Tag Archives: nudity

Feminism Fights EVIL The Only Way Possible in “Broken Mirrors” reviewed! (Cult Epics / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

The Best Depiction of the Unpleasant Side of Brothels.  “Broken Mirrors” on Blu-ray.

An Amsterdam brothel Happy House Club clings to the good girls that remain employed to pleasure the reprobate and insensitive johns that visit.  Dora, a virtual working girl lifer, brings in new blood, Diane, a young mother desperate in need of financial support because of her drug addicted husband.  Night after night, customers select through the ever-growing service list the club’s owner deems profitable while the women and the matron manager naively cope with a profession that’s quick, easy cash.  They create a process, a standard of procedure so to speak, that tries to make the work that much less degrading but with each client, a little piece of their humanity is chipped away.  Simultaneously, a methodical serial killer abducts the women he previously surveillances from off the street, chains them to a bed in a remote room, takes snapshots of them in confinement, and slowly starves them to death, which could last months.  The two stories are intertwined and connected by a gender dominance disease in which a slow resistance begins to build to an explosive head.

The unofficial sobriquet of the Queen of Feminism Marleen Gorris had made a name for herself as a staunch supporter of feminism and lesbianism with her controversial and provocative films.  Her acclaimed 1982 debut written-and-directed “A Question of Silence” show oppressed gender solidarity and mutiny against a systematically enslaved masculine society.  Continuing her crusade against the patriarchal grain, Gorris followed up “A Question of Silence” with another powerfully messaged, social commentary film that, again, places women emotions and safety under the unyielding thumb of men two years later with “Broken Mirrors.”  Natively known in the Netherlands as “Gebroken Spiegels,” the film marks the return of select cast from her inaugural feature, marshalling in a new narrative in the neo-feminism cinema under the returning production company Sigma Film Productions with producer Matthijs van Heijningen (“A Woman Like Eve,” “The Cool Lakes of Death.”).

As mentioned, a pair of actresses have carried over from “A Question of Silence” to maintain a principal performance in “Broken Mirrors,” beginning with Henriëtte Tol who played the outwitting secretary in Gorri’s debut returns as a woman working in Amsterdam’s red-light district as a seasoned employee of the Happy House Club.  Tol ups the ferocity levels of her previous performance while still maintaining a gradually steady sex appeal.  Another returning actress who nearly didn’t have any dialogue in her previous role as a mother without a voice is Edda Barends now in a character that can’t stop screaming for her life as the latest abductee chained to a cruddy bed in a cruddy room with a coming-and-going, polaroid-enthused sociopath. In Barends starkly different rage against the man machine archetype, the actress finds herself discomposed in the face man she can’t understand but eventually recognizes his nasty need and withdraws it.  Both women excel beyond the unsavory current conditions and transfer the power that’s been dangling over their heads into themselves.  Newcomer Diane, played by Lineke Rijxman, becomes the key to initiate the unraveling of power of a man-owned brothel that subjugates women not as mere employees of a man-owned business but as nothing more than moneymaking ass-shakers and back-layers.  Rijxman puts in the work of having her character be resilient at work and at home as she juggles a wide variety of disgusting clients to please their whims while coming home to deal with a junkie husband’s mess.  As the story progresses and the women fall deeper under life’s heel, Dora and Diane spark what begins as a mutual friendship that slips gradually into sexual tension, giving them more assurances when they need it the most as the brothel parties become bigger and more intense.  The parallel story runs along the same oppressive path but in unconventional, unlawful, and inhuman way with the kidnap and starvation torture of a young mother.  Eddie Brugman is also a returning “A Question of Silence” actor who now finds himself in the shoes of Jean-Pierre, a mild-manner husband and by all rights societally normal seemingly man who visits the brothel for a quickie, easy money as Francine (Marijke Veugelers) would proclaim, but his dark hobby is to snatch unsuspecting women for his own perverse pleasure of watching and hearing them plea for their lives.  By the end of both stories, connected by Jean-Pierre and who finds himself at the end of the disappointing stick for his kicks, crafts more than one way to not give in and to stand up against male malarkey and nastiness.  The cast rounds out with Carla Hardy, Coby Stunnenberg, Anke van ‘t Hof, Elja Pelgrom, Hedda Oledzky, Arline Renfurm, Johan Leysen, Wim Wama, and Elsje de Wiljn.

Not only is “Broken Mirrors” another contentious and provocative incendiary story that wedges apart men and women, with the latter being victimized and justified in their actions, but Marleen Gorris also directs one hell of a boiling point intertwining between parallelisms that almost have no link to each other until the reveal.  Gorris doesn’t necessarily employ red herrings to keep audiences guessing but rather keep the killer obscure, as all that we are exposed to see is from behind the man, who doesn’t speak much either and if he does speak, his responses are to the point with as little descriptors and adjectives as possible.  Not only is the editing between simultaneous stories organic but also the other editing techniques that materialize the characters’ emotional decaying befit the mostly linear structure, such as with the student party montage at the brothel that does a roundtable of individualized scenarios between the women and their slimeball clients in an emotionally painful grin-and-bear it series that culminates to which one character best describes the ordeal as feeling like a human lavatory.  The feeling is very much mutual with viewers as well, like a used wet nap to scrub off a soul staining filth covering head to toe, as Gorris represents a thematic exactitude of fiercely dividing feminism that would define her career. A clear understanding of how brothels operate is greatly depicted with that flimsy layer of excitement and efficiency to mask the ugliness underneath.

“Broken Mirrors” arrives on a Blu-ray home video from Cult Epics and, once again, resurrects and restores a pièce de résistance of Netherland celluloid. The new 4K high-definition transfer from the original 35mm negative is presented in European widescreen 1.66:1 aspect ratio on an AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50. 35mm print looks none worse the wear over the course of father time with a mint print. Restored color graded has freshened up the natural print palette of the brothel story while the kidnapper’s tale sustains a grayscale to bisect the narrative and the delineation for both presents a palatable depth. The aplenty natural grain doesn’t swarm and takeover the higher pixelations to award us with a satisfying vintage image that now enriched without any smoothing enhancements nor any compression issues to note. The Danish language release comes with two audio tracks: A DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono and a LPCM 2.0 Mono. “Broken Mirrors” fair well from both dual channel formats with the DTS-HD aggrandizing the Lodewijk de Boer razor synth score with intent that in itself is a character. Comparatively elsewhere, the two outputs offer little differences and sate with forefront dialogue, balanced in front an equally balanced ambient track. Optional error-free English subtitles are available with haste text to keep up with the fast-paced Dutch. Special features include an audio commentary by Leiden University film scholar Peter Verstraten, an archived 1984 interview with U.S. sex worker and activist Margo St. James with Cinema 3 host Adriaan van Dis, a promotional still gallery, and trailers. The Cult Epics Blu-ray comes in a clear, traditional snapper sporting the film’s most iconic and titular moment, displayed also on the disc art, while the reverse side of the cover depicts a still image of Carla Hardy. The region free Blu runs at a not rated 110 minutes. A good double bill against “A Question of Silence,” “Broken Mirrors” makes for a morosely on the trot sister feature in more ways than one to further a Marleen Gorris artfully aired agenda.

The Best Depiction of the Unpleasant Side of Brothels.  “Broken Mirrors” on Blu-ray.

When Machine and Man Merge, Which EVIL Will Emerge? “Re-Flesh” reviewed! (SRS Cinema / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Re-Flesh” DVD Available Now to Replace Your Old Skin!  

In a dystopian future, machine and man have merged into an asymmetrical symbiosis where machine is preponderantly present to corrupt man’s benevolent humanity.  Such corruption removes compassion at the core level with the use of neurol inhibitors of technological ascendency over mankind in a gruesome, unpleasant fashion.  The exhibited process is exampled with a masked nurse pushing a wheelchair bound masked man down a dank and dark hallway and into a reprocessing room where he’s plugged with a cable attached to his arm.  From there, the man is fitted with a virtual viewfinder displaying five short reprocessing-to-repair files, transmitted before his eyes to incite organic machinery violence that’ll absorb and eradicate years of human psychological evolution.  Slowly through the images and videos of visceral excision does the man morph into an automaton of flesh, blood, and commingled organic cabling and mechanical veins that will render him resolved as biologically re-fleshed.

Japanese splatter punk Body horror inspired “Re-Flesh” becomes “Deep Web XXX” and “Suffering Bible’s” director Davide Pesca’s tribute to the very distinctive denaturalization of the man-machine mix cinematic movement from the unabashed narrative risktakers hailing from land of the rising sun, Japan.  Made popular by the likes of auteurs Shinya Tsukamoto and Shozin Fukui and cult favorites like “Tetsuo:  The Iron Man” and “Tokyo Gore Police,” “Re-Flesh” adds to the niche palate with an unconfined, Italianized take to ambiguate that blurry line between the soul and the soulless as man comes to terms with a terror-inducing technological takeover.  Writer-director Pesca’s underground anthological tale pits the human condition, it’s mortal coil if you will, up against the cold and heartless tech to create coded layers of neova carne, or new flesh.  Pesca and fellow coproducer Massimo Bezzati reteam after “Night of Doom” to collaborate the 2020 released production under their respective indie companies Demented Gore Productions and M.B. Productions.

The five-story anthology with the interweaving wraparound of a man being reprogrammed casts a lot of visual performances without the need for dialogue.  Dialogue is reduced to only a pseudo medical television advert or surgical endorsements for a better, prosperous life to eliminate human flaws, advancement in new, and improved, flesh, and can even cure homeless afflictions like drugs and addictions.  Pesca keeps a simplicity about his scenes by keeping sullying dialogue removed to just retain the beauty of body horror and a sonorously cacophonous industrial soundtrack.  Each story’s characters are also fairly simplified.  Without dialogue, individual complexities and depth remain shallow in what is “Re-Flesh’s” sole celebration of horror based cybernetic organisms.  This creates no emotional attachment to any of the characters being violated by fiber optic cables and experimentally operated on with crude animatronic gizmos, but Pesca does implant an imploration of at least one emotional response from his audience through gratuitous nudity on half of the female protagonists going through a rapture and ruination of bodily rape and mutate connected by inhumane sentient cybernetics.  Most of the women protagonists are half-naked women ensnared by the inescapable new world of merged new flesh but the tail end episodes dig a little deeper, perhaps even stretch the theme to the limits of cyberpunk horror, to where women are more than just ravaged victims.  “Re-Flesh” sees skin in the game from Alessandra Pellegatta (“Night of Doom”), Giacomo Clerici, Mery Rubes (“Rage Killers’), Reiko Nagoshi (“Devil Times Two – Quando le Tenebre escono dal Bosco”), Giulia Reine, Paolo Salvadeo, Amira Lucrezia Lamour (Devil Times Two – Quando le Tenebre escono dal Bosco), Alessandro Davoili (“Alice Was My Name”), Ivan Brusa (“7 Days, 7 Girls”), and Marco Cinque.

David Pesca is no stranger to short, gore-laden, underground films having been a featured segment director on a pair of anthologies in the last decade from “A Taste of Phobia” and “After Midnight.”  For “Re-Flesh,” Pesca doesn’t have to share the spotlight in his very own tech-themed, feature length compilation that narrates transmitted computer files as tech insidiously infiltrating our insubstantial innards.  The first three episodes revolve around phones and solitary women become enslaved to the devices with a link of invading their bodies with a foreign object, whether be adopted a virtual, grotesque pet to being the reason for infection that spreads throughout the body like a flesh-eating disease, to being beamed up and constrained for a thorough, if not sexual, examination of one of mother nature’s creatures.  I’m intentionally skipping the review of fourth short and head straight into the terminal episode that is more dystopian splatter punk than the others with an experimental bio-cybernetics company called Neo Vita, or New Life, ridding the world of lowlifes by module implants that turn them into society-controlled puppets.  Yet, all these stories are not terribly straight forward with the rub being the ambitious nature of interpretation and the fact there isn’t a dialogue track for most of the runtime.  Taking a step backwards to the fourth short, I found this particular short doesn’t fit “Re-Flesh’s” theme with a demonic woman damning three inert souls to a black void of pain and death.  Perhaps, a construal could be constructed to lay in code into the technology sequence strand, but the code would be a fractional stretch in comparison to the surrounding system.  As a whole, “Re-Flesh” may side more with gory sanguine than an illuminating story but does depict the scourged with a front row seat in this bloodcurdling network of body horror.

Befitting to be distributed on SRS Cinema’s Nightmare Fuel – Extreme and Unrated sublabel, “Re-Flesh” emerges as a bizarre aghast mix of tentacle erotica and technical dysfunction onto a 480p DVD, presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Technical dysfunction also applies to the image quality.  Though combating some lossy compression issues, the standard definition resolution and budget filming equipment sustain a level of image softness under a desaturated color palette.  Depth and delineation range from hazily outlined to a complete wash out from the frame’s JPEG conversation.  Pesca operates under a wide-stylistic format that incorporates varied black-and-white schemes (a gritty B&W wraparound story compared to a more defined desaturated monochrome for the fourth segment), natural lighting, harsh gel lighting and tint, and green screen for CGI backdrops.  The English dub stereo 2.0 mix will obliterate your sound setup if not careful and without a subwoofer with a booming LFE industrial soundtrack that has produced an inherent crackle and since there is no in-scene dialogue or ambience, all of which is 100% done in ADR, the lower frequencies engulf the other channels that may pop in for phone effects or squishy surgery sounds.  “Re-Flesh” is an Italian film, but the cybernetic implant advert shot, originally spoken in Italian, is dubbed in a burned-in expeditious English dub that is what it is.  Bonus features include a promo and original trailer, a behind-the-scenes featurette entitled Backstage which is a look at some of the gory scene effects the first two segments, the short “Electric Dreams” which is an alternate graded version of the second segment, and other SRS trailers.  The traditional DVD snapper case comes with the illustrated front cover art of the man plugged in under a faux harsh white neon glow with the disc art containing the same art but superimposed with a red hue layer.  There is no insert inside the casing.  The unrated feature has a runtime of 72 minutes, more than enough time for this type of anthology, and has a region free playback.  A kitschy and schlocky graft of “Re-Flesh” will get under your skin, but this anthology quickly grinds gears toward a blue screen of death.      

“Re-Flesh” DVD Available Now to Replace Your Old Skin!  

Friends for Dinner is EVIL’s Table Setting! “Gnaw” reviewed! (MVD Visual / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Gnaw” on this DVD from MVD Visual, Danse Macabre, and Jinga FIlms!

A holiday away in the English countryside might not be the perfect relaxation for six prickly friends.  Quarrelsome and unfaithfulness run rampant through their fragile friendship on the verge of collapse.  Everything at first was manageably enticing – a quaintly rustic countryside house, a quietly isolated surrounding woodland, and the matron house owner who whips up meaty delicacies for them to enjoy breakfast, lunch, and dinner – but when darkness falls amidst a heated love triangles, lustful romps, and frustrated behaviors, the divisive friends become blind to the ever watchful eye that’s hungry for what the group of young people have to offer – as fleshy comestibles.  A cannibalistic cook lurks in the shadows and in between the walls, waiting for the opportune moment to strike, fillet, ground, and prepare the tender meat for seasoning and baking, but his observant eye has set it’s sights on one whose expecting child that could be a tasty morsel for later. 

Cannibalism subgenre has been a staple in horror for decades the under the vastly wide dog-eat-dog umbrella that pits human beings against each other in one of the many gruesome reasons of unwittingly engaging into a form of Darwinism.  People considered as food are lower-shelf commodities to those who need to feed of human flesh and organs, regarding their placement in the food chain as superior amongst the rest despite being in the same category of the animal kingdom.  Every filmic narrative contains a tweaked difference in justification for cannibalism and in Gregory Mandry’s 2008 English horror, simply known as “Gnaw,” in lies that sense of definite worth in craving someone else’s entrails, boiling the viscera down into a hot soup or baking it into a meat and potato Cornish pastry.   The script, penned between first time screenwriters Michael John Bell and Max Waller from a story by independent horror producer Rob Weston (“Antibirth,” “The Thompsons”), contrasts people’s life-consuming narcissism and pettiness against something truly terrifying and waiting to sink its teeth in you.  Weston and Simon Sharp produce the film under Weston’s production company, Straightwire Entertainment Group, as well as The Big Yellow Feet Productions.

Being that “Gnaw” was released in 2008 and is a low-budget indie film, a novice bunch of English first timers trying to break into the acting game and industry overall comprises the story’s cast of victims and cannibals, but that isn’t to necessarily say the meat and bones are rotten from the very unwrapping of DVD case plastic.  As a whole, the fresh cast undertakes the pessimistic angles of a souring love triangle between established couple Jack and Jill, yes, like the nursery rhyme, played by Nigel Croft-Adams and Rachel Mitchem in a slowly sink ship that symbolizes their relationship, torpedoed by an unknown undercurrent in Jack’s fling with Lorrie (Sara Dylan, “Mandrake”).  Between the three, suspicion is entrenched in Jill with sarcastic lashings on Jack’s recent temperament and behavior that suggests she’s aware of wandering playboy antics, but what Jill is unaware of is the other woman, a hopeless romantic who can’t seem to see through Jack’s philandering, self-assured ways.  One thing “Gnaw” does to spoil this wonderfully taught threesome is not bring the tension to a head and, instead, deflects to the butchering head chef of human bodies, played gruntingly by a muted and snarky-looking Gary Faulkner attempting his best to imitate a killer from the very best of the 80’s slasher renaissance and only to come up short of the current slasher renaissance a decade and a half later.  Masked half the time with some kind of black felt cloth with an attached pelt, Faulkner looks more like a half-wit brandishing a two-prong pitchfork than an large, formidable intimidator you’d be scared of just by looking over your shoulder while running as fast as you can to get away.  Granted, the character is tough to kill, able to take punches and stabs as if they were mosquito bites, but his connection to cannibalism often feels lost in the chase rather than knee deep in guts and a frying pan.  The rest of the cast rounds out with a trope-horny couple in Julia Vandoorne and Hiram Bleetman (“Zombie Diaries”) and the matronly yet unnerving face and voice of Carrie Cohen as the house owner.

In the grand canon scheme of cannibalism films, “Gnaw” places on the generic neighborhood scale.  The small time indie picture rides the line of equivalence, neither being absolutely terrible or outstanding gruesome, with a less-is-more story that more-or-less been done before in the subgenre.  Yet, “Gnaw” doesn’t give audiences anything new to squirm about with its peanut long-pigs who arbitrary abduct locals for their bone-licking appetites.  “Gnaw’s” in frame gore generally consists of goring with that aforementioned puny pitchfork and we’re quickly skirted from the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” inspired moment of Faulkner revving the two-stroke engine for maximizing terror in the eyes of a soon-to-be-in-bits victim   Gore should be a staple motif for any cannibal film where one deranged person has to either sauté, stew, bake, or grill the parts of a hacked up totally emotion-regulated person and Mandry’s film seldomly shows the sickening, sordid sloppy Joe-makings of a flesh eater, except for one scene of a severed foot being ground into hamburger meat that fits the bill while most of the rest happens implied off screen or unshown.  Mandry’s approach to telling the story has the inklings of a 80s-90s vintage made-for-TV movie with an unpolished dark veneer and snooping camera angles to obtain a POV sense of prowling prey while also keeping us engaged with the frustratingly unresolved melodramatics of the group that can stifle our concern for the characters in the last act, infectiously affecting the crude final scenes that literally drops a baby into our laps and expects us to know what to do with that information. 

Personally, my second time around with Gregory Mandry’s “Gnaw” but a lot has changed in between the more than 10-year span of now-and-then.  Hell, even I’ve changed in regard to taste and with now having consumed more cinematic wisdom over the years, from what I recall, “Gnaw” was a rememberable off-industry shocker to a limit and it’s gratifying to see the little cannibal film that could receive a revisit on DVD from MVDVisual in association with Danse Macabre and Jinga Films.  The film is housed on a DVD5 that presents the 35 mm stock in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio and in a rather chaotic upscaled transfer that may be more commercially equipment caused than artefact, but compression macro blocking is evident during the majority of night scenes as it phases in and out of overlapping darker shades. Tom Jenkins’s cinematography can be nicely fore focused to center the characters in front of a background out of focus, but there are other instances where the lighting is extremely binary with not a splash of other color to liven up the image. The only audio option is an English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound mix with an overkill statement on a film that doesn’t require it.  The back and side channels hardly become utilized for any back brush movement or creaky old house shifting so a lot of the sound is in the anterior which is where the dialogue most rightfully aggressive and clearest.  No issues with the digital recording that offers a balance between the placid moments and the screaming hysteria without being too much intake on the speakers.  There’s not much in the way of ambience, some chewing of the meat pies, steaming of pots, and the revving of a chainsaw is most character-driven sounds that overtake any kind of natural environment along the background landscape.  English subtitles are optionally available.  The DVD does not list special features, but extras appear on the static menu with a director’s commentary that can be toggled off/on.  There is also a trailers selection with previews for the feature plus “Midnight Son,” “After,” and “Red Latex.”  Physical features offer an alternate cover from the other releases with a man opening wide to take a bite out of a literal hand sandwich in the photoshopped composition.  The DVD case does not contain an insert and the disc art contains the same image as the front cover.  With a region free playback, the movie come not rated and has a manageable runtime of 84 minutes.  The second time around with “Gnaw” proves to appreciate the work that goes into a stably fixtured indie horror from the UK but with the copious entries of the cannibal subgenre, especially in the early 2000s with more theatrical pieces in “Wrong Turn” and “The Hills Have Eyes” remake, “Gnaw” treads mediocre waters just enough to sate the man-eater hunger.

“Gnaw” on this DVD from MVD Visual, Danse Macabre, and Jinga FIlms!

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Enter the Netherworld on Blu-ray!

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

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

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

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

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

Enter the Netherworld on Blu-ray!

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

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Flesh City” Yearns for Connection on DVD!

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

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

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

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

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

“Flesh City” Yearns for Connection on DVD!