurt you but provide a feeling of captivated wonder.  Yet, don’t expect to be thrilled in a traditional predator-and-prey sense as “Flesh City” appeals more to our disconnect from each other and how to reconnect must be through some kind of inclemency. 

Likely to transmit under the radar, “Flesh City’s” biomorphic body horror arrives onto unrated director’s cut DVD home video courtesy of cult and independent distributing label Wild Eye Releasing in association with Tomcat Films.  The DVD5 presents the transfer in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio with varying levels of image quality due to different types of equipment and methods used to create Fleisch’s tripped out vision that contains, but isn’t limited to, black and white, color, stylistic lighting, analog equipment, digital equipment, stock footage, and so forth.  This mishmash movie makes for divisible degrees of signal quality that can be look crystal clear in one scene and then heavy noise interference the next, but the overall clarity is remains stable without any scenes being rifted because of visual vagueness.  The audio comes in two formats:  a English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound and a English Dolby Digital 2.0.  Frankly, the original English dialogue track is feeble under the tremendously potent soundtrack and sound design that makes comprehending Vyren and Loquette subterranean exchanges under the industrial rumble of the score virtually impossible to discern.  Even Quantum 1337’s cyber-stutter chat softly introduces us into his world, essentially leading the blind into a mound of musical mania. Bonus features only include other Wild Eye Releasing trailers with the physical aspects of the DVD come with a misconception cover art that has a terrifying gaunt and fleshy, humanoid creature front and center, but that creature doesn’t exist in the film until maybe at the climax that’s nebulously discernible at best what viewers are supposed to see. Inside the standard DVD snapper, the disc art is pressed with the same front cover image but with no accompanying insert. The region free disc features the unrated film with a runtime of 84 minutes. “Flesh City” is a delicacy of distortion, but the Thorsten Fleisch film is an acquired taste that general audiences won’t have taste for but, then again, general audiences are not Wild Eye Releasing’s target audience, now are they?

“Flesh City” Yearns for Connection on DVD!