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When EVIL is so Ingrained, Drastic, Dangers Measures Must Be Taken. “Confessions of a Police Captain” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Confessions of a Police Captain” Now Available on Blu-ray!

Police captain Giacomo Bonavia is a dog with a bone when it comes to pinning an arrest against the corrupt and criminal kingpin Ferdinando Lomunno.  Lumunno is seemingly immune and untouchable to conviction, having been acquitted of charges three times already while in Bonavia’s custody after key witnesses go missing or are found dead deemed by accidental circumstances.  Determined to stick it to Lumunno by going outside the limitations of the law, Bonavia strong arms the release of a professional hitman from a psychiatric ward and who has a lethal grudge against Lumunno for dating his sister.  When the plan backfires in a bloodbath, the captain becomes the subject of investigation for assistant D.A. Traini who suspects Bonavia to be no less corrupt than those he pursues, but when the evidence suggests corruption at the highest level within the public office, Traini wavers on the captain’s crusade against inexorable crime.  

Before moving into a follow-up of powerful possession of one of America’s favorite haunted houses in “Amityville II:  The Possession” and even before formulating a planned coup of an Arican nation with a meticulous plan that involves the hijacking of a major hotel and taking key hostages in “Goodbye & Amen,” Italian director Damiano Damiani tackled corruption on every level with “Confessions of a Police Captain,” released 1971.  Originally titled “Confessione di un commissario di polizia al procuratore della repubblica,” the script is written by Damiani, who usually has his hands mixed into his directed projects, and Salvatore Laurani, based off a story by Damiani and Italian genre utility screenwriter Fulvio Gicco Palli (“The Designated Victim”).  The Italian crime thriller is shot on location in Palmero of the Sicily region and is produced by “Hitch-Hike” producers Mario Montnari and Bruno Turchetto with Euro International Films and Explorer Films ’58 as the coproduction studios.

One of the biggest names in Hollywood shares the screen with one of the biggest names in Italian cinema as questionable colleagues against crime as Martin Balsam of “Psycho” and “12 Angry Men” plays the cynical police captain Bonavia who has lost all faith in the justice system and takes a covert vigilante approach with a dangerous plan that hopefully kills two birds with one stone.  Balsam fashions Bonavia as a man exhausted by law’s red tape, lack of enforcement, and the justice system need for hard evidence, turning the hardnose captain into playing the game just as the criminals do with deceit, guile, and ruthlessness.  While Bonavia’s intentions are in the right place but executed with malice and frustration, deputy D.A. Traini sees the world in black and white and not as red and complex as Bonavia as the deputy is almost near clueless to the corruption with his straightforward approach to the justice system her serves, believing it works without wickedness.  “Django” actor Franco Nero compliments Martin Balsam’s tranquil plotting and coverup with headstrong thoroughness to cover every base to nab the captain in his own misstep or vocally browbeaten and accuse him into a confession.  Nero purposefully feels lost but never out of the cat-and-mouse game that he plays to a character’s fault, losing sight of the real danger of blatant criminality and the scum that pull the strings right under his nose.  The supporting cast includes colorful peripheral characters who double as cynical expendable fodder or are possibly a double agent with their own set of vices with Marilù Tolo (“The Scorpion with Two Tails”), Luciano Catenacci (“Syndicate Sadists”), Arturo Dominici (“Castle of Blood”), Claudio Gora (“Seven Blood-Stained Orchids”), Adolfo Lastretti (“Venus in Furs”), Giancarlo Prete (“Escape from the Bronx”), and Michelle Gammino (“The Virgo, the Taurus and the Capricorn”) in those roles. 

As far as Italian crime thrillers go, “Confessions of a Police Captain” is about as brutal and unforgiving as they come with a medley of fair game for mortal coil and where high rankings, who are opposed to pure corruption, must go beyond that upstanding public official role to bend or break the law to be effective against the insidious nature and unkillable cockroach conduct of crime.  The story puts to question the moral judgement of good men who want to do the right thing but our bound by the shackles of statutes and can do nothing about the misuse of the justice system and how career criminals in high places can get away with murder without even a scratch.  Is Captain Bonavia the good guy of the story as he goes after a hefty criminal or is he the story’s villain for stirring up trouble with a plotted assassination attempt that in turn leads to a string of homicides?  The latter seems pretty damning but, at the same time, it exposes more truth to the underlining criminal element that disguises itself as powerful public figures who are supposed to be on the right side of the law.  Audiences will be neutral with Captain Bonavia and feel more relatable with Deputy D.A. Traini and his confusion and frustration about the internal conflicts of the law, the transgressions, and the blurred line of vigilantism.  There’s also a remark in the story about how integrated crime is the institutions and this goes as far as being very literal too by comment and even exhibiting a scene of a snuffed-out corpse being encased in cement used for pillars of new skyrise construction.  The ruthless and plausibility of cementing someone inside a concrete pillar is one aspect that makes “Confessions of a Police Captain” a visceral Italian crime thriller amongst an already stacked of powerhouse performance.

Damiano Damiani’s “Confessions of a Police Captain” is a taut crime thriller now available on a 2K transfer restoration, limited-edition Blu-ray from Radiance Films.  The UK distributor releases the Blu-ray for the North American market, encoded with both regions A and B, under is AVC compressed BD50 with Hi-Def, 1080p resolution, and presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio.  The restoration refreshes the image with a stronger color saturation and deeper details that make people and objects pop off screen and have a tactile appearance.  This is the best the Damiani picture has ever looked that remains consistent through the runtime with no issues with the well-preserved and maintained print and no issues with compression codec.  Even wide shots of large landscapes around Palmero, from rock click formations to the cityscape are highly detailed and don’t have that washed out and stretched to lesser image discernability.  The Italian uncompressed PCM mono track offers an about as expected with a post-production, or ADR, audio layer distinctly detached for the action, more so with the dialogue that the action effects as gunshots are particularly well integrated.  Not a native Italian linguist, Balsam’s English performance was noticeably mismatched and had an Italian overlay track with a voice acting dub.  English subtitles are available and they pace well without grammatical error.  Special features include new interviews with actors Franco Nero and Michelle Gammino, a new interview with editor Antonio Siciliano, and a new interview with film score export Lovely Jon.  The new artwork sleeve has a reversible side with a replica of original Italian poster art.  Inside, a limited edition booklet feature a pair of archival interviews with Damiano Damiani conducted by Gerard Langlois and Guy Braucort, cast and crew listing, transfer notes and acknowledgement, and black and white stills from the film within the 23 pages.  Housing the release is a clear Scanova Blu-ray case.  The film is not rated and has a runtime of 104 minutes.

Last Rites: “Confessions of a Police Captain” is the epitome of an Italian police story with subversive city corruption, a vigilante lawman, and unflinching narrative that puts every character in the crosshairs of its noir-like composition.

“Confessions of a Police Captain” Now Available on Blu-ray!

What’s Fashion Without a Little EVIL Behavior? “Helter Skelter” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Beauty is Pain. “Helter Skelter” from 88 Films!

Lilico is the hottest Japanese fashion icon.  Fans adore her, brands want her, magazines crave her, and paparazzi and photographers yearn to shoot and work with her beauty that inspires all and commands undivided attention.  However, her astonishing beauty isn’t entirely organic as multiple surgeries through unorthodox surgical procedures that enhance her from a forgettable nobody to an unforgettable somebody.  Her radical surgeries begin to show blight side effects of the surface of her skin, sending her into vanity driven sociopathic spiral of sex, mental torture, and self-destruction, also affecting those closely around her, especially her assistant Hada who takes the brunt of her maltreatment.  When a new, hot model is presented by her manager and the world begins to fall in love with her, seemingly dropping Lilico from being the face of the fashion industry, the model’s snowballing and necrotizing surgical side effects can’t be stopped from becoming all but public. 

Social commentary horror movies like “The Substance,” “The Neon Demon,” and “The Ugly Stepsister” underline the vast awfulness and extreme lengths of beauty standards.  How to keep youthful, how to manipulate the face and body, and how envy can be weaponized from the worst of counterparts are just some of the attributes, which are very accurate outside the cinema, used as tropes for the body horror subgenre where attractiveness is the core catalyst that motivates monstrosities.  These late 2010s and early 2020 films might not have been directly inspired by Mika Ninagawa’s “Helter Skelter” but definitely pulls from the same cloth.  The 2012 Japanese fashion industrialized body and psychological horror is adapted by Arisa Kaneko based off the Kyôko Okazaki manga of the same name with established manga-to-film experienced producers, Morio Amagi (“Cutie Honey”) and Mitsuru Uda (“Xxxholic”), producing the WOWOW, Parco Co. Ltd, and Asmik Ace Entertainment film.

Objectification perspective isn’t always from the outside looking in but can be looking out as well.  In “Helter Skelter,” model Lilico believes in her self-importance, treating others in subordinate to her illustriousness career as the hottest flavor in Japan’s fashion society.  Society objectifies Lilico as nothing more than a stylistic Goddess who can do no wrong and even have the smallest bit of her in their space, whether be the hot topic of conversation or to the be face of their magazine cover, whereas Lilico objectifies those all around her with eviscerating self-proclaimed eminence and dominion over their mind, body, and soul.  “Ghost Train’s” Erika Sawajiri has the perfect look and approach to celebrity derision without blatancy toward others as her expressionless face never contorts with anger, never smiles without the devilish smirk and piercing eyes, that makes the fashion icon unreadable and to sway of control during bi-polar scenes where happiness and disgust swing rapid on a totalitarianism pendulum.  Personal assistant Michiko Hada, under the performance of “R100’s” Shinobu Terajima, takes the brunt of abuse during on-the-clock and off-the-clock professional and personal time.  Terajima’s ordinary bearings for Hada make the character an easy target in contrast to Lilico’s ornate wardrobe and lavish style of living spurred by ruthless nature to be best and most beautiful, taking an authoritative sovereign stance of control in the fashion hierarchy.  Lilico’s spoiled prince behavior coincides by a fueling Kaori Momoi in a queen-like mother figure as the talent agent who mostly advises her star pupil an instigating misconduct mindset with pro-surgical advice and like-minded guidance that artificially influences her body despite the pain and dangers as well as providing a mimicking behavior of dejecting and downcast harm.  Nao Ōmori (“Ichi the Killer”), Gô Ayano (“Woman Transformation”), Kiko Mizuhara (“Attack on Titan”), Hirofumi Arai (“The Neighbor No. Thirteen”), Anne Suzuki (“Returner”), and Mieko Harada (“Ran”) all play a role in the rise and fall of Lilico.

Much like Lilico’s quickly deteriorating fractured state of mind, and body, Ninagawa utilizes a cinematic style that’s overly brilliant with neon colors and a sharp polished look that contrasts reality and distorted perception, creating a disjointed narrative digression Lilico experiences.  The hyper stylization keeps in tandem with the fashion world of flash photography and gaudy maximalism, the ultra-violence and promiscuous behavior depict the cutthroat competition of remaining beautiful and the ugliness that’s truly inside, and the sheer flaunting of indifference and superficiality lingers throughout in and out of favor of our terrible protagonist who is actually the villain and the victim of her own tale.  Each character is flawed beyond reproach and having no redeemable qualities that make them appear strong or promising to be a virtuous type.  Not even the meek and eager-to-please personal assistant Hada who takes the punishing commands of her employer and manager in a purely pitiful subjugation of oneself to not lose a job position and be in the presence of stardom.  Hada even lets Lilico invade her personal life and continues to let it happen with no choice in the matter.  “Helter Skelter” embodies the very definition of the term with its confused and hurried chaotic state in design and in story while, in the same baroque breath, disenchanting the illusion of the fashion industry and beauty standards as not glamourous and genuine but fickle and fabricated with a heavy dish of backstabbing and self-destruction. 

In the same spirit as photogenic magazine models, UK label 88 Films releases a beautifully crafted, limited-edition Blu-ray release.  The numbered release Blu-ray is AVC encoded, 1080 high-definition resolution, onto a BD50 that was already shot digitally with a Red One MX camera through Zeiss Ultra Prime and Angenieux Optimo lenses under cinematographer Daisuke Soma.  This gave “Helter Skelter” a glamorously polished look to accentuate the hyper-stylized and contemporary look that starkly discolor the centralized characters as ruthless people of fashion and high society.  When good finally enters the picture, a young model stepping to Lilico’s high heels as the next young, hot model, the harsh design of modernism is scaled back to simple and sterile aspects with more of the dramatics being held locally to the downfallen characters.  Higher contrasts create deeper shadows amongst a medium-heavy color saturation that primaries strong statement colors like fire-engine red and Duke blue.  The curvature of the anamophoric lenses, presenting in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, do show intentional signs of wrapping at the sides to capture the entirety of the wide shots in smaller spaces but adds to the surrealistic effect and is implemented at the right moments to make it all sensible.  No compression issues to note.  The Japanese DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio and 2.0 Stereo tracks are the only two formats encoded.  The 5.1 has formidable attention to the side and back channels with the chaotic fashion-industry ambiance with erratic behaviors steering the scene.  Every action detail is highlighted to bring quieter scenes more tension and every tumultuous moments a fuller body.  The dialogue is crystal clear and layered appropriate with environmental track and soundtrack.  Moods rise up and down with the fluctuation soundtrack that pulsates in breath-holding, provocative, turning-point scenes that while melodies play in more of shocking portions to entice attention during climatic notes.  The newly translated English subtitles have no synchronization or grammatical issues to note and pace well with the visuals.  Special features include a feature in tandem audio commentary with Tori Potenza and Amber T., interviews with star Erika Sawajiri and director Mika Ninagawa, a behind the scenes of raw footage making the film, the Japanese premiere stage greeting, an opening day stage greeting, the Q&A from the Taipei Film Festival with director Mika Ninagawa, the original rehearsal footage, an image gallery, and the teaser and official trailers.  Like Ninagawa’s film, 88 Films tangible release is also hyper-stylized with newly commissioned art by Luke Insect that’s surreal, color, and slightly disturbing.  The clear Scanavo cases comes with an gold Obi strip with film and Blu-ray details and the sleeve is dual sided with original Japaense compositional design on the inside.  Inserted inside is a 23-page color booklet with a chaptered essay by Violet Burns, complete with color photo stills and promotional photos with the front and back art contrasting the two model women in a good and evil, light and dark, way.  The not rated, limited-edition Blu-ray has a runtime of 127 minutes and is A and B encoded to support playback in the Americas as well as Europe. 

Last Rites: There are plenty of horror as well as commentary films about fashion, but none do it with style quite like Mika Ninagawa and still develop an unrivaled cynicism of self-implosion.

Beauty is Pain. “Helter Skelter” from 88 Films!

Invincible-Seeking EVIL Loves to Hide Behind Strip Clubs! “Decadent Evil 2” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The Sequel “Decadent EVIL II” Bites Hard! Check It Out!

After barely surviving Morella, Dex and Sugar, along with carrying around the homunculous Marvin, traverse across the country to find a vampire master.  Their plan is to take a drop of his blood needed for a resurrection ritual to bring vampire hunter and Marvin’s son Ivan Burroughs back to life after sacrificing himself to stop the deadly, megalomaniac Morella.  Ivan’s golden tracking cross brings them to midwestern gentleman’s club full of possible seedy suspects as the master vampire – the vampiric-attributed club owner Janos, the stern and scary club manager Burke, or even the club’s beautiful top dancer Lena are all suspects.  To uncover the master vampire, Dex and Sugar work their way to being hired at the club in order to snoop around.  Meanwhile, dancers and customers are winding up dead nearby.  As the investigation continues, Dex, Sugar, Marvin, and even the undead Ivan must work together to find the master vampire and stop him from continuing what Morella started. 

“Decadent Evil II” is a direct sequel to the 2005 original that returns Full Moon founder Charles Band (“Puppet Master”) to the director’s chair and writer Domonic Muir to pen the follow-up.  Same vampire tricks, more topless strippers, and a ragtag team of vampire trackers has this 2007 subsequent feature feel like a heel biter by keeping the story going without a lot of time lapsed.  Band retains his personal interest in pint size creatures and nude women in the sequel while keeping costs down as much as possible with limited locations and special effects fields filled in mostly with strippers doing their routines in between.  Band also returns as producer alongside Bill Barton (“Blood Forest”) and Joe Magna (“Dangerous Worry Dolls”) with James Synder, Jon Morrey, and Dana K. Harrloe serving executive producer under Band’s Wizard Entertainment, now Full Moon Productions.

Jill Michelle and Daniel Lennox return to their respective roles of being a vampire-human love story couple, Sugar and Dex.  No longer hiding secrets from one another and on-the-road together, going from one dingy hotel to the next, the carry around the corpses of Ivan Burroughs in hopes to one day resurrect him by securing master vampire blood.  Ivan Burroughs, unfortunately, is played by a new actor, one who in my opinion is an upgrade from the already great Phil Fondacaro (“Land of the Dead”).  Ricardo Gil replaces Fondacaro as the vampire hunter with a vindictive vendetta.  Gil does have similar features to Fondacaro but has more personality in his delivery, making Ivan Burroughs more sarcastic and rougher around the edges than the first subdued portrayal with less snarkiness, and that gives the sequel more notability against the first film.  The vampire lot doubles in villainy with a master vampire purposing sporting his beastly side of a red vampire bat head, complete with pointy airs, conical snout, and elongated fangs, and which, in all honesty, makes him look more like the Prince of Darkness of traditional appearance.  The master vampire hides amongst the human pool of the gentleman’s club to mist the air with mystery of who it is with a suspect list including a club owner Janos (Jon-Paul Gates, “Alice in Terrorland”), club’s top stripper Lena (Jessica Morris, “The Haunted Casino”), and club manager Burke (James C. Burns, “A Haunting at Silver Falls”).  Mike Muscat, Lillie Nyx, and Rory Williamson make up the rest of the cast.

“Decadent Evil II” is comparable to the original film with both being watermarked by Charles Band need for small creatures, campy horror, and substantial number of topless women, the latter being more prominently risky in the sequel with extra suggestive stripper poses that focus on the crotch area to lay gingerly into that filmmaking golden role of bigger and better for a sequel.  “Decadent Evil II” does teeter that idea with also a doubled antagonist pool and a higher body count but not necessarily containing, and also being a sorely lack of, gore that more-or-less stays the same from the original film with a rivulet trickles of blood running down necks and chins.   Band and Muir do take the vampire out of the Gothic setting, one that Morella had resided herself into living at a mansion of marble and stone, and they trade it for an automotive junkyard, an ill-fitting home for a well-dressed vampire whose lived centuries in human culture.  One locale that has remained constant throughout both Band’s films are strip clubs and channeling the success of such gentleman’s club with bloodsuckers as “From Dusk till Dawn, both films prominently display them with great grandeur for the B-roll stripper moves.  With being a sequel, I held quite a bit of disappointment for the story that follows the same thematics as the first, the main being a singular master vampire garnering souls to become invincible and there’s nothing to accentuate that idea even further as it’s surrounded by, again, much of the same – Dex, Sugar, and Ivan, the inexplicable homonculous and his strange attributes, and a strip clubs.  Even the final scene remains familiarity with instead of Marvin making love to another homunculous, he makes doggy love to a full-size person in a cringy and uncomfortable last scene moment.

Charles Band’s “Decadent Evil II” receives it’s Hi-Def Blu-ray as a part of a long and arduous of converting Full Moon’s films to Blu-ray.  The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD25 offers Full Moon’s catalogued 239 title a new pixel perspective of a saturated color palette inside its darker shaded tone.  The details are mediocre as much of the finer points are lost in low light, gel lighting, and haze but the compressions aim to be stable without any artefacts to note on lowest capacity Blu-ray.  Plenty of inky and less visible delineating contrast is a credit to the gaffing and director of photography Terrance Ryker for a soap opera-noir aesthetic.  For the first time ever, the film is presented in HD in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio.  The audio options are an English LPCM 5.1 surround and a stereo 2.0 that caters to District 78’s alternative, indie rock during the club sequences but elucidates and livens up the dialogue to where nothing obstructed with ambiguity.  Hardly any depth to the sound design as characters never wade beyond medium shots and range is limited to mostly the dialogue track along with imitation actions one would see in a low budget production or cartoon.  English subtitles are not available on the Blu-ray.  Extra features include a behind-the-scenes, a 42-minute featurette Battle of the Bands with a little stroll down memory lane for Charles Band as well as musical ventures for the film, stripper auditions for the Visions Night Club, the original trailer, and Full Moon trailers.  The physical presence is much of the same from Full Moon with a standard Blu-ray Amaray with relatively new artwork focusing on the homunculous rather than the vampires.  The sleeve is one sided with no inserts inside.  The region free Blu-ray has a runtime of 81 minutes and is not rated.

Last Rites: Like stuck on repeat, “Decadent Evil II” doesn’t offer a different type of narrative but ups the amount of nudity and vampires without much formidability in this lackluster sequel.

The Sequel “Decadent EVIL II” Bites Hard! Check It Out!

Elizabeth Bathory Evokes the Birth of EVIL! “Blood Bitch Baby” reviewed! (Blood Sick Productions / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Blood Bitch Baby” Now Available!

What if Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer who bathed in virgin women blood to obtain youth, didn’t die in a prison cell?  What if Bathory was alive and well, living agelessly as one of the demon Asmodeus’s handmaiden to do his bidding, such as selecting a chosen woman to birth the Antichrist?  The countess does just that by posting a job position of caregiver with Jenny, a unemployed woman with an abusive, greedy boyfriend, responding to the ad.  Selected as the chosen one, Jenny is marked with Asmodeus’s symbol that grants her the power of strength and a craving for human flesh and blood.  After devouring her boyfriend, she meets Iris, a homeless lesbian who witnesses the expedited birth of the antichrist soon after meeting her.  Can Iris and a professor of parapsychology stop the second coming of Satan or will the world be condemned to the Hell on Earth. 

The professional relationship between long time schlocky, low-budget horror director Donald Farmer (“Cannibal Hookers”) and the independent, modern day scream queen Jessa Flux (“Murdercise”) has gone beyond the limitations of a working relationship and into more along the lines of friendship and respect as the two have collaborated on a total of six completed productions from 2023 to date with “Amityville Aliens,” “Darbie’s Scream House,” “Debbie Does Demons,” “Bigfoot Exorcist” and “Shark Exorcist 2:  Unholy Waters.”  The sixth film is the one we’re going to look at today, “Blood Bitch Baby,” aka “Wicked Witch,” provides Flux the opportunity to play a notorious historical figure, the Blood Countess herself, Elizabeth Bathory.  The 2024 released film is also written by Donald Farmer and, if you’re familiar with the cult director’s work, there’s very little money invested into what’s considered a horror spirited feature that takes some liberties with the story.  “Blood Bitch Baby” is produced by the “Coven of the Black Cube” director Brewce Longo under his Blood Sick Productions company.

Jessa Flux might headline the movie but that doesn’t make “Blood Bitch Baby” a solo effort as the energetic cast is entirely occupied by Donald Farmer alternative and willing regulars.  Angel Nichole Bradford takes the protagonist lead as the abused and job-seeking Jenny who falls into Bathory’s classifieds trap, ensnared and bewitched to be the biological mother of the Antichrist.  Bradford co-stars in “Crackcoon” and “Darbie’s Scream House” alongside Flux and the petite, auburn-haired actress, in contrasts the voluptuous, curly-blond Flux and who also has a hand in special effects and makeup on these multi-hat productions, has a knack for acting that isn’t monotonic, flat, forced, or with limited range as often some of these cult B-movie actors can produce in attempt to be melodramatic.  When there’s usually Flux and Bradford in the same film together, Mel Helfrin isn’t too far behind as the third into this triple threat of titillating terror.  Helfrin, a vet of horror schlock, also starred in “Darbie’s Scream House” as well as “Night of the Dead Sorority Babes” with Jessa Flux.  The trio really do live up and liven up every scene with enthusiasm for budget horror, hamming it to death for the sake of blood, guts, and sex within its thin plotline structure that often veers off course.  More Farmer regulars in Claude D. Mills (“Debbie Does Demons”) and Joe Casterline (“Shark Exorcist 2:  Unholy Waters”) find themselves in the mix as bite victims of demonic forces.  There’s overperforming, bad performing, and some decent enough thespian to keep progression from staling but there’s definitely a comfortability and jelling within the troupe that sets expectations on a low-level production and a horrendously hackneyed and expositional script.  Jessie Youngs, Ronnie George (“Deadly Dealings”), Fallon Vendette, Marilyn Paige, and Kimberly Cole Zemke (“Debbie Does Demons”) costar. 

“Blood Bitch Baby” is an alliteration title that makes about as much as the film’s original alliteration title of “Wicked Witch” when considering the story has Jessa Flux in a prologue setup surrounding Elizabeth Bathory’s life post-virginal blood bathing.  Bathory’s deal with demonic forces gives the 16th-century woman what she’s always wanted, youth and beauty, but the agreement is never spoken of again in what’s an integral piece of important backstory to volley the immaculate conception (unless you consider Jenny’s nightmare of a demon raping her the act) of the antichrist.  That’s the theme for the entirety of the film as the story veers and swerves off-course away from a film setup to be about Bathory when really it’s about Jenny as a vessel for antichrist and those around succumbing to the infernal forces that dragon-headed hand puppets in this cost-efficient production.  The film is so strapped for cash that flesh wounds that should result in gaping hole actually grow a slab a raw and discolored meat overtop.  When Jenny eats her boyfriend’s eye, there should be an empty eye socket but what’s there is tumor growth.  The same can be said about Bathory being slashed or bitten in the face by the demon baby as instead of perforating scratches down her face, she too grows a bulbous mass.  Other randomized are added to try and add depth but are terribly too threadbare to fully attach itself with any kind of impression or influence, such as Keller, a Professor of Parapsychology who just randomly shows up at the right place, right time, and Iris, the dope-smoking lesbian who happenstance into a relationship with the recently unattached yet devilishly tranced and impregnated Jenny.  Iris isn’t essential to the story which makes her essentially just a body for sex appeal and for the kill counter.

Blood Sick Productions gives Elizabeth Bathory a lifelong change at more malevolence and death in “Blood Bitch Baby” now available on Blu-ray home video.  The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD25 is riddled with colorful gel tints that play havoc in the details, reducing skin and fabric textures with smooth splotches of image posterization.  When using natural lighting or unfiltered key lighting, the details better render through to illuminate the little details, such as skin imperfections and granulated texturing on all surfaces.  Hue changes run rampant with cinematographer Curtis Everitt can’t pin down a singular style, relying heavily on a multi-color use of tinted lighting to feign supernatural surrealism but when edited, the colors change and there are times when there is no coloring at all in certain frames.   The English LPCM 2.0 Stereo is adequate for the release with clear dialogue until the amplified volume static, that’s not filtered out, comes into play, losing some fidelity out of the dual channel.  The audio is overall flat but that’s expected with the mostly closeup and extreme closeup shots that innately don’t have depth.  Range is limited as well with mostly a talking head narrative and ADS demonic creature sounds.  Mike Treblicock and Tim Ritter’s soundtrack pours into the channels nicely, overtaking when needed, such as the dream sequence, and balanced where needed to be defined.  There are no English subtitles available.  Bonus features include a Donald Farmer video introduction with Kasper Meltedhair standing adjacent to him as agreeable arm candy, behind-the-scenes photo gallery, and Blood Sick Productions trailers for other distributed and produced films.  There’re also bloopers in the after credits.  The standard Amaray Blu-ray comes with killer gory artwork by graphic artist Rick Melton.  There is no image on the reverse side of the sleeve, and the disc is pressed with Jessa Flux’s colorfully tinted Bathory face.  Not rated and region free, the Blood Sick “Blood Bitch Baby” has a runtime of 68 minutes. 

Last Rites: Donald Farmer has always been a king of underground, independent schlock horror but over the years, Farmer’s work has tapered from passion projects to more undistinguishable indies with hammy performances and shoddy effects that has “Blood Bitch Baby” cribbed.

“Blood Bitch Baby” Now Available!

EVIL Dances Naked the Night Away! “Orgy of the Dead 2” reviewed! (MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Get in on the “Orgy of the Dead 2” on Blu-ray!

The Emperor of the dead and his Princess of the Night return from the dead to behold entertainment from the beyond.  As the Emperor sits on his graveside throne, his lap-seated Princess announces the lineup of dancing deceased, half naked women in a seduction of debauchery and death.  If the Emperor is not entertained, nor turned on, he damns their souls to Hell forever!  Four teens, on their way to the graveyard for sex and drugs amongst the dead, crash their car after some distracting roadhead, killing one of them in absent of a seatbelt.  As they search the graveyard for a living soul for help, they stumble upon the Emperor’s variety of groovy vixen and are captured to witness their dance of the dead.  As the show becomes more and more sordid, not all of the prisoners feel turned off by the show that creeps closer to their doom and their dawn.  

If you’re deeply knowledgeable of cult movies, have a familiarity with Ed Wood Jr. films, and have a genuine affinity for really schlocky horror and eroticism, you may have once in your life experienced the 1965 nudie-cuties erotic horror “Orgy of the Dead” that danced the graveside night away with topless stripteases challenged to entertain the Emperor of the Dead to avoid eternal damnation.  “Plan 9 from Outer Space” and “Jail Bait” filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr. penned the then controversial and provocative script with Stephen C. Apostolof debuting his directorial effort, who then went on to do a number of exploitation pictures, such as “College Girls,” “The Snow Bunnies,” and “Five Loose Women.” The film’s rights were obtained from the Apostolof family by Andrew J. Chambers, who’s credentials followed a similar subgenre to his 1965 predecessors with “Babezilla vs the Zombie Whorde” and “Lust, Magic, and the Witches’ Sabbath.”  Chambers’s goal was to create a sequel, simply entitled “Orgy of the Dead 2” that brought back the Emperor, Princess of the Night, and a slew of scantily cladded undead women to burlesque the night away.  Chambers writes, directs, and produces the 2026 release alongside co-producer Stephen Apostolof’s son, Chrisotpher, under Chambers independent production company, HojBob Productions, and was partially crowdfunded under Indigogo.com, achieving an approx. $3,700 in pledges.

Obviously, the 60-year span between the two films doesn’t see the return of Jeron Criswell back as the Emperor (died 1982), Fawn Silver as the Black Ghoul (long retired and left pictures altogether), or Pat Barrington and William Bates as the stumbling lost couple Shirley and Bob.  Instead, the sequel features new talent in the principal parts as Mike Fantastik dons the undead ruler of darkness as the Emperor who sits on his throne to judge the decaying dancers.  Fantastik is no Criswell but the indie rapper from Nebraska brings his own licentious flair to the character by blatantly reading from cue cards just off screen.  Princess of the Night is played by pinup model Penny Aphrodite (“Pigshit”) that does resemble a bit of Fawn Silver’s Gothicism in looks and mannerisms.  The duo of Bob and Shirley are replaced with a quartette, or a pair of couples, who wreck their car after roadhead sends their car careening into the bushes near a graveyard.  Nick Somers, Adam Peltier, Jaymie Schroeder (“The Devil’s Dancers”), and Jessa Flux (“Debbie Does Demons”) are the new captured and witnesses to the Emperor’s sordid dance space of judgement.  Flux has established herself as a rising scream queen by integrating herself into any and all-types of horror films in a very unselective manner and with “Orgy of the Dead 2,” her character closely recalls other Flux’s roles of a sexed-up hot chick, making her Cindy performance not that stand out, but in contrasts, there’s an omission of emotional guilt and anger compared to the others tied to a staked crosses as they watch the perversion and death unfold.  The dancers a motley of alternate women and unabashed topless stripteasers between Stephanie Love, Bobbi Jo, Mercy Andersen, Tina Mazing, Katie Kadaver, Maia Thomas, Naomi Webb, Kaisa Neal, and Mae Devour with Michael E. Ross, Clint Beaver, Tony Kimball, Zdenek Voprada, and Morgan Molck as the Emperor’s creatures of the night. 

If any of you readers have ever seen the 1965 “Orgy of the Dead,” you’ll find the modern-day sequel to be not really a sequel in the traditional sense but more like a remake.  There’s no firm connection to the original production with Chambers bringing new nudie-cuties to the dance on the graves, a mixed soundtrack, and a totally different perverted vibe that’s cruder than it is implied to accommodate the time period in which the film is made.  Apostolof’s “Orgy of the Dead” had no plot in the traditional sense in what was more of an erotic, burlesque shindig in the middle of ghoulish-driven cemetery and, to be frank, the whole concept didn’t exactly leave an ecstatic and an aesthetic taste in my mouth with its boring static evolution further into the runtime.  I get it.  Times change, movies change, and taste change and Apostolof’s “Orgy of the Dead” might have been the hot ticket punched for some sleazy gawkers but in the early 2000s, when “Orgy of the Dead” made it to VHS, the novel idea just fell hard like a rock sinking to the bottom of a lake.  Chamber’s sequel, following the same design as the original, produces the same effect with its timeless homage to Apostolof’s original and, while that’s honorable, Chambers didn’t reinvent the wheel, he just bedazzled it with different kinks and coarser content.  Product looks even cheaper than the original on its measly $5-$7,000 budget that can only afford cardboard structures and tombstones, a glue on prosthetics, and simple in-laid practical effects.  Plenty of heart with really no soul, “Orgy of the Dead 2” is about as lifeless as the undressing undead. 

From Hojbob Productions and MVD Visual, “Orgy of the Dead 2” is a blast form the past done in contemporary times now on Blu-ray home video.  The unrated, region free release doesn’t have a lot of technical disclosure, but the release is AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, onto a 25GB BD-R with the bruised colored disc underbelly, suggesting a commercial writeable disc and muted colored, textured DVD label on top.  Presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, the indie production isn’t at the summit of quality and, in fact, is rather low with poor visibility (aka lighting), compression blights such as banding and splotches, and an anemic color saturation.  The former of the three can be accepted to work in the sequel’s advantageous favor that keeps the hazy graveyard cemetery dim as possible and not be evident of key lighting that’ll throw off whatever authenticity “Orgy of the Dead 2” may possess.  The audio is an English Stereo 2.0, uncompressed but not reigned in with it’s noise static when volume levels overload with intense decibels.  Dialogue is clear but varies in strength in part to recording mic placement that can’t capture more than one person standing adjacent to the person next to the mic. The soundtrack by Aaron Gum is perhaps the best with a variety of musical genres from carnivalesque to rhapsody that loosely fits the dance number.  Special features include a making-of featurette with Andrew J. Chambers, a behind-the-scenes featurette with raw footage of takes and setups, actor Adam Peltier’s ramblings, a director and actor feature length commentary track, and the original trailer.  Released in a standard Blu-ray Amray case, “Orgy of the Dead 2” homages its predecessor with a slapped together package design of a blown up still from the actual movie and used as the front cover face.  The sleeve art is also one-sided.  Inside in the insert section, there’s a slick and nicely illustrated retroesque comic book front cover insert of the main characters.  It’s unfortunately uncredited.  The narrowly hour film, coming in at 65 minutes, is the perfect size for the BD-R capabilities.

Last Rites: If a fan of the original “Orgy of the Dead,” the sequel doesn’t stray into new territory with dancing corpses and a killer soundtrack, but don’t expect a novel sequel in this ready-made remake.

Get in on the “Orgy of the Dead 2” on Blu-ray!