Tag Archives: MVD

Grade A Evil! Murder University review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Enthralled from last week’s viewing of Richard Griffin’s The Disco Exorcist (see review here) that I checked into the player another Griffin film entitled Murder University from 2012. A fairly generic titled college slasher with semi-comedic values that tries to blend in with similar genre slashers such as Urban Legend, House on Sorority Row, Black Christmas, or Sorority House Massacre. Comedy elements separate Murder University from the rest as well as Murder University doesn’t set itself in the present time of which the setting takes place. I’ll dissect Griffin’s film the best I can because my response post viewing teeters back and forth of a thumbs up for pratical effects and homage or thumbs down for storyline and dialogue.

Greensboro University has a notorious reputation for being constructed by a founder who ritualized satanic values and murdered people for years in the late 19th century. In the late 20th century, the New England university is once again plague by the cult-like killers who call themselves the Greesnboro Devils. A survivor of a recent attack and a shunned detective try to hunt down the motives behinds the killings and the secrets of a legacy of killers.
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The upside of Murder University stems from the use of practical special effects. Decapitations became an obvious motif for this film (though there was no reason to explain this and I can only guess that beheadings were a big way to die in the 80s) with a grand total of six axe-chopped decapitations. The detail in the severed heads had high marks as well as other death scenes in the movie. Another throwback from the 80’s is the music and Murder University’s soundtrack certainly have that synth, brit-rock feel in some scenes, but in other scenes, 90’s grunge ruled the screen a long with hairstyles and clothes of a more recent decade.

The downside holds more weight coming from the story and the dialogue. The story comes a part at the seems with lead character Josh Greene as his backstory is intertwined with the murders and to get more of that backstory from his past would have been better than the exposition given nature of who Josh really is destined to be and what Josh is destined to be comes off pointless by default. Was this the divine will of Satan? Were these killers psychotic? What were the motivations? That is the real questions. The dialogue also scores low marks for being off key, choppy, awkward, and explicatively gratuitous. Not everybody is Quentin Taratino and can pull of mouthy vulgarity with ease and the script with Murder University just seems too forced for comfort.
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Jamie Dufault has a solid performance as our hero Josh Greene coming from a nobody in college and transforming to becoming the ultimate domineer in the end, but Nat Silva gives an even more solid performance as the killer (when the killer has dialogue) and Samantha Acampora (Josh’s girlfriend Meg) is certainly the eye candy that we wish would show a little more skin than just her bare ass.

Murder University‘s retro entertainment keeps afloat just under chin level and won’t bore you to death. Richard Griffin is two for two in my little black book of directors and I’ll keep an eye out for more of his material in the future. MVD and Wild Eye Releasing release this Not Rated, widescreen disc with deleted scenes and two commentary tracks. This should be a fairly affordable, tongue-and-cheek horror movie if you’re looking for a cheap, yet entertaining, thrills.

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Get Down With Evil! The Disco Exorcist review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Rex Romanski loves the ladies. His swinging disco fever charm dons no rival and the ladies, acknowledging his love’em and leave’em attitude, want his mojo even after he ditches them. But when Rex wines and dines and screws the wrong woman Rita Marie, his nightmare is only beginning. Rita is a black magic priestess with devilish revenge on the mind and Rex’s new play toy, mega porn star Amoreena Jones, becomes the host of an implanted demon to reek havoc among Rex and his groovy friends.

Director Richard Griffin did a decent job with this sleazy decadence of a screen play making the most of the nudity, the blood, the sex, and the utmost offensive nature that is The Disco Exorcist. I’m not too familiar with Griffin, but the native New Englander has been balls deep in horror and exploitation since the early 2000’s and his decade efforts really show the core of his passion. The Disco Exorcist won’t win Academy Awards, but have rock the shit out of horror film festivals including Rock and Shock 2011 and Killer Film Festival 2011 and rightfully so. This homage to the 1970’s includes super fueled drug and sex scenes that are, but probably not, the overboard culture of the 1970’s.

Rex Romanski isn’t a stereotypical hero. In fact, Rex is a bit of a wimp with a big love stick and he just happens to be in the right place at the right time when his ass needs saving. While the The Disco Exorcist wants to portray Rex the all mighty and strong hero, he doesn’t really do anything. Actor Michael Reed who portrays Rex makes you forget how pathetic Rex really can be by using his on camera charm. The guy is likable – what else can I say? Griffin and Reed have worked together previously in Griffin’s older work Nun of That and The Beyond the Dunwich Horror and I imagine their chemistry is similar to that of Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs.
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Ruth Sulterland is another of Griffin’s entourage and her role as the black magic priestess doesn’t spark as much likability as maybe Reed’s Rex does for the sheer fact that there resembles not nearly enough evil in Ruth to conjure any real threat to our hero and heroine. Rita is more in the background playing with her voodoo dolls and placing spells upon the grave to awake all scorn women from their tombs. Rita would have been more convincing if she was more hands on with Amoreena or Rex, but instead Rita resembles more like one of Rex’s whores and is easily forgettable.
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The gore of The Disco Exorcist doesn’t really pick up until almost 45 minutes into the film when the porn shoot goes array with possessed, bare chested roller girls hacking away at the on-set production crew. The first 45 minutes were more about Rex mojo’ing the beaver from various ladies and snorting coke like his life depended on it. The retro fitting of The Disco Exorcist really helps set the stage for the homage to the exploitive films of that represented decade. What doesn’t hurt the film either is the mayhem after that initial cherry popping gore scene which follows up with castration, decapitation, and combustion!
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Tons of fun, tons of drugs, ton of gore, tons of nudity – what is not to like about Richard’s Griffin’s sleazy and funny tale of Rex Romanski? Wild Eye Releasing and MVDvisual bring this film to DVD home entertainment and both companies are super pro-independent and company you can trust to give you a good time. The Disco Exorcist is a prime example of a good time.

Evil is the Pits! Jug Face review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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“The pit wants what it wants.” Sometimes it is that simple. That saying could be the meaning of life for all we know? Could be the answer to the mysterious universe? Hell, could tell us what happened to Jimmy Hoffa and if there really lives a Loch Ness Monster. For the backwood folks of the movie Jug Face, that phrase is life and death. A backwoods community just on the outskirts of civilization serves an unseen entity in a deep muddy pit. The pit psychically connects with Dawai, a local simpleton who loses consciousness when connected to, to create a ceramic jug face of the face the pit wants to sacrifice in order for the community to keep sustaining their health. When young and out of wed-lock pregnant Ada’s face becomes the jug face, she steals the jug and hides it in the woods in attempt to not only save her life but her baby’s too. When the entity is ignored, the wrath of a gruesome death comes down upon the whole community by taking one person at a time until the pit gets what it wants.
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Jug Face strikes an originality chord in this reviewer’s bones. Usually when too much is happening one could easily become lost in the thick of the story, but where the thick might be the thickest, Jug Face fiercely cuts through and weaves a story of a women coming into her own to face responsibility and a story about fate in which no matter how much you try to re-arrange it, you’ll receive your rightfully due diligence in the end. The story ends up being grim for everyone and nobody has a one speck of happiness. A great parallelism to reality if you ask me because not every ending is sugar plums and puppy dog tails.
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The pit entity doesn’t seem like the “bad guy” villain that we might expect. Ada is not saint as she commits carnal sins and her actions result in the deaths of her friends and family and not all at the hands of the pit, but some by the community as well. Granted, not all the victims were innocent – some just as guilty as Ada – but we struggle with Ada’s compelling reason to live and to keep her unborn baby alive too. We’re more partial to Dawai, who like I said earlier is the community nitwit, and her father Sustin who tenderly loves her more than anything as a father should but obeys the pit’s commands when a jug face is revealed.

The ensemble cast headlines with Lauren Ashley Carter as Ada. A relatively unknown actress with a great pair of breasts; she’s topless in the first 5 minutes of the movie. Carter is a wide eyed beauty with a face like Kristen Stewart except without that dumb glare. Indie genre favorite Larry Fessenden (I Sell The Dead, Habit) takes on Ada’s father Sustin. Sean Bridges plays a great village idiot as Dawai and the other Sean, Sean Young, Ray Finkle him-herself, is Ada’s sadistic mother.
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Overall the movie watchable value and cult status written all over it (I has saying cult status, but what else is there to label it?). In reality, the MVDVisual distributed film with come and go with much of the straight-to-DVD market and that is a grisly disappointment because this little bizarre script from first feature film direct received a little money behind it and has a great cast, but the names aren’t big enough, the distributor isn’t big enough, and the story will fly over most people’s heads. MVDVisual and Modern Distributors did do a great job with the 5.1 Surround Sound and the clear 2:35 Widescreen format. Everything is pretty sharp here, but don’t expect jug Face to make waves amongst the masses.

Evil’s a Dick! Zombie A-Hole Review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Slowly and slowly, there has been a increase of likability toward director and writer Dustin Mills and his hugely creative and widely entertaining horror films. This might sound like a creepy man-crush, but the Kevin Smith like-a-like director has his own production company, he pulls from his own stable of actors, and his movies are not your typical, run-of-the-mill independent boringness trash. The experiences had with Dustin Mills have been in backwards motion where I’ve started Mills recent projects and have worked backwards ending with Zombie A-Hole – so far. Zombie A-Hole involves a hellbent cowboy, a psychic twin brother, and a one-eyed engineer superstar all seeking the same evil – the other twin brother who gave his soul to an evil living inside a medallion that has given the brother unlimited power and has returned him from the grave! This a-hole stalks and kills twin siblings for their brain matter to give him everlasting power making this zombie a-hole the most depraved, the most senseless, and the most hated being on this twisted earth!

What impresses me more about Dustin Mills is his use of effective special effects when compared to a $1,000 budget. The man must be good with a computer because even though I can see the slight mistakes or the slight cheapness of the prosthetics, his special effects can please even the most critical critics. Mills even uses quick editing techniques to create the illusion of twin siblings. Seven “twins” will trick your mind by having the “twins” seem to be in the same scene, but with some quick camera work and some flawless editing the same actor will only seem to be in the same scene with their twin when they’re talking to each other. If that last sentence doesn’t confuse you, then you’re special. Mills can also make Party City skeletons looks like some grade A Sam Raimi Army of Darkness skeletons by brushing them up in makeup and using filter techniques to create his own smart ass undead army.

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Two regular actors of Mills’ work turn grueling indie project into a highly entertaining horror film. Brandon Salkil portrays three characters in Zombie A-hole as the twin brothers and the zombie. Jason Eal takes on the rough and tough, zombie asskickin’ cowboy. Both actors feature in Mills’ later films such as Bath Salt Zombies (another great, based on a true story film) and both have had their own starring roles in Mills’ films as well as working behind the scenes on the production crew. Versatile and hardworking, these two actors’ on screen performances are poetic. Salkil’s animated personality homes in on a Jim Carrey while Eal tough guy schtick is well welcomed when dealing with any evil force.

Zombie A-hole markets itself as a zombies are cool and hip while being brutal and deadly. Though Salkil’s zombie is brutal and deadly, the prey could have been more lively. The “twins” are mainly alternative girls who for some reason always get the ax when they’re taking a bath or in the shower…? A pre-shower, during shower, post-shower motif I don’t completely understand. Perhaps to show some gratuitous tits or maybe to show how helpless these victims are with no fight in them when the Zombie A-Hole is cracking open their skulls, ready to eat their brains!

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Zombie A-Hole’s all out mentality will leave you with great appreciate for independent filmmaking. Thank you MVDVisual for releasing Dustin Mills work and exposing the writer and director and also his two main actors Brandon Salkil and Josh Eal. MVD’s presentation runs 108 minutes with a standard definition 16×9 widescreen ratio, but Mills purposely grains the film to give the a grindhouse film feel and the standard definition goes right out the window. There are no extras and its a bit of a shame because I would want to see the behind the scenes of Zombie A-Hole, but that shouldn’t come between man and his urges to see blood, boobs, and the zombies!

Evil Ready to Chow Down! Eyes of the Woods Review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Always does this seem to me is that all the root causes of demonic possession in films stem from the ye ole ages when the land was young and naive.  Nearly in the same vein are The Evil Dead and Ginger Snaps in which these prequels explore ancient curses and demons to be the reason for all the present carnage and this is just to quickly name a couple of examples.  Darrin Reed and F. Miguel Valenti’s The Eyes of the Woods follows a similar structure but separate’s itself by beginning in the past with a pilgrim village Knobb’s Creek being slaughtered by a vengeful father who lost his daughter and blames God for his loss.  He leads Satan into his soul giving him ultimate strength, sustaining life, and a thirst for human flesh.  Four hundred years later to the present day,  five friends are hunted and tormented by the legendary creature of Knobb’s Creek whom has consumed numerous lives over the years feeding his body with souls.

What might be the most interesting piece about the Eyes of the Woods is Mark Villalobos whom’s hands are deep within the bloody special effects and also behind the creature played by Walter Phelan (Dr. Satan of House of a 1000 Corpses). The prosthetic applications on lanky Phelan are a nice touch making Phelan look like Baraka from Mortal Kombat 2, but naked. What a shame that the sound editing screws up the whole character; at best the foley sounds come off as loony-toony and the boom mike, or whatever was used, doesn’t produce quality sound – what can you expect with 2.0 Dolby?

However, the Creature has been overshadowed and not by the our young fresh-faced victims. The forest becomes more frightening than the actually villain much like, again, The Evil Dead. Entire lakes move, night is actually day, day is actually night are only a few examples of how our group of kids get turned around and completely “mind-fucked!” The Creature is completely overshadowed and becomes just a meager product of it’s environment – the forest. Unlike my comparison to The Evil Dead, the trees don’t reach out and rape women nor bust down doors to swallow souls. Instead, the trees act as an Electric Magnetic Pulse disabling phones and cars. How and why you say? Fuck if I know. Eyes of the Woods doesn’t explain much about the cause and one could guess that evil forces, especially demonic forces, are working to keep modern technology out of the bush!

Our young bunch deem very unlikable and audiences will have a hard time sympathizing with them. We want them to die just because there is nothing interesting about them, no showy love poise, no fight for something to live for and if anything, we can cheer for the character of “Winter” portrayed by Johnny Moreno, who in my opinion acts and looks just like James Duval from Cornered! Quirky and likable, had me rolling a couple of times, yet completely idiotic and still doesn’t become a character that you can root for to live. Even the female characters (who give us any gratuitous nudity and only gratuitous lake crossing in their bikinis) are just, well, blah. Now, there is gratuitous nudity with a chick walking out of the cave, covered in blood, and walking aimlessly through the woods and stumbles upon a backpacking couple who are not helpful. The backstory on this naked, covered in blood, chick doesn’t explain much of a background besides that her friend went in a cave and died. That’s about it – just walking tits.

Eyes of the Woods, not to be confused with The Hills Have Eyes or The Woods Have Eyes, homes into other horror flicks, but tries too hard to become a cult favorite. Instead, a mesh of mess chops off the film’s livelihood and throws it out the window because, basically, there is no use for the film’s manhood. Eyes of the Woods becomes another direct-to-video to take the direct-to-graveyard, do not pass go, do not collect $200 route. Even with a veteran villain, a special effects guru, and a decent, if a confusing, premise, this satanic creature feature won’t settle well with horror fans and will certainly leave a bad taste.