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Norwegian EVIL Has Women Issues! “The Thrill of a Kill” reviewed! (Wild Eye Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Enjoy the “Kill” on DVD now Available on Amazon.com

Out of work Kimsy and her irritated mother butt heads over Kimsy’s lack of effort in trying to find a job and help out with responsibilities around the house.  After a particularly nasty argument, Kimsy storms out to walk off her frustration in the quiet surrounding woods.  Instead of lowering her blood pressure, Kimsy’s blood runs scarred and runs down her head as she’s knocked out and picked up by a playful serial killer with an irreparable hate for women and takes gratification in degrading them by any means possible.  Sadistically bred by unconditional motherly abuse, the killer treats each of his prized possessions like dogs to submit to his every beckon and call.  Kimsy’s mother and sister, Camilla, grow concern for Kimsy who hasn’t returned home and set off to find her.  When they realize she’s been abducted, they’re able to track her to a remote, vacant cabin used as a kill house and as they set foot inside the cabin to save Kimsy, a killer lies and waits to strike. 

Lars-Erik Lie’s Norwegian torture porn, “The Thrill of a Kill,” resonates with the old and true proverb, what comes around, goes around.  Filmed in and around Norway’s largest ski destination and resort, the Scandinavian mountain town of Trysil becomes the backwoods abattoir for the director to set his exploitation workshop for the bleak Norse horror.  “The Thrill of a Kill” is the first feature length fictional film from the Norway-Born Lie who has digs into the indie underground and gory storytelling, self-funded by his own banner, Violence Productions, and is coproduced by Morten K. Vebjørnsen and Arve Herman Tangen, Morten Storjordet, and Linda Ramona Nattali Eliassen serve as executive producers.

Dichotomizing “The Thrill of a Kill” into two stories set during two different time periods, Lars-Erik Lie’s focal point is not the hapless victims caught in a deadly spider’s web of perversities.  Instead, Lie’s story formulates the theory on how the sociopathic killer was ill-nurtured into a monster with an interweaving plot set in 1968 of a young boy (Carl Arild Heffermehl) neglected and abused, verbally and physically, by an alcoholic and sexually promiscuous about town mother (Sonja Bredesen) who would bring home another town drunk to bed. Missing his (deceased?) father and tired of being bullied by his own mother, the boy mental state snaps like a twig under immense emotional, family-oriented pressure and descends into a murderous madness. Years later and all grown up, the maniac mountain man abducts young women as a direct result of the hate toward his mother and her mistreatments. Arve Herman Tangen becomes the goateed face of the grown man gone haywire. Tangen develops his character with purposeful intent and with a nonaggressive tone to persuade his bound quarry to remain subdued. The role is nothing short of typical that we’ve seen in other films of its genus where a screwed-up child-turned-adult runs a deviancy amok sweatshop of imprisoned flesh and torture devices and Tangen really adds nothing meaningful to derangement. In her debut and only credited role, Kirsten Jakobsen, former Model Mayhem model from Oslo, succumbs to being the unlucky alternative girl, Kimsy, that runs into the big, overwhelming man while strolling through the forest. One would think Kimsy would have suffered brain damage after being struck and knocked unconscious not once, not twice, but three times by the killer who undresses her after each time with the third and final blow putting the final touches on his toying with the girl and bringing her back for a visit to his hen house of brutalized women. After the first blow or two, Jakobsen doesn’t show that much concern for Kimsy’s attentive wellness or concern as Kimsy continues to just wander as if nothing major has happened. Camilla Vestbø Losvik is a much more reliable and realistic rendition of the situation as Kimsy Sister, Camilla. As another alternative and attractive woman, Camilla shares a strong kinship with Kimsy despite their mother’s disciplinary differences toward them, to which eventually their mother (Toril Skansen) comes around as the patron saint of motherly worriment that’s likely a contrasting parallel to the killer’s unaffectionate mother. With an ugly-contented subgenre, “The Thrill of a Kill” has various compromising positions for its cast with rape and genital mutilation that there’s some shade of respect give to those who can mock play the unsettling moments we all are morbidly curious to see. The film rounds out with a lot of half-naked women strung up in bondage or chained to the wall with Linda Ramona Nattali Eliassen, Veronica Karlsmoen, Veronica Karlsmoen, Madicken Kulsrud, and Ann Kristin Lind with Raymond Bless, Niclas Falkman, and Jarl Kjetil Tøraasen as drunk, male suitors.

“The Thrill of a Kill” recreates the simulacrum of SOV horror as Lars-Erik Lie pulls out his handheld video to follow Kimsy’s journey through the jollies of a madman and the mother and sister’s rout out for their lost Kimsy. The beginning starts off with a zombie-laden dream sequences that places Kimsy in a field with a killer and his mutilated corpses that reanimate in a bit of foreshadowing of what’s in store for the spikey haired damsel. By dismissing her vividly horrifying dream of diminutive meaning, just like she does with everything else, Kimsy falls easily into the killer’s hands signifying one of the films’ themes to never take things for granted, especially those things that are important to you as exampled later on in the story. That’s about as much purpose I could pull from out of Lie’s film that floats like a feather on surface level waters. There is one other tangential offshoot Lie attempts to explored but never fleshes out fully is the unbeknownst to Kimsy and Camilla’s perverted hermit of a father who lives on the outskirts of town. Their mother thought he would have insight on Kimsy’s whereabouts but instead he tries to forcibly coerce Kimsy into his shack for involuntary lovemaking and then the exposition ensues after Camilla barely escapes his axe-chopping in (sexual?) frustration clutches. That exposition literally goes into a tunnel leading to nowhere and doesn’t alter the actions of Camilla or her mother to do anything different, expunging any kind of knowledge to utilize for a complete character arc and just comes to show Lie’s written bit parts don’t define the narrative of learned opportunities or gained instinct but rather are just additional sleazy show. The same sleazy show can be said about the rape scenes as they won’t ascertain the intended reaction of squeamish uncomfortableness. Now, while rape is no laughing matter or accustomed at any degree, there’s a level of numbness to these scenes that carry a severe flat affect to doesn’t display the anguish, the terror, or the hurt these women are going through as the killer decides upon himself to violate them. There’s literally no fight in these undrugged, still vigorous, young women who have just been snatched and made into his plaything and while some seasoned BDSM partisans may get aroused, the emotional receptor in me wants to empathize what their strife agony, but maybe that’s why the film is titled “The Thrill of a Kill,” to be an emblem of fun, cheap thrills.

Coming in at number 70 on the spine, the Norway schlocker-shocker, “The Thrill of a Kill” lands appropriately onto the Wild Eye Releasing’s Raw & Extreme banner. The 2011 released film finds a vessel for its North American debut over a decade later after its initial release and presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, with vertical letterboxing on 16×9 televisions, despite the back cover listing a widescreen format and being released in 4:3 is a bit surprising as other countries display in anamorphic widescreen and the lens used in the film is definitely anamorphic as you can tell with flank falloff that distorts the image and makes the picture appear rounded. Color grading is slightly washed and lives in a low contrast. Again, I have to wonder how aesthetically different the transfer is on the outer region product. Soft, SOV-equivalent details don’t necessarily kill the image quality, but you can obviously notice some pixelation in the frame inside the shack and in wider shots of the landscape amongst the low pixelated bitrate. The Norwegian Golby Digital Stereo 2.0 comes out clean, clear, and about as full-bodied as can be with a two-channel system. Some of the Foley is overemphasized production which comes off sillier than the deserving impact of a thrown punch or a meat hook going through the lower mandible. English subtitles are burned/forced into the picture but are synched well without errors though the grasp maybe lost a little in translation. Bonus content is only a trailer selection warehousing select Raw & Extreme titles, such as “Hotel Inferno,” “Acid Bath,” “Morbid,” “Bread and Circus,” “Absolute Zombies,” “Whore,” and “Sadistic Eroticism.” Continuing to achieve maximum controversial covers, Wild Eye Releasing doesn’t hold back for “The Thrill of a Kill” DVD with a crude, yet fitting DEVON illustrated cover art that is a platterful of unclasped splatter while in the inside is a still frame of one of the more tongue biting scenes. No cuts with this unrated release and the film clocks in at 85 minutes with a region free playback. A grating gore gorger with mother issues, “A Thrill for a Kill” redundantly recalls our attention back to the subservience of what makes horror horrifying and while what terrifies us is pushed aside, the free-for-all fiend-at-play treats the death-obsessed to a buffet of blood and defilement.

Enjoy the “Kill” on DVD now Available on Amazon.com

The EVIL is Inside Me! “Nightmare Man” reviewed! (Ronin Flix / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Nightmare Man” Is Here To Haunt Your Dreams in High-Definition!  Blu-ray Available at Amazon.com

To channel mystical help with her and her husband’s fertility issues, Ellen purchases a mask from overseas that supposed to provide fruitful results.   Instead, Ellen is plagued by nightmares of a demon figure, forcing himself onto her with a maniacally grin.  Diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic and on medication to dilute the vivid dreams, Ellen’s husband chauffeurs her to the mountain isolated Devonshire Institute to commit her for treatment, but when the car runs out of gas and her husband ambles for gas, Ellen finds herself alone in the car at night and with the nightmare man lurking outside,   Escaping barely with her lift now that the physical form of her tormentor is no longer just in her dreams, Ellen takes refuge with a pair of couples celebrating an engagement party.  Rambling erratically about an entity no longer inside her, a debate between the group of friends question Ellen’s sanity until the nightmare man shows up and slaughters anyone in his path, but the party’s just beginning when another killer has been freed from suppression.

Pivot stories are the best!  The investments into a foundation roots a focus, provides a clear understanding of the forthcoming, and can be, for better or worse, an expectation of narrative structure.  What happens when a monkey wrench is thrown into the story and completely bends the storyline at a 90-degree angle onto another totally unexpected path?  Some would be too jarred by the jerk toward another direction, coming out of the film with a severe case of whiplash that joggles and boggles the mind, while others, like myself, would find a refreshing phoenix out of the tired ashes of a stale genre and welcome it with open, grateful arms to keep my rear-end sewn to the couch and eyes glued to the television to see what happens next!  Writer-Director Rolfe Kanefsky (“There’s Nothing Out There,” “Art of the Dead”) alters the early 2000s post-“Scream,” masked-slasher with a twist and never second guesses the decision to bounce from out of one subgenre and into another without skipping a beat.  “Nightmare Man” is a production of Delusional Films and is non-SAG, shot in the area of Big Bear, California, produced film by the father-son team of Rolfe and Victor Kanefsky and Esther Goodstein, and Frederico Lapenda.

What’s very curious as well as fascinating about “Nightmare Man’s” character hierarchy is that there isn’t just one lead principal throughout the film.  In fact, lead principals change hands at least three times and also misleads audiences into thinking someone is going to charge of the situation only to be cut down in a blink of eye and a jolt to the normal hardwires of our cerebral higher functioning.   The titular star of Rolfe Kanefsky’s “Jacqueline Hyde,” Blythe Metz, returns to work with the filmmaker as a woman overwhelmed by dreams of a demonic dybbuk of sorts who chases her and tries to force himself onto her, into her, in a violating way.  Metz convinces much later as someone suffering from delusions and paranoia but her Ellen character, a woman who is supposed to be wealthy from some of the dialogue bits, is a bit more lucid and grounded early into the story with only her frustration to lean back on to warrant being committed, which seems like a harsh and unconvincing setup for the character that also induces early suspicion on her husband’s (Luciano Szafir, “Hopekillers”) eagerness to check his wife into a mental institution.  Before long, we’re introduced to two couples, played by Jack Sallfield (aka Jack Sway), Johanna Putnam (“Feast II and III”), James Ferris (“Jacqueline Hyde”), and every fan’s favorite scream queen, who’s currently playing a reoccurring character in season 3 of “Picard,” Tiffany Shepis (“Abominable,” “The Black Room”), partaking in an intimate celebration and partaking in what mostly early 2000s portrayed characters love to participate in – sex themed conversation, games, and forbidden secrets.   Soon, the two parties collide when Ellen is chased through the woods by her African horn-masked dream stalker (Aaron Sherry) and then the situation turns into mice in a glass cage with a snake circling hungry.  Shepis doesn’t stray terrible too far from her normal cache of credits or Tromaville antics as a provocative, promiscuous, and downright master of her domain with intent.  While Shepis doesn’t necessarily compete with any other onscreen personas, as the long-time horror vet can steal a show with ease, we’re also treated to strong performances from her costars, such as Metz splitting into thirds with her diagnosed paranoid-schizophrenia, and we’re introduced to Johanna Putnam in her debut role as an engaged woman has who a dangling lesbian secret from her past hanging over her head.  The dynamic works not in a dramatic means but rather as a comedy portico tossed into the narrative structure to spruce up character conversing toward something humorous and interesting as arrows plunge into chests and knives are puncturing through lower jaws.  “Nightmare Man” rounds out the cast with Richard Moll.  Yes, Bull from Night Court, as well as “Scary Movie 2” and “Sorority Party Massacre, makes brief cameo appearance as the local sheriff and you need look very closely because the scene is so dark, you can barely tell it’s him. 

The one theme that keeps popping up in the recess of the mind is perhaps the one theme that eludes being talked enough about when overhauling “Nightmare Man” as a message bearer. Being an early 2000’s horror in the long established and well-dipped into the shadow of the “Scream,” “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” and “Urban Legend” franchises that defined the turn of century before it even happened might have had something to do with “Nightmare Man’s” lack of enticements for distributors to feel love for the man of nightmares and notice it for the novelty and the theme for what it is, an instilled paranoid fear that one’s sexual attacker leaves behind as a post-traumatic stress bomb that is everything all consuming. Kanefsky patterns the hallmarks of rape trauma stealthily into the script, disguised as a shadow, with a teethy mask, and vividly glowing and menacing eyes. Some other scenes are more obvious than others, such as Ellen’s dreams of the sinister smiling figure pinning her to the attic floor and spreading her legs right before she wakes or when she cries out, “I still feel him inside me,” while held up inside the cabin, with Kanefsky painting with a broader brush on “Nightmare Man’s” obscured presence and masked killer with an agenda that attaches itself directly in avoidance of calling a spade a spade. The kills and gore effect gags can stand up against any big budget, Hollywood production and are just unique enough to make the killer interesting in diversity and brutal enough to give “Nightmare Man” an edge sharper than the knife he wields.

If a Tiffany Shepis fan, or a fan of Tiffany Shepis in her underwear holding a crossbow and won’t be rattled by the bent elbow plot pivot, the Rolfe Kanefsky picture is an enjoyable, campy romp that gives homage to the horror films that have set the scene for “Nightmare man” to exist.   Ronin Flix plucks “Nightmare Man” out of standard definition dreamland and into the reality of high-def, 1080p Blu-ray.  Presented in an anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the story is set almost entirely at night with more household lighting for interior shots and not too much exterior lighting to brighten objects or even cast hard-edged shadows.  While this creates more realistic atmospherics of isolating apprehension in the woods horror, Kanefsky and cinematographer Paul Deng (“Trancers 6,” “Song of the Vampire”) bathe many of the night shoots in deep blue tint and the Ronin Flix transfer appears to display in low contrast and is very dark, leaving focal objects nondelineated and obscured.  I haven’t checked out the Lionsgate After Dark DVD print of this film so I can’t compare.  There some dip in the compression decoding as the release hovers in the mid-30Mbps for good periods of time but does dip into the lower 20s and it shows with light phasing macroblocking.  When not bathed in blue, skin tones and grading often look natural and palpable.  The English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio is balanced between all levels tracks, putting the dialogue in the forefront, keeping the range of ambient noises at an appropriate depth, and a soundtrack that maintains tensions rather than over intensifies to a fault.  I will say that the multi-channel lacked a significant stalwart production that didn’t provide the anticipated strength of audio.  Dialogue is clean and clear with no perceptible issues and the overall package track can be said the same.  English SDH are optional.  With the Ronin Flix release, new bonus supplementals extend more background and insight with retrospective discussions and distribution challenges associated with “Nightmare Man,” such has a new interview featurette with director Rolf Kanefsky, producer Esther Goodstein, and star Tiffany Shepis in There’s Something Out There:  The Making of Nightmare Man and a new audio track isolating the film score by Christopher Farrell (“Bus Party to Hell”).  Also included is Creating the Nightmare:  The Making of Nightmare Man – a raw footage behind-the-scenes look at some of special effects, makeup, and off-the-cuff tomfoolery during in between take down time, extended scenes, Tiffany’s Behind-the-Scenes of Tiffany Shepis weaponizing a handheld camera with her flare of sexualized humor and potty-mouth pizazz, an audio commentary track, on the audio setup, with director Rolf Kanefsky, producer Esther Goodstein, and star Tiffany Shepis, Flubbing a Nightmare Gag Reel, still photos, and a promo reel.  The physical features include a David Levine package design of an abract-esque composite of the Nightmare Man mask, Tiffany Shepis in a bra, and a knife all splashed in red lined inside a traditional Blu-ray snapper case with no insert.  The release is locked on Region A playback and the film has a runtime of 87 minutes and is rated R for horror violence, gore, some sexuality/nudity, and language – what Tiffany Shepis release wouldn’t include all of that?  “Nightmare Man” is a dream of a subgenre-bending film; sexy, gory, intense, and unpredictable, all the prefigures of a hell of a good time.

“Nightmare Man” Is Here To Haunt Your Dreams in High-Definition!  Blu-ray Available at Amazon.com

Never Weekend on Sadomasochists’ EVIL Private Island Alone! “Eugenie” (Blue Underground / 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Eugenie” is Waiting to Tell You Her Story of Perversion!  See It Now on 4K UHD at Amazon.com

A wealthy, sexually sadistic Madame St. Ange, a specialist in the Marquis de Sade’s teachings, entices to coerce the father of a young and beautiful innocent girl, Eugenie, St. Ange befriends to permit the naïve teenager to visit Madame’s private island for the weekend.  Excited and overjoyed with the idea of feeling like an adult indulging in mature activities, Eugenie is unaware that Madame and her equally as cruel stepbrother and lover Mirvel, who has been beguiled by Eugenie’s beauty, have ulterior motives and lured the unsuspecting youth into a ritualistic trap of sexual corruption and sadomasochism.  The step-siblings drug and rape Eugenie for their unspeakable gratifications only for her to awake in what only be explained as horrible nightmares of phantasmagorical encounters but when the nightmares unveil a disturbing reality when the dogmatic Dolmance and the rest of his Marquis de Sade acolytes arrive to initiate Eugenie into more than just pain and pleasure educations but to be a pawn in a murder scheme that tears the very fabric of virtue. 

Spanish director Jesús Franco, or widely known as Jess Franco, helmed an excessive number of provocative-pushing films over his nearly 60-year-career as a filmmaker before his death in 2013.  Many of the once labeled video nasties director were crafted on a tight budget with an even more so tight timeline as Franco churned out regularly mostly trashy horror and sexploitation that would more than often wind up in the projection booth of local red light district theaters for a dime and a wank.  Yet, “Eugenie” strokes a different kind sensation, one that lies in the ethereal concept of sexploitation and the ruin of youth made to order by the Marquis de Sade himself and artfully stitched by Jess Franco’s profundo knowledge of cinematic sculpturing.  “Eugenie,” or “Eugenie…. The Story of her Journey into Perversion” in the extended title, is based off the French 1795 novel, La Philosophie dans le boudoir (Philosophy in the Bedroom) written by de Sade and the script adaptation is penned by “99 Women” and “Christina” screenwriter and profound producer of film, Harry Alan Towers.  Towers also produces “Eugenie” under the pseudonym of Peter Welbeck for Video-Tel International Productions and was theatrically distributed by Distinction Films.

At the frayed edge of an already soul crusher subject matter, “Eugenie” repels against the grain of easily digestible roles,  Marquis de Sade’s characters are sadomasochist with abhorrent qualities of deception, malintent, and insatiability for a cathartic release from sexual pleasure and punishing pain.  On the other side of the coin, Franco and Towers film calls for the characters to push beyond the limits of their comfortability around the idea of drugging and raping, or being the victim of such, as well as violence and murder as part of a cult normalizing and rationalizing unrestrained freedom and ideology.  Swedish born actress Marie Liljedahl had a brief stint in erotica, as a power-seductress as the titular Inga, and only dabbled with sexploitation, “Eugenie” being that dabbled powder only once snorted to warrant a sudden disinterest in the theme altogether.  Liljedahl plays the titular character and she looks every bit the age later-aged teen with a round, youthful face, vibrant demeanor, and curvaceous like a ripe peach.  Like that knot forming in your gut spurred from anxiety, watching Eugenie exploited while in a stupor is the equivalent imaginations of what the deplorable effects and actions of a roofied drink that produces vague and foggy recollections and disbeliefs in what is reduced down to a vivid dream gone wild.  The two inveiglers at the heart of Eugenie’s virtuous destruction quickly become despicably loathed by not only their debauchery plans to corrupt good embodied but also by their snooty affluency and their acrid arrogance with the help.  “The Blood of Fu Manchu” and “99 Women” blonde beauty, Maria Rohm, and the stern faced “Succubus” and “The Vampires Night Orgy” actor Jack Taylor exemplify the essence of evil as the de Sade principled lovers and step-siblings Madame Saint-Ange and Mirvel.  The opened-ended lust Mirvel has for Eugenie morphs into a determined, nagging desire to have her at all costs, kept close to the chest by Taylor but knowing it’s simmering quickly to a head, and you can see in the Madame’s eyes that she’s either really internally pissed about Mirvel’s narrowed focus on a new toy or she’s basking in her ideology’s unchained gratification.  Rohm’s nonaligned decision maintains Madame’s sensual composure and undisclosed intentions until the shocking end.  The presence of Sir Christopher Lee in a Jess Franco film isn’t all that surprising.  The legendary, late British actor – “The Blood of Fu Manchu,” “The Bloody Judge,” and “Count Dracula” – where a handful of euro trashy and exploitative horror that were released around the same time as “Eugenie,” but “Eugenie” garishly bathed in the idea of sexual misappropriations and Lee being a last minute addition due to another actor’s ill-fate, agreed to fulfill the role without knowing how involved the nudity would ultimately land perverted cuts of the film into spank cinema houses.  Lee’s red smoking jacket, elegantly stoic composure and dialogue delivery, and his incredible ability to perform an intimidating figure without as much as lifting a finger compounds the value of Franco’s filmic adaptation to the point where I firmly believe with the original slated actor George Sanders (“Village of the Damned, 1951) in the ringleader and adherent role of Dolmance would likely have not have been half as good.  Anney Kablan, Paul Muller (“Vampyros Lesbos”), Uta Dahlberg, and Maria Luisa Ponte (“El Liguero Mágico”) costar.

Through an ocean of film filth, “Eugenie” may be the very film that proves Jess Franco is a cinematic genius in his own rite by capturing de Sade in the flesh, so to speak, with a plain-sighted fetish that diabolically hatches a scheme within a scheme.  In addition, “Eugenie,” dare I say it, almost feels like a Hammer film, especially with Lee in the picture.  The interior sets are modernly gothic with sleek and sterile furniture but garnished with large candle holders and the Marquis de Sade era sartorial worn by Dolmance’s muted followers. There’s a cadence to Franco’s story, one that leaves breadcrumb plot aspects to go against divulging a straightforward story right from the start, and the history between acquainted characters is contentious and fraught with unpleasant emotions in the act nice, play nice master sadists and the subservient help hierarchy that hints at a fraction of degrading minorities. Saint-Ange and Mirvel boatman Augustine, a black man who has his life reborn from the ashes of poverty only to be toiled as their attendant and frivolous plaything when the mood is right. There’s also deaf and mute woman brought on to be the new maid in a moment’s conversation between the siblings just to drop a dab of her presence amongst them. Augustine and the maid represent the lower class of people, a man of color and a woman of disability, to easily take advantage of just like Saint-Ange and Mirvel do with Eugenie’s innocence. France shies away being overly showy in slipping in this unjust dynamic that unfolds bit by bit as mentioned earlier of Franco’s revelation design. “Eugenie” not only dangles the attractive set locations and nudity carrot to draw attention but also invests in its talent as Frnaco the cherishes the cast of individual portrayers with longer shot moments to speak volumes of their unique objective or to pedestal them in their own keynote scene of power and, subsequently, obliteration that makes every occurrence worth noting and not just something to write off. “Eugenie” has no tears or apologies to spare but only inhuman indecencies separated by a blurred, unfettered line of sex and sadism satisfactions. This is Jess Franco at his finest.

The 1970 “Eugenie” print takes on more pixels, 2180p to be exact, with 4K UHD transfer and a re-release 1080p high-definition Blu-ray in a 2-disc set from Blue Underground. The 4K restoration from the original camera negative with Dolby Vision Hi-Def resolution on a 66GB, double layer UHD and is also on an AVC encoded Blu-ray that are both presented in an anamorphic widescreen 2.40:1 aspect ratio. Both transfers execute their respective program, offering an average frame rate of mid-high 30s Mbps, but there’s a focus issue with the transfer brought upon likely at the origin of filming and we know this because the frame rate never drops, staying consistent throughout the issue. Periods of unfocused detail come and go between edits and often in the same shot as if attempting to render delineation between the foreground and the background in order to get the shot on the fly (there are many instances Franco had limited time to shoot). Color grading, including skins tones, are natural appearing until the red tint, a symbol of when the subject matter becomes dark, eliminates and reduces vast color palette to one single hue. Both formats offer an English and French dub language 1.0 mono mix that buff enough to be ample; in fact, the mix is rather good considering the single channel with substantially clarity with no hissing, popping, or other blights on the dialogue track, Foley, or any track for that matter. Subtitles are offered in English, French, and Spanish. If you’re looking for special features, they mostly encoded onto the second disc, the Blu-ray, with Perversion Stories, a retrospective interview with the late Jess Franco, writer Harry Alan Towers, and stars Christopher Lee and Matrie Liljedahl discussing the behind-the-scenes measures and understandings of the sexploitation classic, Stephen Thrower on Eugenie, an interview with the author of “Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco,” a new interview with costar Jack Taylor Jack Taylor in the Francoverse, a newly expanded poster and still gallery, and theatrical trailer. The 4K disc also has a new commentary with film historians Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth, plus a theatrical trailer. A two-disc UHD case holds a disc on each side of the interior and the case itself sports the class naked Eugenie pose with her brown locks draped over her shoulders, covering her chest. Speaking of covering, the snapper case is sheathed in a O-slipcover with oval cutout of the front to display Eugenie with a Victorian-aged mirror border. The darkened slipcover is also prominently titled under Marquis de Sade’s novel English moniker, “Philosophy in the Boudoir” that has a regal and classic aesthetic. The unrated, 87-minute film has an all-region playback. Jess Franco distills revolutionary extravagance and couples it with the notion that youth will inevitably be corrupted by family, friends, and a group of cruel Marquis de Sade cultists in what can be construed as one of the director’s most prestigious sexploitation and melodramatic films of his oeuvre.

“Eugenie” is Waiting to Tell You Her Story of Perversion!  See It Now on 4K UHD at Amazon.com

Eventually, You’ll Have to Stand Up to EVIL. “The Retaliators” reviewed! (Quiver Distribution / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Man Up and Take Back Your Life with “The Retaliators” on Blu-ray!  Click to Purchase from Amazon.

Having recently lost his wife, Pastor Bishop tries hard to keep his two school age daughters safe with an oversight thumb, but when his oldest daughter, Sarah, begs him for the car, God himself knows that the Pastor’s children can’t stay children forever. Bishop fears come reality when Sarah is chased by a sadistic man, ran off the road, and zip tied to her steering wheel as her car is pushed into a nearby ravine. Destroyed by another loss, there is seemingly no way out of the grief hole for the man of the cloth until a Detective, who once shared Bishop’s pain and suffering with a similar, personal experience, introduces him to his isolated former fallout bunker turned torture cabin in the woods with the man who killed Bishop’s daughter chained captive in the basement and next to him sits a variety of melee tools of affliction. Deeper into the Detective’s subterranean dwelling lies a more terrible, caged secret, one that is incidentally unleashed upon the world, and will wreak carnage upon the land and it’s up to the grin and bear it Pastor to take a stand against pure evil.

Frighting for yourself and for special persons in your life is crucial for any self-respecting person to be able to look at themselves in the mirror and say, “I did all I could.” Those who believe in understanding and forgiveness ultimately fall into being trampled on and biting the bullet because just surviving the other end of a contentious situation can be a false sense of security and an opaque veil to the ever-present dangers lurking in every crevice. The 2021 release of “The Retaliators” accouters that theme of following one’s combative conscious to protect what’s dear while also sporting a hefty amount of violence, blood, subhuman psychopaths, and a nearly all nu metal musician cast. Co-directed between from short and music video filmmaker, Samuel Gonzolas Jr., the film’s star and “Central Park” actor, Michael Lombardi, and music video director, Bridget Smith, “The Retaliators” aims to show an ugly, real truth that can affect and twist good men into the same abhorrence and villainy they’ve struggled to repel and resolve. “The Retaliators” mark the first screenplay from the Geare Brothers, Darren and Jeff Allen, is shot across various locations in the U.S., including states Nevada, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and is a production of Lombardi’s Better Noise Films with the company’s CEO, Allan Kovac, and Philly Born Film’s Mike Walsh also producing.

As a company that’s half part a music record label, the film was destined to showcase some of the independent rooted musical and elemental talent of the rock genre, but the narrative is convoyed by a fellow musician, who will humbly admit they are not trained or experienced actors, but rather actors who are rock artist sympathizers, in the case of principal leads Michael Lombardi and Marc Menchaca of Peacock’s new horror thriller “Sick” and who you may not have recognized in the third season of Amazon’s “Tom Clancy’s Jack Reason” as a high-and-tight, clean-cut naval captain. Menchaca is anything but burred cut as a bearded and wavy-haired, somber detective assigned to Pastor Bishop’s (Lombardi) case of his murdered daughter. Menchaca does his work in feeding off the dark energy cocktail of Lombardi’s grief, despair, and vengeance-stricken neo-pastor. Lombardi’s heartfelt performance definitely deserves praise for how one should react in losing a child and also reflects the helplessness that burdens the parent into a black hole of sorrow. As a character, Bishop struggles morally with seeping into and being swallowed by the grim circumstances gifted for him despite however the circumstances may seem to be in his favor. The gears Lombardi has to switch from a faithful person, to rancorous, to then finally a path of soul changing redemption goes smoothly enough to justify his position as principal lead. Menchaca’s demented detective almost feels left out to an extent, but the audience will get enough of a taste to satiate his unglued righteousness. While no love interest makes it into the fold of characters, the narrative does house spots for the nu metal and rock musicians in supporting or minor roles. Papa Roach’s Jacoby Shaddix, Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee, Ice Nine Kills Spencer Charnas, Escape the Fate’s Craig Mabbitt, From Ashes to New’s Matt Brandyberry, Lance Dowdle, Danny Case, and Matt Madiro, and Five Finger Death Punch’s Ivan L. Moody, Zoltan Bathory, and Chris Kael are just a select few of rockers you’ll see in “The Retaliator’s” lineup. Personally, I wanted to see more of Jacoby Shaddix as Quinn Brady, a homicidal madman in a horrific cat-and-mouse lark with the detective. Who knows, maybe we’ll see a prequel with Shaddix returning to the role. For the most part, like Shaddix, the musicians are well integrated with diverse roles that range from biker club, to strip club DJs, to bartenders, and to AA participants. “The Retaliators” round out the cast with Katie Kelly (“Deadly Seduction”), Abbey Hafer, Cree Kelly (“Aftermath”), and the massively built and scary-looking Joseph Gatt (“Titanic 666”) as the child-killer strapped and prepped for Pastor Bishop to physically and mentally break.

Better Noise Films is comparable to another divisional filmic offshoot of a larger parent music record label. Cleopatra Entertainment, of Cleopatra Records, often builds film structures and narrative plots around the company’s signed ensembles to promote and market their lyrical and thrash-heavy material as well as putting names to faces and thrusting them out into the world to those who may not have heard of their music. Aside from likely being a huge cost-savings benefit, these films are often scored by their artists, leading to a diverse sounding and electric soundtrack that typically works out less than desired. What the directors end up implementing, musically, yields result only half of the time while the other half is forced unto the audience for the sheer effect of promotion despite the off-putting composition. Not every intense scene needs a band backdrop to flourish raw emotion and pump up the blood but that’s what films, like “The Retaliator’s,” is bred to show off in a marbled genre that has categorical plot pivots all along the way to the grand finale of an all-out brawl, fight for your life skirmish with the criminally and tortured insane. That latter concept is perhaps one of the more interesting and original ideas of reinventing the psychopath that I’ve seen in a long time and the anticipatory excitement and thrills of their release to wreak havoc like barbaric rippers had found moments of great gore excess when Paster Bishop finds his divine strength to help the savage sadists meet their maker by way of machete, a shovel, and a woodchipper. “The Retaliators” make use of familiar horror tropes, such as the fog machine and a blend of lowkey and neon flushed lighting, to conjure an unconventional crypt of rock and homicide, putting its own unique stamp of indirect evil leading to up to another bigger, badder bedlam of things.

Chalked up to be an 80’s-stylized 90’s cinematic horror pulp, with early 2000’s soundtrack, “The Retaliators” arrives onto Blu-ray home video courtesy of Quiver Distribution. The AVC encoded, high definition, 1080p BD50 has a CinemaScope, aka anamorphic, widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio. The large storage formatted disc offers more variety as the capacity can handle the expansion of color and range of content. From complex, diversly lit, and heavily foot trafficked interiors to the great outdoors with trees fields, gravel terrain, and watery brooks, the quite a bit that’s going on looks pretty good on screen and the anamorphic widescreen doesn’t have that squeeze-it-in feel either but can’t escape a few scenes of lens flare. Details provide a tactile enamel, but the colors are quite soft with a lower dialed in color grading. The English DTS-HD 5.1 surround sound has more teeth in the soundtrack that overlaps and snuffs out any ambient sound design, essentially making “The Retaliators” a 96 minute, give-or-take a few scenes, music video. Dialogue doesn’t suffer the same backseat fate as the script-to-screen exchanges are in the forefront and though the soundtrack is a bit flat, the original, nebulous-electronic score in between by “Stranger Things” composers Kyle Dixon and Michel Stein does stand out to add a nice underlayer of questionability and suspense. Special features include cast interviews with actors and music artists speaking to their experience on the film, “The Retaliator’s” music video, and theatrical trailer. The physical release comes with a cardboard slipcover on the first pressing with a rendered pseudo-illustrated mockup of pyramid arranged character heads with Pastor Biship standing bloody and machete in hand right smack in the middle. The standard Blu-ray snapper includes the same cover arrangement art as the slipcover. Not listed on the back, the unrated film does support region A playback. “The Retaliators” pumps up the blood as well as the jams during an overhaul of one’s convictions in a baptism by hellfire.

Man Up and Take Back Your Life with “The Retaliators” on Blu-ray!  Click to Purchase from Amazon.

Sheen and Estevez Take Out the EVIL Trash! “Men at Work” reviewed! (MVD / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Men at Work” Now Available on a MVD Visual Blu-ray at Amazon.com

Garbagemen James and Carl are California dreamers, scoping out babes, riding the surf, and fantasizing about opening their own surf shop business one day.  Their day job goes against the grain of their live loose lifestyle, but when they discover a dead body in a trash can, the same dead body that was arguing with a beautiful woman in the building across the street and Carl shot in the butt with a pellet gun the night before, James and Carl no longer have the luxury of fun and games.  Their probational, ride along observer, a crazed combat veteran named Louis, doesn’t add to trash-slinging surfers’ comfort other than noting the strangulation marks around the neck, proving their innocence of a pellet gun murder.  The three men go into investigation mode and Carl infiltrates into the woman’s apartment for clues on what really happened but what they get themselves mixed into is manufacturer corruption on the highest level and now they’re in the crossfire and crosshairs of an off-shore, toxic waste dumping crime boss.

Seeing siblings on screen together has always been of great interest to myself because for an actor to grow up with another actor from adolescence, there’s some level of comfortability, trust, and likeminded, on the same wavelength, aptitude in the performance dynamic.  Brothers Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estévez certainly have a cozy dynamic as two laid-back garbagemen in the dark yet zany comedy, “Men at Work,” despite not sharing their Estévez surname.  Of course, this is a 1990 released film and things have changed between them and personally with themselves over the span of 30+ years, but the Emilio Estévez written-and-directed comedy is a snapshot of a relationship pairing that we didn’t see too often.  Sure, we received their performances in other genres, such as head-butting cowboys in the western-action “Young Guns” and as two sleazy pornographic film filmmakers divided by their own greed in the Jim and Artie Mitchell biographical picture, “Rated-X,” but we never again get a quirky, smorgasbord comedy that exhibits their distinct dry humor in one package.  Set on the beautiful shores of California, include Los Angeles, “Men at Work,” is a studio production from the Trans World Entertainment subsidiary label, Epic Productions, under Moshe Diamant (“Commando Squad,” “Ski Patrol”) and is produced by Cassian Elwes (“Mom and Dad,” “Knock Knock”) and Barbara Stordahl.

Safe to say that most audiences are familiar with the likes of Charlie Sheen and Emilo Estévez between their catalogue of rite of passage movies while growing up in the 1980s through the 1990s.  From “Major League” and “Maximum Overdrive” to “Hot Shots” and “Mighty Ducks,” the brothers captured comedy, action, horror, and feel-good films.  “Men at Work” is another one of those nostalgia recognized, yet slightly underrated, comedies that hasn’t necessarily aged well in regard to its comedy.  Sheen and Estévez are wonderfully poised with a pinch of mania performances surrounding a murder mystery, but the comedy has faded like washed out jeans as we’re numb to these types of comedic devices that have used and overused the last three decades.  Keith David, on the other hand, remains just as funny as the day of release as the Vietnam combat-shocked veteran, Louis, who has become James and Karl’s overseer after public complaints.  The “They Live” and “The Thing” actor costars alongside Charlie Sheen four years later after the release of Oliver Stone’s “Platoon,” which begs the question whether Estévez and Sheen are meddling with the cinematic universes just a tad, and David brings the intensity, high-energy, and overwhelming brutishness to “Men at Work’s” rather subdued, off-the-cuff antics of investigation work done by a pair of surfer dudes who have not witnessed the horrors of war.  The disturbing coolness of stride David’s character takes suits him as an angry vet with a penchant to go against authority.  The love interest in this narrative is played by the actress-turned-director Leslie Hope (“Doppelganger,” “Bruiser”) as a dead guy’s political campaign manager who just happened to be at the wrong place, wrong time accidently swapping the incriminating tape with her boss.  Did I mention the dead guy is a politician in bed with crime?  The “Weekend at Bernie’s” performance by Darrell Larson (“Android”) is one for the ages with Larson providing the slacked jaw, rigor mortis poses, and an overall deadpan dead guy.  “The Fly’s” John Getz is a suitable villain Maxwell Potterdam III, as if plucked straight from a comic book, to the quirky comedy despite being a bit hammy at times.  Potterdam’s bicker henchmen Mario (John Lavachielli) and Biff (Rufus funk musician Hawk Wolinski) are better suited to entertainment with distinct personalities that made their interactions dry and spot on funny. The cast fills out with Sy Richardson (“Repo Man”), Troy Evans (“Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers”), Geoffry Blake (“The Last Starfighter”), Cameron Dye (“Out of the Dark”), Dean Cameron (“Summer School”), and John Putch (“Jaws 3-D”) and Tommy Hinkley (“Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation”) as bike cops in a very compromising position.

“Men at Work” is one of those memorable films that teeters between the 80s and the 90s.  Mullets, denim-on-denim, large three-piece suits, and the breeziness of politically incorrect humor genetically makeup “Men at Work’s” guilty-pleasurable and amusing plot anticipatedly driven well by the two principal leads, Sheen and Estevez, who are thrusted into the wrong place at the wrong time scenario as unlikely, joshing heroes, but the stars’ arm-candied, supporting cast of character actors shape and hold together a better lasting picture as with Keith David’s unphased Vietnam veteran, bored with life as it seems during his contentious first impressions with James and Carl, to nudge the garbage-toting friends into action as if he’s spearheading a campaign back in the bush fighting the Vietcong or with the two bickering hit-men who do more damage than damage control with their opposing opinions and tough guy prides.  Estevez’s farce is directed modestly well without the visual cues or styles to assist but rather works in alignment with how Estevez shoots most of his directing gigs with perfectly framed scenes and precision panning that join the foreground, background, and characters together all in one harrowing moment, such as with the pallet gun prank that ends in the murder of the politician, and those kinds of scenes speak for themselves without having to be edited down.  The by-the-numbers pacing builds the story up until a culminating head from the two simple sanitation workers living out their mundane lives with mundane problems to the classic showdown of being outnumbered with Potterdam and his toxic waste dumping henchmen in hazard gear, and though by-the-numbers, the pacing is fairly comfortable and routine, practically natural, without ever feeling forced with the exception of Leslie Hope’s character uncharacteristically, or maybe we’re just not privy of her personal background, lends to her spur of the moment coquettish behavior with Charlie Sheen’s play-dumb, act-dumb surreptitious act in her apartment alone and then out for a late night drive to a beach with him, again alone.  Stranger danger doesn’t apply here in this moment when inviting an unknown into the personal space without the accompany of others to be a safety net and this interaction has a fabricated-feel in moving the story along.

MVD Visual releases “Men at Work” onto Blu-ray in accordance with the distributor’s retro-repository label, the Rewind Collection.  Coming in at 46 on the spine, “Men at Work” transfer is pulled straight from the MGM vault and presented with an AVC encoded, high definition, 1080p resolution in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The MGM transfer transposition into an hi-def BD format doesn’t reflect the full effect of a bigger, better resolution. Image details remains quite soft but the end image quality is definitely still a palatable experience with natural, stable color grading and a suitable sheen (not Charlie Sheen) of the California sun and the night lighting that is often snuffed out by stylistic grading or alternative lighting and tint sources for creative measures. The transfer master remains clear and free of damage and withering wear. The English language LPCM 2.0 stereo projects just that, a two-channel output with a lower bit, and while perhaps not a science-fiction blaster-thon picture, there’s plenty of range opportunity to warrant a hearty audio mix, but the, like the picture quality, the result is negligibly free from imperfections. Dialogue contains no hissing and is clean, clear, and free from any other issues. Optional English, French, and Spanish subtitles are available. Special features has only the theatrical trailer going for it while the physical release bears the bonus material with a reversible, illustrated cover art, a mini poster of the original poster art, and the clear Blu-ray snapper is sheathed in an O-card slipcase doctored up to be retro-stickered with video rental trappings. The PG-13 film has a runtime of 98 minutes and the release is region A locked. One of the first buddy comedies to come out of the early 90s, “Men at Work” has an audience relatable rapport with the film’s stars absorbed into struggling, yet free-spirited blue-collar roles that are unwittingly forced to take on the big, bad evil industry and though the film may have lost its comedy edge, “Men at Work” still manages to be a repeatable watched classic.

“Men at Work” Now Available on a MVD Visual Blu-ray at Amazon.com