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To EVIL It’s Only a Game! “Truth or Dare: Legacy” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / 3-Disc, 5-Film Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own All 5 Films on Blu-ray From SRS Cinema!

Truth or dare is the game that can be played by all.  Children will dare each other to do eat dirt or spill the beans on who ate the last chocolate chip cookie.  Teens and adults will be riskier in their sexualized dares and their truth sought questions.  For Mike Strauber, the longstanding game is life and death.  When Mike stumbles upon his wife and friend’s bedroom affair, his dormant psychotic childhood surrounding the game awakens into delusions of playing the game with a woman he hallucinates, ultimately hurting himself enough to be placed in Sunnyville Mental Institution.  As Strauber spirals deeper into his madness, he inflicts his truth or dare game on mental patients who cut off their limbs and explode their heads with a grenade Strauber snuck inside.  Strauber also mutilates his face and comes to wear a copper mask but his time at Sunnyville is cut short when he escapes his confines and goes on a murderous rampage back to where his breakdown started, with his cheating wife and unscrupulous friend that sets Mike Strauber’s story to influence others to follow in his footsteps and even give Strauber another chance to work the killing field once again.

SOV filmmaker Tim Ritter is renowned amongst hardcore horror fans for his VHS and budget films that ambitiously and thoroughly executed with gory effects accentuated with a sleazy dressing.  Select filmic highlights include “Killing Spree,” “Day of the Reaper,” and even a segment in the Hi-8:  Horror Independent 8 Films” horror anthology, but his flagship film and franchise stems from the 1986 “Truth or Dare?  A Critical Madness” that spurred four sequels stretching from 1994 to 2017 under an array of non-sequentially titled projects, such as “Wicked Games,” “Screaming for Sanity,” “Deadly Dares,” and “I Dared You.”  If you haven’t noticed already, the multi-player required game of truth or dare is at the core of the franchise.  Ritter wrote and directed the films with Scott Tepperman (“Cruel Summer” franchise) co-directing “I Dared You” as well as starring in the picture, Kevin Lindenmuth (“Vampires and Other Stereotypes”) and SRS Cinema’s Ron Bonk cowriting “Screaming for Sanity,” and Kermit Christman cowriting “Wicked Games.”  The original film is an extenuation of a short film of the same subject matter in Ritter’s “Twisted Illusions” anthology.  Twisted Illusions would become the name Ritter and Joel D. Wynkoop’s small band production company to finance and shoot the first three films along with Peerless Films, Wynkoop Productions, and Los Bastardz Productions sneaking in here and there in the series as association coproductions with Ritter, Joel D. Wynkoop, Ron Bonk, Scott Tepperman, Yale Wilson, Denise Blackwell, and Reaper M. Jones are the credited producers across the five films.

Other than the centerpiece killer Mike Strauber in all five films, only one other character returns to the storyline and only in three out of the five, although Hess’s profession changes from psychiatric doctor to police detective.  One other principal support character from Part IV makes a brief appearance in Part V but has seemingly zero tether to previously film, making his character more confusing in the cast scheme.  While there have been many actors to have portrayed Mike Strauber, from John Brace being the first to give it his all as a scorned lover and a broken mental case to more the stereotypical slasher-stoic demeanors of Kevin Scott Crawford (Part II), Bill Cassinelli (Part III), Joel D. Wynkoop (Part IV), and Part V uses the character by notorious legend only, Dan Hess is essentially played by one actor, Joel D. Wynkoop in Parts II, III, and V and this would mark the character as the anthesis against Strauber, much like the Laurie Strode and Michael Myers embattled relationship of intertwined fates.  However, unlike Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, Ritter’s plots flare out to mostly not give Strauber all killer credit and gives Strauber’s inspired lot a chance to flourish in his all-encompassing infamy with copycat killers and even killer’s he’s made up in his own demented mind.  Like any Ritter production, there’s a slew of sultry, scantily-cladded women show a bit of flesh but their flesh is filleted.  The hot bods of Mary Fanaro (“Demon Queen”), Patricia Paul (“Creep”), Lara Stewart, Jessica Cameron, Krista Grotte Saxon (“The Day of the Living Dead”), and Ashley Lynn Caputo are just some highlights that’ll put your sweat glands into overdrive.  The 40-year stretched between the first film and the last film offers a variety of styles, culturally inclined for the decade, so nothing between styles and transitions carry over the same from film-to-film but that gives “Truth and Dare” it’s non-commercial edge, right?

“Truth or Dare?  A Critical Madness” is unusual proof of how mighty a small production with a lot of can-do attitudes can be with it’s tremendously vast cult following that has reached the likes of Frodo himself, Elijah Wood (“Maniac”) as well as to the casual horror fan bored on a Friday night and decides to rent the movie, digitally unfortunately nowadays.  There is a certain crude charm in it’s development of a killer as Tim Ritter evolves the mental state of the man, Mike Strauber, before he turns into a copper-faced killer whereas other slasher kings, like Jason Voorhees or Michel Myers, who are introduced to audiences in the deepest throes of their instable mental state and that is perhaps one reason why the original film works and connects with audiences who can empathize a killer instinct after being bluntly cheated on by their significant other or some other relatable, emotionally vulnerable, traumatic event.  The sequels from the 90s, “Wicked Games” and “Screaming for Sanity,” are the only two sequels that are back-to-back and still keep that aforesaid charm of encapsulated brutality surrounding the legacy of Mike Strauber in the form of copycat killers.  Strauber never returns to the likes of an immortal juggernaut but his notoriety feeds inspiration and influence for sequels to come, something we haven’t really seen before prior to 1990 and many have now imitated, such as the “Scream” films.  This separate but the same idea continues into the more modern last two sequels from the 2010s but has evolved or morphed to accommodate the digital age of internet, online videos, and webcams to infect madness with the truth or dare game being at its very essence.   However, Ritter transitions from 16mm and SOV to digital for the latter two sequels, losing that warm and fuzzy glow in the color tones and the 480-interlacing resolution of analog video.  The last film “I Dared You” is more of a caricature comedy than it is a tale of severity that preys on themes of derangement, loneliness, and trauma, trading those key aspect of downtrodden humanity for campy kitsch that doesn’t work and alienates itself from the body of the snake by putting a bulgy-eyed frog’s head at the end head of it; it just doesn’t work.

All five films are now available on a “Truth or Dare? Legacy” 3-Disc Blu-ray set from SRS Cinema.  A perceptively definitive set, SRS Cinema’s Blu-ray comes AVC encoded with 1080p Hi-Def resolution on a BD50s.  Each film is visually exhibited appropriately according to its shooting decade and budget capacity.  For instance, the 1980’s “Truth or Dare?  A Critical Madness” is shot on super 16 but then scanned to VHS for ease of distribution so there entails the film stock grain and light bleeds as well as interlacing and tracking properties but with an overall and a definitively pleasurable watching experience with it’s extremely minimal wear, tear, and age issues.  The 90’s “Wicked Games” and “Screaming for Sanity” were directly shot on SOV and come with that warm, orange coloring as well as soft but intense glow of other color lighting tints used to extract emotion out of the scene.  The 2010’s “Deadly Dares” and “I Dared You” are digitally filmed that take away much of that analog aesthetic of indie cinema, trading the format favorites for a cleaner image that has no visual personality to it.  These films are not a stylistic artistically with a cinematic flare but there are some visual tricks with tints, composites, and distortions that make the imagery stimulating.  Prior to the 2010’s installments, which are displayed in a widescreen 1.78:1, the aspect ratios for the older works are a full screen 1.33:1 aspect ratio.  All five films have a Dolby Digital 2.0 audio spec with an unpolished innate recording that has a medium-strength dialogue and feeble organic action that’s naturally captured without the enhancement of an audio strengthening and touchup.  There’s voiceover dialogue that’s more robust that loses that in-the-scene spatial distance.  English captions are available for each film and all alternate versions.  Each disc comes with special features that are rounded around and inspired by each of the films on the disc.  Disc one is just the first film “Truth or Dare?  A Critical Madness” that contains two cuts of the film supervised by Ritter and Roy Damm and Susan Kapostasy,  both versions have an audio commentary featuring director Tim Ritter and actor Joel D. Wynkoop, a feature-length documentary “Celluloid Carnage” that has some behind-the-scenes and raw materials and photos, the original Italian language track is available for both versions, a snippet of the talk show interview between Craig Ferguson and Elijah Wood with Wood discussing “Truth of Dare” as his favorite horror movie, a Ritter short film with Joel D. Wynkoop audio commentary available, a promotional photo gallery, the feature trailer, and a Tim Ritter introduction from 2016.  Disc 2 contains “Wicked Games” and “Screaming for Sanity” and contain a parallel audio commentary for each film with Tim Ritter, Joel D. and Cathy Wynkoop, a retrospective interview with Michelle Macabre, the original 1993 making-of “Blinded by the Blood II,” a featurette on the alternate conception “Writer’s Block,” promotional art and trailers, and a secondary interview with Ritter with scream queen Katrina.  The third and final disc, “Deadly Dares” and “I Dared You,” also include Tim Ritter audio commentaries with the latter co-hosted with Los Bastardz’s Scott Tepperman and Jim O’Rear along with series staples, Joel D. & Cathy Wynkoop, and rounded out with promotional and crowdfunded extras and fundraiser videos, behind-the-scenes of Part V, an estate location visit with Tepperman and O’Rear, Tepperman’s reflection of making Part V, and Ritter’s short film “Hess” with Joel D. Wynkoop starring which comes with it its own two commentaries, one with Joel D. and Cathy Wynkoop and the other with Marcus Kempton  The traditional Blu-ray Amaray has the more contemporary artwork of Mike Strauber in a copper mask and slicing a machete through the air with the title sporting the original font of dripping blood just overhead Strauber.  The reverse side of the cover art contains a complete overview of each disc’s special features and transfer specs.  First disc resides on left side lock while the last two discs are stacked on a double disc push lock, leaving no room for tangible inserts.  With a total runtime of 450 minutes, each film is not rated and comes region free.

Last Rites: Like normal, the sequels slowly dilute the original “Truth or Dare” film until by the 5th film there’s barely a resemblance of Tim Ritter’s heart and soul. Times change, sure, but keeping that underground and spirited essence of “Truth or Dare” would have made more sense than the killer’s influence amongst the masses over the decades. In any case, SRS Cinema’s 5-film Blu-ray is the definitive edition, nonetheless.

Own All 5 Films on Blu-ray From SRS Cinema!

The Red Glow of EVIL Lurks Inside Your Closet of Trauma. “Midnight Monster” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Midnight Monster” is On Sale at Amazon.com!

The police track down a serial kidnapper and murderer of women by relying on Veronica’s projection psychic abilities to keep tabs on the killer’s every move before he claims another victim.  When the rescue and apprehension of the killer went off without incident, saving a woman’s life as a direct result of Veronica’s supernatural ability, the exhaust Veronica returns to what’s consider her normal life but when she sleeps, dreams of a monstrous human figure with glowing red eyes haunts her dreams.  Basking in a hot red glow, the monster lives in her closet and comes out when she sleeps, manifesting terrible visions Veronica can’t tell if she’s awake or dreaming of the monster in her wardrobe space.  Every night the dreams become more intense and frightening and she senses losing control, it consumes her psychic powers and entrances her to confront her past with dire consequences that will change her life forever. 

“Midnight Monster,” also originally known as “Closet Monster” and labeled on other global releases, is the Dustin Ferguson written and directed, psychic-powers and burning-eyed, night terror from 2023.  Ferguson is no stranger to low-budget B-horror moviemaking have worn multiple hats in a budget that doesn’t allow for individual expertise.  Having over two decades worth of directorial credits, including the penny-pinched and scantily-cladded thrills and coherent productions of “Horror Movie Workout,” “Mondo Shock,” and more fittingly enough “Penny Pinchers:  The Kings of Low-Budget Horror,” a documentary about making a horror movie on pennies of the dollar, the multi-faceted filmmaker, who also goes by the alias Dark Infinity, utilizes his own independent film production company, SCS Entertainment, to finance and equip production costs by funneling working capital through non-studio and alternative- spurred means as Joseph Williamson (“Arachnado,” “Ebola Rex”) serve as producer and “Liza:  Warden from Hell’s” Kevin Age and Brad Banacka as executive producers, all three have worked previous together on numerous films throughout the years.

Opening up “Midnight Monster” is the dramatic scene of Veronica using her powers inside a police interrogation room to track down a soulless killer before he nixes the life of another victim tied up in the back of his car, setting up Veronica’s uncanny abilities to project into current time through a personal belonging, or more technically known as psychoscopy, and she apparently does it very well to help authorities capture their suspect.  This also sets up for the conjured misfortune of a closet monster haunting her sleep, representing or demonizing personal childhood trauma.  Alana Dro (“Zombie Rage,” “Death Bitch”) steps into psychic-shoes of the closet creature plagued Veronica with little effort put into the character’s complexity of navigating her powers and her dreams to try and understand them better.  Instead, Dro becomes more of a peepshow prop than a proper lead character trying to solve the evil enigma that skulks from out the closet.  Not all the character flaws can be contributed to Dro with Veronica being written half-hearted into a narrative that requires her to be inquisitive and resolute in curing what haunts her.  There are not many scenes shared between Dro and Robert Lankford (“Nemesis 5:  The New Model”), who portrays the closet monster as more a tip-spear figurehead for Veronica’s ship of trauma rather than an actual beast with unknown intentions, but Veronica and the monster have their individualized zoned moments that are shared and connected only through the power of editing to create a surreal space of subliminal supernaturality between them.  Other characters pop in and then pop out for non-reoccurring roles with the 80s-90s scream queen Brinke Stevens (“Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity,” “Nightmare Sisters”) being the most recognizable actress given primary credit.  Jonathan Nation, Ronnie Angel, Joycelyne Lew, Guillaume Rivaud, Richard During, Roger Trexler, Vida Ghaffari, and Breana Mitchell have their moment as the rest of the cast.

Ferguson’s “Midnight Monster” has interesting, dark undertones of childhood trauma expressed through the manifestation of a monster whose power of Veronica holds her entranced, as if the monster is familiar to her.  It can be understood that the monster represents someone who hurt her, abused her, or raped her as a child, someone close to her who’s authority and relationship has likely brainwashed her into trust, love, and affection.  While these themes are provocatively deep and powerful, Ferguson can’t quite pull in “Midnight Monster’s” narrative into a balanced state and cheapens it with wash, rinse, and repeat scenes of Alana Dro full naked in the shower in an extended shoot of her getting wet and soapy.  Not necessarily a bad thing to have an abundance of gratuitous nudity in a grindhouse picture, there’s typically only one shower scene per film and “Midnight Monster” has two with the same actress doing the exact same thing, a slow full-body soap up, for a good chunk of the already fleeting runtime.  The second shower scene forces the narrative to wander off course and Ferguson tries to wrangle it back in by the finale ties all the pieces together with a meaty twist ending I found blindsided by, in a good way, but it also can feel and seem arbitrary and disconnecting with the introduction of new characters suddenly thrust into the fold without warning in its concluding moments.   

A regular outlet for Dustin Ferguson’s films, Wild Eye Releasing continues to shower horror fans with more of filmmaker’s films onto DVD.  “Midnight Monster” receives a MPEG2 encoded DVD5 in true 720p standard definition.  The digital image is deconsecrated from its divinely detailed imagery due to poor, commercial equipment, and a lesser codec that’s not upscaled, creating more of a SOV aesthetic which I wholly believe to be the intent.  Presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on the DVD, the compressed image does decent capturing of the peripheral objects but without an spherical lens, there’s limitations to the scene.  There are some gorgeously soft red lighting and glow to get the monster in the mood for scaring and for surrealism, but most of the film is considerably ungraded with not a lot of other pop to its palette.  There LPCM stereo presents a fine U.S. English dialogue that isn’t quite robust in the forefront but has clarity and no obstruction and the rest of the ambient and environment sound is most comprised of added action in post-production.  The entire encoding is a bit rough and ready, and again that’s likely purposeful in attempt to be a grindhouse picture.  Encoded special features include an interview with actress Alana Dro, an image gallery, and trailers for “Midnight Monster” as well as other Wild Eye Releasing titles.  There are also three fake grindhouse trailers at the beginning as 9-minutes’ worth of B-movie coming attractions with retro visual graphics and each film encased with a 8mm film filter to mimic vintage film stock and films. The clear DVD Amaray case has a neat and red color-infused, illustrated graphic art of the titular monster overlooking a sleeping woman with a reverse side containing a still of the monster.  The runtime listed is 60 minutes, but I had clocked the film in under 50 minutes, even with the faux trailers.  The region free DVD is not rated. 

Last Rites: “Midnight Monster” plays out like a fever dream of serial killers and daddy issues but there’s not enough Scotch tape to make this digital reel work effectively, leaving Ferguson to piece together slim pickings on what could have been a promising night terror.

“Midnight Monster” is On Sale at Amazon.com!

It’s in Human Nature to be EVIL! “Cradle of Fear” reviewed! (Unearthed Films / 2-Disc Limited Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Cradle of Fear” Available on a 2-Disc Unearthed Films Release!

Occultist and hypnotician Kemper has been locked away in a criminal asylum for years for a gruesome series of murders, involving not only men and women but also some children.  Kemper seethes against the arresting and prosecuting team who = put him away.  Able to sneak out a list of targets and their addresses, Kemper uses his black magic lineage to carry out revenge on his behalf, a violent revenge on the loved ones of who incarcerated him to a life in imprisonment.  Four gruesome assassins through Kemper’s supernatural means leaves a body trail for eccentric Inspector Neilson whose unusual investigative methods has him highly sensitive to the case and his temper has him in the crosshairs of his commanding supervisor.  With no leads on how Kemper is committing a new string of gruesome crimes, Neilson pieces together that all the victims are related to the case that put Kemper away and when his son becomes the last target, Neilson goes to extreme lengths to see the serial killer is put down for good. 

A gory and cynical narrative of indelicate irony, “Cradle of Fear” is the British, anthological horror that speaks to the insidiously widespread evil that courses through the inevitable fallible and immoral side of human nature, leaving no good deed unpunished in its circumference of supernatural punitive karma.  The early 2000s anthology is written and directed by Alex Chandon, director behind the 1980s sex comedies “The Perv Parlor” and “Pervirella” as well as directing select music videos for the UK extreme black metal band Cradle of Filth, whose Goth-cladded lead signer Dani Filth stars in the film and is the poster boy for film art, hence the title’s similarity to the band’s name.  Eddie Kane, Ciska Faulkner, and Nico Rilla produced the film with Paul Luke and Andy Skivington serving as executive producers for the Pragmatic Pictures production. 

Aforementioned, Dani Filth stars as the ghoul with the ultimate evil of transforming his human form into a demonic creature that can rip to shreds those unlucky to be in his path, the opening gives us a glimpse into his power by viciously terminating two would-be, back-alley muggers.   From there, the story goes into the gruesome crime scene of two young women (Emily Bouffante, “Evil Aliens,” and Melissa Forti) laid strewn with their innards outwards and inspector Neilson (Edmund Dehn, “The Containment”) copping a feel as his way of rain-manning the scene.  Their end first storyline begins the moment the two goth club women were fated for untimely demise when they spotted Filth’s more-goth-then-they-are The Man.  Eventually, Inspector Neilson figures out the victims are connected by their last names and those related to trial participants with the next tales of sharing ill-fated death in the ghastliest and most gruesome ways, anthological style.  Another two women (Rebecca Eden, “Pervirella,” and Emma Rice) try to nick an old-timer of his bed stashed savings but find there is no honor between the combination of friends and thieves, an amputee (Louie Brownsell) murders an acquaintance to use his leg for longshot transplant only to have his leg reject in the most horrifying way, and a officer man (Stuart Laing, “Lie Still”) risks everything in life to get his rocks off gawking at online snuff films only to find himself in one!  There’s also the wrap around story that peppers transition scenes in between to bridge gaps and bring the short stories together into one long feature.  Kemper is the story’s chief antagonist but isn’t the only bad guy in the narrative but is our resemblance of a hero Inspector Neilson’s force to stop as the inspector doesn’t really just how purely symbolizing the embodied of pure evil Kemper really is perhaps even the Devil himself, as the orchestrator is the marionette pulling the strings that leaves Neilson chasing his tale.  Performances all around are gritty, apathetic, cynical, and mean that leaves no ounce of hope or feel-good intentions.

The early short films are not set up with Kemper as the man behind the curtain and this can put some confusion into the mix with seemingly rough transitions from one story to the next.  Plus, the non-linear first film isn’t mirrored into the other three, leaving the first third of the movie wandering, or grasping, to cling to something whole.  By the end of the second short, “Cradle of Fear” levels and becomes clear that an anthology is playing out with each tale containing a formula narrative:  a setup, the rising action or transgression, a brief, jovial high, and then it all comes crashing with gory horror.  The gore is a blend between practical and composite VFX that gets away with a range of simple stab wounds to more complicated head popping deaths while the visual effects has obvious green screen incongruity but dishes some devilish effects from deformed spider-like legs sprawled out from a half-severed head to some shoddy-level effects like a European car flying through and crashing through traffic.  What’s ingrained in the gore and horror is the sex, an element that’s immensely weighed in “Cradle of Fear’s” content that showcases scenes of sensual romance, to gratuitous nudity, to tasteful moments but keep the skin touched upon at least once in every episode.  “Cradle of Fear’s” circulated theme speaks toward the persistence and ever-present evil that’s within us all and from within it can’t be contained as human nature is ultimately fallible and every soul can be conditioned to expel the verhy worst in us all. 

Unearthed Films “Credle of Fear” arrives onto Blu-ray home video with a new 2-Disc, limited-edition collector’s set release encoded with AVC onto a BD25 and presented in an European widescreen of 1.66:1 aspect ratio with 1080p, high-definition resolution.  The 2-Disc set has for a long time seemingly vanished out of Unearthed Films’ newly released lineup, aside from the dual-format releases but it’s nice to see a comeback that’s more special features driven rather than playback format.  The dark grading leads to plenty of finer detail loss but the film has clear delineation and when it is key lit, textures flourish.  With a color scheme of mostly darker shades, keeping in line with its bleak noir tone and the gothic model, this early 2000’s horror fashions a polished veneer as one of the earlier pioneers of digital capturing.  The CGI is not at its finest being that it’s early early 2000’s VFX tech and on a budget too nonetheless and you can the shift in reality whenever the effect is composited into a scene.  Depth is mostly retained for closeups and medium closeup shots as Chandon’s does stylize quite a bit with fade in and outs, negative images, lighting, slow-motion, and various edits to make a swirl of designer continuity.  The British English audio is encoded with an uncompressed PCM 2.0 stereo.  Strong dialogue track doesn’t clash with the imposed, arterial soundtrack comprised of industrial goth and rock bands including Cradle of Filth, for obvious reasons, and The Dark Poets, Jezebel, Slacker, Lungworm, Intense, Quicksilver, and Crotchet.  Often, the ambience and Foley has chaotic aversion to one another that disrupt the audiological flow of the film, except for a few excellently crafted scenes such as Mel’s walk Emily Bouffante’s walk through the downtown area and see demon faces is harmonized very well.  The Foley can be slapstick at times with hits to the body being overexaggerated with cartoonish tones.  English subtitles are available on the feature disc. Disc one contains some ride-along aspecial features, including a brief making-of, a second behind-the-scenes Important Words that has direct Alex Chandon and cast members rambling about other topics rather than being topically relevant to the film, the German DVD making-of the feature, a behind-the-scenes gallery, and three original trailers for the film.  Disc two is mainlhy comprised off Alex Chandon’s short films – “Chainsaw Scumfuck,” “Bad Manor,” “Bad Karma,” “Drillbit,” “Night Pastor,” “Bullshit News,” and “Borderline.”  Also included is a promo for Film Extremes 3, outtakes for the shorts, a behind-the-scenes gallery for the shorts, and their trailers.  Packaging includes a traditional Blu-ray Amaray with new composition cover art on a one-sided sleeve.  The limited-edition O-ring slipcover contains the same primary image.  The discs are held in place on the inner layer of the Ameray with snaplocks and pressed with controversial and provocative imagery including a bloodied baby head and an illustrated eviscerated naked woman.  The region A locked film has a runtime of 120 minutes and is unrated. 

Last Rites: “Cradle of Fear” rocks the anthological horror subgenre not to sleep but to give rise to the killer instinct from within and to show the self-inflicted suffering from the innate debasement in the dark recesses of our soul.

“Cradle of Fear” Available on a 2-Disc Unearthed Films Release!

Sex-Crazed EVIL Goes to an All-Girl School! “Delinquent School Girls” reviewed! (VCI Entertainment / Dual Format Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Delinquent School Girls” on Blu-ray and DVD from VCI Entertainment!

Three insane asylum inmates incarcerated for their perversive and deviant acts escape their small confines of a cell and the electroshock abuse.  On the run, the people they encounter to pillage what they need find themselves either enamored with them in drink and spirit as well as the initially force exploitative intercourse that becomes more pleasurable and desired.  When they invade the outskirts of an all-girls private school, they stumble upon an elder biology professor taking advantage of a roofied young admirer, two busty kitchen cooks giving them only minor trouble before having their way them, and two poolside lasses eager to be pleased.  When they encounter what remains of the student body left behind on holiday leave in the gymnasium, the group of voluptuous young women are subjected to the whims of the maniacs before they fight back with their learned karate lessons as they spill out of their karate uwagi jackets. 

There’s no decade genre that can more outrageous and controversial than the scantily-cladded, seventies exploitation and Greg Corarito’s 1975 “Delinquent School Girls” fits the bill with sexed-up prison escapees finding themselves fleeing into the sheltering arms of half-naked and promiscuously feisty schoolgirls.  Also known around the world as “Carnal Madness,” and more selectively, alternatively titled as “The Love Maniacs,” “The Sizzlers,” and “Bad Girls,” the film is a mix between sexploitation and crude comedy, penned by the American B-movie and pornographic director of “The Sadistic Hypnotist” and “Hard on the Trail” Corarito and alongside fellow adult oriented filmmaker John Lamb (“The Starlets”) and Maurice Smith (“The Joys of Jezebell,” “Love, Swedish Style”).  Riding the Russ Meyer gravy train of slapstick sleaze and high energy antics, Smith and Lamb also serve as producers of the film that was shot under by Alpha Productions in Santa Barbara, California. 

Not to be taken overly seriously, despite its licentious context of male prisoners holding hostage and raping women, “Delinquent School Girls” isn’t centrically focused on the schoolgirls although the title suggests as such.  The attention is mostly set on the three fugitives absconding from law enforcement and these are not just any prisoners; these are demented sex maniacs.  While the label is perversely provoking, only one of them is truly aberrant in his hunt for the opposite sex.  Being more of the muscle and the muscular brute of the group is Bob Minor (“Coffy,” “Foxy Brown”).  A regular actor in early blaxploitation, Minor indulges his character Dick Peters’ sexual deviancies by nearly bedding every woman he encounters and compares himself to being God’s sexual gift to women.  Of course, the women love it because they’re either sexually repressed by low libido men or just naïve and horny.  Peters is not however the leader of the pack, a position taken with great ostentation and theatrical direction by the demanding Carl C. Clooney who talks a good act of deviancy but never really follows through with any carnality.   Clooney is played by Michael Pataki who we just reviewed as a Marlon Brando impersonator in the “The Last Tango in Paris’ sex-spoof, “The Last Foxtrot in Burbank,” directed by debuting Charles Band.  Pataki does a fair share of impersonations but none really home in on a certain celeb, but he uses his farcical approach to be the pack leader that calls the shots and reins in a randy Peters with absurd choice considering their fugitive state.  The last of the trio is Stephen Stucker, who you might recognize from the “Airplane” spoof movies as the flamboyant air traffic controller with his trademark androgynous voice and mannerisms, playing the “gay man” of the group and has zilch sexual aggression or desires toward the women.  Considering the female cast there’s isn’t one that stands out as a full-fledged protagonist in what is more of a collective effort amongst the troupe, beginning with some slightly more principal leads in porn star Colleen Brennan, a busy and fiery redhead who takes no crap from a male dominated society.  Before full transitioning to the adult industry with such titles as “Daisy Chain,” “Maid in Manhattan,” and “Tower of Power,” Brennan was at the cusp of sexploitation with genre films like Russ Meyer’s “Supervixens” and Stu Segalls “The Dirty Dolls.”   Promiscuous women flow left-and-right through the entirety of “Delinquent Schoolgirls” with other notable performances from Zoe Grant, Debbie Raymond, Brenda Miller, Jane Steele, Betty Johnson, Valerie Anderson, Kay Lange, Doree Vega, and nude model with large bombshell breasts, Roberta Pedon.  Ralph Campbell (“Hollywood 90028”) and John Carpenter regular peripheral actor George ‘Buck’ Flower also co-star

“Delinquent School Girls” is pervy but not grossly over-the-top in its sexploitation subgenre.  To counter the depravity and objectification, there’s theatrical melodramatics and plenty of comedy to offset a lopsided licentiousness.  Dick Peters provides the perversion, Carl C. Clooney provides the excessive, madman performance, and Bruce Wilson, played by Stucker, is a riot of feminine mannerisms and one-liners without being an oversized caricature of a gay man on screen.  The trio is almost like a ruffian version of the Three Stooges without the eye-poking, forehead slapping, hair pulling slapstick.  Clooney and gang are also a traversal entity, meaning they travel from their escaped holding cells to the school for troubled girls in a when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object scenario as the escapees run-through and overcome all obstacles in their path – an old man and his sexually frustrated wife, a roofie slipping biology teacher and his unconscious pupil, two feisty kitchen maids – until they meet the school age women in the middle of nightly karate class nonetheless.  That’s where the buck stop and the rebellion against the convict’s joyride comes to halt and in the middle is all the sullied interactions that kind of wind up being turned onto a corrected head – the sexually frustrated wife gets her fill while the husband gets amiably drunk with the two holding him hostage, the roofied girl is saved from a snake stimulated biology teacher and rapist, and the two kitchen maids happily share meal around a card table after being ravaged with no complaints.  While contextually the subject matter can be dark and sharp, “Delinquent School Girls” has a good-natured attitude about the whole ordeal that makes this emotional calorie intake all the lighter. 

Jumping jack jugs that spill right out, upskirts of high school schoolgirl outfits, and plenty of long-legged, bare-chest exposure, “Delinquent School Girls” bares the mark of sexploitation with pride and caters to a comedy that neutralizes the often shame audiences that comes with bleak and hard to swallow the exploitation of a slew of sexpot ladies in the film.  The first film on the Psychotronica label from VCI Entertainment, “Delinquent School Girls” arrives on a 2-dsic, dual-formatted, DVD and Blu-ray set.  The AVC encoded BD25 has a 1080p, high-definition resolution and the DVD is MPEG2 encoded DVD5 with an upscaled 720p standard definition.  The Blu-ray edges out the DVD counterpart with better clarity around the often congested in variables and in the restored 4K scanned transfer of the original 35mm negative that never provides a consistent detail quality or color.  Some cells appear yellowish, others are often speckled by blow up, a few has lighter contrasts that bleed and meld objects, but there are more scenes of well-delineated and detailed-oriented scenes that granular specifics on skin and textures.  Night sequences are hit-or-miss with a chiaroscuro lighting of key areas, such as Roberta Pedon’s extremely large and oval shaped breasts.  VCI transfer does it’s best to refine the cheaply and does a good job reconditioning previous home video versions, retaining healthy grain, some speckling, and little-to-no damage or compression follies.  The uncompressed English track, a LPCM 2.0 mono, is centered inlaid and focused but discerns any ensuing chaos well enough to provide distinct entities without being a cacophony.  Dialogue comes over clear and distinct; we get some real nice clarity and vocal difference from the three very contrasting convicts with their personalities.  There’s not in the depth or range department as medium shots are often overlaid with voiceover dialogue and range is limited to the Foley wallops of kicks and punches.  English subtitles are optional available on each disc.  Special features are included on each disc as well and they include an archived commentary by actor Bob minor with Los Angeles-based documentarian Elijah Drenner hosting, Pscyhotronica:  Dive into Cult Cinema featurette, and original trailers for the film.  The release comes in a traditional Blu-ray Amaray with reversible sleeve artwork containing pieces of original artwork.  Both discs are region free for the rated R release that has a softcore runtime of 89 minutes.

Last Rites: A comedy first with perversities as a secondary, “Delinquent School Girls” is a gambol of a good time in its eccentric and wanton unprincipled behaviors, saturated with feminine succulence and dastardly deviance.

“Delinquent School Girls” on Blu-ray and DVD from VCI Entertainment!

A Homosexual Hooks Up with a Porn Star and Treats Her EVILLY Sleazy. “The Last Foxtrot in Burbank” reviewed! (Full Moon Features / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Last Foxtrot in Burbank” Finally Recognized by Charles Band and Full Moon Features!

In the fictious setting of Burbank, France, a distraught and wandering Paul grieves over the loss of his gay, drag queen lover.  Wallowing in despair as well as barely entertaining his lover’s mother, Paul is on a half-hearted hunt for a new apartment and runs into Jeannine when the two meet looking at the same rental.  A mostly sexualized relationship ensues at the apartment with Paul treating the beautiful French woman and aspiring adult star like a piece of meat in a homosexual way, stemmed by his inadequacies in bed.  Jeanne, becoming fed up with Paul’s obsessive and polarizing behavior during their romantic tryst, lashes out in various ways, one as a gun-toting adult starlet that makes shooting scenes with her all that more dangerous to one’s health.  Paul’s health too becomes a target as Jeanne’s ultimate distaste for his floundering and obsessive ways, especially in condemning her pornographic lifestyle.

“The Last Foxtrot in Burback” is a film Charles Band (“Puppet Master”) desperately tried to erase and forget along with then newcomer editor, “Halloween’s” John Carpenter, as both filmmakers disassociated and disavowed its existed because of a couple reasons:  1) the romantic satirical spoof was not a horror/sci-fiction film both of them wanted to make at the time and 2) audiences were not appreciating it’s parodical and fleshy colored luster.  The film it removes inspirational humorous bones from is Marlon Brando’s “The Last Tango in Paris,” helmed by Bernardo Bertolucci who is dug a path of steamy sexual dramas, including “Stealing Beauty” and “The Dreamers.”  “The Last Foxtrot in Burbank” aimed to capitalize on its 1972 pushing-the-boundaries of sexualization success with writers Bill Haggard and Sam Vaughn behind the screenplay pages.  Band produced the film with filming held in Los Angeles and Marc Perilli serving as executive producer under the Federal Film Incorporation.

In his best Marlon Brando impersonation, Michael Pataki (“Halloween 4:  The Return of Michael Myers,” “The Baby”) opens his pastiche performance with hyperbole and flamboyance to emulate his version Paul to Brando’s version of Paul while still dishing the Brando-isms and deliveries.  Pataki also opens his trench coat to open-faced frontal nudity.  Yet, the one who is mostly nude is Sherry Denton in the role of Frenchwoman Jeanne.  Her role does harness the same essence of “The Last Tango in Pari’s” Maria Schneider, making Denton’s Jenne harder to define as she absorbs Paul’s verbal and emotional abuse, as she contemplates their arranged sexual rendezvous against her emotional withstand all, and how she manages a life in the adult industry as a sex object that runs parallel with being too a sex object outside the profession.  Pataki and Denton’s scenes together resemble that of a mother humoring a spoiled child.  Denton’s rather levelheaded compared to a full-blown exaggeration of Marton Brando in Michael Pataki with acute yelling spats and irrational sex requests that bleed into pleading and disappointment on a childish person of imprudence.  The gut punch of obsession, desire, and more refined melodrama is lost within Band’s spoof in a combination of bad writing and missed opportunities to sell the performances.  While this version of “The Last Foxtrot in Burbank” is not the pornographic scene splice in version, the actors still must be comfortable with each other in the story’s requirement of genitalia proximity and exposure as some scenes can be often graphic in its simulation of sex as well as be humiliating.  The cast rounds out with Merlouch Drabin, Sally Marr (“Young Lust”), Simmy Bow, and I. William Quinn (“Alligator”).

Supposedly, “The Last Foxtrot in Burbank” is a shot-for-shot spoof but Charles Band’s picture has jagged edges around a nonconformist narrative whereas “The Last Tango in Paris” abides by more linear storytelling.  The gags are not particular funny unless you’ve seen the Brando film and have a puerile sense of humor, but even then, the gags are terribly heavy fisted in a strive to really make light of sexual casualness and obsession in a conduit of Brando’s mumble and gravelly discord with the occasional outburst of hyperbolic flair.  For those who haven’t seen the Brando film, “The Last Foxtrot in Burbank” will be totally lost without a reference, especially the France set story shows it’s budget with the English-laden business and directional signs that play into the running gag of the fictious city that combines Burbank, California and Paris, France.   One could see why Charles Band and John Carpenter wanted to disassociate and distance themselves from this film but for both filmmakers, it’s a significant first film that kind of redirected their career paths when they knew comedy, such as this one, wasn’t their forte.  Charles Band even went as far as destroying all copies of the film and changing his name to a pseudonym, Carlo Bokino, to erase all involvement but he unsuccessful and a print was discovered unphased by his attempts to eradicate all known evidence.  Today, Band accepts his first film and even catalogue’s it with a No. 0 on the spine that makes it official Charlie canon. 

The first official and unofficial film of Charles Band’s career comes to Blu-ray home video from Band’s Full Moon Features in an unlikely genre release from the horror and science fiction regular.  The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD25 comes uncut and uncensored, transferred from an original negative donated from the UCLA archives under an anonymous donor.  Not much is stated here about what kind of a transfer we’re treated but the 2K scan appears adequate with a freshened image with moderate color saturation and details.  There are times the image appearance has a slightly faded realism, similar to that of William Friedkin’s “The French Connection” where details can be soft at times and ungraded.  Most scenes are better than not with palpable textures around more closeups and medium shots.  Skin tones are little more on the orange side, likely due to the chemical dye in the exposure that has an orange base which results in a natural, fringed tint.  The Blu-ray is presented in a widescreen aspect ratio 1.78:1.  Audio comes with an English LPCM 5.1 and a Stereo 2.0.  Both audio formats provide a crisp track of a dialogue, ambience, and what soundtrack is present, but the surround sound does little to enhance the film with its lack of off-camera or multi-directional scenes with mostly centered performances by the actors and not a ton of action.  The stereo 2.0 suffices.  No hissing or crackling present and the interference is kept to a suitable minimum to digest all its wacky dialogue.  The physical presence of Full Moon’s Blu-ray runs the same course as the others with a standard Amaray Blu-ray case and single-sided sleeve art with no other tangible attributes.  The nearly full-bodied orange colored sleeve mirrors “The Last Tango in Paris’” art to an extent and Full Moon uses stills with nudity on the back cover as an added perk.  The 56 minute Blu-ray, shorter because the cut of the hardcore inserts, is rated R and unlocked for multi-region playback. 

Last Rites: “The Last Foxtrot in Burbank” is a hard sell with its flat lampooning of “The Last Tango in Paris.” A handful of sleaze to be had but there’s nothing more cringy than watching histrionics for an extremely niche market.

“The Last Foxtrot in Burbank” Finally Recognized by Charles Band and Full Moon Features!